y may see
in what crushing personal anguish some of its most sinister growths had
their roots. When the cares of beggary come suddenly upon a man in
middle life, they burn very deep. Alone, and starving for a cause that
is dear to him, he might encounter the grimness of fate with a fortitude
in which there should be many elevating and consoling elements. But the
destiny is intolerably hard which condemns a man of humane mould, as De
Maistre certainly was, to look helplessly on the physical pains of a
tender woman and famishing little ones. The anxieties that press upon
his heart in such calamity as this are too sharp, too tightened, and too
sordid for him to draw a single free breath, or to raise his eyes for a
single moment of relief from the monstrous perplexity that chokes him.
The hour of bereavement has its bitterness, but the bitterness is
gradually suffused with soft reminiscence. The grip of beggary leaves a
mark on such a character as De Maistre's which no prosperity of after
days effaces. The seeming inhumanity of his theory of life, which is so
revolting to comfortable people like M. Villemain, was in truth the only
explanation of his own cruel sufferings in which he could find any
solace. It was not that he hated mankind, but that his destiny looked as
if God hated him, and this was a horrible moral complexity out of which
he could only extricate himself by a theory in which pain and torment
seem to stand out as the main facts in human existence.

To him, indeed, prosperity never came. Hope smiled on him momentarily,
but, in his own words: 'It was only a flash in the night.' While he was
in Venice, the armies of Austria and Russia reconquered the north of
Italy, and Charles Emanuel IV., in the natural anticipation that the
allies would at once restore his dominions, hastened forward. Austria,
however, as De Maistre had seen long before, was indifferent or even
absolutely hostile to Sardinian interests, and she successfully opposed
Charles Emanuel's restoration. The king received the news of the perfidy
of his nominal ally at Florence, but not until after he had made
arrangements for rewarding the fidelity of some of his most loyal
adherents.

It was from Florence that De Maistre received the king's nomination to
the chief place in the government of the island of Sardinia. Through the
short time of his administration here, he was overwhelmed with vexations
only a little more endurable than the physical distr