Paris, one superior man excuses himself from admiring another.

"Was there ever," said he, "in your former life, any event, any
thought or wish which told you what your vocation was?" asked Emile
Blondet; "for we all, like Newton, have our apple, which falls and
leads us to the spot where our faculties develop----"

"Yes," said de Marsay; "I will tell you about it."

Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, de Marsay's
intimate friends,--all settled themselves comfortably, each in his
favorite attitude, to look at the Minister. Need it be said that the
servants had left, that the doors were shut, and the curtains drawn
over them? The silence was so complete that the murmurs of the
coachmen's voices could be heard from the courtyard, and the pawing
and champing made by horses when asking to be taken back to their
stable.

"The statesman, my friends, exists by one single quality," said the
Minister, playing with his gold and mother-of-pearl dessert knife. "To
wit: the power of always being master of himself; of profiting more or
less, under all circumstances, by every event, however fortuitous; in
short, of having within himself a cold and disinterested other self,
who looks on as a spectator at all the changes of life, noting our
passions and our sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the
judgment of a sort of moral ready-reckoner."

"That explains why a statesman is so rare a thing in France," said old
Lord Dudley.