rgniaud on that day were the studies of one suffering from ennui.

Ennui was the necromancer which conjured up the ghost of Caesar on the
eve of the battle of Philippi. And when Brutus esteemed that battle
lost, which in truth had been won, he had yet to wrestle with that
unseen enemy, and enter on a new contest, where he was sure to be
overthrown. The execution of Madame Roland was a scene, as far as she
was concerned, of intense and unmitigated suffering; but when Brutus
dared to despair of virtue, the atrocious sentiment was dictated, not by
the spirit that had dared to plan the liberties of the world, but by the
demon of ennui, which in an evil hour had possessed himself of the
patriot's soul.

Finally, for we have surely made ourselves intelligible, if it is
possible for us to do so--the timid lover, whose affections are moved,
yet not tranquillized, who gazes with the eyes of fondness on an object
that seems to be of a higher world, and admires as the stars are
admired, which are acknowledged to be beautiful yet are never possessed;
the timid lover, neither wholly doubting, nor wholly hoping, the sport
alternately of joy and of sorrow, full of thought and full of longing,
feeling the sentiment of rapture yield to the faintness of uncertain
hope, is half his time a true personification of ennui.

That ennui is a principle of action widely diffused, will hardly be
denied by any careful observer of human nature. No individual can
conscientiously claim to have been always and wholly free from its
influences, except where there has been a life springing from the purest
sources, sanctified by the early influence of religious motives, and
protected from erroneous judgments by the constant exercise of a
healthful understanding. For the rest, though few are constantly
afflicted with it as an incurable evil, there are still fewer who are
not at times made to suffer from its influence. It stretches its heavy
hand on the man of business and the recluse; it makes its favourite
haunts in the city, but it chases the aspirant after rural felicity,
into the scenes of his rural listlessness; it makes the young
melancholy, and the aged garrulous; it haunts the sailor and the
merchant; it appears to the warrior and to the statesman; it takes its
place in the curule chair, and sits also at the frugal board of old
fashioned simplicity. You cannot flee from it; you cannot hide from it;
it is swifter than the birds of passage, and swif