When, from the grief that succeeded to the death of Eugenie, he woke to find himself amidst the strange faces and exciting scenes of an Oriental court, he turned with hard and disgustful contempt from Pleasure, as an infidelity to the dead. Ambition crept over him--his mind hardened as his cheek bronzed under those burning suns--his hardy frame, his energies prematurely awakened, his constitutional disregard to danger,--made him a brave and skilful soldier. He acquired reputation and rank. But, as time went on, the ambition took a higher flight--he felt his sphere circumscribed; the Eastern indolence that filled up the long intervals between Eastern action chafed a temper never at rest: he returned to France: his reputation, Liancourt’s friendship, and the relations of Eugenie--grateful, as has before been implied, for the generosity with which he surrendered the principal part of her donation--opened for him a new career, but one painful and galling. In the Indian court there was no question of his birth--one adventurer was equal with the rest. But in Paris, a man attempting to rise provoked all the sarcasm of wit, all the cavils of party; and in polished and civil life, what valour has weapons against a jest? Thus, in civilisation, all the passions that spring from humiliated self-love and baffled aspiration again preyed upon his breast. He saw, then, that the more he struggled from obscurity, the more acute would become research into his true origin; and his writhing pride almost stung to death his ambition. To succeed in life by regular means was indeed difficult for this man; always recoiling from the name he bore--always strong in the hope yet to regain that to which he conceived himself entitled--cherishing that pride of country which never deserts the native of a Free State, however harsh a parent she may have proved; and, above all, whatever his ambition and his passions, taking, from the very misfortunes he had known, an indomitable belief in the ultimate justice of Heaven;--he had refused to sever the last ties that connected him with his lost heritage and his forsaken land--he refused to be naturalised--to make the name he bore legally undisputed--he was contented to be an alien. Neither was Vaudemont fitted exactly for that crisis in the social world when the men of journals and talk bustle aside the men of action. He had not cultivated literature, he had no book-knowledge--the world had been his school, and stern life his teacher. Still, eminently skilled in those physical accomplishments which men admire and soldiers covet, calm and self-possessed in manner, of great personal advantages, of much ready talent and of practised observation in character, he continued to breast the obstacles around him, and to establish himself in the favour of those in power. It was natural to a person so reared and circumstanced to have no sympathy with what is called the popular cause. He was no citizen in the state--he was a stranger in the land.