Honorine | Page 8

but he has no vices.'
"'Well,' said the Count, with a kindly look, 'do you like yourself there?
Tell me. There are so many rooms in this barrack that, if you were not
comfortable, I could put you elsewhere.'
"'At my uncle's I had but one room,' replied I.
"'Well, you can settle yourself this evening,' said the Count, 'for your
possessions, no doubt, are such as all students own, and a hackney
coach will be enough to convey them. To-day we will all three dine
together,' and he looked at my uncle.
"A splendid library opened from the Count's study, and he took us in
there, showing me a pretty little recess decorated with paintings, which
had formerly served, no doubt, as an oratory.
"'This is your cell,' said he. 'You will sit there when you have to work
with me, for you will not be tethered by a chain;' and he explained in
detail the kind and duration of my employment with him. As I listened
I felt that he was a great political teacher.
"It took me about a month to familiarize myself with people and things,
to learn the duties of my new office, and accustom myself to the
Count's methods. A secretary necessarily watches the man who makes
use of him. That man's tastes, passions, temper, and manias become the
subject of involuntary study. The union of their two minds is at once
more and less than a marriage.

"During these months the Count and I reciprocally studied each other. I
learned with astonishment that Comte Octave was but thirty-seven
years old. The merely superficial peacefulness of his life and the
propriety of his conduct were the outcome not solely of a deep sense of
duty and of stoical reflection; in my constant intercourse with this
man--an extraordinary man to those who knew him well--I felt vast
depths beneath his toil, beneath his acts of politeness, his mask of
benignity, his assumption of resignation, which so closely resembled
calmness that it is easy to mistake it. Just as when walking through
forest-lands certain soils give forth under our feet a sound which
enables us to guess whether they are dense masses of stone or a void;
so intense egoism, though hidden under the flowers of politeness, and
subterranean caverns eaten out by sorrow sound hollow under the
constant touch of familiar life. It was sorrow and not despondency that
dwelt in that really great soul. The Count had understood that actions,
deeds, are the supreme law of social man. And he went on his way in
spite of secret wounds, looking to the future with a tranquil eye, like a
martyr full of faith.
"His concealed sadness, the bitter disenchantment from which he
suffered, had not led him into philosophical deserts of incredulity; this
brave statesman was religious, without ostentation; he always attended
the earliest mass at Saint-Paul's for pious workmen and servants. Not
one of his friends, no one at Court, knew that he so punctually fulfilled
the practice of religion. He was addicted to God as some men are
addicted to a vice, with the greatest mystery. Thus one day I came to
find the Count at the summit of an Alp of woe much higher than that on
which many are who think themselves the most tried; who laugh at the
passions and the beliefs of others because they have conquered their
own; who play variations in every key of irony and disdain. He did not
mock at those who still follow hope into the swamps whither she leads,
nor those who climb a peak to be alone, nor those who persist in the
fight, reddening the arena with their blood and strewing it with their
illusions. He looked on the world as a whole; he mastered its beliefs; he
listened to its complaining; he was doubtful of affection, and yet more
of self-sacrifice; but this great and stern judge pitied them, or admired
them, not with transient enthusiasm, but with silence, concentration,

and the communion of a deeply-touched soul. He was a sort of catholic
Manfred, and unstained by crime, carrying his choiceness into his faith,
melting the snows by the fires of a sealed volcano, holding converse
with a star seen by himself alone!
"I detected many dark riddles in his ordinary life. He evaded my gaze
not like a traveler who, following a path, disappears from time to time
in dells or ravines according to the formation of the soil, but like a
sharpshooter who is being watched, who wants to hide himself, and
seeks a cover. I could not account for his frequent absences at the times
when he was working the hardest, and of which he made no secret from
me, for he would say, 'Go on with this