something beyond mere cleverness.

Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner
depth the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was
generous. He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund
of wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and
courtesy, and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious
man, to play a sorry part to gain "a good position," as we call it in
modern days.

He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his
box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at
the scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking
to carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing
the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as
you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known
to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel,
for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical
cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his
brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was
hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather