"His concealed sadness, the bitter disenchantment from which he
suffered, had not led him into philosophical deserts of incredulity;
this brave statesman was religious, without ostentation; he always
attended the earliest mass at Saint-Paul's for pious workmen and
servants. Not one of his friends, no one at Court, knew that he so
punctually fulfilled the practice of religion. He was addicted to God
as some men are addicted to a vice, with the greatest mystery. Thus
one day I came to find the Count at the summit of an Alp of woe much
higher than that on which many are who think themselves the most
tried; who laugh at the passions and the beliefs of others because
they have conquered their own; who play variations in every key of
irony and disdain. He did not mock at those who still follow hope into
the swamps whither she leads, nor those who climb a peak to be alone,
nor those who persist in the fight, reddening the arena with their
blood and strewing it with their illusions. He looked on the world as
a whole; he mastered its beliefs; he listened to its complaining; he
was doubtful of affection, and yet more of self-sacrifice; but this
great and stern judge pitied them, or admired them, not with transient
enthusiasm, but with silence, concentration, and the communion of a
deeply-touched soul. He was a sort of catholic Manfred, and unstained
by crime, carrying his choiceness into his faith, melting the snows by
the fires of a sealed volcano, holding converse with a star seen by
himself alone!

"I detected many dark riddles in his ordinary life. He evaded my gaze
not like a traveler who, following a path, disappears from time to
time in dells or ravines according to the formation of the soil, but
like a sharpshooter who is being watched, who wants to hide himself,
and seeks a cover. I could not account for his frequent absences at