which
announced a nature essentially nervous and impressionable. His forehead
was broad and open, his complexion pale, his eyes black, full at once
of mildness and penetration, his countenance honest, intelligent, and
attractive.

One word will paint the character of M. Hardy. His mother had called him
her Sensitive Plant. His was indeed one of those fine and exquisitely
delicate organizations, which are trusting, loving, noble, generous, but
so susceptible, that the least touch makes them shrink into themselves.
If we join to this excessive sensibility a passionate love for art, a
first-rate intellect, tastes essentially refined, and then think of the
thousand deceptions, and numberless infamies of which M. Hardy must have
been the victim in his career as a manufacturer, we shall wonder how
this heart, so delicate and tender, had not been broken a thousand
times, in its incessant struggle with merciless self-interest. M. Hardy
had indeed suffered much. Forced to follow the career of productive
industry, to honor the engagements of his father, a model of uprightness
and probity, who had yet left his affairs somewhat embarrassed, in
consequence of the events of 1815, he had succeeded, by perseverance
and capacity, in attaining one of the most honorable positions in the
commercial world. But, to arrive at this point, what ignoble annoyances
had he to bear with, what perfidious opposition to combat, what hateful
rivalries to tire out!

Sensitive as he was, M. Hardy would a thousand times have fallen a
victim to his emotions of painful indignation against baseness, of
bitter disgust at dishonesty, but for the wise and firm support of his
mother. When he returned to her, after a day of painful struggles
with odious deceptions, he found himself suddenly transported into an
atmosphere of such beneficent purity, of such radiant serenity, that he
lost almost on the instant the remembrance of the base things by which
he had been so cruelly tortured during the day; the pangs of his heart
were appeased at the mere contact of her great and lofty soul; and
therefore his love for her resembled idolatry. When he lost her, he
experienced one of those calm, deep sorrows which have no end--which
become, as it were, part of life, and have even sometimes their days
of melancholy sweetness. A little while after this great misfortune, M.
Hardy became more closely connected with his workmen. He had always been
a just and good master; but, a