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universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and
spirit-stirring. "Oh, le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer!"
In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my
disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates,
and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all
not greatly older than myself;--over all with a single exception.
This exception was found in the person of a scholar, who, although
no relation, bore the same Christian and surname as myself;--a
circumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble
descent, mine was one of those everyday appellations which seem, by
prescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common property
of the mob. In this narrative I have therefore designated myself as
William Wilson,--a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real.
My namesake alone, of those who in school phraseology constituted "our
set," presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class--in the
sports and broils of the play-ground--to refuse implicit belief in my
assertions, and submission to my will--indeed, to interfere with my
arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a
supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind
in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions.
Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest
embarrassment;--the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which in
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