l the benedictions of the
Collection of Antiquities went with him; he was kissed by the dowagers;
good wishes were heaped on his head; his old father, his aunt, and
Chesnel went with him out of the town, tears filling the eyes of all
three. The sudden departure supplied material for conversation for
several evenings; and what was more, it stirred the rancorous minds
of the salon du Croisier to the depths. The forage-contractor, the
president, and others who had vowed to ruin the d'Esgrignons, saw
their prey escaping out of their hands. They had based their schemes of
revenge on a young man's follies, and now he was beyond their reach.

The tendency in human nature, which often gives a bigot a rake for a
daughter, and makes a frivolous woman the mother of a narrow pietist;
that rule of contraries, which, in all probability, is the "resultant"
of the law of similarities, drew Victurnien to Paris by a desire to
which he must sooner or later have yielded. Brought up as he had been in
the old-fashioned provincial house, among the quiet, gentle faces
that smiled upon him, among sober servants attached to the family, and
surroundings tinged with a general color of age, the boy had only seen
friends worthy of respect. All of those about him, with the exception of
the Chevalier, had example of venerable age, were elderly men and women,
sedate of manner, decorous and sententious of speech. He had been
petted by those women in gray gowns and embroidered mittens described by
Blondet. The antiquated splendors of his father's house were as little
calculated as possible to suggest frivolous thoughts; and lastly, he had
been educated by a sincerely religious abbe, possessed of all the charm
of old age, which has dwelt in two centuries, and brings to the Present
its gifts of the dried roses of experience, the faded flowers of the
old customs of its youth. Everything should have combined to fashion
Victurnien to serious habits; his whole surroundings from childhood
bade him continue the glory of a historic name, by taking his life as
something noble and great; and yet Victurnien listened to dangerous
promptings.

For him, his noble birth was a stepping-stone which raised him above
other men. He felt that the idol of Noblesse, before which they burned
incense at home, was hollow; he had come to be one of the commonest as
well as one of the worst types from a social point of view--a consistent
egoist. The aristocratic cult of the _ego_ si