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THE QUEST OF GLORY
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE VIPER OF MILAN
I WILL MAINTAIN
DEFENDER OF THE FAITH
GOD AND THE KING
THE QUEST OF GLORY
BY
MARJORIE BOWEN
“LA GLOIRE NOUS DONNE SUR LES CŒURS UNE AUTORITÉ NATURELLE QUI
NOUS TOUCHE SANS DOUTE AUTANT QUE NULLE DE NOS SENSATIONS ET
NOUS ÉTOURDIT PLUS SUR NOS MISÈRES QU’UNE VAINE DISSIPATION;
ELLE EST DONC RÉELLE EN TOUS SENS.”
MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1912_
CONTENTS
PART I
THE QUEST JOYFUL
I. PRAGUE, 1742
II. THE CHAPEL OF ST. WENCESLAS
III. CAROLA KOKLINSKA
IV. CARDINAL FLEURY’S BLUNDER
V. THE RETREAT FROM PRAGUE
VI. ON THE HEIGHTS
VII. THE HOME AT AIX
VIII. CLÉMENCE DE SÉGUY
IX. THE HERETIC
X. THE MAGICIAN
XI. M. DE RICHELIEU
XII. THE DIAMOND RING
XIII. THREE LETTERS
PART II
THE QUEST SORROWFUL
I. PARIS
II. A WALLED GARDEN
III. A PAVILION AT VERSAILLES
IV. DESPAIR
V. THE PAINTER
VI. IN THE GARDEN
VII. A PICTURE
VIII. VOLTAIRE
IX. REFLECTIONS
X. IN THE LOUVRE
XI. THE FÊTE
XII. AFTERWARDS
XIII. CLÉMENCE
XIV. IN THE CONVENT
PART III
THE QUEST TRIUMPHANT
I. THE FATHER
II. RETURN TO LIFE!
III. THE BETROTHED
IV. THE CONFLICT
V. THE DEPARTURE FROM AIX
VI. THE GARRET
VII. THE ROSES OF M. MARMONTEL
VIII. THE END OF THE QUEST
EPILOGUE
THE QUEST OF GLORY
PART I
THE QUEST JOYFUL
“Tout est très abject dans les hommes, la vertu, la gloire,
la vie; mais les choses les plus petites ont des proportions
reconnues. Le chêne est un grand arbre près du cerisier;
ainsi les hommes à l’égard les uns des autres.”--LE MARQUIS
DE VAUVENARGUES.
CHAPTER I
PRAGUE, 1742
The Austrian guns had ceased with the early sunset, and the desolate
city of Prague was silent, encompassed by the enemy and the hard,
continuous cold of a Bohemian December: in the hall of Vladislav in
the Hradcany, that ancient palace of ancient kings that rose above
the town, several French officers wrapped in heavy cloaks were walking
up and down, as they had done night after night since the dragging
siege began. In the vast spaces of the huge pillarless hall with the
high arched Gothic roof, bare walls and floor, imperfectly lit by a
few low-placed lamps, their figures looked slight to insignificance,
and the sound of their lowered voices was a mere murmur in the great
frozen stillness. At one end of the hall rose a tall carved wooden
throne and rows of benches divided from the main hall by a light
railing; these, which had once been the seats of the King and nobility
of Bohemia, were now decayed and broken, and behind the empty chair of
state was thrust a Bourbon flag tied with the blue and white colours
that the French carried in compliment to the Elector of Bavaria, whom
they, for many intricate reasons,--some wise, and some foolish, and
none just,--were seeking to place on the Austrian throne as Charles II.
These officers, who were the unquestioning instruments of this policy
of France, ceased talking presently and gathered round the degraded
throne before which burnt a handful of charcoal over an iron tripod.
The only near light was a heavy lamp suspended before the window; a
stench of rank oil and powder filled even the cold air, which rasped
the throat and the nostrils and had no freshness in it but only a
great lifeless chill.
There were four of these officers, and as they stood round the
struggling flame that leapt and sank on the brazier, the cross lights
of fire and lamp showed a great similarity in their persons. It was
noticeable how totally different they were from their surroundings;
no one ever would have thought that they were of the breed that had
built this vast barbaric hall or carved the bold monsters on the rude
throne: in every line they stood confessed foreign, alien to this
crude grandeur and of another nation, another civilization, old and
thrice refined.
They were all slight men, though two were tall; they all wore under
their cloaks the uniforms of the famous _régiment du roi_; and they
all had their hair as carefully powdered and curled and their linen
as fresh and elaborate as if they were at Versailles: yet it was now
several months since Prince Lobkowitz and his Hungarian Pandours had
driven the French into Prague.
Their manner was as similar as their persons: a composed gaiety,
an unconscious courtesy, an absolute reserve and command of emotion
were as common to each as the silver epaulettes and frogs of their
blue uniforms. The four faces the charcoal flame lit were proud and
delicate and much alike in feature, but one was distinguished, even
in that light, by the fresh attractiveness of its youthful beauty--the
beauty of dark colour, of soft eyes, of rich hair that pomade could
scarcely disguise, of ardent lips and eager expression that even the
formality of that universal noble manner could not conceal; a face
beautiful and lovable, and one that had not yet looked on twenty years.
He was the youngest as he was the tallest. His companions were much of
an age and much of a height, and nothing remarkable distinguished one
from the other save that one wore the gorgeous uniform of a colonel,
two that of captain; the youth’s rank was merely that of lieutenant.
They were all silent; there was absolutely nothing to talk about.
They had been shut up in Prague all the winter, and though they could
easily have broken through the loose ranks of the unskilful besiegers,
all thought of leaving the city was impossible until the spring.
Bohemia was ice from end to end, and even in the encampment in Prague
the Frenchmen died of cold.
The siege was almost without incident and quite without excitement;
the Austrians made no attempt to take the city by storm, and the
French made no sallies. News of the outside war was their one
diversion: all Europe was in arms; Spain and England had been the last
to march on to the universal battle-field; France was but one member
of a coalition that endeavoured to wrest new possessions from the
Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa, whom English gold and Magyar loyalty
alone supported. France had signed the Pragmatic Sanction that left
her heiress to her father’s empire, but that promise had been lightly
enough broken when France saw her advantage in allying herself with
Frederick of Prussia, who, after his seizure of Silesia, had become a
power in Europe. No Frenchman had any personal feeling about the war;
Prussian was the same as Austrian in the eyes of most, and very few
troubled to follow the ramifications of the policy that had led the
Ministers who ruled in Paris to side with the effete Elector rather
than the gallant Queen of Hungary in this struggle for the succession
of Charles V. Therefore, with no interest in the war, little news from
home, enclosed in a foreign and half-barbarous town among a people
strange and mostly unfriendly, the French, during the long months
of the nominal siege, were utterly overcome with weariness and a
dispirited lassitude from which these four standing over the charcoal
pan in the Vladislav Hall were not wholly free.
The opening of the door at the farther end of the hall caused them all
to turn with the expectancy born of monotony. Several figures entered
the shadows, themselves dark and casting shadows by reason of the
lantern the foremost held.
The officers moved forward. The light of dim lamp and swinging lantern
was merely confusing to the sight; the advancing group threw fantastic
blots of shade, and seemed to merge, subdivide, and merge again until
there might have been ten people or two coming down the great bare
aisle of the hall.
When the light above the throne at last flung its feeble illumination
over them, it disclosed a stout Bohemian servant carrying a lantern,
a young man in a splendid dress of scarlet and fur, and a woman rather
clumsily muffled in a military cloak which was caught up so as to show
her riding-boots and fantastic long spurs.
The officers saluted; the lady paused and looked at her companion,
who returned the salute and said in good French, “We are prisoners,
I believe.”
“Austrians?” asked the Colonel.
“No: Poles. On our way to Paris. We were captured by the Pandours,
who routed our escort, and then by a Bohemian regiment, who considered
us enemies”--he smiled engagingly. “But I have induced them to allow
me an audience of M. de Belleisle, who, I am certain, will allow us on
our way.”
“Why, doubtless,” returned the Frenchman, with disinterested courtesy;
“but it is severe weather for travelling, and in time of war, with a
lady.”
“My sister,” said the young Pole, “is used to the cold, for she has
lived all her life in Russia.”
The lady lifted a face pale with fatigue and shadowed with anxiety;
her black hair was very unbecomingly twisted tight round her head, and
she wore a fur cap of fox’s skin drawn down to her ears.
“I have a good reason to wish to hasten to Paris,” she said. “I am
summoned there by the Queen.”
She made an impatient gesture to the Bohemian who conducted them, and
with a weary little bow followed him through the small door that had
been cut in the high blank wall.
With a more elaborate courtesy her companion followed her, his heavy
tread echoing in the stillness even after the door had closed behind
him.
“I wish I were bound for Paris,” remarked the young Colonel, M. de
Biron.
One of the captains lightly echoed his wish; the other glanced at the
lieutenant and said in a very pleasing voice--
“No, M. le Duc, wish for a battle, which would suit us all better.”
M. de Biron smiled.
“You are very sanguine, Luc.”
“How sanguine, Monsieur?”
“You speak as if war was what it used to be in the days of Amathis
de Gaul: forays, single combats, pitched battles, one cause--reward,
honour, glory.”
