Leon Giraud, appointed in the first instance master of petitions,
became eventually a Councillor of State.

The whole existence of Daniel d'Arthez is consecrated to work; he sees
society only by snatches; it is to him a sort of dream. His house is a
convent, where he leads the life of a Benedictine; the same sobriety
of regimen, the same regularity of occupation. His friends knew that
up to the present time woman had been to him no more than an always
dreaded circumstance; he had observed her too much not to fear her;
but by dint of studying her he had ceased to understand her,--like, in
this, to those deep strategists who are always beaten on unexpected
ground, where their scientific axioms are either modified or
contradicted. In character he still remains a simple-hearted child,
all the while proving himself an observer of the first rank. This
contrast, apparently impossible, is explainable to those who know how
to measure the depths which separate faculties from feelings; the
former proceed from the head, the latter from the heart. A man can be
a great man and a wicked one, just as he can be a fool and a devoted
lover. D'Arthez is one of those privileged beings in whom shrewdness
of mind and a broad expanse of the qualities of the brain do not
exclude either the strength or the grandeur of sentiments. He is, by
rare privilege, equally a man of action and a man of thought. His
private life is noble and generous. If he carefully avoided love, it
was because he knew himself, and felt a premonition of the empire such
a passion would exercise upon him.

For several years the crushing toil by which he prepared the solid
ground of his subsequent works, and the chill of poverty, were
marvellous preservatives. But when ease with his inherited fortune
came to him, he formed a vulgar and most incomprehensible connection