g men generally belittle themselves in their relations with
women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a
concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast and
unsuspected power.

This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of
modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by the
laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental despot.
But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by brutish men,
was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European intelligence,
with French wit--the most subtle, the keenest of all intellectual
instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest of his
pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social world
had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without emphasis and
deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis XIV. could
have of himself, but that which the proudest of the Caliphs, the
Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine origin, had
of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled themselves from their
subjects under the pretext that their looks dealt forth death. Thus,
without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, De
Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously
offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict
was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune similar to that which a
thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a smiling Parisienne in some
hackney coach, instead of crushing the old coachman who is driving
her to a _rendezvous_. Thus the bitter and profound sarcasm which
distinguished the young man's conversation usually tended to frighten
people; no one was anxious to put him out. Women are prodigiously fond
of those persons who call themselves pashas, and who are, as it were
accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk in a panoply of
terror. The result, in the case of such men, is a security of action,
a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a leonine consciousness, which
makes women realize the type of strength of which they all dream. Such
was De Marsay.

Happy, for the moment, with his future, he grew young and pliable, and
thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl
with the golden eyes, as the young and passionate can dream. His dreams
were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances--full of light,
revealing invisi