himself with moral beauty, do honor to his nature in language, and
pose like Alceste while behaving like Philinte. His egotism trots
along protected by this cardboard armor, and often almost reaches the
end he seeks. Lazy to a superlative degree, he does nothing, however,
until he is prodded by the bayonets of need. He is incapable of
continued labor applied to the creation of a work; but, in a paroxysm
of rage caused by wounded vanity, or in a crisis brought on by
creditors, he leaps the Eurotas and attains to some great triumph of
his intellect. After which, weary, and surprised at having created
anything, he drops back into the marasmus of Parisian dissipation;
wants become formidable; he has no strength to face them; and then he
comes down from his pedestal and compromises.

Influenced by a false idea of his grandeur and of his future,--the
measure of which he reckons on the noble success of one of his former
comrades, one of the few great talents brought to light by the
revolution of July,--he allows himself, in order to get out of his
embarrassments, certain laxities of principle with persons who are
friendly to him,--laxities which never come to the surface, but are
buried in private life, where no one ever mentions or complains of
them. The shallowness of his heart, the impurity of his hand, which
clasps that of all vices, all evils, all treacheries, all opinions,
have made him as inviolable as a constitutional king. Venial sins,
which excite a hue and cry against a man of high character, are
thought nothing of in him; the world hastens to excuse them. Men who
might otherwise be inclined to despise him shake hands with him,
fearing that the day may come when they will need him. He has, in
fact, so many friends that he wishes for enemies.

Judged from a literary point of view, Nathan lacks style and