But no; he could not think of Chazel without feeling an inward wound, bleeding and keen. His pride had been stricken to its deepest depths. He, who since their common adolescence had in thought treated Alfred as an inferior creature, he, who had robbed the poor wretch of his wife without the slightest remorse, he now had suddenly been crushed with generosity by this man, had been almost outrageously contemned. There was no means of rebelling against it, of standing out against it. Of the two it was he, Armand, who was playing the unworthy part, and he was pained by it in the baser portions of his being, in that pride in taking the first place, which, from their childhood, had been manifested in the pettiest details. Did they enter a restaurant, or take part in a country excursion? It was Armand who sought to pay, just as he sought to surpass at every game, and to win prizes at the distributions. Vanity had prevented him from choosing a career. Vanity again had inclined him to intrigues with women. Thus he was humiliated to the very soul. But his painful sensations proceeded at the same time from a more noble cause. The cord of pity had thrilled within him at the sighing forth of the terrible lament to which he had listened for an hour. Aridity of soul was not an essential part of Armand de Querne's nature. It was caused by the fact that with him emotion passed through the brain before it reached the heart. By a rooted deformity to be found in all intellectual lives, he must needs give himself reasons for feeling in such or such a manner. The powerlessness to love of which he was a victim proceeded from this peculiar disposition. He had never been able to believe in the truth of any woman's heart, and as a consequence he had always given himself reasons for not loving any of them unreservedly. Such a nature is the most miserable of all, for it prompts those who possess it to the worst acts of egotism without securing to them the icy and unconscious serenity of true egotists. Thus it was that the young man was able to become Helen's lover without a scruple, and to tread upon friendship as tranquilly as upon the carpet in the room where they met; and yet Alfred's suffering had just moved him to the inmost fibre. Ah! the reason was that he did not dispute the sincerity of this suffering; he had touched it as though it were an object, and as he believed in it, he felt it.