om the college of Vendome in 1810,
lived under close paternal discipline for three years. The tyranny by
which the old man of seventy oppressed his heir influenced, necessarily,
a heart and a character which were not yet formed. Paul, the son,
without lacking the physical courage which is vital in the air of
Gascony, dared not struggle against his father, and consequently lost
that faculty of resistance which begets moral courage. His thwarted
feelings were driven to the depths of his heart, where they remained
without expression; later, when he felt them to be out of harmony with
the maxims of the world, he could only think rightly and act mistakenly.
He was capable of fighting for a mere word or look, yet he trembled at
the thought of dismissing a servant,--his timidity showing itself in
those contests only which required a persistent will. Capable of doing
great things to fly from persecution, he would never have prevented it
by systematic opposition, nor have faced it with the steady employment
of force of will. Timid in thought, bold in actions, he long preserved
that inward simplicity which makes a man the dupe and the voluntary
victim of things against which certain souls hesitate to revolt,
preferring to endure them rather than complain. He was, in point of
fact, imprisoned by his father's old mansion, for he had not enough
money to consort with young men; he envied their pleasures while unable
to share them.

The old gentleman took him every evening, in an old carriage drawn
by ill-harnessed old horses, attended by ill-dressed old servants, to
royalist houses, where he met a society composed of the relics of the
parliamentary nobility and the martial nobility. These two nobilities
coalescing after the Revolution, had now transformed themselves into
a landed aristocracy. Crushed by the vast and swelling fortunes of the
maritime cities, this Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux responded
by lofty disdain to the sumptuous displays of commerce, government
administrations, and the military. Too young to understand social
distinctions and the necessities underlying the apparent assumption
which they create, Paul was bored to death among these ancients, unaware
that the connections of his youth would eventually secure to him that
aristocratic pre-eminence which Frenchmen will forever desire.

He found some slight compensations for the dulness of these evenings in
certain manual exercises which always delight young men,