him that aristocratic pre-eminence which Frenchmen will forever
desire.

He found some slight compensations for the dulness of these evenings
in certain manual exercises which always delight young men, and which
his father enjoined upon him. The old gentleman considered that to
know the art of fencing and the use of arms, to ride well on
horseback, to play tennis, to acquire good manners,--in short, to
possess all the frivolous accomplishments of the old nobility,--made a
young man of the present day a finished gentleman. Accordingly, Paul
took a fencing-lesson every morning, went to the riding-school, and
practised in a pistol-gallery. The rest of his time was spent in
reading novels, for his father would never have allowed the more
abstruse studies now considered necessary to finish an education.

So monotonous a life would soon have killed the poor youth if the
death of the old man had not delivered him from this tyranny at the
moment when it was becoming intolerable. Paul found himself in
possession of considerable capital, accumulated by his father's
avarice, together with landed estates in the best possible condition.
But he now held Bordeaux in horror; neither did he like Lanstrac,
where his father had taken him to spend the summers, employing his
whole time from morning till night in hunting.

As soon as the estate was fairly settled, the young heir, eager for
enjoyment, bought consols with his capital, left the management of the
landed property to old Mathias, his father's notary, and spent the
next six years away from Bordeaux. At first he was attached to the
French embassy at Naples; after that he was secretary of legation at
Madrid, and then in London,--making in this way the tour of Europe.