"
Forced after a while to behave like an ordinary man, the poet found an
unexpected stumbling-block on ground where La Briere had already won
the suffrage of the worthy people who at first had thought him sulky.
They felt the need of compensating themselves for Canalis's reputation
by preferring his friend. The best of men are influenced by such
feelings as these. The simple and straightforward young fellow jarred
no one's self-love; coming to know him better they discovered his
heart, his modesty, his silent and sure discretion, and his excellent
bearing. The Duc d'Herouville considered him, as a political element,
far above Canalis. The poet, ill-balanced, ambitious, and restless as
Tasso, loved luxury, grandeur, and ran into debt; while the young
lawyer, whose character was equable and well-balanced, lived soberly,
was useful without proclaiming it, awaited rewards without begging for
them, and laid by his money.
Canalis had moreover laid himself open in a special way to the
bourgeois eyes that were watching him. For two or three days he had
shown signs of impatience; he had given way to depression, to states
of melancholy without apparent reason, to those capricious changes of
temper which are the natural results of the nervous temperament of
poets.
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