andsome, and perhaps he was. Though he had reached
the age of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved
a flower of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led.
Like all men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired
a certainly reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some
resemblance to Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a
man with black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign
with blue eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of
ardent and noble ambition in the great author's eyes had been somewhat
quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed had
flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now spread
its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow tones
of the class of temperament whose forces band together to support a
crushing and long-continued struggle. If you observe carefully the noble
faces of ancient philosophers, you will always find those deviations
from the type of a perfect human face which show the characteristic to
which each countenance owes its originality, chastened by the habit of
meditation, and by the calmness necessary for intellectual labor. The
most irregular features, like those of Socrates, for instance, become,
after a time, expressive of an almost divine serenity.

To the noble simplicity which characterized his head, d'Arthez added a
naive expression, the naturalness of a child, and a touching kindliness.
He did not have that politeness tinged with insincerity with which, in
society, the best-bred persons and the most amiable assume qualities in
which they are often lacking, leaving those they have thus duped wounded
and distressed. He might, indeed, fail to observe certain rules of
social life, owing to his isolated mode of living; but he never shocked
the sensibilities, and therefore this perfume of savagery made the
peculiar affability of a man of great talent the more agreeable; such
men know how to leave their superiority in their studies, and come
down to the social level, lending their backs, like Henry IV., to the
children's leap-frog, and their minds to fools.

If d'Arthez did not brace himself against the spell which the princess
had cast about him, neither did she herself argue the matter in her own
mind, on returning home. It was settled for her. She loved with all her
knowledge and all her ignorance. If she questioned hersel