all intelligent male
Parisians, he wept. Since that moment, however, a gaiety, serene and
imperturbable, has been the mainstay of his happily constituted
character. The girl to whom his uncle desires to see him united--odd,
quixotic, intelligent, with a sort of pathetic and delicate grace, and
herself very religious--belongs to an old-fashioned, devout family,.
resident at Varaville, near by. M. Feuillet, with half a dozen fine
touches of his admirable pencil makes us see the place. And the
enterprise has at least sufficient interest to keep Bernard in the
country, which the young Parisian detests. "This piquant episode of my
life," he writes, "seems to me to be really deserving of study; to be
worth etching off, day by day, by an observer well informed on the
subject."

Recognising in himself, though as his one real fault, that he can take
nothing seriously in heaven or earth, Bernard de Vaudricourt, like all
M. Feuillet's favourite young men, so often erring or corrupt, is a man
of scrupulous "honour." He has already shown disinterestedness in
wishing his rich uncle to marry again. His friends at Varaville think
so well-mannered a young man more of a Christian than he really is;
and, at all events, he will never owe his happiness to a falsehood. If
he has great faults, [223] hypocrisy at least is no part of them. In
oblique paths he finds himself ill at ease. Decidedly, as he thinks,
he was born for straight ways, for loyalty in all his enterprises; and
he congratulates himself upon the fact.

In truth, Bernard has merits which he ignores, at least in this first
part of his journal: merits which are necessary to explain the
influence he is able to exercise from the first over such a character
as Mademoiselle de Courteheuse. His charm, in fact, is in the union of
that gay and apparently wanton nature with a genuine power of
appreciating devotion in others, which becomes devotion in himself.
With all the much-cherished elegance and worldly glitter of his
personality, he is capable of apprehending, of understanding and being
touched by the presence of great matters. In spite of that happy
lightness of heart, so jealously fenced about, he is to be wholly
caught at last, as he is worthy to be, by the serious, the generous
influence of things. In proportion to his immense worldly strength is
his capacity for the immense pity which breaks his heart.

In a few life-like touches M. Feuillet brings out, as if it