whose cleverness they possess; we watch them climbing, we admire their
agility, but once at the summit we see only their absurd and
contemptible parts. The reverse side of my host's character was made
up of pettiness with the addition of envy. The peerage and he were on
diverging lines. To have an ambition and gratify it shows merely the
insolence of strength, but to live below one's avowed ambition is a
constant source of ridicule to petty minds. Monsieur de Chessel did
not advance with the straightforward step of a strong man. Twice
elected deputy, twice defeated; yesterday director-general, to-day
nothing at all, not even prefect, his successes and his defeats had
injured his nature, and given him the sourness of invalided ambition.
Though a brave man and a witty one and capable of great things, envy,
which is the root of existence in Touraine, the inhabitants of which
employ their native genius in jealousy of all things, injured him in
upper social circles, where a dissatisfied man, frowning at the
success of others, slow at compliments and ready at epigram, seldom
succeeds. Had he sought less he might perhaps have obtained more; but
unhappily he had enough genuine superiority to make him wish to
advance in his own way.

At this particular time Monsieur de Chessel's ambition had a second
dawn. Royalty smiled upon him, and he was now affecting the grand
manner. Still he was, I must say, most kind to me, and he pleased me
for the very simple reason that with him I had found peace and rest
for the first time. The interest, possibly very slight, which he
showed in my affairs, seemed to me, lonely and rejected as I was, an
image of paternal love. His hospitable care contrasted so strongly
with the neglect to which I was accustomed, that I felt a childlike
gratitude to the home where no fetters bound me and where I was
welcomed and even courted.