CHAPTER V.
RURAL HOSPITALITY .-- AN EXTRAORDINARY GUEST .-- A FIN$ GENTLEMAN IS NOT NECESSARILY A FOOL.
WE were all three (my brothers and myself) precocious geniuses.

Our early instructions, under a man like the Abbe, at once learned and worldly, and the society into which we had been initiated from our childhood, made us premature adepts in the manners of the world; and I, in especial, flattered myself that a quick habit of observation rendered me no despicable profiter by my experience.

Our academy, too, had been more like a college than a school; and we had enjoyed a license that seemed to the superficial more likely to benefit our manners than to strengthen our morals.

I do not think, however, that the latter suffered by our freedom from restraint.

On the contrary, we the earlier learned that vice, but for the piquancy of its unlawfulness, would never be so captivating a goddess; and our errors and crimes in after life had certainly not their origin in our wanderings out of academical bounds.
It is right that I should mention our prematurity of intellect, because, otherwise, much of my language and reflections, as detailed in the first book of this history, might seem ill suited to the tender age at which they occurred.