ghtmares."

CHAPTER XXXII

Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the
dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point
of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive
objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at
them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies
more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth
had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period.
Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater
heights tempt him to relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he
saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped him, and
air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the former came precipitately
down again, and the latter were at the mercy of the winds; while he
remained tranquil on his solid unambitious ground, fitting his morality
to the laws, his conscience to his morality, his comfort to his
conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut himself off from his fellows: on
the contrary, his sole amusement was their society. Alone he was rather
dull, as a man who beholds but one thing must naturally be. Study of the
animated varieties of that one thing excited him sufficiently to think
life a pleasant play; and the faculties he had forfeited to hold his
elevated position he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in
others. Thus:--wonder at Master Richard's madness: though he himself
did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect on his beloved
relatives. As he carried along his vindictive hunch of cake, he shaped
out their different attitudes of amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing
by some personal chagrin in the prospect. For his patron had projected a
journey, commencing with Paris, culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in
Rome: a delightful journey to show Richard the highways of History and
tear him from the risk of further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit
might be altogether bathed in freshness and revived. This had been
planned during Richard's absence to surprise him.

Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the
race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance,
as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs,
and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to
the Hobb