. Renan. There had been nothing austere or rigid in the
bringing up of the gallant boy; the father who had at one hour been
the tutor and the monitor, was at the next the comrade and the
playmate, and at all times the true and trusted friend, while the
mother had been ever the idolized and adored protectress, and the
confidante of all the innocent schemes and artless joys of boyhood.

Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the young
soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on landing in his
loved France, was the intelligence that those--all those, with but one
exception--whom he most tenderly and truly loved, all those to whom he
looked up with affectionate trust for advice and guidance, all those
on whom he relied for support in his first trials of young manhood,
were cold and silent in the all absorbing tomb.

To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him to grasp
joyously the absolute command of his great heritage. In his heart
there was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice which finds
compensation for the loss of the scarce-lamented dead in the severance
of the dearest natural bonds, in the possession of wealth, or the
promise of power. Nor was this all, for, in truth, so well had Raoul
de Douarnez been brought up, and so completely had wisdom grown up
with his growth, that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found
himself endowed with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and
wealthiest peers of France, and in all but mere name his own
master--for the Abbe de Chastellar, his mother's brother, who had been
appointed his guardian by his father's will, scarcely attempted to
exercise even a nominal jurisdiction over him--he felt himself more
than ever at a loss, deprived as he was, when he most needed it, of
his best natural counsellor; and instead of rejoicing, was more than
half inclined to lament over the almost absolute self-control with
which he found himself invested.

Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to put trust in
others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy
natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human
nature, that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind,
even after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some
sort justified suspicions, until his head has grown gray.

And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de St. Renan,
for henceforth he must be called