de Sainte-Severe omitted to
mention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor did Gaston himself say a
word about him. But, at the same time, it is true that the brother was
consumptive, and to all appearance would shortly be laid in earth,
lamented and forgotten.
At first Gaston de Nueil amused himself at the expense of the circle.
He drew, as it were, for his mental album, a series of portraits of
these folk, with their angular, wrinkled faces, and hooked noses,
their crotchets and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits which
possessed all the racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their
"Normanisms," in the primitive quaintness of their ideas and
characters. For a short time he flung himself into their squirrel's
life of busy gyrations in a cage. Then he began to feel the want of
variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the cloister,
cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on till he reached a
crisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, but combines all the
symptoms of both. When a human being is transplanted into an
uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there is
always a little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, if
nothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to
them, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and
renders him powerless.
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