The all-potent vitality which ceaselessly envelops him takes away from him in a vast degree the exertion of amusing himself.

The roar of the city, rising like a great bass around him, fills up the gaps in his thoughts, and never leaves that disagreeable sensation--a void.
There is no Parisian who is not happy in the belief that he makes all the noise he hears, writes all the books he reads, edits all the journals on which he breakfasts, writes all the vaudevilles on which he sups, and invents all the 'bon mots' he repeats.
But this flattering allusion vanishes the moment chance takes him a mile away from the Rue Vivienne.

The proof confounds him, for he is bored terribly, and becomes sick of himself.

Perhaps his secret soul, weakened and unnerved, may even be assailed by the suspicion that he is a feeble human creature after all! But no! He returns to Paris; the collective electricity again inspires him; he rebounds; he recovers; he is busy, keen to discern, active, and recognizes once more, to his intense satisfaction, that he is after all one of the elect of God's creatures--momentarily degraded, it may be, by contact with the inferior beings who people the departments.
Camors had within himself more resources than most men to conquer the blue-devils; but in these early hours of his experience in country life, deprived of his club, his horses, and his cook, banished from all his old haunts and habits, he began to feel terribly the weight of time.

He, therefore, experienced a delicious sensation when suddenly he heard that regular beat of hoofs upon the road which to his trained ear announced the approach of several riding-horses.