the end of the avenue appeared one of the infrequent clearings of that
dense forest. In a frame formed to perfection by the horn-beams and
beeches, which blended their rusty foliage with the pale gold of the
birches and the dark verdure of the firs, was being enacted the final
scene of that too short day. Victorias and automobiles were arriving at
the cross-roads. They drew up in line along one of the roads. In the
centre a considerable crowd had already gathered in a circle, composed
of country people come to assist at the finish, guests who had followed
the hunt in carriages, and hunters, whose costumes in the colors of the
hunt--Spanish snuff-color with blue lapels--heightened with a dash of
brilliancy that truly charming and picturesque little tableau. Here
grooms were covering with blankets the horses heated by the ardor of the
chase. Farther on servants were bringing baskets filled with provisions
for the lunch. The mellow autumn light bathed with its invigorating rays
those groups, over whose heads rang out blasts of the horn, blended with
the baying of the restless hounds; and each blast, by its few notes,
explained to Landri the movements which were taking place in the crowd,
and which he amused himself by following with his glass.--The horns blew
the _mort_. The dogs were led away from the game. The first huntsman cut
off the right fore-foot and handed it to the master of the hunt. The
horns blew the honors of the foot. The master presented the foot to one
of the ladies whose three-cornered hats could be seen beside the velvet
caps of the men. The horns blew the _mort_ anew. The baying of the pack
redoubled. From his post of observation Landri could distinguish quite
plainly all the details of the _curée_: the whipper-in, standing
astride the stag, waved the head, by the antlers, before the slavering
jaws, held in respect by the raised whip of the huntsman. Another blast.
The whips had fallen. The dogs had hurled themselves on the bleeding
mass of which already nothing remained.
In the front rank of the spectators of this ancient and savage ceremony,
the young man had had no difficulty in making out his father's imposing
profile. In his costume of master of the hunt, completed according to
the old fashion by a three-cornered hat turned back with a copper
button, the Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp instantly justified, by his
aspect alone, the sobriquet of "Émigré" which his son often bestowed
upon him. He inevitably recalled the image of one of those sportsmen
represented in the charming paintings of the staircase at Fontainebleau,
or that exquisite picture at Versailles which depicts one of the
hunting-parties of the Prince de Conti in the neighborhood of
l'Isle-Adam.
The marquis was a man of sixty-five, whose sturdy old age put to shame
the worn-out middle-aged men of to-day. He was very tall, very straight,
and was still slender, although powerfully built, with a handsome face,
high-colored, of which his snow-white hair intensified the ruddy hue.
His long, delicate, tapering nose, a little too near the epicurean and
clever mouth, gave to his profile a vague resemblance to that of
François I. He was conscious of it, and he emphasized the likeness by
the cut of his beard, which was snow-white, like his hair. His face did
not need that adventitious aid to make even the most ignorant say of him
when they first saw him: "He's a walking portrait." Everything in him
was eloquent of race, the prolonged existence of a family in the
constant enjoyment of energy, wealth, and domination. His whole person
was instinct with kindliness of nature, and yet there emanated from it
an indescribable atmosphere of dignity, and the self-assurance of one
who has always maintained his rank, not only through himself, but
through all his kindred.
At this moment his eyes, deep-blue and piercing none the less,
expressed, as did his whole haughty countenance, the most complete and
heartfelt satisfaction. His lips laughed gaily and disclosed his large
white teeth, of which not one was missing. He had beside him two men of
his circle whom Landri knew very well, a M. de Bressieux and a M. de
Charlus. The latter, who was very small, almost puny, seemed a dwarf
beside the superb master of the hunt. His refined features also savored
of race, but of a meagre and worn-out type. He was only fifty-five, but
he was the older man. Bressieux, who was younger, was more comely of
aspect, and yet there was in his face a something which vitiated it, and
his cold arrogance contrasted no less strangely with the simple grand
manners of the marquis.
At that short distance Landri was able to study the group in detail with
almost photographic accuracy, and he felt once more the sentiment of
which he had told Madame Olier, a heartfelt admiration for his father.
