Contented Man

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <h2> A CONTENTED MAN </h2> <p>A young man goes skipping and bounding along a street in the capital. His movements are gay and alert; there is a sparkle in his eyes, a smirk on his lips, a pleasing flush on his beaming face.... He is all contentment and delight.</p> <p>What has happened to him? Has he come in for a legacy? Has he been promoted? Is he hastening to meet his beloved? Or is it simply he has had a good breakfast, and the sense of health, the sense of well-fed prosperity, is at work in all his limbs? Surely they have not put on his neck thy lovely, eight-pointed cross, O Polish king, Stanislas?</p> <p>No. He has hatched a scandal against a friend, has sedulously sown it abroad, has heard it, this same slander, from the lips of another friend, and&mdash;<i>has himself believed it</i>!</p> <p>Oh, how contented! how kind indeed at this minute is this amiable, promising young man!</p> <p><i>February 1878.</i></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />