The bare thought of that explanation oppressed the young man with an agony of timidity. He had always suffered from it in the presence of that man whose name he bore, whose heir he was, whom he loved, and by whom he was loved, and he had never been able to open his heart to him fully, to explain himself concerning his inmost thoughts. His character, which was very manly in respect to important decisions, but extremely sensitive, and consequently easily disconcerted in its outward manifestations, had always been taken by surprise as it were by that of the marquis, so unhesitating, so dominating, so impervious to argument. His resistance to this moral despotism was not altogether conscious. It was that which incited him in his constant effort not to be an "émigré," as he said, to make himself useful, to belong to his own time, "to do his duty"--another of his phrases. We must repeat it. There are none more just. Many another young man of his class has felt, as he did, that magnanimous and praiseworthy appetite for efficient and beneficent action. Many have, like him, tried to rebel against the ostracism which France, the offspring of the Revolution, practises, by her customs as well as by her laws, against the old families. They have, like him, stumbled over obstacles. They have rarely felt them, as he did, as tragedies. This excessive and morbid view of his destiny betrayed in Landri a lack of equilibrium, of certainty. In truth, if, in certain directions, his ideas were absolutely opposed to those of his father, in others he underwent a veritable hypnotism at the hands of that powerful personality, and he was very near the point of doubting himself before an irreconcilability which he had not dared really to face but once, when it was a question of entering Saint-Cyr. His mind had been developed by reading, observation, reflection, all solitary, constantly held in check by the loud speech, the imperious intelligence, the steadfast and logical convictions, in a word, the decision, of the marquis. Landri, too, had decision, but by fits and starts, and when he had provided himself with very well-considered reasons therefor. His father had it always, gaily, buoyantly, as he walked, as he breathed, by an unfolding of his inward energy, if one may say so, which was as natural in him as the muscular development is in a lion. The prestige of that opulent and powerful nature maintained so complete a domination over the temperament, more refined perhaps, but less masterful, of his son, that he had been on the point of equivocating when Valentine asked him for that promise. He had given it, however. His lover's pride would have been too deeply humiliated to confess a weakness of which he was now sensible once more.