In effect, no _rendezvous_ had ever irritated his senses
more, revealed more audacious pleasures, or better aroused love from
its centre to shed itself round him like an atmosphere. There was
something sombre, mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained, and
expansive, an intermingling of the awful and the celestial, of
paradise and hell, which made De Marsay like a drunken man.
He was no longer himself, and he was, withal, great enough to be able
to resist the intoxication of pleasure.
In order to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this
story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age
when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with
women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a
concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast
and unsuspected power.
This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of
modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by
the laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental
despot. But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by
brutish men, was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European
intelligence, with French wit--the most subtle, the keenest of all
intellectual instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest
of his pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social
world had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without
emphasis and deriving from himself.
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