The faint smile deepened on Luc de Clapiers’ face; he made no reply,
but the lieutenant flushed quickly and answered--
“Pardon me, Monsieur, but it seems to me like that still.”
The young Duke seated himself on one of the wooden benches and crossed
his slender feet.
“Even Luc,” he said, with an accent of slight amusement, “cannot
make this a crusade. We do not know exactly what we fight for--we
respect our enemies as much as our allies; we think the Ministers
fools, and know the generals jealous of each other. The country, that
never wanted the war, is being taxed to death to pay for it; we”--he
shrugged elegantly--“are ruining ourselves to keep ourselves in
weariness and idleness. We get no thanks. I see not the least chance
of promotion for any of us.”
“But, Monsieur,” cried the lieutenant eagerly, “you forget glory.”
“Glory!” repeated M. de Biron lightly.
Luc de Clapiers flashed a profound look at him in silence; the other
captain laughed.
“We are none of us,” he remarked, “like to get much glory in Prague.”
“Oh, hear d’Espagnac on that,” returned the Duke half mockingly; “he
hath not yet awakened from fairy tales.”
The exquisite young face of Georges d’Espagnac blushed into a
beautiful animation.
“A soldier,” he said, “may find glory anywhere, Monsieur le Duc.”
“In death, for instance,” replied M. de Biron, with a whimsical
gravity. “Yes, one might find that--any day.”
“No--I meant in life,” was the ardent answer. “Die--to die!” The young
voice was scornful of the word. “I mean to live for France, for glory.
What does it matter to me how long I stay in Prague--for what cause
the war is? I march under the French flag, and that is enough. I fight
for France--I am on the quest of glory, Monsieur.” He paused abruptly;
M. de Biron took a fan of long eagle feathers from the bench and
fanned the dying charcoal into a blaze.
“A long quest,” he said, not unkindly. He was thinking that he had
been ten years in the army himself, and only obtained his colonelcy by
reason of his rank and great influence at Court; Georges d’Espagnac,
of the provincial nobility, with no friend near the King, had no
bright prospects.
A little silence fell, then Luc de Clapiers spoke.
“A short or easy quest would be scarcely worth the achieving.”
M. d’Espagnac smiled brilliantly and rose. “It is splendid to think
there are difficulties in the world when one knows one can overcome
them--fight, overcome, achieve--chase the goddess, and clasp her at
last! To ride over obstacles and mount on opposition--nothing else is
life!”
His dark hazel eyes unclosed widely; he looked as magnificent, as
confident, as his words sounded. His cloak had fallen apart, and the
last blaze of the charcoal flame gave a red glow to the silver pomp
of his uniform; his face, his figure, his pose were perfect in human
beauty, human pride transformed by spiritual exaltation; his soul lay
like holy fire in his glance. So might St. Sebastian have looked when
he came the second time to deliver himself to martyrdom.
“I give you joy of your faith,” said M. de Biron.
“Oh, Monsieur, you shall give me joy of my achievement one day. I know
that I am going to succeed. God did not put this passion in men for
them to waste it.” He spoke without embarrassment as he spoke without
boasting, and with a pleasing personal modesty, as if his pride was
for humanity and not for himself.
Luc de Clapiers was looking at him with eyes that shone with
understanding and sympathy.
“Keep that faith of yours, d’Espagnac,” he said softly; “it is the
only thing in the world worth living for. Indeed, how could we live
but for the hope of glory--some day?”
“I trust you may both die a Maréchal de France,” remarked M. de Biron.
The charcoal sank out beyond recovery; a sudden cold blast of wind
blew through the upper part of the window that had been smashed by an
Austrian shell. M. de Biron rose with a shudder.
“It is warmer in the guardroom,” he declared.
Luc de Clapiers spoke to the Lieutenant.
“Will you come with me to the church?”
The young man answered readily. “Certainly, Monsieur.”
The Duke put his hand on the shoulder of the other captain.
“I do believe”--he smiled--“that Luc is on the same quest of glory.”
CHAPTER II
THE CHAPEL OF ST. WENCESLAS
The two young men left the palace and proceeded rapidly, by reason
of the intense cold, through the ways, covered and uncovered, that
led from the royal residence to the other buildings that, ringed by
half-destroyed fortifications, formed the Hradcany. The night was
moonless, and heavy clouds concealed the stars; lanterns placed at
irregular intervals alone lit the way, but Luc de Clapiers guided
his companion accurately enough to the entrance of the huge, soaring,
unfinished, and yet triumphant cathedral of St. Vitus.
“You have been here before?” he asked, as they stepped into the black
hollow of the porch. Though they were of the same regiment, the two
had never been intimate.
“No, Monsieur,” came the fresh young voice out of the dark, “and
you?--I have heard you reason on the new philosophy and speak as one
of those who follow M. de Voltaire--as one of those who do not believe
in God.”
“I do not believe that He can be confined in a church,” answered Luc
quietly. “Yet some churches are so beautiful that one must worship in
them.”
“What?” asked M. d’Espagnac, below his breath. “Glory, perhaps?”
The captain did not answer; he gently pushed open a small door to one
side of the porch. A thin glow of pale-coloured light fell over his
dark cloak and serene face; beyond him could be seen a glimmer like
jewels veiled under water. He pulled off his beaver and entered the
cathedral, followed softly by his companion. For a moment they stood
motionless within the door, which slipped silently into place behind
them.
The air was oppressive with the powerful perfume of strong incense,
and yet even more bitterly cold than the outer night; the light was
dim, flickering, rich, and luxurious, and came wholly from hanging
lamps of yellow, blue, and red glass. In what appeared the extreme
distance, the altar sparkled in the gleam of two huge candles of
painted wax, and behind and about it showed green translucent,
unsubstantial shapes of arches and pillars rising up and disappearing
in the great darkness of the roof, which was as impenetrable as a
starless heaven.
The church was bare of chair or pew or stool; the straight sweep of
the nave was broken only by the dark outlines of princely tombs where
lay the dust of former Bohemian kings and queens: their reclining
figures so much above and beyond humanity, yet so startlingly like
life, could be seen in the flood of ruby light that poured from the
lamps above them, with praying hands and reposeful feet, patient faces
and untroubled pillows on which the stately heads had not stirred for
centuries.
“This is very old, this church, is it not?” whispered M. d’Espagnac.
“Old? Yes, it was built in the days of faith. This is the legend”--he
turned to the left, where two lights of a vivid green cast an
unearthly hue over huge bronze gates that shut off a chapel of the
utmost magnificence and barbaric vividness. A brass ring hung from one
of these gates, and the Frenchman put out his fair hand and touched it.
“This is the chapel of St. Wenceslas,” he said. “He was a prince, and
he built this church; but before it was finished his brother murdered
him as he clung to this ring--and the church has never been completed.”
He pushed the heavy gate open, and the two stood surrounded by the
pomp and grave splendour of Eastern taste. From floor to ceiling the
walls were inlaid with Bohemian jewels set in patterns of gold; the
ceiling itself was covered with ancient but still glowing frescoes;
the altar was silver and gold and lumachella, the marble which holds
fire, and contained vessels of crude but dazzling colour and shape in
enamel, painted wood, and precious stones.
A mighty candelabrum which showed a beautiful and powerful figure of
Wenceslas stood before the altar, and lit, by a dozen wax candles, the
cuirass and helmet of the murdered saint, preserved in a curious case
of rock crystal which rested on the altar cover of purple silk and
scarlet fringing.
Above the altar hung a Flemish picture showing the murder of the
Prince by the fierce Boleslav; the colours were as bright as the gems
in the walls, and the faces had a lifelike look of distorted passion.
A pink marble shell of holy water stood near the entrance, and the
lieutenant, with the instinct of an ingrained creed, dipped in his
fingers and crossed himself. Luc de Clapiers did not perform this
rite, but passed to the altar rails and leant there thoughtfully, a
figure in strong contrast to his background.
“M. d’Espagnac,” he said, in a low, composed voice, “I liked the way
you spoke to-night. Forgive me--but I too have thought as you do--I
also live for glory.”
At hearing these words the youth flushed with a nameless and
inexpressible emotion; he came to the altar also and lowered his eyes
to the mosaic pavement that sparkled in the candlelight. He had only
been a year in the army and one campaign at the war; every detail
of his life still had the intoxication of novelty, and these words,
spoken by his captain amidst surroundings exotic as an Eastern fairy
tale, fired his ardent imagination and caught his spirit up to regions
of bewildering joy.
“You have everything in the world before you,” continued Luc de
Clapiers, and his voice, though very soft, had a note of great
inner strength. “If anyone should laugh or sneer because you desire
to give your life to glory, you must only pity them. M. de Biron,
for instance--those people cannot understand.” He moved his hand
delicately to his breast and turned his deep hazel eyes earnestly on
the youth. “You must not be discouraged. You are seeking for something
that _is_ in the world, something that other men have found--and
won--in different ways, but by the light of the same spirit--always.”
M. d’Espagnac sighed, very gently; his whitened hair and pure face
were of one paleness in the ghostly, dim, mingled light of coloured
lamp and flickering candle.
“I want to achieve myself,” he said simply. “There is something within
me which is great; therefore I feel very joyful. It is like a flame in
my heart which warms all my blood; it is like wings folded to my feet
which one day will open and carry me--above the earth.” He paused and
added, “You see I am speaking like a child, but it is difficult to
find a language for these thoughts.”