Monsieur de Claviers-Grandchamp realized in every respect the physically
and mentally superior type of aristocrat, of the best. He was built of a
more ample, richer human material. What a difference between his
generous, his magnificent way of carrying off his rank, and the
bickerings of Charlus about questions of precedence! That was the sole,
contemptible occupation of that most refined and upright man, who was
nevertheless hypnotized by trivial details concerning his nobility,
though it was of the most authentic! What a difference, too, between the
spontaneous geniality of Monsieur de Claviers and the obsequiousness of
a semi-sharper which Bressieux displayed beneath his assumption of
importance, in order to maintain the course of an ultra fashionable life
by doubtful expedients. Very well born and well connected, endowed
moreover with taste, education, shrewdness and much dexterity, he acted
as intermediary between people of his own station, who were straitened
in their circumstances, and the dealers in curios or wealthy collectors.
Upon what terms? No one had ever dreamed of asking the question of that
individual with the face of a gambler and duellist, ruined by cards and
women, but who had retained the most impeccable manners and the most
virile courage of his race.
In Charlus and in Bressieux their caste was drawing near its end. In the
marquis, however, caste might be unemployed, but it was intact. To his
son he seemed so perfectly the _grand seigneur_ in his bearing even at
that moment, when the picturesque amusement of the day came to an end in
the most bourgeois of occupations: a cold luncheon eaten in the open
air! He went from one to another of his guests, from carriage to
carriage, assisted in that hospitable duty by a young woman in a riding
habit, who had followed the hunt on horseback, without taking part in
it. Landri recognized one of his partners at the infrequent balls which
he had attended during the last two winters.
"Poor Marie de Charlus!" he muttered; "she hasn't grown beautiful!" And
he added, aloud, to his chauffeur: "I am going inside, and we will go
on. I have certainly earned my luncheon."
The limousin began to descend the slope, while the young man removed the
mask, the cap, the gloves and the cloak in which he had arrayed himself.
If the marquis had arrived at that stage of concession at which he
recognized the existence of the automobile, he was still savagely
hostile to the hideous accessories which that style of locomotion
multiplies from day to day. This childlike precaution against the
possible ill humor of his father would have made Landri himself smile
under other circumstances. But the sight of Mademoiselle de Charlus had
suddenly rearoused his preoccupation, which had been somewhat allayed,
in spite of everything, by the fatigue and distractions of the journey.
He foresaw an additional reason for sparing the marquis's least
prejudices. The monomaniacal gentleman's daughter in no wise deserved
the contemptuous apostrophe with which he had saluted her. To be sure,
Marie de Charlus had not regular features. Her mouth was too large, her
nose too short, her forehead too protuberant, but her eyes saved all the
rest by their brilliancy, and, if she was not beautiful, she possessed
that charm of the "ugly-pretty girl" which so many men prefer to beauty.
Rather small, like her father, but of a very good figure, dancing and
riding with a grace at once bold and maidenly, she too had, in her
original physiognomy, that "portrait" aspect which is so frequent in
stationary classes. Those who are most impervious to the theory of
heredity must needs resort, in spite of themselves, in the face of this
fact, to the vulgarized, indefinite and indefinable, yet accurate term,
"atavism."
Landri was more capable than most men of grasping the interesting
character of that young girl's face, closely resembling one of those
eighteenth-century faces of which La Tour has noted the intelligent
expression,--but he was in love with another woman, he had come to
Grandchamp with the purpose of disarming his father's hostility to a
marriage which he passionately desired, and already well-meaning persons
had spoken to him of Marie de Charlus more than once in a very
significant tone. Did not her presence at this hunt, after the marquis
had insisted so earnestly that he should attend it, accord with these
hints? Certain it is that she was the first to espy the young man, even
before the motor had stopped. A faint blush rose to her cheeks. She said
a word to the marquis. He turned. He saw his son descending from the
heavy vehicle, and at the wave of his hand over the surrounding heads,
Landri felt, as usual, the warm blood rush to his heart. This was
perhaps the strangest detail of their strange relations--never had the
son approached the father without an impulse of enthusiasm and
affection; and the next instant he recoiled, withdrew within himself. He
literally bore in his breast two hearts: one which felt a thrill of
emotion upon contact with that powerful vitality, another which was, as
it were, terrified and thrown into confusion by it. This time, however,
the second impulse did not follow at once. The young man, in his
anxiety, felt a too grateful surprise when he realized that there was no
trace of reproach in that greeting, although he arrived when the hunt
was over, after a downright objurgation to be prompt. He passed through
the line of carriages, exchanging hand-shakes, and salutations with the
hat. M. de Claviers' first words to him were accompanied by one of those
hearty laughs which always rang true--the old nobleman would not have
been the admirable and knightly person that he was, if his frankness had
not been absolute, in the most trivial no less than in the most
important circumstances.
