repugnance by showering upon him the most splendid favors as some indemnification for the past. But could he also restore to him the heart which he had forever untuned for the enjoyment of life? Could he restore his years of hope? or make even a shadow of reparation to the stricken old man for what he had stolen from him in the days of his youth?
For nineteen years G----continued to enjoy this clear, unruffled evening of his days. Neither misfortune nor age had been able to quench in him the fire of passion, nor wholly to obscure the genial humor of his character. In his seventieth year he was still in pursuit of the shadow of a happiness which he had actually possessed in his twentieth. He at length died governor of the fortress where state prisoners are confined. One would naturally have expected that towards these he would have exercised a humanity, the value of which he had been so thoroughly taught to appreciate in his own person; but he treated them with harshness and caprice; and a paroxysm of rage, in which he broke out against one of his prisoners, laid him in his coffin, in his eightieth year.
