There
was a kind of austerity about his bearing;--a something difficult to
define, which would have prevented any girl from fancying that he
was at all likely to want to make love to her; a something which
made it as impossible that the refined courtesy of his address
should have called a pleased blush to any girl's cheek, or made her
pulse move one beat the faster, as that she should have been so
affected by the imposition of the hands of the bishop who confirmed
her!
Such as the Marchese was, any committee in the world would have
chosen him its president, any jury in the world would have named him
its foreman, any board in the world have selected him as its
chairman, any deputation in the world would have put him forward as
its spokesman; any sovereign in the world might have appointed him
grand master of the ceremonies; but never at any period of his life
would the suffrages of the ball-room have pitched upon him to be the
leader of the cotillon.
Perhaps it was that his life had been always too full to spare any
space for such lighter matters. He had been left the head of his
family when quite a young man, and had at once, in a great degree,
stepped into the place he had ever since occupied in the social
world of his native city. And what with his music, which was with
him really a passion, and what with his dabblings in science, and
what with the multifarious business he had always made for himself
by real and useful attention to the affairs pertaining to all the
functions he had filled, his life had really been a fully occupied
one.
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