Nathan resembled a man of genius; and had he marched to the scaffold,
as he sometimes wished he could have done, he might have struck his
brow with the famous action of Andre Chenier. Seized with political
ambition on seeing the rise to power of a dozen authors, professors,
metaphysicians, and historians, who encrusted themselves, so to speak,
upon the machine during the turmoils of 1830 and 1833, he regretted
that he had not spent his time on political instead of literary
articles. He thought himself superior to all those parvenus, whose
success inspired him with consuming jealousy. He belonged to the class
of minds ambitious of everything, capable of all things, from whom
success is, as it were, stolen; who go their way dashing at a hundred
luminous points, and settling upon none, exhausting at last the
good-will of others.

At this particular time he was going from Saint-Simonism into
republicanism, to return, very likely, to ministerialism. He looked
for a bone to gnaw in all corners, searching for a safe place where he
could bark secure from kicks and make himself feared. But he had the
mortification of finding he was held to be of no account by de Marsay,
then at the head of the government, who had no consideration whatever
for authors, among whom he did not find what Richelieu called a
consecutive mind, or more correctly, continuity of ideas; he counted
as any minister would have done on the constant embarrassment of
Raoul's business affairs. Sooner or later, necessity would bring him
to accept conditions instead of imposing them.

The real, but carefully concealed character of Raoul Nathan is of a
piece with his public career. He is a comedian in good faith, selfish
as if the State were himself, and a very clever orator. No one knows
better how to play off sentiments, glory in false grandeurs, deck