t deprive him of the use of his faculties, certainly
possess choice minds and hearts; but the mere difference of age opens an
abyss between us. As to the young men and the men of my own age whom I
meet here, they all march with more or less eager step in Madame de
Palme's wake. It is enough that I should decline to follow them in that
path, to cause them to manifest toward me a coolness akin to antipathy. My
pride does not attempt to break that ice, though two or three among them
appear well gifted, and reveal instincts superior to the life they have
adopted.

There is one question I sometimes ask of myself on that subject; are we
any better, you and I, youthful Paul, than this crowd of joyous companions
and pleasant _viveurs_, or are we simply different from them? Like
ourselves, they possess honesty and honor; like ourselves, they have
neither virtue nor religion properly so-called. So far, we are equal. Our
tastes alone and our pleasures differ; all their preoccupations turn to
the lighter ways of the world, to the cares of gallantry and material
activity; ours are almost exclusively given up to the exercise of thought,
to the talents of the mind, to the works, good or evil, of the intellect.
In the light of human truth, and according to common estimation, it is
doubtful whether the difference in this particular is wholly in our favor;
but in a more elevated order, in the moral order, and, so to speak, in the
presence of God, does that superiority hold good? Are we merely yielding,
as they do, to an inclination that leads us rather more to one side than
to another, or are we obeying an imperative duty? What is in the eyes of
God the merit of intellectual life? It seems to me sometimes that we
possess for thought a species of pagan worship to which He attaches no
value, and which perhaps even offends Him. More frequently, however, I
think that He wishes us to make use of thought, were it even to be turned
against Him, and that He accepts as a homage all the quiverings of that
noble instrument of joy and torture which He has placed within us.

Is not sadness, in periods of doubt and anxiety, a species of religion? I
trust so. We are, you and I, somewhat like those poor dreaming sphinxes
who have been asking in vain for so many centuries, from the solitudes of
the desert, the solution of the eternal riddle. Would it be a greater and
more guilty folly than the happy carelessness of the Little Countess? We
shall see. In t