fourteen-year-old school-boy.  Thrown upon the world, his mind found itself fit for the world, and embraced it all.  Nothing of that mind was lost in the infinite.  Himself a poet, he knew only the poetry of action.  He limited to the earth his powerful dream of life.  In his terrible and touching naivete he believed that a man could be great, and neither time nor misfortune made him lose that idea.  His youth, or rather his sublime adolescence, lasted as long as he lived, because life never brought him a real maturity.  Such is the abnormal state of men of action.  They live entirely in the present, and their genius concentrates on one point.  The hours of their existence are not connected by a chain of grave and disinterested meditations.  They succeed themselves in a series of acts.  They lack interior life.  This defect is particularly visible in Napoleon, who never lived within himself.  From this is derived the frivolity of temperament which made him support easily the enormous load of his evils and of his faults.  His mind was born anew every day.  He had, more than any other person, a capacity for diversion.  The first day that he saw the sun rise on his funereal rock at Saint Helena, he jumped from his bed, whistling a romantic air.  It was the peace of a mind superior to fortune; it was the frivolity of a mind prompt in resurrection.  He lived from the outside.”

Garain, who did not like Paul Vence’s ingenious turn of wit and language, tried to hasten the conclusion: 

“In a word,” he said, “there was something of the monster in the man.”

“There are no monsters,” replied Paul Vence; “and men who pass for monsters inspire horror.  Napoleon was loved by an entire people.  He had the power to win the love of men.  The joy of his soldiers was to die for him.”

Countess Martin would have wished Dechartre to give his opinion.  But he excused himself with a sort of fright.

“Do you know,” said Schmoll again, “the parable of the three rings, sublime inspiration of a Portuguese Jew.”

Garain, while complimenting Paul Vence on his brilliant paradox, regretted that wit should be exercised at the expense of morality and justice.

“One great principle,” he said, “is that men should be judged by their acts.”

“And women?” asked Princess Seniavine, brusquely; “do you judge them by their acts?  And how do you know what they do?”

The sound of voices was mingled with the clear tintinabulation of silverware.  A warm air bathed the room.  The roses shed their leaves on the cloth.  More ardent thoughts mounted to the brain.

General Lariviere fell into dreams.

“When public clamor has split my ears,” he said to his neighbor, “I shall go to live at Tours.  I shall cultivate flowers.”

He flattered himself on being a good gardener; his name had been given to a rose.  This pleased him highly.

Schmoll asked again if they knew the parable of the three rings.