In Silvere's case, however, his scraps of stolen knowledge only augmented his liberal aspirations.

He was conscious of horizons which at present remained closed to him.

He formed for himself divine conceptions of things beyond his reach, and lived on, regarding in a deep, innocent, religious way the noble thoughts and grand conceptions towards which he was raising himself, but which he could not as yet comprehend.

He was one of the simple-minded, one whose simplicity was divine, and who had remained on the threshold of the temple, kneeling before the tapers which from a distance he took for stars.
The hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre consisted, in the first place, of a large room into which the street door opened.

The only pieces of furniture in this room, which had a stone floor, and served both as a kitchen and a dining-room, were some straw-seated chairs, a table on trestles, and an old coffer which Adelaide had converted into a sofa, by spreading a piece of woollen stuff over the lid.