a crisis, which is neither
spleen nor disgust, but combines all the symptoms of both. When a human
being is transplanted into an uncongenial soil, to lead a starved,
stunted existence, there is always a little discomfort over the
transition. Then, gradually, if nothing removes him from his
surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and adapts himself to the
vacuity which grows upon him and renders him powerless. Even now,
Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the air; and he was willing to discern
a kind of vegetable happiness in days that brought no mental exertion
and no responsibilities. The constant stirring of the sap of life, the
fertilizing influences of mind on mind, after which he had sought so
eagerly in Paris, were beginning to fade from his memory, and he was in
a fair way of becoming a fossil with these fossils, and ending his
days among them, content, like the companions of Ulysses, in his gross
envelope.

One evening Gaston de Nueil was seated between a dowager and one of the
vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled drawing-room, floored
with large white tiles. The family portraits which adorned the walls
looked down upon four card-tables, and some sixteen persons gathered
about them, chattering over their whist. Gaston, thinking of nothing,
digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which the provincial looks
forward all through the day, found himself justifying the customs of the
country.

He began to understand why these good folk continued to play with
yesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth,
and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others.
He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even tenor
of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodical monotony, in
their ignorance of the refinements of luxury. Indeed, he almost came
to think that luxury profited nothing; and even now, the city of Paris,
with its passions, storms, and pleasures, was scarcely more than a
memory of childhood.

He admired in all sincerity the red hands, and shy, bashful manner
of some young lady who at first struck him as an awkward simpleton,
unattractive to the last degree, and surprisingly ridiculous. His doom
was sealed. He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led the
feverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into the
lifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached
his ear--a few words that called u