It was not possible for a young man, endowed with the impressible temperament of Maurice, to be thrown into constant communication with an associate as full of vigorous activity as Ronald Walton, without being stirred and inspired by the contact. The force, decision, aptitude, promptness, which distinguished Ronald, had constituted him a sort of prince among his fellow-students, who gave him the lead in all their united movements, without defining to themselves his claim to supremacy. Ronald's character was not free from imperfections; but its very faults were essentially national,--were characteristics of that "fast-running nation" which is "indivertible in aim," and incredulous of the existence of the unattainable. His dominant failing was a self-dependence, which, in a weaker nature, would have degenerated into self-sufficiency, but just stopped short of that complacent, puerile egotism, which narrows the mind, and rears its own opinions upon a judgment-seat to pronounce verdicts upon the rest of the world. He never doubted his ability to scale any height upon which he fixed his eyes; he laughed at obstacles; he did not believe in impossibilities; what any other man could accomplish, that he had an internal conviction he might also achieve; and he held the faith of the poet-queen that all men were possible heroes.
These attributes were precisely those most calculated to impress and charm Maurice, and he regarded Ronald with unbounded admiration, mingled with a sickening sense of regret when he reflected upon the trammels which reined in the ready impulses and crushed the instinctive aspirations which were wrestling within himself.
Count Tristan, as soon as his son was sufficiently restored to travel, suggested that he should return with him to Brittany; but Maurice betrayed such uncompromising reluctance to this proposal that his father thought it wise not to press the point.
Though the count had escaped a calamity, which even to contemplate had almost driven him out of his mind,--though his son's life was spared, and his restoration to vigorous health assured,--at times the father felt as if that son were lost to him forever. An inexplicable reserve had risen up and thrust them asunder. In the count's presence Maurice was always abstracted and pensive; he uttered no complaints, made no petitions. He had come to the conclusion that both were useless; but his opinions and wishes were no longer frankly, boldly, iterated. He and his father stood upon different platforms, with an invisible, but an insurmountable barrier looming up between them. Count Tristan, albeit irritated, galled, grieved, could discover no mode of reëstablishing the olden footing. After spending a month in Paris, he returned to Brittany, his mind filled with discomforting forebodings, to which he could give no definite shape.