“It is impossible,” answered Luc de Clapiers under his breath; “the
holiest things in the world are those that have never been expressed.
The new philosophy is as far from them as the old bigotry, and Prince
Wenceslas, who died here five hundred years ago, knew as much of it as
we do who are so wise, so civilized--so bewildered, after all.”
The youth looked at him reverently; until to-day he had hardly noticed
the silent young soldier, for Luc de Clapiers had nothing remarkable
about his person or his manner.
“Monsieur, you think, then, that I shall achieve my ambitions?”
Hitherto he had been indifferent to encouragement; now he felt eager
for this man’s approval and confidence.
“Of course--you surely never doubt?”
“No.” Georges d’Espagnac smiled dreamily. “I have done nothing yet.
I have no task, no duty, no burden; there is nothing put to my
hand--everything is so golden that it dazzles me. I think that will
clear like dawn mists, and then I shall see what I am to do. You
understand, Monsieur?”
The young captain smiled in answer.
“I brought you here to say a prayer to St. Wenceslas,” he said.
M. d’Espagnac looked up at the picture above the altar.
A prince, and young; a saint, and brave; a knight, and murdered--it
was an ideal to call forth admiration and sorrow. The lieutenant went
on his knees and clasped his hands.
“Ah, Monsieur,” he said, half wistfully, “he was murdered--a villain’s
knife stopped his dreams. Death is unjust”--he frowned, “if I were to
die now, I should be unknown--empty-handed--forgotten. But it is not
possible,” he added sharply.
He drew from the bosom of his uniform a breviary in ivory with silver
clasps, opened it where the leaves held some dried flowers and a
folded letter, then closed it and bent his head against the altar rail
as if he wept.
Luc de Clapiers went to the bronze gates and looked thoughtfully
down the vast dusky aisles of the church, so cold, so alluring yet
confusing to the senses, so majestic and silent.
He stood so several minutes, then turned slowly to observe the young
figure kneeling before the barbaric Christian altar.
Georges d’Espagnac had raised his face; his cloak had fallen open on
the pale blue and silver of his uniform; the candle glowing on the
silken, crystal-encased armour of St. Wenceslas cast a pale reflected
light on to his countenance, which, always lovely in line and colour,
was now transformed by an unearthly passion into an exquisite nobility.
He was absolutely still in his exalted absorption, and only the liquid
lustre of his eyes showed that he lived, for his very breath seemed
suppressed.
The young captain looked at him tenderly. “Beautiful as the early
morning of spring,” he thought, “are the first years of youth.”
M. d’Espagnac rose suddenly and crossed himself.
“I would like to keep vigil here, as the knights used to,” he
said--his breath came quickly now. “How silent it is here and
vast--and holy; an outpost of heaven, Monsieur.”
His companion did not reply; he remained at the opening of the gates,
gazing through the coloured lights and shadows. The world seemed to
have receded from them; emotion and thought ceased in the bosom of
each; they were only conscious of a sensation, half awesome, half
soothing, that had no name nor expression.
The weary campaign, the monotonous round of duties, the sordid
details of the war, the prolonged weeks in Prague, the fatigues,
disappointments, and anxieties of their daily life--all memory of
these things went from them; they seemed to breathe a heavenly air
that filled their veins with delicious ardour, the silence rung with
golden voices, and the great dusks of the cathedral were full of
heroic figures that lured and beckoned and smiled.
A divine magnificence seemed to burn on the distant altar, like the
far-off but clearly visible goal of man’s supreme ambitions, nameless
save in dreams, the reward only of perfect achievement, absolute
victory--the glamour of that immaculate glory which alone can satisfy
the hero’s highest need.
To the two young men standing on the spot where the saintly prince
fell so many generations before, the path to this ultimate splendour
seemed straight and easy, the journey simple, the end inevitable.
The distant mournful notes of some outside clock struck the hour, and
M. d’Espagnac passed his hand over his eyes with a slight shiver; he
was on duty in another few minutes.
“Au revoir, Monsieur,” he said to the captain. Their eyes met; they
smiled faintly and parted.
M. d’Espagnac walked rapidly and lightly towards the main door of
the cathedral. He noticed now that it was very cold, with an intense,
clinging chill. He paused to arrange his mantle before facing the
outer air, and as he did so, saw suddenly before him a figure like
his own in a heavy military cloak.
The first second he was confused, the next he recognized the Polish
lady he had lately seen in the Vladislav Hall.
He voiced his instinctive thought.
“Why, Madame, I did not hear the door!”
“No,” she answered. “Did you not know that there was a secret passage
from the palace?” She added instantly--
“What is the name of your companion, Monsieur?”
He glanced where she glanced, at the slight figure of the young
captain standing by the bronze gates of the Wenceslas Chapel. He felt
a shyness in answering her; her manner was abrupt, and she seemed to
him an intruder in the church that had inspired such a religious mood
in him. She evidently instantly perceived this, for she said, with
direct haughtiness--
“I am the Countess Carola Koklinska.”
M. d’Espagnac bowed and flushed. He gave his own name swiftly.
“I am the Comte d’Espagnac, lieutenant in the _régiment du roi_;
my friend is Luc de Clapiers, Monsieur le Capitaine le Marquis de
Vauvenargues, of the same regiment, Madame la Comtesse.”
She laughed now, but in a spiritless fashion.
“Very well--I will speak to M. de Vauvenargues.”
CHAPTER III
CAROLA KOKLINSKA
The lady waited until M. d’Espagnac had left the church, then turned
directly to the gates of the Wenceslas Chapel, loosening, as she
moved, the heavy folds of her great cloak.
She came so directly towards him that the Marquis could not avoid
opening the gate and waiting as if he expected her, though in truth
he found her sudden appearance surprising.
“This is a famous chapel, is it not?” she remarked as she reached
him. She stepped into the deep glitter of the jewelled dusk, and the
Marquis felt the frozen air she brought in with her--cold even in the
cold. He smiled and waited. She stood a pace or two away from him, and
he could see her frosty breath.
“I am Carola Koklinska,” she added. “I have been in the church
some time, and I overheard what you said to your friend, M. de
Vauvenargues.”
He still was silent; his smile deepened slightly. She moved towards
the altar and stood in the exact spot where M. d’Espagnac had knelt;
with a broken sigh she shook off her mantle and cast it down on the
gorgeous pavement. She was dressed in a fantastic and brilliant
fashion: her long blue velvet coat, lined and edged with a reddish
fur, was tied under the arms by a scarlet sash heavy with gold
fringings; her crimson skirt came scarcely below her knees and showed
embroidered leather riding-boots and long glimmering spurs; her coat
was open at the bosom on a mass of fine lace and linen worked with
gold threads; she wore coral ornaments in her ears and a long scarlet
plume in her heavy cap of fox’s fur; her hands were concealed in thick
leather gloves embroidered with silk down the backs; in her sash were
a short sword and a gold-mounted riding-whip.
The Marquis noticed these details instantly, also that the lady
herself, in the setting of these strange Oriental garments, was pale
and fair and delicate as a white violet nourished on snow. She exhaled
a powerful perfume as of some Eastern rose or carnation: he had
noticed it when she crossed the Vladislav Hall.
“You are travelling to Paris?” he asked.
“I told you,” she replied, with a kind of delicate directness. “My
sister is maid-of-honour to the Queen Marie Leckinska, and as she is
to be married I am going to take her place. But we are delayed, it
seems. M. de Belleisle advises us to stay in the Hradcany till the
spring.”
“Prague,” said the Marquis, “is full of travellers and refugees. No
one would willingly journey this weather.”
“I would, save that we have lost our sledges, our horses, our
servants, our escort. Sometimes it is colder than this in Russia.”
“You will find it dreary in Prague, Mademoiselle,” said the Marquis
kindly; “but when you reach Paris you will be recompensed.”
She fixed her large, clear and light brown eyes on his face.
“I told you I had heard what you said, Monsieur. Are you usually so
indifferent to eavesdroppers?”
“I said nothing that anyone might not hear--though not perhaps
discuss,” he answered gently.
“You mean you will not talk of these things to a woman!” she exclaimed
quickly. “And I suppose I seem a barbarian to you. But perhaps I could
understand as well as that young officer.” Her voice was slow and sad.
“I come from an heroic and unfortunate country, Monsieur. I also have
dreamt of glory.”
Still he would not speak; her frankness was abashed before his gentle
reserve.
“I came here to attend Mass,” she said hurriedly. “There is Mass here?
I have not been inside a church for many weeks.”
“Service is held here and well attended,” he replied, “but it is yet
too early.”
She still kept her eyes on him.
“My brother is finding lodgings--he is to meet me here. I will stay
for the Mass.”
The Marquis moved just outside the bronze gates so that the light of
the green lamps cast a sea-pearl glow over his person. He was looking
towards the high altar, and Carola Koklinska observed him keenly.
He appeared older than his years, which were twenty-seven, and was of
a delicate, though dignified and manly, bearing. A little above the
medium height, he carried himself with the full majesty of youth and
health and the perfect ease of nobility and a long soldier’s training.
His face, in its refinement, repose, and slight hauteur of composure,
was typical of his nation and his rank; his expression was given a
singular charm by the great sweetness of the mouth and the impression
of reserved power conveyed by the deep hazel eyes, which were of a
peculiarly innocent and dreamy lustre--not eyes to associate with a
soldier, incongruous, indeed, with the stiff gorgeous uniform and the
pomaded curls that waved loosely round his low serene forehead.
