for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger
generation, those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are
as simple as children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst,
and the captain of a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a
merchant's day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore being
innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act upon
their strongest impulses. Castanier's crime was one of those matters
that raise so many questions, that, in order to debate about it, a
moralist might call for its "discussion by clauses," to make use of a
parliamentary expression.

Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of
himself, "I will never do that," when a siren joins in the combat and
throws her spells over him.

So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the
truths of religion which the French Revolution and a soldier's career
had forced Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, "You will be happy
or miserable for all eternity!" made but the more terrible impression
upon him, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren
tree; because his desires could effect all things, so that it was
enough that any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and
he forthwith thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare
such great things with social follies, Castanier's position was not
unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions
cannot obtain for him an entrance into the society of the noblesse,
must set his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social
privileges that he has already acquired are as nothing in his eyes
from the moment when he discovers that a single one is lacking.