true relation to the human aggregate,---how insignificant his
part as one living atom of the social organism. Seldom, at the
age of twenty-eight, has one been made able to comprehend,
through experience alone, that in the vast and complex Stream of
Being he counts for less than a drop; and that, even as the blood
loses and replaces its corpuscles, without a variance in the
volume and vigor of its current, so are individual existences
eliminated and replaced in the pulsing of a people's life, with
never a pause in its mighty murmur. But all this, and much more,
Julien had learned in seven merciless days--seven successive and
terrible shocks of experience. The enormous world had not missed
him; and his place therein was not void--society had simply
forgotten him. So long as he had moved among them, all he knew
for friends had performed their petty altruistic roles,--had
discharged their small human obligations,--had kept turned toward
him the least selfish side of their natures,--had made with him a
tolerably equitable exchange of ideas and of favors; and after
his disappearance from their midst, they had duly mourned for his
loss--to themselves! They had played out the final act in the
unimportant drama of his life: it was really asking too much to
demand a repetition ... Impossible to deceive himself as to the
feeling his unanticipated return had aroused:--feigned pity where
he had looked for sympathetic welcome; dismay where he had
expected surprised delight; and, oftener, airs of resignation, or
disappointment ill disguised,--always insincerity, politely
masked or coldly bare. He had come back to find strangers in his
home, relatives at law concerning his estate, and himself
regarded as an intruder among the living,--an unlucky guest, a
revenant ... How hollow and selfish a world it seemed! And yet
there was love in it; he had been loved in it, unselfishly,