For the first time since he had reached his uncle’s house, Ireneus was alone.  A few days before the merry chat of Alete, the philosophical conversation of the old gentleman, the dreamy poetry of Ebba, and the activity and motion of all the household had diverted the young officer’s attention from himself.  Now his thoughts involuntarily returned, in consequence of news he had received from his country.  His mother, who shared all his secrets, sought to encourage him, and to unfold a new horizon.  In spite of this, however, every letter increased his unhappiness.  Some of his friends also wrote to him; and this correspondence surprised him painfully.  He heard, in this manner, of political defections which he, in his chivalric exaggeration looked on as felony, and at which he was most indignant.

“Villains!” said he, one day, as he read to his uncle a letter which he had just received.  “Now, this man owed everything to the kindness of Charles X., yet for the sake of office he has cast himself at the foot of a new master.  Here is one who, on the 28th of July, applauded the ordinances, and swore that the hydra of liberalism should he destroyed:  and said that he would pour out the last drop of his blood in defense of legitimacy.  He is now a partisan of the revolution.  We live in a scandalous age.  All principles of honor and religion are forgotten.  Office has great value, indeed, when honor and conscience are sacrificed to it.”

As he spoke thus, Ireneus strode up and down the room, and crushed the letter in his hands.

“My boy,” said M. de Vermondans, with his kind philosophy, “your feeling springs from a sentiment which does you honor.  Unfortunately, however, it can but injure you without benefiting those for whom you have so much sympathy.  To-day is not the first time that man has violated his oath, and made a traffic of obligation; one need only open a history, and read on every page amid some noble actions, countless base intrigues and unworthy cowardice.  The Roman senate erected statues to monsters it had dignified with the imperial purple.  The middle age, which we are pleased to look on as an epoch of faith and chivalric devotion, is everywhere sullied by acts of felony and the consequences of mad ambition.  Civilization, while it corrected the gross errors of rude nations, also restrained their virtues.  Love of prosperity, the sensations of luxury, bear to the wall the energetic principles of self-denial.  Some individuals, who, by their elevated position, attract attention to themselves; here and there break a link of the moral chain; others imitate them, and by fracture after fracture the whole series of austere ideas is interrupted and dislocated.  A few of the faithful may attempt to preserve the remnants, but others look on them with pity, and treat this religious faith as an anachronism.  The worship of the great is destroyed, and replaced by that of sensual enjoyments.  We do not ask God to give