The details of his dress were fashionable and exquisite: he wore
diamonds in his neckcloth and his sword-hilt was of great beauty. His
manner and whole poise were so utterly calm that the Countess Carola
felt it difficult to associate him with the ardent voice that had
spoken to Georges d’Espagnac. He had put her very completely outside
his thoughts. She winced under it as if it were a personal discourtesy.
“I regret I intruded,” she said sincerely.
The Marquis gave her a look of astonishment; her open glance met his;
he blushed, opened his lips to speak, but did not.
“I also can admire St. Wenceslas,” she added.
She pulled off her clumsy cap, and long trails of smoke-black hair
fell untidily over her resplendent coat. She went on one knee before
the altar, snatched off her gloves, and clasped above her head her
small hands, which were white, stiff, and creased from the pressure of
the leather.
“I have been discourteous,” said the Marquis, and the ready colour
heightened in his delicate cheek.
The Countess Carola took no heed; she was murmuring prayers in her own
language, which to his ears sounded uncouth, but not unpleasing. He
moved respectfully away. An acolyte was passing before the high altar;
the door was swinging to and fro as several people--French, Bavarian,
and Bohemian--entered the church for vespers.
M. de Vauvenargues looked back at the figure of the Polish lady.
She appeared to be praying with a real and rather sad fervour; her
strange, rich, and flamboyant dress, her disarranged hair, her
attitude of supplication made her a fitting figure for the sparkling
chapel; she looked more like a youth than a woman; she might have been
St. Wenceslas himself just before the knife of Boleslav was plunged
into his back.
The Marquis passed out into the bitter sombre night, which was filled
with the ringing of the bells of many churches. He made his way along
the dark terraces until he stood looking over the lights of Prague
below, the still more distant fires of the Austrians, the whole windy
depth of the night spread before him. Immediately beneath him he
could hear the rustling of the great bare trees in the Stags Ditch.
Presently the organ from the cathedral silenced these sounds and
rolled out gloomily and commandingly across the darkness.
M. de Vauvenargues, of ancient family and small fortune, had been
nine years in the army, had served in the Italian campaign of ’32,
and had as yet met with no distinction and could foresee no hope of
advancement; but it never occurred to him to doubt that the great
career that filled his dreams would be one day his. He never spoke of
his ambitions, yet he foresaw himself a Maréchal de France, carrying
the baton with the silver lilies, riding across Europe at the head of
a huge army.
Sometimes, as now, this vision was so intensely vivid that a little
shiver ran through his blood and his breath choked his throat and a
desire for action possessed him, so passionate that it shook his heart.
He found himself chafing--and not for the first time--at this long
idleness in Prague. He felt impatient with M. de Broglie for allowing
himself to be forced into the city, and impatient even with M. de
Belleisle for not moving before the winter set in, for now they could
not move for three, perhaps four, months.
Even if the Austrians disappeared from under the walls to-morrow it
would be impossible to stir from the city in this utter severity of
cold. M. de Vauvenargues saw that the generalship that had brought
them to lie useless in Prague was as wrong as the policy that had
offered assistance to Frederick of Prussia. He did not admire the war
nor the causes that had brought it about; but he was merely one of
thousands of pawns that had no choice as to where they stood.
The wind was so insistently chill that he moved from his post
overlooking the town and turned, still thoughtful, towards that
portion of the rambling buildings of the Hradcany where his regiment
was quartered.
Before he reached it he met his colonel, M. de Biron, who caught hold
of his arm rather eagerly.
“A messenger from Paris,” whispered the Duke. “Came with letters to M.
Belleisle--he has sent for M. de Broglie.”
The second in command was not loved by the Maréchal; that they should
be in consultation seemed to both the young officers as if the news
from France must be serious.
“When shall we know?” asked M. de Vauvenargues.
“Not before the morning,” sighed the colonel.
They entered the guardroom together: the chamber was full of the
perfume of Virginian tobacco and pleasantly warm. Georges d’Espagnac
was playing cards at a curious old table inlaid with ivory; his fair
young face was flushed with warmth and animation and showed dazzling
through the smoke wreaths.
CHAPTER IV
CARDINAL FLEURY’S BLUNDER
Maréchal de Belleisle lay full length on a couch of saffron-coloured
satin with his head raised on a pile of silk cushions.
His room was one of the royal apartments in the Hradcany, and was
most splendidly furnished with his own luxurious belongings: the floor
was covered with a silk carpet; the walls hung with bright tapestry;
the chairs were gilt and ash-wood; the many small tables held all
manner of rich articles of gold, tortoiseshell, porcelain, and enamel,
books richly bound, and caskets of sweets and preserved fruits. The
light came entirely from crystal lamps suspended from gilt chains and
supported by the ivory figures of flying cupids. A great clear fire
burnt on the hearth, and near it was an ormolu writing-desk, on which
were a few papers and a number of extravagant articles of gold and
precious stones.
The Maréchal was a man of middle life with an appearance denoting
great pride and energy. He wore a white and scarlet brocade
dressing-gown over black breeches and waistcoat of the extreme of
fashion; his feet and legs were bandaged to the knee; the upper part
of his person glittered with jewels--in the seals at his watch-chain,
in the heavy lace at his throat, and on his strong, smooth fingers.
His face was unnaturally pale and expressed a cold despair; his full
brown eyes stared in absorbed trouble across the beautiful little
room; and in his right hand he tightly grasped a letter from which
swung the seals of France. He moved his head with a quick breath as
his valet open the door and announced--
“Monsieur le Duc de Broglie.”
M. de Belleisle compressed his lips and his head sank back on the
pillows again. M. de Broglie entered; the door closed behind him; he
bowed and crossed to the fire.
“Be seated,” said the Maréchal, with a bitter kind of courtesy.
M. de Broglie brought his handkerchief to his lips with a little
cough. He was splendidly attired in full uniform, but wore his bright
chestnut hair unpowdered and tied with a turquoise ribbon. He was by
some years younger than the Maréchal and a man of great charm in his
appearance.
“You have heard from Paris?” he asked, glancing at the letter the
other held. “From M. de Fleury, Monsieur?” As he named the Minister
who guided the affairs of France the Maréchal groaned. “From M. de
Fleury?” he repeated, and looked sternly at the careless figure of
M. de Broglie. He, the Maréchal de Belleisle, restless, ambitious,
capable, confident, had planned this war. It was he who, dazzled by
visions of acquiring for France a large portion of the possessions of
the seemingly helpless Queen of Hungary, had travelled from court to
court of the little states of Germany animating them against Maria
Theresa; it was he who had persuaded Cardinal Fleury to offer the
alliance of France to Frederick of Prussia when that prince seized
Silesia; and it was he who had marched the French auxiliaries across
the Rhine and successfully counter-moved Prince Lobkowitz and his
Hungarians during several months of uneventful warfare.
From the first he had never liked M. de Broglie; his feeling became
bitter contempt when his illness left M. de Broglie in command and
that General’s first action was to allow himself and almost the entire
French force to be cornered in Prague.
M. de Belleisle, though unable to stand or ride, had insisted on
being carried into the city and reassuming his authority. Since then
the relations of the two, in their open enmity, had been matter for
comment to the whole army.
M. de Broglie saw, however, to-night a stronger passion than aversion
to himself in the Maréchal’s haggard face--saw, indeed, an expression
that caused him to check the careless courtesies with which he was
generally ready to vex his superior.
“I see this is serious,” he remarked; “but you leave me, Monsieur,
utterly at a loss.”
The Maréchal made a restless movement on his sumptuous couch and half
sat up, resting on his elbow. The long powdered curls that fell over
his black solitaire and embroidered shirt were no more colourless
than his face; his lips quivered and his eyes were narrowed as if he
restrained pain.
“M. de Broglie,” he said strongly, “you had better have been dead than
have brought the army into Prague.”
The younger General paled now, but raised his eyebrows haughtily; his
right hand closed over the smooth red silk tassels of his sword.
“This is an old subject, Monsieur,” he answered coldly. “I am ready to
answer for my conduct at Versailles--I have told you so before.”
“Versailles!” exclaimed the Maréchal grimly. “There are not many of
us, Monsieur, who will see Versailles again.”
M. de Broglie rose to his feet; the powerful firelight lent a false
colour to his face.
“What is your news from France, Maréchal?” he asked softly.
With a fierce gesture M. de Belleisle cast down the letter he held.
“This--we are to vacate Prague and join Maillelois at Eger--on the
instant.”
“It is not possible,” stammered M. de Broglie. The Maréchal
interrupted him passionately--
“My orders are there. The old man is in his dotage. Thirty leagues to
Eger along unbroken ice--a retreat in this weather, when the men are
dying under my eyes even in shelter.”
The Duc de Broglie was startled and shocked beyond concealment.
“It cannot be done!” he ejaculated.
“There are my orders,” answered the Maréchal bitterly. “How many men
does the Cardinal think I shall get to Eger? My God, it will be a
disaster to make Europe stare--and the end of the war.”
