this fleeting picture; he followed out his
own life in it, thought by thought, day after day. He saw himself, not
without astonishment, an absent gloomy figure in the midst of these
lively folk, always musing over his own fate, always absorbed by his own
sufferings, seemingly impatient of the most harmless chat. He saw how
he had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so ready to
establish--no doubt because they feel sure of never meeting each other
again--and how he had taken little heed of those about him. He saw
himself like the rocks without, unmoved by the caresses or the stormy
surgings of the waves.

Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the thoughts of all
those about him. The light of a candle revealed the sardonic profile
and yellow cranium of an old man; he remembered now that he had won from
him, and had never proposed that the other should have his revenge; a
little further on he saw a pretty woman, whose lively advances he
had met with frigid coolness; there was not a face there that did not
reproach him with some wrong done, inexplicably to all appearance, but
the real offence in every case lay in some mortification, some invisible
hurt dealt to self-love. He had unintentionally jarred on all the small
susceptibilities of the circle round about him.

His guests on various occasions, and those to whom he had lent his
horses, had taken offence at his luxurious ways; their ungraciousness
had been a surprise to him; he had spared them further humiliations of
that kind, and they had considered that he looked down upon them, and
had accused him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost
thoughts as he fathomed their natures in this way. Society with its
polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was envied and hated for
his wealth and superior ability; his reserve baffled the inquisitive;
his humility seemed like haughtiness to these petty superficial natures.
He guessed the secret unpardonable crime which he had committed against
them; he had overstepped the limits of the jurisdiction of their
mediocrity. He had resisted their inquisitorial tyranny; he could
dispense with their society; and all of them, therefore, had
instinctively combined to make him feel their power, and to take revenge
upon this incipient royalty by submitting him to a kind of ostracism,
and so teaching him that they in their turn could do without him.

Pity came over him, first of all, at this asp