ements, without defining to themselves his claim to
supremacy. Ronald's character was not free from imperfections; but its
very faults were essentially national,--were characteristics of that
"fast-running nation" which is "indivertible in aim," and incredulous of
the existence of the unattainable. His dominant failing was a
self-dependence, which, in a weaker nature, would have degenerated into
self-sufficiency, but just stopped short of that complacent, puerile
egotism, which narrows the mind, and rears its own opinions upon a
judgment-seat to pronounce verdicts upon the rest of the world. He never
doubted his ability to scale any height upon which he fixed his eyes; he
laughed at obstacles; he did not believe in impossibilities; what any
other man could accomplish, that he had an internal conviction he might
also achieve; and he held the faith of the poet-queen that all men were
possible heroes.

These attributes were precisely those most calculated to impress and
charm Maurice, and he regarded Ronald with unbounded admiration, mingled
with a sickening sense of regret when he reflected upon the trammels
which reined in the ready impulses and crushed the instinctive
aspirations which were wrestling within himself.

Count Tristan, as soon as his son was sufficiently restored to travel,
suggested that he should return with him to Brittany; but Maurice
betrayed such uncompromising reluctance to this proposal that his father
thought it wise not to press the point.

Though the count had escaped a calamity, which even to contemplate had
almost driven him out of his mind,--though his son's life was spared,
and his restoration to vigorous health assured,--at times the father
felt as if that son were lost to him forever. An inexplicable reserve
had risen up and thrust them asunder. In the count's presence Maurice
was always abstracted and pensive; he uttered no complaints, made no
petitions. He had come to the conclusion that both were useless; but his
opinions and wishes were no longer frankly, boldly, iterated. He and his
father stood upon different platforms, with an invisible, but an
insurmountable barrier looming up between them. Count Tristan, albeit
irritated, galled, grieved, could discover no mode of reestablishing the
olden footing. After spending a month in Paris, he returned to
Brittany, his mind filled with discomforting forebodings, to which he
could give no definite shape.

Maurice was once more left in the