Thus cheated by
a stroke of fate, Rodolphe's mother had recourse to a heroic measure.
She sold everything she owed to the munificence of her child's father
for a sum of more than a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a
life annuity for herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income
of about fifteen thousand francs, resolving to devote the whole of it
to the education of her son, so as to give him all the personal
advantages that might help to make his fortune, while saving, by
strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of age. It was
bold; it was counting on her own life; but without this boldness the
good mother would certainly have found it impossible to live and to
bring her child up suitably, and he was her only hope, her future, the
spring of all her joys.
Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, and a man of
mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with extreme sensitiveness.
From his infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In
him mere desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his
whole being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his
actions. Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was
alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for
things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as a painter
sketches, as a musician creates melodies. Tender-hearted, like his
mother, he dashed with inconceivable violence and impetus of thought
after the object of his desires; he annihilated time.
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