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 comparatively at my ease. I did not, it is true, like my position in his house, but being freed from the annoyance of false professions and double-dealing I could endure it, especially as no heroic sentiments of hatred or jealousy of the director distracted my philosophical soul; he had not, I found, wounded me in a very tender point, the wound was so soon and so radically healed, leaving only a sense of contempt for the treacherous fashion in which it had been inflicted, and a lasting mistrust of the hand which I had detected attempting to stab in the dark.

This state of things continued till about the middle of July, and then there was a little change; Pelet came home one night, an hour after his usual time, in a state of unequivocal intoxication, a thing anomalous with him; for if he had some of the worst faults of his countrymen he had also one at least of their virtues, i.e. sobriety. So drunk, however, was he upon this occasion that after having roused the whole establishment