Jealousy, however, was not the sole reason for the solitude in which the Count de Mortsauf lived.  His early education was that of the children of great families,—­an incomplete and superficial instruction as to knowledge, but supplemented by the training of society, the habits of a court life, and the exercise of important duties under the crown or in eminent offices.  Monsieur de Mortsauf had emigrated at the very moment when the second stage of his education was about to begin, and accordingly that training was lacking to him.  He was one of those who believed in the immediate restoration of the monarchy; with that conviction in his mind, his exile was a long and miserable period of idleness.  When the army of Conde, which his courage led him to join with the utmost devotion, was disbanded, he expected to find some other post under the white flag, and never sought, like other emigrants, to take up an industry.  Perhaps he had not the sort of courage that could lay aside his name and earn his living in the sweat of a toil he despised.  His hopes, daily postponed to the morrow, and possibly a scruple of honor, kept him from offering his services to foreign powers.  Trials undermined his courage.  Long tramps afoot on insufficient nourishment, and above all, on hopes betrayed, injured his health and discouraged his mind.  By degrees he became utterly destitute.  If to some men misery is a tonic, on others it acts as a dissolvent; and the count was of the latter.

Reflecting on the life of this poor Touraine gentleman, tramping and sleeping along the highroads of Hungary, sharing the mutton of Prince Esterhazy’s shepherds, from whom the foot-worn traveller begged the food he would not, as a gentleman, have accepted at the table of the master, and refusing again and again to do service to the enemies of France, I never found it in my heart to feel bitterness against him, even when I saw him at his worst in after days.  The natural gaiety of a Frenchman and a Tourangean soon deserted him; he became morose, fell ill, and was charitably cared for in some German hospital.  His disease was an inflammation of the mesenteric membrane, which is often fatal, and is liable, even if cured, to change the constitution and produce hypochondria.  His love affairs, carefully buried out of sight and which I alone discovered, were low-lived, and not only destroyed his health but ruined his future.

After twelve years of great misery he made his way to France, under the decree of the Emperor which permitted the return of the emigrants.  As the wretched wayfarer crossed the Rhine and saw the tower of Strasburg against the evening sky, his strength gave way. “’France!  France!’ I cried.  ‘I see France!’” (he said to me) “as a child cries ‘Mother!’ when it is hurt.”  Born to wealth, he was now poor; made to command a regiment or govern a province, he was now without authority and without a future; constitutionally healthy and robust, he returned infirm