Graham had scarcely quitted Alain, and the young Marquis was about to
saunter forth to his club, when Duplessis was announced.
These two men had naturally seen much of each other since Duplessis had
returned from Bretagne and delivered Alain from the gripe of Louvier.
Scarcely a day had passed but what Alain had been summoned to enter into
the financier's plans for the aggrandisement of the Rochebriant estates,
and delicately made to feel that he had become a partner in speculations,
which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Duplessis brought to bear,
seemed likely to result in the ultimate freedom of his property from all
burdens, and the restoration of his inheritance to a splendour
correspondent with the dignity of his rank.
On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted to professional
business, Duplessis arranged that these consultations should take place
in the evenings. From those consultations Valerie was not banished;
Duplessis took her into the council as a matter of course. "Valerie,"
said the financier to Alain, "though so young, has a very clear head for
business, and she is so interested in all that interests myself, that
even where I do not take her opinion, I at least feel my own made
livelier and brighter by her sympathy."
So the girl was in the habit of taking her work or her book into the
_cabinet de travail_, and never obtruding a suggestion unasked, still,
when appealed to, speaking with a modest good sense which justified her
father's confidence and praise; and _a propos_ of her book, she had taken
Chateaubriand into peculiar favour. Alain had respectfully presented to
her beautifully bound copies of Atala and Ls Genie du Christianisme; it
is astonishing, indeed, how he had already contrived to regulate her
tastes in literature. The charms of those quiet family evenings had
stolen into the young Breton's heart.
He yearned for none of the gayer reunions in which he had before sought
for a pleasure that his nature had not found; for, amidst the amusements
of Paris, Alain remained intensely Breton--viz., formed eminently for the
simple joys of domestic life, associating the sacred hearthstone with the
antique religion of his fathers; gathering round it all the images of
pure and noble affections which the romance of a poetic temperament had
evoked from the solitude which had surrounded a melancholy boyhood-an
uncontaminated youth.
Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much disturbed from
its wonted saturnine composure.
"Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse de Tarascon?
Can it be? You ask military service in this ill-omened war?--you?"
"My dear and best friend," said Alain, very much startled, "I should have
thought that you, of all men in the world, would have most approved of my
request--you, so devoted an Imperialist--you, indignant that the
representative of one of these families, which the First Napoleon so
eagerly and so vainly courted, should ask for the grade of sous-
lieutenant in the armies of Napoleon the Third--you, who of all men know
how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant--you, feel surprised that he
clings to the noblest heritage his ancestors have left to him--their
sword! I do not understand you."
"Marquis," said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding Alain with a
look in which were blended the sort of admiration and the sort of
contempt with which a practical man of the world, who, having himself
gone through certain credulous follies, has learned to despise the
follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they
bewitch, "Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common
sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples had
allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment not
unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian, to whom
France can look for rational liberty combined with established order.
Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who on earth
could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword
hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which the madness,
I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a sovereign against
whom you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance of placing the
descendant of Henry IV. on his throne."
"I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my country against
the foreigner."
"An excellent answer if the foreigner had invaded your country; but it
seems that your country is going to invade the foreigner--a very
different thing. _Chut_! all this discussion is most painful to me. I
feel for the Emperor a personal loyalty, and for the hazards he is about
to encounter a prophetic dread, as an ancestor of yours might have felt
for Francis I. could he have foreseen Pavia. Let us talk of ourselves
and the effect the war should have upon our individual action. You are
aware, of course, that, though M. Louvier has had notice of our intention
to pay off his mortgage, that intention cannot be carried into effect for
six months; if the money be not then forthcoming his hold on Rochebriant
remains unshaken--the sum is large."
"Alas! yes."
"The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect many speculative
adventures and operations when at the very moment credit may be most
needed. It is absolutely necessary that I should be daily at my post on
the Bourse, and hourly watch the ebb and flow of events. Under these
circumstances I had counted, permit me to count still, on your presence
in Bretagne. We have already begun negotiations on a somewhat extensive
scale, whether as regards the improvement of forests and orchards, or the
plans for building allotments, as soon as the lands are free for
disposal--for all these the eye of a master is required. I entreat you,
then, to take up your residence at Rochebriant."
"My dear friend, this is but a kindly and delicate mode of relieving me
from the dangers of war. I have, as you must be conscious, no practical
knowledge of business. Hebert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry
out your views with a zeal equal to mine, and with infinitely more
ability."
"Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to Hebert; if you wish to get your
own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder to the wheel."
Alain coloured high, unaccustomed to be so bluntly addressed, but he
replied with a kind of dignified meekness: "I shall ever remain grateful
for what you have done, and wish to do for me. But, assuming that you
suppose rightly, the estates of Rochebriant would, in your hands, become
a profitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage, and the sum
you have paid Louvier on my account, let it pass to you irrespectively of
me. I shall console myself in the knowledge that the old place will be
restored, and those who honoured its old owners prosper in hands so
strong, guided by a heart so generous."
Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words; they seized him on
the tenderest side of his character--for his heart was generous, and no
one, except his lost wife and his loving child, had ever before
discovered it to be so. Has it ever happened to you, reader, to be
appreciated on the one point of the good or the great that is in you--on
which secretly you value yourself most--but for which nobody, not
admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit? If that has
happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when the fittest
representative of that divine chivalry which, if sometimes deficient in
head, owes all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to the
professional moneymaker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged
that a compliment to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose
qualities of heart had never yet received a compliment!
Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, "Listen to
me, I love you--I never had a son--be mine--Rochebriant shall be my
daughter's dot."
Alain returned the embrace, and then recoiling, said: "Father, your first
desire must be honour for your son. You have guessed my secret--I have
learned to love Valerie. Seeing her out in the world, she seemed like
other girls, fair and commonplace--seeing her--at your house, I have said
to myself, 'There is the one girl fairer than all others in my eyes, and
the one individual to whom all other girls are commonplace.'"
"Is that true?--is it?"
"True! does a _gentilhomme_ ever lie? And out of that love for her has
grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her--something that
may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to ancestors,
nothing to themselves. Do you suppose for one moment that I, saved from
ruin and penury by Valerie's father, could be base enough to say to her,
'In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant'? Do you suppose that I,
whom you would love and respect as son, could come to you and say: 'I am
oppressed by your favours--I am crippled with debts--give me your
millions and we are quits.' No, Duplessis! You, so well descended
yourself--so superior as man amongst men that you would have won name and
position had you been born the son of a shoeblack,--you would eternally
despise the noble who, in days when all that we Bretons deem holy in
noblesse are subjected to ridicule and contempt, should so vilely forget
the only motto which the scutcheons of all _gentilhommes_ have in common,
'Noblesse oblige.' War, with all its perils and all its grandeur,--war
lifts on high the banners of France,--war, in which every ancestor of
mine whom I care to recall aggrandised the name that descends to me. Let
me then do as those before me have done; let me prove that I am worth
something in myself, and then you and I are equals; and I can say with no
humbled crest, 'Your benefits are accepted:' the man who has fought not
ignobly for France may aspire to the hand of her daughter. Give me
Valerie; as to her dot,--be it so, Rochebriant,--it will pass to her
children."
"Alain! Alain! my friend! my son!--but if you fall."
"Valerie will give you a nobler son."
Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily; but he said no more in deprecation
of Alain's martial resolves.
A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, however philosophical he
may be, who does not sympathise with the follies of honour--who does not
concede indulgence to the hot blood of youth when he says, "My country is
insulted and her banner is unfurled," may certainly be a man of excellent
common sense; but if such men had been in the majority, Gaul would never
have been France--Gaul would have been a province of Germany.
And as Duplessis walked homeward--he the calmest and most far-seeing of
all authorities on the Bourse--the man who, excepting only De Mauleon,
most decidedly deemed the cause of the war a blunder, and most
forebodingly anticipated its issues, caught the prevalent enthusiasm.
Everywhere he was stopped by cordial hands, everywhere met by
congratulating smiles. "How right you have been, Duplessis, when you
have laughed at those who have said, 'The Emperor is ill, decrepit, done
up.'"
"Vive l'Empereur! at least we shall be face to face with those insolent
Prussians!"
Before he arrived at his home, passing along the Boulevards, greeted by
all the groups enjoying the cool night air before the cafes, Duplessis
had caught the war epidemic.
Entering his hotel, he went at once to Valerie's chamber. "Sleep well
to-night, child; Alain has told me that he adores thee, and if he will go
to the war, it is that he may lay his laurels at thy feet. Bless thee,
my child, thou couldst not have made a nobler choice."
Whether, after these words, Valerie slept well or not 'tis not for me to
say; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess that her dreams were rose-
coloured.