The smug-faced towns-folk whom he met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks he countered with hot defiant glances--he included them in his anathema.

He extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the rest.

They were all of a breed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms, insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection.
All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his eyes to the mountains.
One thing only perplexed him.

He understood the attitude of Basterga and Grio and Louis towards the girl.

He discerned the sword of Damocles that they held over her, the fear of a charge of witchcraft, or of some vile heresy, in which they kept her.