Perhaps, as a consequence, De Vaux suffered greatly, like Carlo, from that sickening of a vague disease, that inexplicable, unbearable depression, that weight of sympathy thrown back on itself, which will always beset such men. I do not know how he could have stood it, without breaking out into some abnormal eccentricity, or seeking a miserable refuge from himself and his weakness in excess or vice, if it had not been for the intellectual and muscular sides of him, both of which had been carefully developed. They afforded him the relief of a variety of interests in study, art, science, in long walks and rides—wherein not only his nerves and muscle were braced, but a wholesome love of natural history was farther fostered, in fishing, shooting, deer-stalking, hunting, each in its proper season. Neither was he, in his father’s house, at liberty to neglect intercourse with his neighbours, though they afforded him much less solace, and frequently grated painfully on his fine perceptions, so that they drove him to give tokens of sinking, with all his advantages, into the life of a confirmed recluse before he was thirty years of age. Withal, it was rather a melancholy spectacle to see De Vaux and Carlo sitting listlessly together on a glad spring morning, or a serene summer evening, by the bank of a trout stream, or at the man’s study window—De Vaux’s long legs crossed, his long hand supporting his drooping head, his eyes gazing wistfully and moodily into the distance; while the dog, reflecting closely his master’s expression, if not his attitude, sat with his head declined also, and his nose sniffing the air in a kind of tender despondency—both so weary and sad, with wonderfully treacherous fascination for them in the energy-sapping sadness—and yet both so goodly in their respective fashions; De Vaux not yet twenty-three, Carlo not turned ten years.