Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/182

174 a commission, if I had joined his regiment. But I knew the day was past both for priest and soldier; and it was not merely to live, no, nor to live comfortably, but to enjoy power, that I desired; so I declined these offers. Others of my friends would have been delighted to have kept me in their house, feasted me, joked with me, rode with me, and nothing more! But I had already the sense to see, that if a man dances himself into distinction, it is never by the steps of attendance. One must receive favours and court patronage, but it must be with the air of an independent man. My old friends thus rendered useless, my legal studies forbade me to make new, nay, they even estranged me from the old; for people may say what they please about a similarity of opinions being necessary to friendship, a similarity of habits is much more so. It is the man you dine, breakfast, and lodge with, walk, ride, gamble, or thieve with, that is your friend, not the man who likes Virgil as well as you do, and agrees with you in an admiration of Handel. Meanwhile, my chief prey, Lord Mauleverer, was gone; he had taken another man's dulcinea, and sought out a bower in Italy;