crown or in eminent offices. Monsieur de Mortsauf had emigrated at the
very moment when the second stage of his education was about to begin,
and accordingly that training was lacking to him. He was one of those
who believed in the immediate restoration of the monarchy; with that
conviction in his mind, his exile was a long and miserable period of
idleness. When the army of Conde, which his courage led him to join
with the utmost devotion, was disbanded, he expected to find some
other post under the white flag, and never sought, like other
emigrants, to take up an industry. Perhaps he had not the sort of
courage that could lay aside his name and earn his living in the sweat
of a toil he despised. His hopes, daily postponed to the morrow, and
possibly a scruple of honor, kept him from offering his services to
foreign powers. Trials undermined his courage. Long tramps afoot on
insufficient nourishment, and above all, on hopes betrayed, injured
his health and discouraged his mind. By degrees he became utterly
destitute. If to some men misery is a tonic, on others it acts as a
dissolvent; and the count was of the latter.

Reflecting on the life of this poor Touraine gentleman, tramping and
sleeping along the highroads of Hungary, sharing the mutton of Prince
Esterhazy's shepherds, from whom the foot-worn traveller begged the
food he would not, as a gentleman, have accepted at the table of the
master, and refusing again and again to do service to the enemies of
France, I never found it in my heart to feel bitterness against him,
even when I saw him at his worst in after days. The natural gaiety of
a Frenchman and a Tourangean soon deserted him; he became morose, fell
ill, and was charitably cared for in some German hospital. His disease
was an inflammation of the mesenteric membrane, which is often fatal,
and is liable, even if cured, to change the constitution and produce
hypochondria. His love affairs, carefully buried out of sight and