His heart, indeed, had been left inactive; but his intellect and his physical powers had been kept in hourly exercise.

He returned to the world of his equals with a mind laden with the treasures of a various and vast experience, and with much of the same gloomy moral as that which, on emerging from the Catacombs, assured the restless speculations of Rasselas of the vanity of human life and the folly of moral aspirations.
Ernest Maltravers, never a faultless or completed character, falling short in practice of his own capacities, moral and intellectual, from his very desire to overpass the limits of the Great and Good, was seemingly as far as heretofore from the grand secret of life.

It was not so in reality; his mind had acquired what before it wanted,--_hardness_; and we are nearer to true virtue and true happiness when we demand too little from men than when we exact too much.
Nevertheless, partly from the strange life that had thrown him amongst men whom safety itself made it necessary to command despotically, partly from the habit of power and disdain of the world, his nature was incrusted with a stern imperiousness of manner, often approaching to the harsh and morose, though beneath it lurked generosity and benevolence.
Many of his younger feelings, more amiable and complex, had settled into one predominant quality, which more or less had always characterized him,--Pride! Self-esteem made inactive, and Ambition made discontented, usually engender haughtiness.

In Maltravers this quality, which, properly controlled and duly softened, is the essence and life of honour, was carried to a vice.

He was perfectly conscious of its excess, but he cherished it as a virtue.