He had a practical mind. He set up for being a believer in all that was useful, in mathematical truths, positive religions and the exact sciences. He had a certain compassion for art, and maintained that Boule furniture had never been made as well as at present. Political economy, that science which leads on to all things, had appealed to him when he went out into the world as a vocation and a career, consequently he had decided to be an economist. He had brought to this dry study a narrow-minded intelligence, but he had been patient and persevering, and now, once a fortnight, he published in important reviews a long article well padded with figures which the women skipped and the men said they had read. By the interest which it takes in the poorer classes, by its care for their welfare and the algebraic account it keeps of all their misery and needs, political economy had, of course, given to Henri Mauperin a colouring of Liberalism. It was not that he belonged to a very decided Opposition: his opinions were merely a little ahead of Government principles, and his convictions induced him to make overtures to whatever was likely to succeed. He limited his war against the powers that were to the shooting of an arrow or to a veiled allusion, the key and meaning of which he would by means of his friends convey to the various _salons_. As a matter of fact, he was carrying on a flirtation, rather than hostilities, with the Government in power. Drawing-room acquaintances, people whom he met in society, brought him within reach of Government influence and into touch with Government patronage. He would prepare the works and correct the proofs of some high official who was always busy and who had scarcely time to do more than sign his books. He had managed to get on good terms with his Prefect, hoping through him to get into the Council and afterward into the Chamber. He excelled in playing double parts, and was clever at compromises and arrangements which kept him in touch with everything without quarrelling with anybody or anything. Though a liberal and political economist, he had found a way of turning aside the distrust of the Catholics and their enmity against himself and his doctrines. He had won the indulgence and sympathy of some of them, and had managed to make himself agreeable to the clergy and to flatter the church by linking together material progress and spiritual progress, the religion of political economy and that of Catholicism: Quesnay and Saint Augustin, Bastiat and the Gospel, statistics and God. Then besides this programme of his, the alliance of Religion and Political Economy, he had a reserve stock of piety, and he observed most regularly certain religious practices, which won for him the affectionate regard of the Abbe Blampoix and brought him into secret communion with believers and with those who observed their religious duties.