As he thought of the proud ambitions with which he had first meddled
in the affairs of Austria, the difficulty he had had in wringing
authority from Versailles for this alliance with Frederick of Prussia,
the trouble to persuade that crafty King himself to accept the
dangerous protection of France--as he thought of the splendid army
he had poured into Bohemia, and saw now the end of that army and of
the war in a catastrophe that would make France groan--and through no
fault of his own, but because of the ignorant blunder of a foolish old
priest in Paris--two haughty tears forced from his eyes and rolled
down his thin cheeks.
M. de Broglie was breathless as a tired runner; he put out his hand
mechanically and grasped an enamelled snuff-box that lay among the
frivolous trifles on the gilt desk.
“M. de Fleury does not know,” he whispered, “either a Bohemian winter
or the route from here to Eger.”
The Maréchal fixed him with fierce wet eyes.
“You are answerable for this, M. le Duc--you and you alone--and I must
pay for your careless folly.”
“Monsieur,” answered the other General, “I made Prague a shelter. I
did not imagine that any sane man would order a retreat from it--in
midwinter.”
From the table near his couch M. de Belleisle took a map rudely drawn
and coloured; he stared at the cross he had himself drawn which
denoted Eger, the quarters of M. de Maillelois.
“Sane!” he said furiously; “no one will think we are sane. King
Frederick will laugh at us and curse too. Oh, if I were in Versailles
or the old Cardinal here!”
He rang the elegant bell on the table and his valet instantly appeared.
“Draw the curtains,” ordered the Maréchal.
The man pulled back the soft straw-coloured silk from the blackness of
the window.
“Open the casement.”
The valet obeyed; a blast of frozen air set the lamp flickering.
“What manner of night is it?” asked the Maréchal.
“Snowing, Monseigneur,” shivered the valet.
The heavy flakes whirled in out of the darkness and settled on the
polished floor; the Maréchal looked at them in a bitter absorption.
“Close the window,” cried M. de Broglie; he was blenching in the deep
cold that had in an instant chilled the luxurious little chamber.
The valet obeyed and again drew the beautiful curtains over the
closed, barred window.
The Maréchal cast down the map on top of the letter from France and
asked for wine. When it was brought M. de Broglie put it aside in
silence, but M. de Belleisle drank heavily, then dropped into his
cushions with a sigh of physical pain.
When the servant had left, the younger man spoke; he had recovered his
composure and something of his self-confident manner.
“Do you mean to obey these orders, Monsieur?”
“I am a Maréchal de France, Monsieur le Duc, and I obey the orders of
France.”
Crippled by gout as he was he managed to sit upright, half supporting
himself against the carved back of the couch.
“M. de Fleury speaks for France--you have been too long in
Prague--abandon the town and join Maillelois, so you may make a dash
on Vienna,” he gasped. “Vienna!--we shall see hell sooner.”
With a quivering hand he pressed his handkerchief to his pallid lips,
then wiped the damp of pain from his brow.
“But it shall be done--do not think, Monsieur, that I shirk the duty.
France has spoken. You will make ready for a council to-night.”
M. de Broglie shrugged his shoulders.
“You at least, M. le Maréchal, are not fit to leave Prague.”
M. de Belleisle narrowed his clever eyes.
“While I can draw a breath to form a sentence I do not resign command
again,” he said with cold passion.
The Duke bowed.
“That is as you please, Monsieur.”
Their common responsibility, their mutual anxiety for a moment
obscured their jealous rivalry. M. de Broglie could not restrain a
little exclamation of despair.
“We shall not get ten regiments through!” he cried.
The Maréchal answered, rigid with secret pain and mental anguish--
“No more words--the fiat is there; we shall leave Prague to-morrow.
God have mercy on the poor devils in the ranks--fine men too,” he
added in spite of himself, “and, by Heaven, we _might_ have stormed
Vienna if I had had a chance!”
“You will hold the council here?” asked M. de Broglie.
“In my outer chamber--see to it for me, M. le Duc. I must confess that
I am a sick man and something overwhelmed.”
His colleague looked at him a moment, then crossed the room
impulsively and kissed the hand that lay on the brocaded velvet
cushions; then, with a deep obeisance, withdrew.
To reach the quarters of the aide-de-camp whose duty it would be to
summon the Generals to the sudden council, M. de Broglie had to pass
through the guardroom of this portion of the irregular buildings that
formed the Hradcany.
Two officers of the _régiment du roi_ sat by an insufficient fire; one
was reading, the other, of a singular and youthful beauty, was writing
a letter on a drum-head. As they rose and saluted M. de Broglie paused.
“Ah, M. de Vauvenargues,” he said excitedly, “what do you read?”
“Corneille, Monsieur,” answered the Marquis.
“I think you are a philosopher,” returned M. de Broglie. “I will give
you something to meditate upon. The army leaves Prague to-morrow.”
Georges d’Espagnac looked up with a flush of joy.
“Monsieur,” he cried, “then it is to be action at last!”
The Duke gave him a flickering look of pity.
“A retreat to Eger, my friend. I hope,” he added gravely, “we shall
all meet again there.”
He saluted and passed on.
“Oh!” exclaimed the Marquis softly--“a retreat in mid-December.”
He closed the volume of Corneille and glanced at the eager face of his
companion.
They could hear the wind that swirled the snow without.
CHAPTER V
THE RETREAT FROM PRAGUE
The French quitted Prague on the evening of the 16th of December,
leaving only a small garrison in the Hradcany; by the 18th the
vanguard had reached Pürgitz at the crossing of the rivers, and then
the snow, that had paused for two days, commenced towards evening and
the cold began to increase almost beyond human endurance.
At first their retreat had been harried by Austrian guns and charges
of the Hungarian Pandours, but the enemy did not follow them far. The
cannon was no longer in their ears; for twenty-four hours they marched
through the silence of a barren, deserted country.
The road was now so impassable, the darkness so impenetrable, the
storm so severe, the troops so exhausted that M. de Belleisle ordered
a halt, though all they had for camping-ground was a ragged ravine,
a strip of valley by the river, and, for the Generals, a few broken
houses in the devastated village of Pürgitz.
The officers of the _régiment du roi_ received orders to halt as they
were painfully making their way through the steep mountain paths; they
shrugged and laughed and proceeded without comment to make their camp.
It was impossible to put up the tents, both by reason of the heavy
storm of snow and the rocky ground; the best they could do was to fix
some of the canvas over the piled gun carriages and baggage wagons and
so get men and horses into some kind of shelter.
No food was sent them, and it was too dark for any search to be made.
It was impossible to find a spot dry enough to light a fire on. The
men huddled together under the rocks and rested with their heads on
their saddles within the feeble protection of the guns and carts.
The officers sat beneath a projecting point of rock, over which a
canvas had been hastily dragged, and muffled themselves in their
cloaks and every scrap of clothing they could find; behind them their
horses were fastened, patient and silent.
“I am sorry,” said M. de Vauvenargues, “that there are so many women
and feeble folk with us.”
“Another of M. de Belleisle’s blunders,” answered the Colonel calmly.
“He should have forced them to remain in Prague.”
“There was never a Protestant,” remarked Lieutenant d’Espagnac, “who
would remain in Prague at the mercy of the Hungarians.”
The other officers were silent; it seemed to them vexatious that
this already difficult retreat should be further hampered by the
presence of some hundred of refugees--men, women, and children,
French travellers, foreign inhabitants of Prague, Bavarians who wished
to return to their own country, Hussites who were afraid of being
massacred by the Pandours.
M. de Vauvenargues had it particularly in his mind; he had seen more
than one dead child on the route since they left Prague. Eger was
still many leagues off and both the weather and road increasing in
severity and difficulty.
“I wonder if Belleisle knew what he was doing,” he remarked
thoughtfully.
M. d’Espagnac laughed; his soaring spirits were not in the least cast
down. He had just managed, with considerable difficulty, to light
a lantern, which he hung from a dry point of rock. Its sickly ray
illuminated the group and showed features a little white and pinched
above the close wrapped cloaks; but Georges d’Espagnac bloomed like a
winter rose. There was no trace of fatigue on his ardent countenance;
he leant back against the cold grey rock under the lantern and began
to hum an aria of Glück’s that had been fashionable when he last saw
Paris. His hair was loosened from the ribbon and half freed from
powder; it showed in streaks of bright brown through the pomade.
“There will be no moving till dawn,” said M. de Biron with an air of
disgust. The snow was beginning to invade their temporary shelter.
Another officer spoke impatiently.
“There must be food--many of our men have not eaten since they
started. How many men does M. de Belleisle hope to get to Eger in this
manner?”
There was no answer: the blast of heavy snow chilled speech. Some
faint distant shouting and cries were heard, the neighing of a horse,
the rumble of a cart, then silence.
Georges d’Espagnac continued his song; he seemed in a happy dream.
Presently he fell asleep, resting his head against the shoulder of
the other lieutenant. M. de Biron and the second captain either slept
also or made a good feint of it. The Marquis rose and took the lantern
from the wall; it was unbearable to him to sit there in the darkness,
amid this silent company, while there was so much to do outside. The
thought of his hungry men pricked him. The food wagons must have
overlooked them. It was surely possible to find some member of the
commissariat department. The army could not have reached already such
a pitch of confusion.
He stepped softly from under the canvas. To his great relief he
found that the snow had almost ceased, but the air was glacial. As
he paused, endeavouring to see his way by means of the poor rays of
the lantern, his horse gave a low whinny after him. The Marquis felt
another pang--the poor brutes must be hungry too. He began to descend
the rocky path; he was cold even through his heavy fur mantle, and
his hands were stiff despite his fur gloves. The path was wet and
slippery, half frozen already, though the snow had only lain a moment.
