more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he
received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All
these favours, one after another, came to seek the Marquis de
Montriveau; he had asked for nothing however small. Friends had
taken the steps for him which he would have refused to take for
himself.

After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere
he met with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found
some end in life; but everything passed within the man, there
were no external signs; in society he was silent and cold, and
wore a grave, reserved face. His social success was great,
precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the
conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons. He was,
indeed, something quite new there. Terse of speech, like a
hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness,
and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange
and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with
this original person because he was not to be caught by their
flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they
circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their
Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature
only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and
feeling. And he would very promptly have been dropped but for
the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for
the men who cried him up behind his back; but for a woman who
looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman who was to fill
his thoughts.