It even seemed to the old preacher as though the Revolution were an event which he had witnessed.

The Revolution and Napoleon had often fed his thoughts and his discourse toward this land.
Otto had thus, without troubling himself the least about politics, grown up with a kind of interest about France.

The mere intelligence of this struggle of the July days was therefore not indifferent to him.

He still only knew what the horse-dealer had related; nothing of the congregation, or of Polignac's ministry: but France was to him the mighty world-crater, which glowed with its splendid eruptions, and which he admired from a distance.
The old preacher shook his head when Otto imparted this political intelligence to him.

A king, so long as he lived, was in his eyes holy, let him be whatever sort of a man he might.