Was he a
Catholic Hamlet, or merely the victim of incurable disease? But the
undying worm which gnawed at the king's vitals was in Ernest's case
simply distrust of himself,--the timidity of a man to whom no woman
had ever said, "Ah, how I love thee!" and, above all, the spirit of
self-devotion without an object. After hearing the knell of the
monarchy in the fall of his patron's ministry, the poor fellow had
next fallen upon a rock covered with exquisite mosses, named Canalis;
he was, therefore, still seeking a power to love, and this
spaniel-like search for a master gave him outwardly the air of a king
who has met with his. This play of feeling, and a general tone of
suffering in the young man's face made it more really beautiful than
he was himself aware of; for he had always been annoyed to find himself
classed by women among the "handsome disconsolate,"--a class which has
passed out of fashion in these days, when every man seeks to blow his
own trumpet and put himself in the advance.
The self-distrustful Ernest now rested his immediate hopes on the
fashionable clothes he intended to wear. He put on, for this sacred
interview, where everything depended on a first impression, a pair of
black trousers and carefully polished boots, a sulphur-colored
waistcoat, which left to sight an exquisitely fine shirt with opal
buttons, a black cravat, and a small blue surtout coat which seemed
glued to his back and shoulders by some newly-invented process.
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