The wise have held that joys of sense,
The more their pleasure is intense,
More certainly demand again
Usurious interest of pain;

though the moral is enforced in rather a curious manner. Amaury is the
only, and orphan, representative of a good Norman or Breton family, who
has been brought up by an uncle, and arrives at adolescence just at the
time of the Peace of Amiens or thereabouts. He has escaped the
heathendom which reigned over France a decade previously, and is also a
good Royalist, but very much "left to himself" in other ways.
Inevitably, he falls in love, though at first half-ignorant of what he
is doing or what is being done to him. The first object is a girl,
Amelie de Liniers, in every way desirable in herself, but unluckily not
enough desired by him. He is insensibly divided from her by acquaintance
with the chief royalist family of the district, the Marquis and Marquise
de Couaen, with the latter of whom he falls again in much deeper love,
though never to any guilty extent. She, who is represented as the real
"Elle," is again superseded, at least partially, by a "Madame R.," who
is a much less immaculate person, though the precise extent of the
indulgence of their affections is left veiled. But, meanwhile, Amaury's
tendency towards "Volupte" has, after his first visit to Paris, led him
to indulge in the worship of Venus Pandemos, _parallelement_ with his
more exalted passions. No individual object or incident is mentioned in
any detail; and the passages relating to this side of the matter are so
obscurely phrased that a very innocent person might--without stupidity
quite equal to the innocence--be rather uncertain what is meant. But the
twin ravages--of more or less pure passion unsatisfied and wholly impure
satisfied appetite--ruin the patient's peace of mind. Alongside of this
conflict there is a certain political interest. The Marquis de Couaen is
a fervent Royalist, and so willing to be a conspirator that he actually
gets arrested. But he is an ineffectual kind of person, though in no
sense a coward or a fool. Amaury meets with a much greater example of
"Thorough" in Georges Cadoudal, and only just escapes being entangled in
the plot which resulted in the execution[262] of Cadoudal himself; the
possible suicide but probable murder[262] of Pichegru, if not of others;
the kidnapping and unquestionable murder[262] of the Duc d'Enghien, and
the collapse of the career of Moreau. Some ot