"'This is your cell,' said he. 'You will sit there when you have to
work with me, for you will not be tethered by a chain;' and he
explained in detail the kind and duration of my employment with him.
As I listened I felt that he was a great political teacher.

"It took me about a month to familiarize myself with people and
things, to learn the duties of my new office, and accustom myself to
the Count's methods. A secretary necessarily watches the man who makes
use of him. That man's tastes, passions, temper, and manias become the
subject of involuntary study. The union of their two minds is at once
more and less than a marriage.

"During these months the Count and I reciprocally studied each other.
I learned with astonishment that Comte Octave was but thirty-seven
years old. The merely superficial peacefulness of his life and the
propriety of his conduct were the outcome not solely of a deep sense
of duty and of stoical reflection; in my constant intercourse with
this man--an extraordinary man to those who knew him well--I felt vast
depths beneath his toil, beneath his acts of politeness, his mask of
benignity, his assumption of resignation, which so closely resembled
calmness that it is easy to mistake it. Just as when walking through
forest-lands certain soils give forth under our feet a sound which
enables us to guess whether they are dense masses of stone or a void;
so intense egoism, though hidden under the flowers of politeness, and
subterranean caverns eaten out by sorrow sound hollow under the
constant touch of familiar life. It was sorrow and not despondency
that dwelt in that really great soul. The Count had understood that
actions, deeds, are the supreme law of social man. And he went on his
way in spite of secret wounds, looking to the future with a tranquil
eye, like a martyr full of faith.