In every crevice and hole in the rocks the soldiers were lying or
sitting; many of them were wrapped in the tent canvases and horses’
blankets; here and there was a dead mule with a man lying close for
warmth, or a wounded trooper dying helplessly in his stiffening blood.
The Marquis saw these sights intermittently and imperfectly by the
wavering light of his lantern. He set his teeth; after nine years’
service he was still sensitive to sights of horror.
When he reached the level ground by the river that was the principal
camping ground, he stopped bewildered amidst utter confusion.
There were neither tents, nor sentries, nor outposts, merely thousands
of men, lying abandoned to cold and hunger, amidst useless wagons of
furniture; and as the Marquis moved slowly across the field he saw no
other sight than this.
What might lie beyond the range of his lantern he could not tell, but
all he could see seemed abandoned to despair.
A man leading a mule knocked up against him; he also held a feeble
lantern; his dress and the chests the mule carried showed him to be a
surgeon.
“This is a pitiful sight, Monsieur,” he said. “Most of the wagons were
lost in that storm yesterday, and how am I to work with nothing?” He
lifted his shoulders and repeated, “with nothing?”
“Is there no food?” asked the Marquis.
“In Pürgitz, yes--but who is to distribute it on such a night?”
“We are like to have worse nights. Is M. de Belleisle in Pürgitz?”
“And some regiments. They are in luck, Monsieur.”
M. de Vauvenargues stood thoughtfully, and the surgeon passed on. Two
officers rode up on horseback, attended by a soldier with a torch; the
Marquis accosted them.
“Messieurs, I am Vauvenargues of the _régiment du roi_,” he said.
“We are encamped up the ravine, and there is no provision for men or
horses----”
By the light of the torch he recognized in the foremost officer M. de
Broglie, whose bright hair gleamed above a pale face.
“Maréchal,” he added, “I do not know how many will be alive by the
morning.”
“M. de Vauvenargues!” exclaimed the General, with a faint smile. “I am
helpless--absolutely helpless. The food wagons have not come up--some,
I believe, are lost.”
The Marquis looked at him keenly; M. de Broglie was so careless
in manner that the young officer suspected he was in truth deeply
troubled.
“Very well, Monsieur,” he answered. “I suppose we may look for some
relief with the dawn?”
“I think the orders will be to march at daybreak,” answered de
Broglie. He touched his beaver and rode on, first adding gravely,
“Pray God it does not snow again.”
The Marquis remained holding the lantern and looking at the huddled
shape of men and horses. A vast pity for the waste and unseen courage
of war gripped his heart; none of these men complained, the horses
dropped silently, the very mules died patiently--and what was the
use of it? The war was wanton, unprovoked, expensive, and, so far, a
failure; it had nothing heroic in its object, which was principally
to satisfy the ambitious vanity of M. de Belleisle and the vague
schemes of poor old well-meaning Cardinal Fleury who had never seen
a battle-field in his life.
The end seemed so inadequate to the sacrifice asked. The Marquis had
seen the soldiers suffer and die in Prague with secret pangs, but this
seemed a sheer devastation. It was impossible to stand still long in
that cold; it was obvious that nothing could be done till the dawn. He
pulled out his silver filigree watch, but it had stopped.
Slowly he moved through the camp. Now the snow had ceased, several
pitiful little fires were springing up in sheltered spots; and the men
were moving about in their heavy wraps, and the surgeons coming in and
out the groups of wounded and sick.
A dog barked in a home-sick fashion; there was not a star visible.
A Hussite pastor came within range of the Marquis’s lantern; he was
carrying a limp child, and murmuring, in the strange Bohemian, what
seemed a prayer.
Soon the flickering orbit of light fell on a Catholic priest kneeling
beside a dying man whose face was sharp and dull. He too prayed,
but the familiar Latin supplications were as outside the Marquis’s
sympathy as the Hussite’s appeal; he was tolerant to both, but his
thoughts just touched them, no more. A strange haughty sadness came
over his heart; he felt disdainful of humanity that could be so weak,
so cruel, so patient.
His lantern had evidently been near empty of oil, for it began to
flicker and flare, and finally sank out.
He put it from him and felt his way over a pile of rocks that rose up
suddenly sheer and sharp.
Nothing could be done till the dawn; it was doubtful even if he could
find his way back to his own regiment. He seated himself on the rock,
wrapped his cloak tightly about him, and waited.
He thought that he must be in some kind of shelter, for he did not
feel the wind, and here the cold was certainly less severe.
His sombre mood did not long endure; he ceased to see the darkness
filled with weary, dispirited, wounded men; rather he fancied it full
of light and even flowers, which were the thoughts, he fancied, and
aspirations of these poor tired soldiers.
Obedience, courage, endurance, strength blossomed rich as red roses
in the hearts of the feeblest of these sons of France--and in the
bosom of such as Georges d’Espagnac bloomed a very glory, as of white
passion flowers at midsummer and in his own heart there grew enough to
render the bloodstained night fragrant.
He smiled at his conceit, but it was very real to him. He had not
eaten since early the previous day; he wondered if he was beginning
to grow light-headed, as he had done once before in Italy when he had
been without food and several hours in the sun.
The reflection brought back a sudden picture of Italy, hard,
brightly-coloured, gorgeous, brilliant; he shivered with a great
longing for that purple sunshine that scorched the flesh and ran in
the blood.
In particular he recalled a field of wheat sloping to a sea which was
like a rough blue stone for colour, and huge-leaved chestnut trees of
an intense reddish green that cast a bronze shadow growing near, and
the loud humming of grasshoppers persistently--no, he thought, that
did not come in the wheat, but in the short dried grass, burnt gold as
new clay by the sun; the sun--that sun he had scarcely seen since he
left Paris.
A shuddering drowsiness overcame him; his head fell on his bosom, and
he sank to sleep.
When he woke it was with a sense of physical pain and the sensation
that light was falling about him in great flakes; his clearing senses
told him that this was the dawn, and that he was giddy. He sat up, to
find himself in a natural alcove of rock overgrown with a grey dry
moss frozen and glittering; a jutting point partially shut off his
vision, but he could see enough of dead men and horses and painfully
moving troops in the strip of ravine immediately below him. He
unfolded his cloak from his stiff limbs, and by the aid of his sword
rose to his feet. As he did so, he raised his eyes, and then gave an
involuntary cry of wonder and pleasure.
Immediately behind him was a silver fir, perhaps a hundred feet high,
as high at least as a village steeple, rising up, branch on branch,
till it tapered to a perfect finish; and in the flat topmost boughs
the sun, struggling through frowning blank grey clouds, rested with
a melancholy radiance.
The Marquis had seen many such trees in Bohemia, and there was nothing
extraordinary that he should, unwittingly, have slept under one; yet
his breath was shaken at the sight of the tall, unspoilt beauty of
this common silver fir with the sun in the upper branches, and he
could not tell why.
He supported himself against the trunk and closed his eyes for a
moment; his body was stabbed with pain, and his head seemed filled
with restless waves of sensation. He had never been robust, and it had
often been a keen trouble to him that he could not support hardship
like some men, like most soldiers. He set his teeth and with an effort
opened his eyes.
The first sight they met was that of a woman riding a white horse
coming round the fir tree.
He knew her instantly for the Countess Koklinska, and she evidently
knew him, for she reined up her horse, which she rode astride like a
man, and looked down at him with a direct glance of recognition.
“I have forgotten your name,” she said, “but I remember you, Monsieur.
You are ill,” she added.
He blushed that she should see his weakness, and mastered himself
sufficiently to step to her stirrup.
“I found a lodging in Pürgitz,” she said, “and food; but there has
been great suffering among your men.”
Her attire was the same as when he had seen her last--barbaric and
splendid, dark furs, scarlet powdered with gold, turquoise velvet and
crimson satin; her face was pinched and sallow, but her eyes were
clear and expressive under the thick long lashes.
“I wish we had no women with us,” said the Marquis faintly.
She dismounted before he had divined her intentions, and drew a silver
flask from her sash, and held it out to him in her white fur gloved
hands.
“Only a little poor wine,” she murmured humbly, and she had the cup
ready and the red wine poured out.
He thanked her gravely and drank with distaste; their heavy gloves
touched as he handed the horn goblet back to her and again their eyes
met.
In the pale, clear winter morning he looked dishevelled, pallid, and
sad, but his eyes were steady, and held the same look as had lightened
them in the chapel of St. Wenceslas.
“If there are no more storms, we shall do very well,” he remarked
quietly. “I think there are no more than twenty leagues to Eger, and
M. de Saxe took this route last year with but little loss.”
“Not in this weather,” returned the Countess Carola. “And M. de
Belleisle is not Maurice de Saxe.”
Both her remarks were true, but the Marquis would not confirm them; he
bowed gravely, as if displeased, and passed down the rocky path.
She remained beside the silver fir looking after him. The cold clouds
had closed over the feeble sun and the wind blew more icy; all the
sounds of a moving camp came with a sharp clearness through the pure,
glacial air.
The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment
bivouacked. His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower
as he ascended, and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the
unconscious dying. He turned a point of rock to see the figure of
Georges d’Espagnac standing at the edge of a little precipice fanning
some glimmering sticks into a flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a
few flakes, then a dense storm that blended heaven and earth in one
whirl of white and cold.
