supposed himself unobserved; but then he was a child again, he gave
course to the tears hidden beneath the toga, to the excitement which,
if wrongly interpreted, might have damaged his credit for perspicacity
as a statesman.

"When all this had become to me a matter of certainty, Comte Octave
had all the attractions of a problem, and won on my affection as much
as though he had been my own father. Can you enter into the feeling of
curiosity, tempered by respect? What catastrophe had blasted this
learned man, who, like Pitt, had devoted himself from the age of
eighteen to the studies indispensable to power, while he had no
ambition; this judge, who thoroughly knew the law of nations,
political law, civil and criminal law, and who could find in these a
weapon against every anxiety, against every mistake; this profound
legislator, this serious writer, this pious celibate whose life
sufficiently proved that he was open to no reproach? A criminal could
not have been more hardly punished by God than was my master; sorrow
had robbed him of half his slumbers; he never slept more than four
hours. What struggle was it that went on in the depths of these hours
apparently so calm, so studious, passing without a sound or a murmur,
during which I often detected him, when the pen had dropped from his
fingers, with his head resting on one hand, his eyes like two fixed
stars, and sometimes wet with tears? How could the waters of that
living spring flow over the burning strand without being dried up by
the subterranean fire? Was there below it, as there is under the sea,
between it and the central fires of the globe, a bed of granite? And
would the volcano burst at last?

"Sometimes the Count would give me a look of that sagacious and
keen-eyed curiosity by which one man searches another when he desires