he was
leagued, the path to which he had committed his career--still for her
instincts for genuine Art--which for its development needs the
serenity of peace, which for its ideal needs dreams that soar into the
Infinite--Gustave had only the scornful sneer of the man who identifies
with his ambition the violent upset of all that civilisation has
established in this world, and the blank negation of all that patient
hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into the next.

On his side, Gustave Rameau, who was not without certain fine and
delicate attributes in a complicated nature over which the personal
vanity and the mobile temperament of the Parisian reigned supreme,
chafed at the restraints imposed on him. No matter what a man's
doctrines may be--however abominable you and I may deem them--man
desires to find, in the dearest fellowship he can establish, that
sympathy in the woman his choice singles out from her sex-deference
to his opinions, sympathy with his objects, as man. So, too, Gustave's
sense of honour and according to his own Parisian code that sense was
keen--became exquisitely stung by the thought that he was compelled to
play the part of a mean dissimulator to the girl for whose opinions he
had the profoundest contempt. How could these two, betrothed to each
other, not feel, though without coming to open dissension, that between
them had flowed the inlet of water by which they had been riven asunder?
What man, if he can imagine himself a Gustave Rameau, can blame the
revolutionist absorbed in ambitious projects for turning the pyramid of
society topsy-turvy, if he shrank more and more from the companionship
of a betrothed with whom he could not venture to exchange three words
without caution and reserve? And what woman can blame an Isaura if she
felt a sensation of relief at the very neglect of the affianced whom she
had compassionated and could never love?

Possibly the reader may best judge of the state of Isaura's mind at this
time by a few brief extracts from an imperfect fragmentary journal, in
which, amid saddened and lonely hours, she held converse with herself.

"One day at Enghien I listened silently to a conversation between M.
Savarin and the Englishman, who sought to explain the conception of duty
in which the German poet has given such noble utterance to the thoughts
of the German philosopher--viz., that moral aspiration has the same goal
as the artistic,--the attainment to the c