Contributing to, or proceeding from, this insane desire of self-aggrandisement, his professional and political convictions (he could not disassociate the two) ran in a restricted channel. But who shall distinguish, in any complaint that is accompanied by an unnatural condition of the nerves, between cause and effect? So M. David’s resentment of patronage may have inclined him to a creed of classic socialism; or his classic proclivities may have prejudiced him against the presumptions of self-qualified rank. In any case, he had twisted his theories, artistic and political, into one thin cord to discipline (or hang) mankind withal, and was as narrow a fanatic as was ever prepared to crucify the disputant that ventured to question his infallibility. Now, at the outset, Ned fell into some fascination of regard for this casual acquaintance of his. His _credo_, social and technical, would appear to jump--its first paces, at least--with M. David’s. Moreover, the glamour that naturally informed the presentment of a notable personality condescending to the regard of a tyro who could boast no actual claim to its notice, induced him, no doubt--under this influence of a flattery indirectly conveyed--to an attitude of respectful consideration towards certain foibles in the stranger that, on the face of them, seemed irreconcilable with the highest principles of morality. It was not so long, however, before his mind began to misgive him that his “half-God” was clay-footed--that here, indeed, was but another inevitable example of that subjective inconsistency that seems so integral a condition of the Gallic temperament. Then: “It is a fact,” he thought, “that one can never start to conjugate a Frenchman but one finds him an irregular verb. Where universal exceptions are to prove the rule, what rule is possible? Anarchy, and nothing else, is the logical outcome of it all.”