"Well, Landri, you won't boast again of the convenience of the
automobile! Your train arrived at Paris at nine o'clock, and now it's
two. Ah! the horse! the horse! The four good post-horses that made the
trip without a stop! However, here you are. It's a pity. You have missed
a fine run. It was hotter than the result would indicate. The attack was
sharp. But Tonnerre has an admirable scent for doublings. He did not
allow the dogs to make a mistake, and the stag was in sight almost all
the time. He was in the water only a few moments. The beast was winded
by the pace. We finished with a run of a kilometre. That's what your
trouble-machine has made you miss."
"I'll make him change his mind about the automobile, Monsieur de
Claviers," said Mademoiselle de Charlus gaily, addressing Landri, "I
pledge myself to do it. On the next _circuit_ I am going to take him
with me, and we shall go a bit fast. He'll find that it's as amusing as
a fine run to hounds. I have sworn to make him _up-to-date_."
She looked at the new arrival with a glance most desirous to please, as
she uttered that untranslatable Americanism, which, indeed, might well
have been her motto. Marie had that characteristic common to certain
women of her class, which is traceable to a reaction against the
monotonies of their environment: an unwillingness to go slow. While
Landri was a modernist, she prided herself on being ultra modern. "Not
in the train, in the express," she would say; "in all the expresses";
which did not prevent her thinking about the substance of things exactly
as her father and the marquis did. By an unexpected contrariety the
young man disliked her and the "Émigré" liked her. Behind her poses
the marquis divined the immutable "one does not mix with the canaille
when one has a name like ours," of the pure-blooded aristocrat; and
then, too, she loved his son, and he knew it. Landri, for his part,
blamed the young woman for that defiant air, that radicalism which was
like a caricature of his own ideas. And above all, he guessed that she
loved him, and he loved Valentine! He replied neither to her glance nor
to her words, but said to the marquis:--
"I had no trouble, father. I was simply detained in Paris a little
longer than I expected."
"Did you go to Jaubourg's?" asked M. de Claviers. "Did you see him?"
"I didn't see him," Landri answered. He too was incapable of lying well.
It was his turn to blush as he added, evasively: "He is so ill! But I
have brought you the bulletin."
"Give it to me," said M. de Claviers eagerly. He read the ominous lines
aloud. "Pierre Chaffin!" he repeated. "I am glad Chaffin's son is there.
His father must have sent him, on my account, because he knows how fond
I am of Jaubourg. He didn't tell me anything in order not to disturb me.
Good Chaffin! And good Jaubourg! I dined with him at the club last
Wednesday--not a week ago. He complained of lassitude and headache. I
said to him: 'You've taken a little cold. Don't worry about it. It's
nothing.' It was the first symptoms of pneumonia and perhaps he will die
of it!"
"He'll have a fine sale," said Bressieux. He had the affectation of
speaking with the ends of his teeth, as if he nibbled at his words. "I
know of two Fragonards that he has, of the very choicest. Those that
were in the poor Duc de Fleury's collection, don't you remember,
Geoffroy?" This other Merovingian name was borne by the marquis, but few
persons were privileged to call him by it; Bressieux never lost an
opportunity. "He was a good buyer," he continued; "he had a deal of
taste."
"And for a man who was not _born_," interposed Charlus, "he was
wonderfully well brought up. I knew of but one fault that he had: he was
not religious."