CHAPTER VI
ON THE HEIGHTS
The snow fell without a break for three days; on the morning of the
fourth it ceased a little, and by the time M. de Belleisle had reached
Chiesch stopped.
The army had now been a week on the road, and the Maréchal hoped by a
forced march to reach Eger, on the borders of Bavaria, with those who
remained of the thirty thousand men who had marched out of Prague.
The famous _régiment du roi_, reduced to half their number, had fallen
out of the vanguard, and stumbled along as best they might through
the rocky ravines and high mounting roads. There was no longer any
order in the army; the retreat had been one horror of death; men fell
every moment, and were quickly buried in the silent snow; the wretched
refugees died by the hundred. The waste of life was appalling; M. de
Vauvenargues felt sick and delirious from the constant spectacle of
this helpless agony; men dropped to right and left of him, he passed
them at every step on the route; two of his fellow-officers had died
the same night; it was like a shrieking nightmare to the Marquis to
have to leave them, carrion in the snow; and now the strength of young
Georges d’Espagnac began to fail; both had long ago lost their horses;
M. de Biron himself was walking; there was indeed scarcely an animal
left in the army; gun carriages and wagons had been abandoned all
along the route as the mules died.
As the sombre evening obscured the awful sights along the line of
march, the thing that the Marquis had been dreading for the last two
days happened: Georges d’Espagnac lurched and fell insensible by his
side.
M. de Biron looked over his shoulder.
“Poor child,” he murmured; then, to the Marquis, “It is death to stop;
you can do no good. Come on.”
But M. de Vauvenargues shook his head and drew the wasted young figure
out of the ghastly march.
A wagon with a broken wheel rested close by with two dead mules still
in the traces and the corpse of a fair-haired woman flung across them,
just as she had crawled out of the way. The Marquis wondered vaguely
why they should have dragged this wagon so far; the covering at the
back was open, and the heavy canvas flaps rose and fell sluggishly in
the bitter wind, while from the interior had fallen a silver dessert
service that glittered curiously on the thick snow and some rolls of
straw-coloured silk that the Marquis had once seen hanging on the
walls of M. de Belleisle’s room in the Hradcany castle.
He winced at the bitter irony of it; yet the rolls of silk, when
shaken out, were some covering for the young Lieutenant, and the wagon
was some protection from the wind.
Beyond this he could do nothing; he knelt and took d’Espagnac’s head
on his knee for greater warmth, and waited.
It was little over a week since he had looked at the beautiful
inspired face turned upwards in the chapel of St. Wenceslas; he gazed
down now at the poor head on his lap, and the tears rose under his
lids.
Georges d’Espagnac was wasted till his blue uniform, tarnished and
torn, hung on him loosely; his face was so thin that even the hollows
in the temples showed clearly and of a bluish tinge, while the lips
were strained and distorted; all powder and dressing had left his
hair, which hung in a mass of damp locks of a startling brightness
about his shoulders; his right cheek was bruised by the fall from the
saddle when his horse died, and his gloveless right hand was cracked
and bleeding.
The Marquis felt his heart, and it was beating reluctantly and wearily.
There was no hope, he knew; at any moment the snow might begin again,
and this lovely life must go out as the other lives were going out,
unnoticed, unsweetened by any care, regret, or tenderness.
But it never occurred to M. de Vauvenargues to leave him, though
he knew that his own best, perhaps his only, chance of life lay in
movement, in pressing on.
The darkness fell slowly and with a certain dreadful heaviness; the
added ugliness of the distant bark of wolves completed the speechless
horror of the Marquis’s mood.
Still the army was trailing past him, bent figures supporting each
other, a few Generals still on horseback, a few wounded and women in
sledges or carts.
From an officer of the Black Musqueteers he begged a little wine that
brought a tinge of colour into d’Espagnac’s cheeks and proved how
pitifully easy it would have been to save him by warmth and care.
“There is only rough nursing here, Monsieur,” said the musqueteer
kindly; “leave him and save your own life, for I think the snow will
begin again.”
“Monsieur,” replied the Marquis gently, “he is so very young. And
maybe he will be conscious before he dies, and find himself alone and
hear the wolves. And it is such a little thing I do.”
And still the army went past like a procession in a dream of hell,
and every moment it became darker, until the fir trees and the rocks
were being lost in blackness and the howls of the wolves sounded
nearer. Presently came a woman walking with more energy than most, yet
stumbling under some burden that she held in her arms. At that moment
d’Espagnac suddenly recovered consciousness, and cried in a clear
voice--
“Let us get on our way, my dear Marquis--we ought to be at Eger
to-morrow night.”
The words made the woman pause and look round. The Marquis gazed at
her; he had last seen her on a white horse beneath a silver fir; and
though he had forgotten her since, he had now a passionate desire that
she should stop and speak to him.
As if in answer to this wish, she crossed directly to the wagon. The
young Count had fallen into a weak swoon again, and she looked down on
him calmly.
“Your friend is dying,” she said. “My God, how many more!”
She sat down on a round grey stone and put her hand to her head; then
the Marquis saw that she carried, wrapped to her breast, a small sick
child.
“You must go on,” he said, with energy. “You must not stop for us,
Mademoiselle.”
“I cannot walk any more,” she answered. “I am very strong, but I
cannot walk farther.”
“Where is your brother?” he asked.
“Dead,” she replied.
“Dead!”
“The word seems to mean nothing. I have a child here, dying too. I
thought it might be happier dying in some one’s arms.”
It was exactly his own thought about Georges; he smiled with his
courteous, sad sweetness, and putting the lieutenant’s head gently on
one of the still rolled-up curtains, rose.
“We are on the heights, are we not?” asked Carola. “I seem to have
been climbing all day.”
He approached her. “I think we are very high up,” he said gently.
“Will you give me the child, Mademoiselle?”
She resigned the pitiful burden without a word; the Marquis shuddered
as he felt the frail weight in his arms.
“So cold,” he murmured. “How could they bring children on such a march
as this! How far have you carried him?” he added.
“Since morning,” answered Carola; “and it is a girl, Monsieur.”
The Marquis looked down into the tiny crumpled white face in the folds
of the fur mantle, and laid the little creature down beside d’Espagnac.
“What can we do?” asked the Countess, in a broken voice.
“Nothing,” he answered gravely; “but if you have any strength at all,
you should join the march. It is your only chance, Mademoiselle.”
She shook her delicate head. “Please permit me to stay with you. We
might help each other. This is very terrible--the wolves are the
worst.” She set her lips, and her pinched face had a look of decided
strength. “Will the army be passing all night?” she added.
“I do not think so--surely there cannot be many more.”
“I was thinking when they go--perhaps the wolves----” She paused.
He was unused to these severe latitudes; there were wolves in France,
but they had never troubled him.
“They might attack us,” she finished, seeing he did not comprehend.
He took his pistols from his belt and laid them on the ground beside
him.
“I am armed,” he answered.
The Countess rose stiffly; her thick fur-lined cloak fell apart and
showed the bright colours of her dress beneath, the tags and braids
of gold, the vermilion sash and ruffled laces. “It is strange that I
should live and my brother die, is it not?” she said wearily. “He fell
from his horse and struck his head on a broken gun. Then he died very
quickly.” There was dried blood on her fur gloves and on the bosom of
her shirt. She went to the unconscious child and knelt beside her,
moved the wrappings from the pallid, dead-coloured face, and touched
the cheek. “I think she will never wake again--but your friend?” She
glanced at the Marquis, who was standing looking down at M. d’Espagnac.
“I can only watch him die,” he said.
The Countess drew from her bosom the flask she had offered to M. de
Vauvenargues four days before.
“This was filled this morning,” she explained, “and I cannot take it
for it makes me giddy.” She moved to the side of M. d’Espagnac and
raised his head tenderly and forced the spirits between his teeth.
“I think there is a lantern in the wagon,” said the Marquis, and
went to find it. The dark was now so thick that they could scarcely
see each other’s features, but he found the lantern and flint and
tinder and lit it, and the long yellow beams were some comfort in the
overwhelming sadness of the night.
The effect of the brandy on M. d’Espagnac was sudden and almost
terrible: he sat up amid the tumbled rolls of silk, and his cheeks
were red with fever and his eyes open in a forced fashion. He appeared
clear-headed and master of his senses; his glance rested on the Polish
lady and then on the Marquis. “You should not have waited for me,”
he muttered. “On--on to Eger. I shall soon be well.” He raised his
wasted, bleeding hands to his brilliant hair. “I am sick from seeing
people die,” he said. “It could never have been meant. O God, what
have we done?” He crossed himself.
“This is war, Georges,” answered the Marquis. “Remember the chapel of
St. Wenceslas and the words we spoke there.”
M. d’Espagnac shuddered and fell back on to the cloaks the Marquis had
piled under his head. Carola took his poor torn hand.
“Rest a little longer,” she said, “and then we can continue on our
way.”
Save for a few stragglers, the army had passed now. The isolation
seemed to increase with the dark, and the greedy howls of the wolves
came nearer.
The lieutenant struggled up again and cried impetuously, “I am not
going to die! That would be folly, for I have done nothing yet.”
