advantages of a sound mind. He had grown accustomed to the face; he
had studied the countenance; he loved the voice, the manners, the
glance of that young girl. Having cast on this attachment the last
stake of his life, the disappointment he endured was the bitterest of
all. His mother died, and he found himself, he who had always desired
luxury, with five thousand francs a year for his whole fortune, and
with the certainty that never in his future life could he repair any
loss whatsoever; for he felt himself incapable of the effort expressed
in that terrible injunction, to /make his way/.

Weak, impatient grief cannot easily be shaken off. During his
mourning, Godefroid tried the various chances and distractions of
Paris; he dined at table-d'hotes; he made acquaintances heedlessly; he
sought society, with no result but that of increasing his
expenditures. Walking along the boulevards, he often suffered deeply
at the sight of a mother walking with a marriageable daughter,--a
sight which caused him as painful an emotion as he formerly felt when
a young man passed him riding to the Bois, or driving in an elegant
equipage. The sense of his impotence told him that he could never hope
for the best of even secondary positions, nor for any easily won
career; and he had heart enough to feel constantly wounded, mind
enough to make in his own breast the bitterest of elegies.

Unfitted to struggle against circumstances, having an inward
consciousness of superior faculties without the will that could put
them in action, feeling himself incomplete, without force to undertake
any great thing, without resistance against the tastes derived from
his earlier life, his education, and his indolence, he was the victim
of three maladies, any one of which would be enough to sicken of life
a young man long alienated from religious faith.