was too practical a man of business to share, those chivalrous sentiments
of loyalty to an exiled dynasty which disqualified the man for the age he
lived in, and, if not greatly modified, would cut him off from the hopes
and aspirations of his eager generation. He thought plausibly enough
that the air of the grand metropolis was necessary to the mental health,
enfeebled and withering amidst the feudal mists of Bretagne; that once in
Paris, Alain would imbibe the ideas of Paris, adapt himself to some
career leading to honour and to fortune, for which he took facilities
from his high birth, an historical name too national for any dynasty not
to welcome among its adherents, and an intellect not yet sharpened by
contact and competition with others, but in itself vigorous, habituated
to thought, and vivified by the noble aspirations which belong to
imaginative natures.

At the least, Alain would be at Paris in the social position which would
afford him the opportunities of a marriage, in which his birth and rank
would be readily accepted as an equivalent to some ample fortune that
would serve to redeem the endangered seigneuries. He therefore warned
Alain that the affair for which he went to Paris might be tedious, that
lawyers were always slow, and advised him to calculate on remaining
several months, perhaps a year; delicately suggesting that his rearing
hitherto had been too secluded for his age and rank, and that a year at
Paris, even if he failed in the object which took him there, would not be
thrown away in the knowledge of men and things that would fit him better
to grapple with his difficulties on his return.

Alain divided his spare income between his aunt and himself, and had come
to Paris resolutely determined to live within the L200 a year which
remained to his share. He felt the revolution in his whole being that
commenced when out of sight of the petty principality in which he was the