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all banquets and carousals; that everybody was rich and enthusiastic,
that the court was gallant, gay, and magnificent;--if by chance, far
from these splendours, in some melancholy, indescribable half-light,
like nightfall, that old man, clad in the same garb as the common
people, was observed pale, absent-minded, bent towards the grave,
standing on the shore of the lake, scarce heeding the storm and the
winter, walking as though at random, his eye fixed, his white hair
tossed by the wind of the shadow, silent, pensive, solitary, who could
forbear to smile?
It was the sketch of a madman.
Thinking of Lord Clancharlie, of what he might have been and what he
was, a smile was indulgent; some laughed out aloud, others could not
restrain their anger. It is easy to understand that men of sense were
much shocked by the insolence implied by his isolation.
One extenuating circumstance: Lord Clancharlie had never had any brains.
Every one agreed on that point.
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