"A man so _comme il faut_!" said Marie sarcastically; "it's surprising.
Never fear, papa, he won't have a civil burial. He won't inflict that on
you." As she was really kind-hearted, she was a little ashamed of having
scratched a dying man on the petty absurdities of his life, and she
added: "No matter, even if he was a bit of a 'snob', he was an excellent
man."
"Excellent!" echoed the marquis; and with the simple benignity which had
always touched his son so deeply, he continued, with tears in his eyes:
"I have known him more than thirty years. He has been a perfect friend
to me. A friend, that is something not to be replaced at my age, nor at
any age! We are happy, breathing freely, going our ways; I see him
suffering, and--" He paused, then continued in a deep voice: "If he must
go, I wish I had bade him adieu." He paused again, and as the wonderful
vitality of his blood naturally inspired his brain with optimistic
thoughts, he said: "But we are in a great hurry to bury him, and the
bulletin does not suggest an aggravated case. Let us hope. I couldn't go
to Paris to-day, on account of the hunt. To-morrow we shall shoot a few
partridges. I will go day after to-morrow."
Plainly he had felt a twinge of remorse because he was not at the
bedside of the friend he loved. He had yielded, he yielded again to the
hereditary passion which decreed that Louis XVI should hunt the stag
while the Jacobins were taking away his throne. And, shaking off his sad
thoughts definitively, he said to his son:--
"You must be tired, my boy. You must have something to eat."--And, to a
servant: "A plate.--Some foie gras? Here." He began to serve Landri
himself.--"The liver of my own birds, mademoiselle, and I am proud of
it!--A glass of champagne? I am hungry too."--He ate again.--"But it's a
healthy hunger, of the sort that your circuit in an automobile won't
give me, mademoiselle, no. A four hours' gallop in my forest, and I
breathe in life through every pore. These woods have been ours for three
hundred years. That's a long lease!--Ah! so you propose to make me
_up-to-date_! On the contrary I will make you 'old France.' You recited
some decadent verses to me just now. I am going to recite you some of
the sixteenth century. They're by Jacques Grévin, the physician of
Marguerite de France. It's a description of this very forest of ours:--
"'Dedans ces bois et forests ombrageuses
Sont les sangliers et les biches peureuses,
Les marcassins, fans de biches et daims,
Les cerfs cornus, familiers aux silvains,
Bref, le plaisir et soulas et bonheur
Que peut avoir ès forests le veneur.'"[2]
He repeated these verses in a sympathetic tone which proved that he felt
their archaic charm, and that the sportsman had a nice taste for
letters. He needed not to borrow a pen to write the famous work on the
"History and Genealogy of the Family of Claviers-Grandchamp," a
chef-d'œuvre in its way, one of those "livres de raison" to be placed
on the same shelf with the eloquent "History of a Vivarois Family,"
published that year by another heir of a very great name. Marie de
Charlus was too refined, even in her affected bad form, not to feel the
picturesqueness and pathos of that figure of an old nobleman, whose
originality, so vigorous to begin with, had emphasized its salience by
its reaction against a too hostile age. The force of the type he
represented measured the degree of his solitude. She replied, half
mischievously:--
"I used to call myself the emancipated _gratin_; if all of us were like
you, I think I should very soon call myself the repentant _gratin_."
"What a memory!" said Charlus admiringly. "But my grandfather was always
talking to me about your grandfather's memory."
"You'll give me those verses, won't you, Geoffroy?" besought Bressieux.
"I am sometimes asked for mottoes to be painted on panels in hunting
lodges."
"I am the repentant _gratin_," rejoined the marquis. "Yes, for having
presumed to lecture the cleverest of Maries. My grandfather's memory?
Yes, I have always been told that I resembled him. There's nothing left
of the army of Condé, but for that!--You shall have the verses, Louis.
Although as to the mottoes on panels--Humph! when one has a motto one
keeps it. When one has none, one has none. But I must excuse myself,
mademoiselle, and you, my friends. I am obliged to leave you. The
carriages will take you home. I do not propose to inflict on you a long
détour that I have to make before I go home. Landri will come with me.
