anything; neither do they who so largely promise to show it to
others. Of the hundred faces that everything has I take one, and am
for the most part attracted by some new light I find in it."

And that new light was sure to lead him back very soon to his
"governing method, ignorance"--an ignorance "strong and generous, and
that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an ignorance,
which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive [104]
knowledge itself"--a sapient, instructed, shrewdly ascertained
ignorance, suspended judgment, doubt everywhere.--Balances, very
delicate balances; he was partial to that image of equilibrium, or
preponderance, in things. But was there, after all, so much as
preponderance anywhere? To Gaston there was a kind of fascination,
an actually aesthetic beauty, in the spectacle of that keen-edged
intelligence, dividing evidence so finely, like some exquisite steel
instrument with impeccable sufficiency, always leaving the last word
loyally to the central intellectual faculty, in an entire
disinterestedness. If on the one hand he was always distrustful of
things that he wished, on the other he had many opinions he would
endeavour to make his son dislike, if he had one. What if the truest
opinions were not always the most commodious to man, "being of so
wild a composition"? He would say nothing to one party that he might
not on occasion say to the other, "with a little alteration of
accent." Yes! Doubt, everywhere! doubt in the far background, as
the proper intellectual equivalent to the infinite possibilities of
things: doubt, shrewdly economising the opportunities of the present
hour, in the very spirit of the traveller who walks only for the
walk's sake,--"every day concludes my expectation, and the journey of
my life is carried on after the same fashion": doubt, finally, as
"the best of pillows to sleep on." And in fact Gaston did sleep well