Far from agreeing with his uncle that a revival of the horrors of 'ninety-three would have assured the triumph of the New Republic, he believed it had sunk under the bloody shadow of its predecessor.
He believed that, owing to this boasted Terror, France had been for centuries the only country in which the dangers of liberty outweighed its benefits.
It is useless to dwell longer on the relations of Louis de Camors with his uncle Dardennes.

It is enough that he was doubtful and discouraged, and made the error of holding the cause responsible for the violence of its lesser apostles, and that he adopted the fatal error, too common in France at that period, of confounding progress with discord, liberty with license, and revolution with terrorism! The natural result of irritation and disenchantment on this ardent spirit was to swing it rapidly around to the opposite pole of opinion.
After all, Camors argued, his birth, his name, his family ties all pointed out his true course, which was to combat the cruel and despotic doctrines which he believed he detected under these democratic theories.
Another thing in the habitual language of his uncle also shocked and repelled him--the profession of an absolute atheism.

He had within him, in default of a formal creed, a fund of general belief and respect for holy things--that kind of religious sensibility which was shocked by impious cynicism.

Further he could not comprehend then, or ever afterward, how principles alone, without faith in some higher sanction, could sustain themselves by their own strength in the human conscience.
God--or no principles! This was the dilemma from which no German philosophy could rescue him.
This reaction in his mind drew him closer to those other branches of his family which he had hitherto neglected.

His two aunts, living at Paris, had been compelled, in consequence of their small fortunes, to make some sacrifices to enter into the blessed state of matrimony.