There are plants which the dew and sun do not completely develop.  There are beings like weak plants, attached to earth by but feeble roots, and who from their very birth seem predestined to misfortune, and who, by a kind of second-sight, made aware of the fate which awaits them, attach themselves with fear and trembling to a world in which they anticipate only an ephemeral existence and cruel deception.  Their sadness is reflected on those who approach them.  There is as it were a fatal circle around them, in which all feel themselves seized with indescribable fear, and with the evidences of sympathy entertained for them is mingled a kind of commiseration.

Ireneus experienced at the appearance of Ebba this sentiment of uneasiness and melancholy sympathy.  When after supper he bade adieu to his uncle and cousins, when he was alone in his room, he smiled when he remembered the amiable gayety of Alete, but became sad and pensive when he recalled the dreamy look of her young sister, the sad melancholy glance which shone over her face like the twilight of an autumn day.

Ireneus was not however one of those sentimental beings belonging to the Byronic or German school.  His mind was rather energetic than tender; it was rather ardent than despairing.  The son of a brave country gentleman who had devoted fortune and life to the cause of legitimacy, and after having followed the princes in their various emigrations, had died for them in the wilderness of la Vendee.  Ireneus had been the inheritor of that obstinate will which never deviates from the end it proposes to itself, and of a chivalric worship of the Royal family, which to him seemed by a law divine to be invested with the imprescriptible right to govern France.  Of the large fortune which formerly belonged to his family, the revolution had left him but a dilapidated castle, a few fields and forests, the revenue of which scarcely sufficed to support his mother in comfort.

The condition of his fortune did not permit him to lead an idle life.  His birth made his profession certain.  He entered Saint-Cyr, and left it with the best possible recommendations.  He could also appeal to the traditions of his fathers services.  Through the union of these two claims he was so rapidly advanced that at twenty-eight he was already Captain of the Lancers of the Guard, with an honorable name, a handsome person, some intelligence and that elegance of manners inherent in the class to which he belonged, and which to us is known as the aristocracy, the young nobleman might without presumption anticipate a brilliant future.  His mother amid the silence of her provincial castle followed him step by step, with pride, and her solitary dreams saw him the husband of a rich heiress, Colonel and aide-de-camp of a prince, deputy and peer of France.  Who can tell how vague were the hopes entertained in relation to that child in whom all her hopes were centered!

His mother was lost in this study and observation of castles in the air, when the revolutions of July burst forth like a thunderbolt, and at one blow overturned all her aerial edifices.