limited his love for humanity. Like the horticulturist who
devotes himself to roses, or dahlias, or heart's-ease, or geraniums,
and pays no attention to the plants his fancy has not selected, so this
young La Rochefoucault-Liancourt gave himself to the workingmen,
the proletariat and the paupers of the faubourgs Saint-Jacques and
Saint-Marceau. The strong man, the man of genius at bay, the worthy poor
of the bourgeois class, he cut them off from the bosom of his charity.
The heart of all persons with a mania is like those boxes with
compartments, in which sugarplums are kept in sorts: "suum cuique
tribuere" is their motto; they measure to each duty its dose. There are
some philanthropists who pity nothing but the man condemned to death.
Vanity is certainly the basis of philanthropy; but in the case of this
Provencal it was calculation, a predetermined course, a "liberal" and
democratic hypocrisy, played with a perfection that no other actor will
ever attain.

Theodose did not attack the rich; he contented himself with not
understanding them; he endured them; every one, in his opinion, ought to
enjoy the fruits of his labor. He had been, he said, a fervent disciple
of Saint-Simon, but that mistake must be attributed to his youth: modern
society could have no other basis than heredity. An ardent Catholic,
like all men from the Comtat, he went to the earliest morning masses,
and thus concealed his piety. Like other philanthropists, he practised
a sordid economy, and gave to the poor his time, his legal advice, his
eloquence, and such money as he extracted for them from the rich. His
clothes, always of black cloth, were worn until the seams became white.
Nature had done a great deal for Theodose in not giving him that fine
manly Southern beauty which creates in others an imaginary expectation,
to which it is more than difficult for a man to respond. As it was,
he could be what suited him at the moment,--an agreeable man or a very
ordinary one. Never, since his admission to the Thuilliers', had
he ventured, till this evening, to raise his voice and speak as
dogmatically as he had risked doing to Olivier Vinet; but perhaps
Theodose de la Peyrade was not sorry to seize the opportunity to come
out from the shade in which he had hitherto kept himself. Besides, it
was necessary to get rid of the young substitute, just as the Minards
had previously ruined the hopes of Monsieur Godeschal. Like all superior
men (for he certainly ha