consumption."

For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of
circulating bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a
woman here and there it is a man; for a certain order of mind it
is a salon, a coterie, a quarter of the town, or some single
city; but Don Juan found his world in himself.

This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, moored his
bark by every shore; but wherever he was led he was never carried
away, and was only steered in a course of his own choosing. The
more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and
saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and
prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation;
justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a _modus
vivendi_; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see
that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just,
generous, prudent, or brave were held cheaply by their
fellow-men.

"What a cold-blooded jest!" said he to himself. "It was not
devised by a God."

From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never
uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the
carven saints in the churches became works of art. He understood
the mechanism of society too well to clash wantonly with its
prejudices; for, after all, he was not as powerful as the
executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit and grace so
well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in fact,