This event, this wound, and his thwarted hopes contributed to change his character.  His Provencal energy, roused for a time, sank down.  At first he was sustained by his wife, in whom his efforts, his courage, his ambition had induced some belief in his nature, and who showed herself, what women are, tender and consoling in the troubles of life.  Inspired by a few words from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris, resolved to win in an administrative career a position to command respect, bury in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for Madame Diard a noble title.  His passion for that seductive creature enabled him to divine her most secret wishes.  Juana expressed nothing, but he understood her.  He was not loved as a lover dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself respected, loved, and cherished.  He foresaw a coming happiness, poor man, in the patience and gentleness shown on all occasions by his wife; but that patience, that gentleness, were only the outward signs of the resignation which had made her his wife.  Resignation, religion, were they love?  Often Diard wished for refusal where he met with chaste obedience; often he would have given his eternal life that Juana might have wept upon his bosom and not disguised her secret thoughts behind a smiling face which lied to him nobly.  Many young men —­for after a certain age men no longer struggle—­persist in the effort to triumph over an evil fate, the thunder of which they hear, from time to time, on the horizon of their lives; and when at last they succumb and roll down the precipice of evil, we ought to do them justice and acknowledge these inward struggles.

Like many men Diard tried all things, and all things were hostile to him.  His wealth enabled him to surround his wife with the enjoyments of Parisian luxury.  She lived in a fine house, with noble rooms, where she maintained a salon, in which abounded artists (by nature no judges of men), men of pleasure ready to amuse themselves anywhere, a few politicians who swelled the numbers, and certain men of fashion, all of whom admired Juana.  Those who put themselves before the eyes of the public in Paris must either conquer Paris or be subject to it.  Diard’s character was not sufficiently strong, compact, or persistent to command society at that epoch, because it was an epoch when all men were endeavoring to rise.  Social classifications ready-made are perhaps a great boon even for the people.  Napoleon has confided to us the pains he took to inspire respect in his court, where most of the courtiers had been his equals.  But Napoleon was Corsican, and Diard Provencal.  Given equal genius, an islander will always be more compact and rounded than the man of terra firma in the same latitude; the arm of the sea which separates Corsica from Provence is, in spite of human science, an ocean which has made two nations.

Diard’s mongrel position, which he himself made still more questionable, brought him great troubles.  Perhaps there is useful instruction to be derived from the almost imperceptible connection of acts which led to the finale of this history.