We will take the automobile, mademoiselle, and I will practise at the
_circuit_. _À tout l'heure_, at the château." He had taken his son's
arm and was leading him toward the motor, saluting on all sides, and
addressing this one and that. "You won't forget, Travers? I rely on you
for dinner this evening.--You dine at Grandchamp, Hautchemin. I will
send you home.--Férussac, you dine at Grandchamp with Madame de
Férussac, that's understood, isn't it? Eight o'clock. If you're late,
we'll wait for you."
When they were seated in the motor, after telling the chauffeur the
direction to take, he said to Landri: "We shall be more than thirty at
table. I don't know just how many; fancy that! I ordered for forty, at a
venture. I like that sort of thing! It's almost the open house of old
times. What a generous and proud expression: open house! The men of
to-day talk about the social question. But our fathers had solved it.
What was a _grand seigneur_? A living syndicate, nothing else. Consider
how many people lived on him, how many live on us! To spend freely a
handsome fortune, from father to son, on the same estate, is to support
a whole district for many generations. When people prate of the luxury
of the nobles of the olden time, they always think of them as like
Cleopatra, drinking pearls, selfishly. But that luxury was a public
service! It was the fountain which monopolizes the water in order to
distribute it. The fountain was overturned, and the water is dribbling
away, turning to mud, and disappearing--that's the whole story!--Ah!
Auguste is going wrong!" And, seizing the megaphone, he shouted: "To the
left, to the left, and then the second avenue on the right. There are
three oaks in a clump and a Calvary."--And turning once more to his son:
"I know the forest, tree by tree, leaf by leaf, I have ridden through it
so often and on such good horses. Do you remember Toby, my gray Irish
horse, and how he jumped? We are going to Père Mauchaussée's."
"Our old gardener?" inquired Landri. "What has become of him?"
"He is what he always was.
"'Qu'ils sont doux, bouteille, ma mie,
Qu'ils sont doux, tes petits glouglous!'
But it's his son that I want to see. I made him second gardener when his
father retired, do you remember? He crushed his foot last week, not on
our land, but at his father's, cutting down a tree. The doctor thinks he
won't be able to work any more. He is in despair. Fancy, a wife and five
children! Chaffin wanted me to help him a little, and nothing more. 'We
don't come within the law relating to accidents to workmen,' he said. 'I
don't need their laws to tell me what my duty is,' I replied. 'He shall
be paid his wages in full, as long as he lives, like his father.'--I am
a socialist, you know, in the old way. It was different from the new way
in this, that the poor received the money of the rich directly, whereas
to-day the politicians keep it all. It's very _up-to-date_, as our young
friend Marie de Charlus says. What do you think of her? She is charming,
isn't she?"
"Charming," Landri replied; "but I am surprised that she pleases you,
with such ideas as she has."
"As she thinks she has," the marquis corrected him. "That will pass off.
It's the impulse of youth. What will not pass off, is the old stock. She
has it to the tips of her fingers and toes. Did you look at her? Ah!
she's a genuine Charlus, and signed! Do you know what I said to myself
when I saw her on horseback to-day?--And how beautifully she
rides!--That she would make the sweetest little Comtesse de
Claviers-Grandchamp.--And do you know this too? That it depends on you
alone? But it does. Tell me if it doesn't begin like a chapter in a
novel? A year ago she was twenty years old. She was sought in
marriage--by the little Duc de Lautrec, if you please. She refused.
Parents astounded. She was so young, they left her in peace. Six months
ago, another offer, from Prince de la Tour Enguerrand, the widower.
Another refusal. A month ago, Lautrec comes forward again. She refuses
again. Then follows an explanation with the mother. Who would have
thought that the 'emancipated _gratin_,' as she calls herself, that girl
who puts on so many twentieth-century airs, is still governed by
sentiment after the old style--the only style, on my word, that is
always good and always young! 'I will marry Monsieur de Claviers,' she
said, 'or I will die an old maid.'"
"That is impossible," interposed the young man; "we just speak to each
other at a ball two or three times in a winter."