beside an ignoble woman--excites of regret and longings for diviner
sentiments in the higher regions of the soul. D'Arthez was, indeed,
the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An
illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful
Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and
seek, if only to make a plaything of him,--that power which they
consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she
had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of
a heart all new to love; and she saw, with untold happiness, that
these merits were contained in a form that pleased her. She thought
d'Arthez handsome, and perhaps he was. Though he had reached the age
of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved a flower
of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led. Like all
men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired a certainly
reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some resemblance to
Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a man with
black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign with blue
eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of ardent
and noble ambition in the great author's eyes had been somewhat
quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed
had flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now
spread its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow
tones of the class of temperament whose forces band together to
support a crushing and long-continued struggle. If you observe
carefully the noble faces of ancient philosophers, you will always
find those deviations from the type of a perfect human face which show
the characteristic to which each countenance owes its originality,
chastened by the habit of meditation, and by the calmness necessary
for intellectual labor. The most irregular features, like those of
Socrates, for instance, become, after a time, expressive of an almost