Those who knew him intimately quickly
learned to esteem his sound judgment, his keen sense of honour, and to
discover under his cold exterior a warm heart, an excessive sensibility,
and a delicacy almost feminine. In a word, although he might be eclipsed
in a room full of strangers or simpletons, he charmed all hearts in a
smaller circle, where he felt warmed by an atmosphere of sympathy.
He accustomed himself to go about a great deal. He reasoned, wisely
perhaps, that a magistrate can make better use of his time than by
remaining shut up in his study, in company with books of law. He thought
that a man called upon to judge others, ought to know them, and for that
purpose study them. An attentive and discreet observer, he examined the
play of human interests and passions, exercised himself in disentangling
and manoeuvring at need the strings of the puppets he saw moving around
him. Piece by piece, so to say, he laboured to comprehend the working
of the complicated machine called society, of which he was charged to
overlook the movements, regulate the springs, and keep the wheels in
order.
And on a sudden, in the early part of the winter of 1860 and 1861, M.
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