Calvert engaged in, he still felt those secret pangs of bitter
disappointment and the fever of unsatisfied desire, but he was both too
unselfish and too proud to show what he suffered. There are some of us
who keep our dark thoughts and secret, hopeless longings in the
background, as the maimed and diseased beggars are kept off the streets
in Paris, and only let them come from their hiding-places at long
intervals, like the beggars again, who crawl forth once or twice a year
to solicit alms and pity. Although Mr. Morris knew Calvert so well, his
impetuous nature could never quite comprehend the calm fortitude, the
silent endurance of the younger man, and so, when he saw him apparently
amused and distracted by the society to which he had been introduced,
and by the thousand gayeties of town life, he left him in September and
returned for a brief stay in Paris, happy in the belief that the young
man was already half-cured of his passion.
He was back again in December with a budget of news from France. "The
situation grows desperate," he said to Calvert. "I told Montmorin and
the Due de Liancourt that the constitution the Assemblee had proposed is
such that the Almighty Himself could not make it succeed without
creating a new species of man.
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