Page:The Head - Keepsake 1834.pdf/18

108 troublesome; my young republican is growing pedante et despote. He has none of the graces of my cousin Eugene." And Madame de Boufflers threw herself into the fauteuil, and indulged in a discontented reverie, in which Julian’s faults and Eugene’s merits occupied conspicuous places; together with the garniture of a new species of sandal which she meditated producing. In the meantime Julian pursued his way through the dark and dreary streets, suffering that agony of disappointed affection which the heart can know but once. Love is very blind indeed, but let the veil once be removed, though but for a moment, and it never can be replaced again. Then how quicksighted do we become to the errors of our past worship, and mortification adds bitterness to regret. "And is it for one," exclaimed he, "who holds the factitious advantage of a name, to be better worth than my deep love, that I have sacrificed the cause to which I was vowed, and have paused on the noblest path to which man ever devoted his energies? But the weakness is over; a terrible bond shall be made with Liberty—Liberty henceforth my only hope, my only mistress!"

The evil spirit of love left his soul for a moment, but returned, though with a strange and lurid aspect, bringing with him other and worse spirits than himself—hate, revenge, blood-thirstiness—all merged in and coloured by the excited and fanatic temper of the time. He stopped before a large hotel, from whose windows the red light glared, as if it mocked the darkness of night as much as the revel within did its silence. There was that mixture of luxury and disorder which at once so shocks and attracts the imagination. Its hangings were silk, the chairs and sofas satin, but they were torn and soiled; the servants were many, but ill-dressed and awkward; all the light elegance for which the hotel had been noted in its former proprietor's life (the Duc de N. had perished by the guillotine) had disappeared; the character