He yearned for none of the gayer reunions in which he had before sought for a pleasure that his nature had not found; for, amidst the amusements of Paris, Alain remained intensely Breton--viz., formed eminently for the simple joys of domestic life, associating the sacred hearthstone with the antique religion of his fathers; gathering round it all the images of pure and noble affections which the romance of a poetic temperament had evoked from the solitude which had surrounded a melancholy boyhood-an uncontaminated youth. Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much disturbed from its wonted saturnine composure. "Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse de Tarascon? Can it be? You ask military service in this ill-omened war?--you?" "My dear and best friend," said Alain, very much startled, "I should have thought that you, of all men in the world, would have most approved of my request--you, so devoted an Imperialist--you, indignant that the representative of one of these families, which the First Napoleon so eagerly and so vainly courted, should ask for the grade of sous- lieutenant in the armies of Napoleon the Third--you, who of all men know how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant--you, feel surprised that he clings to the noblest heritage his ancestors have left to him--their sword! I do not understand you." "Marquis," said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding Alain with a look in which were blended the sort of admiration and the sort of contempt with which a practical man of the world, who, having himself gone through certain credulous follies, has learned to despise the follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they bewitch, "Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples had allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment not unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian, to whom France can look for rational liberty combined with established order. Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who on earth could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which the madness, I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a sovereign against whom you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance of placing the descendant of Henry IV. on his throne." "I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my country against the foreigner."