pon him, among sober servants attached to the family, and
surroundings tinged with a general color of age, the boy had only seen
friends worthy of respect. All of those about him, with the exception
of the Chevalier, had example of venerable age, were elderly men and
women, sedate of manner, decorous and sententious of speech. He had
been petted by those women in gray gowns and embroidered mittens
described by Blondet. The antiquated splendors of his father's house
were as little calculated as possible to suggest frivolous thoughts;
and lastly, he had been educated by a sincerely religious abbe,
possessed of all the charm of old age, which has dwelt in two
centuries, and brings to the Present its gifts of the dried roses of
experience, the faded flowers of the old customs of its youth.
Everything should have combined to fashion Victurnien to serious
habits; his whole surroundings from childhood bade him continue the
glory of a historic name, by taking his life as something noble and
great; and yet Victurnien listened to dangerous promptings.

For him, his noble birth was a stepping-stone which raised him above
other men. He felt that the idol of Noblesse, before which they burned
incense at home, was hollow; he had come to be one of the commonest as
well as one of the worst types from a social point of view--a
consistent egoist. The aristocratic cult of the /ego/ simply taught him
to follow his own fancies; he had been idolized by those who had the
care of him in childhood, and adored by the companions who shared in
his boyish escapades, and so he had formed a habit of looking and
judging everything as it affected his own pleasure; he took it as a
matter of course when good souls saved him from the consequences of
his follies, a piece of mistaken kindness which could only lead to his
ruin. Victurnien's early training, noble and pious though it was, had
isolated him too much. He was out of the current of the life of the
time, for the life of a provincial town is certainly not in the main
current of the age; Victurnien's true destiny lifted him above it. He
had learned to think of an action, not as it affected others, nor
relatively, but absolutely from his own point of view. Like despots,
he made the law to suit the circumstance, a system which works in the
lives of prodigal sons the same confusion which fancy brings into art.

Victurnien was quick-sighted, he saw clearly and without illusion, but
he acted on impulse, a