Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the
dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point of
wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive
objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them:
their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more
comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had built
his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period. Astonishment
never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater heights tempt him to
relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he saw none. Jugglers he
saw running up ladders that overtopped him, and air-balloons scaling the
empyrean; but the former came precipitately down again, and the latter
were at the mercy of the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid
unambitious ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to
his morality, his comfort to his conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut
himself off from his fellows: on the contrary, his sole amusement was
their society. Alone he was rather dull, as a man who beholds but one
thing must naturally be. Study of the animated varieties of that one
thing excited him sufficiently to think life a pleasant play; and the
faculties he had forfeited to hold his elevated position he could
serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others. Thus:--wonder at
Master Richard's madness: though he himself did not experience it, he was
eager to mark the effect on his beloved relatives. As he carried along
his vindictive hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of
amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the
prospect. For his patron had projected a journey, commencing with Paris,
culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome: a delightful journey to
show Richard the highways of History and tear him from the risk of
further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be altogether bathed