The father and son saw little of each other.  M. de Camors was too proud to entangle his son in his own debaucheries; but the course of every-day life sometimes brought them together at meal-time.  He would then listen with cool mockery to the enthusiastic or despondent speeches of the youth.  He never deigned to argue seriously, but responded in a few bitter words, that fell like drops of sleet on the few sparks still glowing in the son’s heart.

Becoming gradually discouraged, the latter lost all taste for work, and gave himself up, more and more, to the idle pleasures of his position.  Abandoning himself wholly to these, he threw into them all the seductions of his person, all the generosity of his character—­but at the same time a sadness always gloomy, sometimes desperate.

The bitter malice he displayed, however, did not prevent his being loved by women and renowned among men.  And the latter imitated him.

He aided materially in founding a charming school of youth without smiles.  His air of ennui and lassitude, which with him at least had the excuse of a serious foundation, was servilely copied by the youth around him, who never knew any greater distress than an overloaded stomach, but whom it pleased, nevertheless, to appear faded in their flower and contemptuous of human nature.

We have seen Camors in this phase of his existence.  But in reality nothing was more foreign to him than the mask of careless disdain that the young man assumed.  Upon falling into the common ditch, he, perhaps, had one advantage over his fellows:  he did not make his bed with base resignation; he tried persistently to raise himself from it by a violent struggle, only to be hurled upon it once more.

Strong souls do not sleep easily:  indifference weighs them down.

They demand a mission—­a motive for action—­and faith.

Louis de Camors was yet to find his.

CHAPTER IV

A NEW ACTRESS IN A NOVEL ROLE

Louis de Camor’s father had not I told him all in that last letter.

Instead of leaving him a fortune, he left him only embarrassments, for he was three fourths ruined.  The disorder of his affairs had begun a long time before, and it was to repair them that he had married; a process that had not proved successful.  A large inheritance on which he had relied as coming to his wife went elsewhere—­to endow a charity hospital.  The Comte de Camors began a suit to recover it before the tribunal of the Council of State, but compromised it for an annuity of thirty thousand francs.  This stopped at his death.  He enjoyed, besides, several fat sinecures, which his name, his social rank, and his personal address secured him from some of the great insurance companies.  But these resources did not survive him; he only rented the house he had occupied; and the young Comte de Camors found himself suddenly reduced to the provision of his mother’s dowry—­a bare pittance to a man of his habits and rank.