CHAPTER II.
MONSTRA evenerunt mihi: Introit in aedes ater alienus canis, Anguis per impluvium decidit de tegulis, Gallina cecinit!*--TERENCE.
* "Prodigies have occurred: a strange black dog came into the house; a snake glided from the tiles, through the court; the hen crowed." WITH his constitutional strength of mind, and conformably with his acquired theories, Maltravers continued to struggle against the latest and strongest passion of his life.

It might be seen in the paleness of his brow, and that nameless expression of suffering which betrays itself in the lines about the mouth, that his health was affected by the conflict within him; and many a sudden fit of absence and abstraction, many an impatient sigh, followed by a forced and unnatural gayety, told the observant Valerie that he was the prey of a sorrow he was too proud to disclose.

He compelled himself, however, to take, or to affect, an interest in the singular phenomena of the social state around him,--phenomena that, in a happier or serener mood, would indeed have suggested no ordinary food for conjecture and meditation.
The state of _visible transition_ is the state of nearly all the enlightened communities in Europe.

But nowhere is it so pronounced as in that country which may be called the Heart of European Civilization.
There, all to which the spirit of society attaches itself appears broken, vague, and half developed,--the Antique in ruins, and the New not formed.

It is, perhaps, the only country in which the Constructive principle has not kept pace with the Destructive.