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The military glory wherewith Napoleon fed and flattered the French nation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual and animal vigor of the conqueror's mind, dazzle even M. Sainte-Beuve, so that he does not perceive the gaping chasms in Napoleon's moral nature, and the consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action, nor the unmanning effects of his despotism.
And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly and demoralising now with the solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth, but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is Marcile?
That it does not succeed in getting its victim out of God's hand, and in unmanning and chattelizing him that God's hold upon him remains unbroken, and that those upward tendencies of the soul, which distinguish man from the brute, are not yet entirely crushed in him is no evidence in favor of its nature: it simply proves, that its power is not equal to its purposes.
Tallisker, too, was more uneasy than he would confess. He had hoped that Colin would answer his father's summons, because he believed now that the life he was leading was unmanning him. The poetical element in his character was usurping an undue mastery. He wrote to Colin very sternly, and told him plainly that a poetic pantheism was not a whit less sinful than the most vulgar infidelity.
Breakfast would at least alleviate this sinking feeling which was unmanning him. And he could think more briskly after a cup or two of coffee. He opened the door. On a mat outside lay a letter. The handwriting was feminine. It was also in pencil, and strange to him. He opened the envelope. "Dear Mr. With a sudden leap of the heart he looked at the signature.
On such occasions Henry would look at him in a manner which was a blend of scorn, amusement, and indignation; and would reply with a single word: 'Me! It was the way he said it that impressed you. But Henry had yet to experience the unmanning atmosphere of a lonely summer resort. He had only just reached the position in the bank where he was permitted to take his annual vacation in the summer.
And yet fear, that unmanning, abominable thing, that struck the light out of life, that made one incapable of energy and activity alike, was that too not a dark gift from the Father's hand? Had it a purifying, a restoring influence? It seemed to Hugh that it had none. Yet why was it made so terribly easy, so insupportably natural, if it had not its place in the great economy of God?
They looked as if they themselves thought something of this too, when they took possession of the desolate second floor; and the widow sat down near her son, and taking his hand in hers, gave vent to a flood of tears, which ended by unmanning the boy as well. And then they shut up the window carefully, and nothing more was seen of them that night.
There even flashed across his mind a mental picture of the on-rush of the train, and of a man hurling himself before it, to get for once and all out of sight and sound of the unspeakable, grotesque, unmanning shame of the thing. It was when he saw her that he resolved that he would not put his foot on the train, lest she might think he meant to go.
And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly and demoralising now with the solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth, but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is Marcile?
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