ons of Eugenie--grateful, as has before been implied, for
the generosity with which he surrendered the principal part of her
donation--opened for him a new career, but one painful and galling. In
the Indian court there was no question of his birth--one adventurer was
equal with the rest. But in Paris, a man attempting to rise provoked all
the sarcasm of wit, all the cavils of party; and in polished and civil
life, what valour has weapons against a jest? Thus, in civilisation,
all the passions that spring from humiliated self-love and baffled
aspiration again preyed upon his breast. He saw, then, that the more he
struggled from obscurity, the more acute would become research into his
true origin; and his writhing pride almost stung to death his ambition.
To succeed in life by regular means was indeed difficult for this man;
always recoiling from the name he bore--always strong in the hope yet
to regain that to which he conceived himself entitled--cherishing that
pride of country which never deserts the native of a Free State,
however harsh a parent she may have proved; and, above all, whatever
his ambition and his passions, taking, from the very misfortunes he had
known, an indomitable belief in the ultimate justice of Heaven;--he had
refused to sever the last ties that connected him with his lost heritage
and his forsaken land--he refused to be naturalised--to make the name
he bore legally undisputed--he was contented to be an alien. Neither was
Vaudemont fitted exactly for that crisis in the social world when the
men of journals and talk bustle aside the men of action. He had not
cultivated literature, he had no book-knowledge--the world had been his
school, and stern life his teacher. Still, eminently skilled in those
physical accomplishments which men admire and soldiers covet, calm and
self-possessed in manner, of great personal advantages, of much ready
talent and of practised observation in character, he continued to breast
the obstacles around him, and to establish himself in the favour of
those in power. It was natural to a person so reared and circumstanced
to have no sympathy with what is called the popular cause. He was no
citizen in the state--he was a stranger in the land. He had suffered
and still suffered too much from mankind to have that philanthropy,
sometimes visionary but always noble, which, in fact, generally springs
from the studies we cultivate, not in the forum, but the closet. Men,
alas! too ofte