"Roussel loved retirement and unaffected manners. Traits of a charming simplicity are related of him. Alibert congratulating him one day on the marriage of one of his brothers, suggested that he should follow his example and marry. 'I assure you,' replied the irresolute bachelor, 'that this idea often occurs to me, but one must go before the priest, before the magistrate--there is no end to the affair.' There are persons for whom pleasing and indefinite fantasies have a charm which they love to prolong; they seem to dread a real happiness which might deprive imagination of its most smiling visions. Roussel was one of these persons. He was smitten with a violent passion for a young and beautiful person whom he had restored to health. Happy, doubtless, in secretly bearing a cherished image in his heart, he refrained from giving utterance to his thoughts. One day it was announced that this person was going to be married. 'Ah,' cried he, '_I am so grieved; I could not have believed it_;' and he shed abundant tears of regret. He was often sorrowful; in one of these fits of melancholy, he ran at midnight to a physician of his acquaintance--'My head turns,' said he; 'I feel myself very ill. I am come to you to implore your attention.' Imbert reassured him, and calmed his alarmed imagination. The two friends engaged in conversation, and Roussel forgot his malady. "Roussel was good; benevolence, a quality so precious to a physician, was in him lovely and expansive. When he suffered, study was an asylum for his grief, a refuge for his afflicted spirit. He found in the joys of the mind a defence against the sorrows of the heart. His internal agitations dissipated themselves thus without gall and without bitterness. His excellence was proof even against evil days. He lived poor, but the affectionate and delicate hospitality of a respectable family never allowed him to perceive it. He could, thanks to the care of M. Falaize, neglect, quite at his ease, both his affairs and his fortune, exercise his profession with the confident and noble freedom so agreeable to elevated minds; meditate without interruption upon Plato, Plutarch, and Rabelais, and withdraw himself, without peril, from those petty torments which impose themselves under the name of social proprieties. A perfect courtesy with him was marvellously allied to good nature a little rough, and which was not without a dash of mischief. Roussel no more sought honours than fortune. He refused the offer of an honourable employment, made to him by the Great Frederic. He failed, however, to be called to the legislative body. He wanted only two votes. Powerful friends had designed him for the Tribuneship. He declined that honour, urging the weakness of his voice, and his timidity. Roussel was timid through excess of modesty.