And still, in his mobility, his animation, in his eager capacity for various life, he was so real an object, after that visionary idealism of the villa.

His voice, his glance, were like the breaking in of the solid world upon one, amid the flimsy fictions of a dream.

A shadow, handling all things as shadows, had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them.
Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly and abundantly, because with a good will.

There was that in the actual effectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to make the most of opportunity; and he had experience already that education largely increased one's capacity for enjoyment.

He was acquiring what it is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the elements of distinction, in our everyday life--of so exclusively living in them--that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or debris of our days, comes to be as though it were not.