Corse de Leon gazed upon him for a moment with a grave, perhaps one might call it a pitying smile. "You have forgotten," he said, "or never fully known, the court of France. There has there risen up," he added, "within my memory, a habit, an affectation of indifference, if you like to call it so, to all things on this earth; which indifference is born of a corrupt and a degraded heart, and of sated and exhausted appetites. To a high mind, furnished with keen and vigorous faculties, nothing on earth can be indifferent; for acuteness of perception--a quality which, in its degree, assimilates us to the Divine nature--weighs all distinctions. As God himself sees all the qualities of everything, whether minute or great, and gives them their due place, so, the grander and the more expansive the intellect may be, the more accurately it feels, perceives, and estimates the good or evil of each individual thing. The low and the base, the palled taste of luxury, the satiated sense of licentiousness, the callous heart of selfishness, the blunted sensibilities of lust, covetousness, gluttony, effeminacy, and idleness, take refuge in indifference, and call it to their aid, lest vanity--the weakest, but the last point to become hardened in the heart of man--should be wounded. They take for their protection the shield of a false and tinsel wit, the answer of a sneer, the argument of a supercilious look, and try to gloze over everything, to themselves and others, with a contemptuous persiflage which confounds all right and wrong. Thus will this count and his companions meet you; and you will gain neither answer nor satisfaction, but a jest, a sneer, or a look of pity." "It matters not," replied Bernard de Rohan, "it matters not! There are some things that men cannot laugh away! Honour, and courage, and virtue are not columns planted so loosely that a light gale can blow them down; and I will mark his brow with such disgrace that an ocean of laughter and light jests will never wash the stain off again. When I have done that, I will seek my Isabel, and by her own wishes shall our future conduct be guided. You have reasoned like a learned scholar, my good friend; but yet you see you have not converted me to your thoughts, though I will own that it much surprises me to find you have such varied knowledge of courts, and, I should think, of schools also."