Villars would not have been satisfied to feel, without knowing why he felt. The Rhone was nothing to him, without its name in history; but it recalled to him the days of Cæsar, and every struggle the ancient Gauls made for the independence of their country: and there was a feeling of pride mixed with the remembrance, which seemed, in a degree, to transfer itself to the object that excited it; and he became almost proud of the Rhone, because he admired the deeds which its banks had witnessed. It is a country fertile in ruins. It seems as if time had taken a barbarous pleasure in leaving there the wreck of mighty works as trophies of his all-destroying power; and in wandering amidst them, Durand would mark the elegance of the capital, or the fair proportion of the architrave which had once adorned some palace or some temple, whose lord and his parasites, whose idol and its worshippers, had long been forgotten in the silence of things that are no more; and he would point out the beauties to his companion who, for his part, would carry his thoughts back to the days of Rome; to the mind, whose energy had conceived, and to the men, whose labour had perfected, those giant fabrics that shame the pigmy efforts of our later times; and while Durand would laughingly contend, that the Romans were neither braver; wiser, nor better than the race of modern men, Villars would exclaim against the degeneracy of mankind, and grieve that he had not lived in those days of glory and of liberty. They were at that period of life when passion is strongest, and imagination most vivid, and when judgment; like a young monarch, forgets his painful duties and leaves his throne vacant, while he wanders amongst the pleasures and diversions of his new estate. They were at this period of life, when the revolution began to throw a new and too strong light upon the world. In the enthusiasm of republican spirit, the revival of ancient institutions, and all the brilliant fantasies which rapidly succeeded each other, many of the wisest and the best got bewildered; nor was Durand one of the last to adore this phantasmagoria of antique forms. _His course_ is soon told. He quitted his native city; but before he went he embraced Villars with all the ardour of his new sect. He called him "_citizen_" and "_brother_," he vowed that their friendship should be everlasting.