This, it seemed to him, was enough to occupy comfortably a young man of ordinary good parts.

But all that he was he was by instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues, which in some aspects seem rather brittle and trenchant, acquired in his application of them an extreme geniality.

In his younger years he had been suspected of low tastes, and his mother had greatly feared he would make a slip in the mud of the highway and bespatter the family shield.

He had been treated, therefore, to more than his share of schooling and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in mounting him upon stilts.

They could not spoil his safe spontaneity, and he remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young nobles.