The intellectual animal of two or three months before
seemed to have laid aside all claims to what his brain had won for him,
and to be beginning existence over again with a new object and new
materials. And had Bressant indeed been a child, the succession of his
ideas and impulses could hardly have been more primitive and natural.
"What's to become of our Hebrew and history, if you turn poet?" inquired
the old gentleman, still chuckling.
Bressant turned his head away and closed his eyes wearily. "I don't want
any thing more to do with that," said he. "Love is study enough, and
work enough, for a lifetime. Mathematics, and logic, and philosophy--all
those things have nothing to do with love, and couldn't help me in it.
It's outside of every thing else: it has laws of its own: I'm just
beginning to learn them."
"A professional lover! well, as long as you recognize the sufficiency of
one object in your studies, you might do worse, that's certain. But you
can't make a living out of it, my boy."
"I don't need money, I have enough; if I hadn't, money-making is for
men without hearts; but mine is bigger than my head; I must give myself
up to it."
"That won't do," returned the professor, shaking his head. "Lovers must
earn their bread-and-butter as well as people with brains.
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