questionings no more. It turned upon personalities, on stratagems and
plots, on ambition. The man had more than his share of that peculiar
susceptibility which is one of the characteristics of his countrymen--
susceptibility to immediate impulse--susceptibility to fleeting
impressions. It was a key to many mysteries in his character when he
owned his subjection to the influence of music, and in music recognised
not the seraph's harp, but the siren's song. If you could have
permanently fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good moments of his
life--even now--some moment of exquisite kindness--of superb generosity
--of dauntless courage--you would have secured a very rare specimen of
noble humanity. But so to fix him was impossible.

That impulse of the moment vanished the moment after; swept aside by the
force of his very talents--talents concentrated by his intense sense of
individuality--sense of wrongs or of rights--interests or objects
personal to himself. He extended the royal saying, "_L'etat, c'est moi_,"
to words far more grandiloquent. "The universe, 'tis I." The Venosta
would have understood him and smiled approvingly, if he had said with
good-humoured laugh, "I dead, the world is dead!" That is an Italian
proverb, and means much the same thing.