incomprehensible; a something ready to break out if occasion calls
into flying upleaping flame? It is the _accidia_ of the cloister; a
trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of
youthful energies, a vague, obscure melancholy."

"That will do," said the Marquise; "you are giving me a mental shower
bath."

"It is the early afternoon languor. If a man has nothing to do, he
will sooner get into mischief than do nothing at all; this invariably
happens in France. Youth at present day has two sides to it; the
studious or unappreciated, and the ardent or _passionne_."

"That will do!" repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with an authoritative
gesture. "You are setting my nerves on edge."

"To finish my portrait of La Palferine, I hasten to make the plunge
into the gallant regions of his character, or you will not understand
the peculiar genius of an admirable representative of a certain
section of mischievous youth--youth strong enough, be it said, to
laugh at the position in which it is put by those in power; shrewd
enough to do no work, since work profiteth nothing; yet so full of
life that it fastens upon pleasure--the one thing that cannot be taken
away. And meanwhile a bourgeois, mercantile, and bigoted policy
continues to cut off all the sluices through which so much aptitude
and ability would find an outlet. Poets and men of science are not
wanted.

"To give you an idea of the stupidity of the new court, I will tell
you of something which happened to La Palferine. There is a sort of