no gloves unless he mounted a
horse, or went to church, and his shoes were thick and common.

Though ten years of emigration and ten years more of farm-life had
changed his physical condition, he still retained certain vestiges of
nobility. The bitterest liberal (a term not then in circulation)
would readily have admitted his chivalric loyalty and the imperishable
convictions of one who puts his faith to the "Quotidienne"; he would
have felt respect for the man religiously devoted to a cause, honest
in his political antipathies, incapable of serving his party but very
capable of injuring it, and without the slightest real knowledge of the
affairs of France. The count was in fact one of those upright men who
are available for nothing, but stand obstinately in the way of all;
ready to die under arms at the post assigned to them, but preferring to
give their life rather than to give their money.

During dinner I detected, in the hanging of his flaccid cheeks and the
covert glances he cast now and then upon his children, the traces
of some wearing thought which showed for a moment upon the surface.
Watching him, who could fail to understand him? Who would not have seen
that he had fatally transmitted to his children those weakly bodies in
which the principle of life was lacking. But if he blamed himself he
denied to others the right to judge him. Harsh as one who knows himself
in fault, yet without greatness of soul or charm to compensate for the
weight of misery he had thrown into the balance, his private life was
no doubt the scene of irascibilities that were plainly revealed in his
angular features and by the incessant restlessness of his eye. When his
wife returned, followed by the children who seemed fastened to her side,
I felt the presence of unhappiness, just as in walking over the roof
of a vault the feet become in some way conscious of the depths below.
Seeing these four human beings together, holding them all as it were in
one glance, letting my eye pass from one to the other, studying their
countenances and their respective attitudes, thoughts steeped in sadness
fell upon my heart as a fine gray rain dims a charming landscape after
the sun has risen clear.

When the immediate subject of conversation was exhausted the count told
his wife who I was, and related certain circumstances connected with my
family that were wholly unknown to me. He asked me my age. When I told
it, the countess echoed my own exclamation