things. How many curious moral variations he had to show!--"vices
that are lawful": vices in us which "help to make up the seam in our
piecing, as poisons are useful for the conservation of health":
"actions good and excusable that are not lawful in themselves": "the
soul discharging her passions upon false objects where the true are
wanting": men doing more than they propose, or they hardly know what,
at immense hazard, or pushed to do well by vice itself, or working
for their enemies: "condemnations more criminal than the crimes they
condemn": the excuses that are self-accusations: instances, from his
own experience, of a hasty confidence in other men's virtue which
"God had favoured": and how, "even to the worst people, it is sweet,
their end once gained by a vicious act, to foist into it some show of
justice." In the presence of this indefatigable analyst of act and
motive all fixed outlines seemed to vanish away. The healthful
pleasure of motion, of thoughts in motion!--Yes! Gaston felt them,
the oldest of [95] them, moving, as he listened, under and away from
his feet, as if with the ground he stood on. And this was the vein
of thought which oftenest led the master back contemptuously to
emphasise the littleness of man.--"I think we can never be despised
according to our full desert."

By way of counterpoise, there were admirable surprises in man. That
cross-play of human tendencies determined from time to time in the
forces of unique and irresistible character, "moving all together,"
pushing the world around it to phenomenal good or evil. For such as
"make it their business to oversee human actions, it seems impossible
they should proceed from one and the same person." Consolidation of
qualities supposed, this did but make character, already the most
attractive, because the most dynamic, phenomenon of experience, more
interesting still. So tranquil a spectator of so average a world, a