The stern yet simple-minded philosopher was not yet too old to love; but he thought that he ought not to aspire to it, and, after having felt its ardent flames more than once, he feared that he might fall into some mere sensual connection, in which his heart would not be included. He resigned himself therefore to live by devotion to others and to abandon all illusions finally and absolutely. He who had endured imprisonment, exile and poverty, and had undergone martyrdom, appealed to himself to conquer the craving for happiness as he had conquered all the rest, and he always emerged tranquillized and triumphant from these meditations; but triumphant as one is after the torture: a blending of feverish excitement and prostration, on one side the heart, on the other the body; a life whose equilibrium is destroyed and in which the mind can no longer tell in what sort of a world it is. And yet Lucilio exaggerated his misfortune to himself. He was beloved, not by a mind of rare intelligence--that is what he needed, at least he thought so, to reconcile himself to his tragic destiny--but by a heart. Before his learning and his genius, Mercedes was like a rose before the sun. She drank in its rays without understanding them; but she was enamored of his gentleness, his courage and his virtue, and her loving heart was prostrate before him. She did not resist the sentiment, but cherished it as a religious duty; she said nothing, however, because she had more fear than hope. We must not forget to mention in its place a little domestic revolution that occurred at the château of Briantes a few days after Monsieur de Beuvre's departure; for the importance of this seemingly trivial incident became grievously manifest later to the too happy inmates of the château. Although the younger of the beaux messieurs de Bois-Doré was not always the more child-like, Mario sometimes displayed a mischievous tendency, especially when, as Adamas expressed it, "he and the little madame had had their heads together." He was too kind-hearted and affectionate ever to torment animals or human beings; he never had occasion to reproach himself for pulling Fleurial's ear or addressing an unpleasant word to Clindor; but inanimate things did not always inspire in him the respect that certain of them inspired in the marquis. Of this number were the little statues from the romance of _Astrée_, which embellished the gardens of _Isaure_ and the famous labyrinth, and the den of old Mandrague, by which he had been much entertained at first, but which gradually began to pall upon him as playthings too utterly devoid of life.