He became a
Liberal in the belief that his fortune might yet be made by the
triumph of the opposition, and he lived in a miserable little house in
the Upper town from which his wife seldom issued. Madame Vinet had
found no one to defend her since her marriage except an old Madame de
Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter, who lived at Troyes. The
unfortunate young woman, destined for better things, was absolutely
alone in her home with a single child.
There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily
borne; but Vinet, devoured by ambition, and feeling himself guilty
towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew
elastic; and he finally came to think any means of success
permissible. His young face changed. Persons about the courts were
sometimes frightened as they looked at his viperish, flat head, his
slit mouth, his eyes gleaming through glasses, and heard his sharp,
persistent voice which rasped their nerves. His muddy skin, with its
sickly tones of green and yellow, expressed the jaundice of his balked
ambition, his perpetual disappointments and his hidden wretchedness.
He could talk and argue; he was well-informed and shrewd, and was not
without smartness and metaphor. Accustomed to look at everything from
the standpoint of his own success, he was well fitted for a
politician. A man who shrinks from nothing so long as it is legal, is
strong; and Vinet's strength lay there.
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