There might be some things about Citizen Latour which set him apart
from his fellows, but all men were the same concerning women.

Latour crossed the courtyard and went quickly up the stairs to the
second floor. The rooms here corresponded with his own below, yet how
different they were. Everything was fresh and dainty. Cheap, but pretty,
curtains hung before the windows and about the alcove where the bed was.
The furnishing was sufficient, not rich, yet showing taste in the
choice; two or three inexpensive prints adorned the walls, and on the
toilet table were candlesticks, a china tray, and some cut-glass
bottles. The boards were polished, and here and there was a rug or strip
of carpet; the paint was fresh and white--white was the color note
throughout. Here was the greatest luxury possible to a shallow pocket,
very different from Bruslart's room, yet with a character of its own.
Latour had chosen everything in it with much thought and care. He had
spent hours arranging and rearranging until his sense of the beautiful
was satisfied. Now he altered the position of a rug, and touched a
curtain by the bed to make it fall in more graceful folds. Then he sat
down to survey his work as a whole.

Still there was the prick of conscience, not very sharp, indeed, and
becoming less persistent as he argued with himself. The Raymond Latour
of to-day was a different man from the old Raymond Latour, the poor
student, the nobody. Was he not mounting the ladder rung by rung, higher
and higher every day? He had been listened to in the Legislative
Assembly, applauded; he was a man of mark in the Convention. He was
still poor, and his ambition was not towards wealth. The road lay
straight before him; it led to fame, he meant it also to lead to love.
Give him love, and these little white rooms were all the kingdom he
asked to reign in. Love, the only love that had ever touched him. He
remembered its first coming. A restive horse, a young girl in a carriage
and in danger. It was nothing to seize the horse, hold it, and quiet it;
he had flushed and stammered when the girl had thanked him, all
unconsciously casting the spell of her great beauty over him. Never
again had he spoken to her. He was only a poor student, the child of
simple folk in the country dead long ago; she was of noble birth, her
home a palace, her beauty toasted at Versailles He saw her often,
waiting to see her pass, and each day he thought of her, setting her on
the hi