was already aged by contact with a world as restless as it was
disappointing.

His mother, who was dying in the peaceful village of Auteuil, recalled
her son to live with her, partly to have him near her, and partly to
put him in the way of finding an equable, tranquil happiness which
might satisfy a soul like his. She had ended by judging Godefroid,
finding him at twenty-eight with two-thirds of his fortune gone, his
desires dulled, his pretended capacities extinct, his activity dead,
his ambition humbled, and his hatred against all that reached
legitimate success increased by his own shortcomings.

She tried to marry him to an excellent young girl, the only daughter
of a retired merchant,--a woman well fitted to play the part of
guardian to the sickened soul of her son. But the father had the
business spirit which never abandons an old merchant, especially in
matrimonial negotiations, and after a year of attentions and
neighborly intercourse, Godefroid was not accepted. In the first
place, his former career seemed to these worthy people profoundly
immoral; then, during this very year, he had made still further
inroads into his capital, as much to dazzle the parents as to please
the daughter. This vanity, excusable as it was, caused his final
rejection by the family, who held dissipation of property in holy
horror, and who now discovered that in six years Godefroid had spent
or lost a hundred and fifty thousand francs of his capital.

This blow struck the young man's already wounded heart the more deeply
because the girl herself had no personal beauty. But, guided by his
mother in judging her character, he had ended by recognizing in the
woman he sought the great value of an earnest soul, and the vast