Up to the present time, Julien de Buxieres had not been spoiled by
Fortune's gifts. His parents, who had died prematurely, had left him
nothing. He lived in a very mediocre style on his slender salary as
comptroller of direct contributions, and, although twenty-seven years
old, was housed like a supernumerary in a small furnished room on the
second floor above the ground. At this time his physique was that of a
young man of medium height, slight, pale, and nervous, sensitive in
disposition, reserved and introspective in habit. His delicate features,
his intelligent forehead surmounted by soft chestnut hair, his pathetic
blue eyes, his curved, dissatisfied mouth, shaded by a slight, dark
moustache, indicated a melancholy, unquiet temperament and precocious
moral fatigue.

There are some men who never have had any childhood, or rather, whose
childhood never has had its happy time of laughter. Julien was one of
these. That which imparts to childhood its charm and enjoyment is the
warm and tender atmosphere of the home; the constant and continued
caressing of a mother; the gentle and intimate creations of one's native
country where, by degrees, the senses awaken to the marvellous sights of
the outer world; where the alternating seasons in their course first
arouse the student's ambition and cause the heart of the adolescent youth
to thrill with emotion; where every street corner, every tree, every turn
of the soil, has some history to relate. Julien had had no experiences
of this peaceful family life, during which are stored up such treasures
of childhood's recollections. He was the son of a government official,
who had been trotted over all France at the caprice of the
administration, and he had never known, so to speak, any associations of
the land in which he was born, or the hearth on which he was raised.
Chance had located his birth in a small town among the Pyrenees, and when
he was two years old he had been transplanted to one of the industrial