“No, you shall not die,” answered Carola, and grasped his hand
tighter. The Marquis was on the other side of him. Georges d’Espagnac
laughed.
“You must not wait for me, Monsieur.” Then he closed his eyes, and
shiver after shiver shook his limbs.
The baby stirred and wailed dismally; in a moment Carola had it caught
up and pressed to her heart. The sick man whispered and moaned, then
suddenly sat up in violent delirium.
“I will not see any more die!” he cried. “No more, do you hear? These
people might have _done_ something--what were they born for? How much
farther? No food--no rest. How much farther? How far to Provence?”
The Marquis started; he was himself Provençal, and had not known M.
d’Espagnac came from his country; the word stirred agony in the heart
he controlled with such difficulty.
“Provence!” repeated the lieutenant. “They will want news of me, you
know, Monsieur. I must tell them--the quest of glory----”
Again the words stabbed M. de Vauvenargues. “Georges,” he murmured,
bending over him, “perhaps you have attained the quest.”
M. d’Espagnac laughed again.
“What a jest if I should die!” he muttered wildly. “My heart is quite
cold, it is freezing my blood. Perhaps I am in my grave, and this is
some one else speaking. How far to Eger?--how long to the Judgment
Day?”
“I am with you, Georges d’Espagnac,” said the Marquis. “We are alive.”
He seemed to hear that.
“Where?” he demanded.
“On the heights,” said M. de Vauvenargues.
It was now quite dark save for the light of the wagon lamp that
fell over the straw-coloured silk hangings of M. de Belleisle, the
beautiful anguished face framed in the gorgeous hair, the woman in her
barbaric splendour clasping the feeble child, and the slender figure
of the Marquis in his blue and silver uniform; it glimmered, too, on
the pieces of the Maréchal’s dessert service, and the sparkle of them
caught Carola’s eye.
“Do you travel with such things?” she asked. “Our nobles sleep on the
ground, and drink from horn----”
“M. de Belleisle must travel as a Maréchal de France,” answered the
Marquis. “But these things seem foolish now.”
A great giddy sickness was on him, and a distaste of life that could
be so wretched; the spirit within him was weary of the miserable flesh
that suffered so pitifully.
“Give me my sword,” said M. d’Espagnac. “I am starting out on a quest.
Do you hear? Jesu, have mercy upon me!”
Carola rose and walked up and down with the child.
“You are Catholic?” she asked.
“No,” answered the Marquis.
“An atheist?” she questioned.
“An ugly word, Mademoiselle”--he gave a little sigh; “but
yes--perhaps.”
“I am sorry for you,” said Carola; at which he smiled. “But your
friend?” she added. “We have no priest!” She seemed distressed at the
thought.
“His soul does not need shriving,” replied M. de Vauvenargues.
But the words seemed to have penetrated the lieutenant’s clouded
consciousness; he clamoured for a priest, for the last Sacrament, for
the Eucharist.
The Marquis caught him in his arms and held him strongly.
“None of that matters,” he said with power. “You are free of all
that--upon the heights.”
The voice calmed M. d’Espagnac; he rested his head on his captain’s
breast, and shuddered into silence.
The Marquis looked up to see Carola with empty arms.
“Where is the child?” he asked.
“Dead,” she answered, in a tired voice. “And I have laid her under the
wagon with my crucifix. I think she was a Hussite, but perhaps God
will forgive her, for she was too young to know error.”
“Do you suppose God’s charity less than yours, Mademoiselle?” answered
M. de Vauvenargues gently. “You sheltered a heretic child all
day--will not God shelter her through all eternity?”
She looked at him strangely.
“I feel very weary,” she said; “the wolves sound nearer.”
The Marquis thought of the two dead mules and the woman’s corpse that
Carola had not seen; he was stretching out his hand for his pistol
when d’Espagnac lifted his head.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” he said, and his voice was sweet and sane; “I
fear I incommode you and Mademoiselle.” He smiled and raised himself
on one arm. “You must not stay for me. I am very well. Dying, I
know--but very well.”
Carola came closer to him.
“I know the prayers of my church--shall I say them for you?”
He faintly shook his head.
“Thank you for your thought. But we are so far from churches.”
He was silent again, and the Marquis noticed with a shudder that the
great snowflakes were beginning to fall once more.
“How can we endure it?” murmured Carola, and the tears clung to her
stiff lids.
M. d’Espagnac moved again. “There are some letters in my pockets--if
you should return to France----”
“Yes, yes,” said the Marquis.
The lieutenant gave a little cough, and seemed to suddenly fall
asleep; they wrapped him up as well as they could and chafed his brow
and hands.
The snow increased and drifted round the wagon and began to cover them
softly.
Presently, as there was no further sound, the Marquis held a scrap of
the feather trimming of his hat before d’Espagnac’s lips and slipped
his hand inside the fine cold shirt.
They discovered that he was dead; had evidently drawn his last breath
on the word “France,” and resigned his soul without a sigh or struggle.
It was horrible and incredible to the Marquis in those first minutes;
why should he, never robust, and a girl of delicate make survive, and
Georges d’Espagnac, so young, strong, and full of vitality, die as
easily as the ailing child?
He bent low over the sunken face, and the loose strands of his hair
touched the frozen snow.
“The Quest of Glory,” said Carola, in a strange voice.
The Marquis looked up at her, and his eyes were full of light.
“Yes, Mademoiselle,” he said simply, and drew the heavy cloak over the
face of Georges d’Espagnac.
“A joyful quest!” she cried, in a hollow voice.
“Yes,” he said again, “a joyful quest.”
He rose, and the snow drifted on to his argent epaulettes, his torn
lace cravat and his loose hanging hair. He leant against the wagon
and put his hand to his side; now that they had the covered form of
the dead between them, the hideous loneliness became a hundredfold
intensified. Heavy tears forced themselves with difficulty from under
Carola’s lids and ran down her wan cheeks, but she made no sound of
sobbing.
“You are a brave woman,” said the Marquis very gently. “You must not
die. Give me your hand.”
She shook her head.
“Leave me here. Why should you trouble? Go on your way.”
She bent her head and then felt his hand on her shoulder, drawing her,
very tenderly, to her feet; she resisted her giddiness, which nearly
flung her into his arms, and murmured in a firmer voice--
“Very well. We are companions in misfortune and will stay together.”
She crossed herself and whispered some prayer over the dead. “It is
horrible to leave them,” she added, thinking of the wolves.
“He is not there,” answered the Marquis, “but ahead of us on the way
already.”
He unfastened the lantern from the wagon and, taking it in his left
hand, offered the right to the Countess.
An extraordinary sweetness had sprung up between them; they felt a
great tenderness for each other, a great respect.
As they made the first steps on the terrible, difficult route, with
the snow-filled blackness before them and their poor light showing
only death and horror, the Marquis said to his companion--
“If I could have spared you, Mademoiselle, any of this----”
She broke in upon his speech--
“We shall never forget each other all our lives, Monsieur.”
Then in silence they followed in the blood-stained track of the army
towards Eger.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOME AT AIX
The winter of the year 1742 had been the coldest, in every part of
Europe, that had been known since 1709, and the following spring was
also remarkable--for heat and sunshine and rainless days and nights.
By early April the chestnuts outside the residence of the Clapiers
family in Aix were in perfect bloom and the white, golden-hearted
flowers sprang from the wide bronze-green leaves and expanded to the
summer-like sun; beneath the trees was a deep rich-coloured shade that
lay up the double steps of the house and across the high door with its
fine moulding of handsome wood. The shutters were closed against the
heat; the whole street was empty of everything save the perfume of the
lilac, roses, and syringa growing in the gardens of the mansions.
This languid peace of afternoon was broken by the arrival of a
gentleman on horseback followed by a servant; he drew rein under the
chestnut trees, dismounted, gave his horse to the man, and rather
slowly ascended the pleasant shaded steps. Without knocking he opened
the door and stepped at once into the dark, cool hall. A clock struck
three, and he waited till the chimes had ceased, then opened a door on
his left and entered a large low room full of shadow that looked out
on to a great garden and a young beech covered with red-gold leaves in
which the sun blazed splendidly.
Luc de Clapiers stood gazing at the home he had not seen for nine
years. Nothing was altered. On just such a day as this he had left it;
but he remembered that the beech tree had been smaller then and not so
prodigal of glorious foliage.
There were the same dark walls, the same heavy mahogany furniture,
the same picture of “The Sacrifice of Isaac” opposite the window, the
same carved sideboard bearing silver and glass, the candlesticks and
snuffers, the brass lamp and the taper-holders. Above the mantelpiece
were, deep carved, the de Clapiers arms, still brightly coloured,
fasces of argent and silver and the chief or--and on the mantelpiece
the same dark marble clock.
Luc crossed to the window that was not far above the ground and looked
down the garden; in the distance were two gentlemen--one young and one
old--followed by three bright dogs.
Luc put his hand to his eyes, then unlatched the window, that opened
casement fashion. The sound, slight as it was, carried in the absolute
stillness; the two gentlemen who were approaching the house glanced up.
They beheld, framed in the darkness of the room, the slim figure of
a young soldier in a blue and silver uniform, wearing a light grey
travelling cloak.
“Luc!” cried the younger, and the other gave a great start.
Luc stepped from the window and crossed to his father. He went simply
on his knees before him and kissed his hands, while the old Marquis
murmured, “You never wrote to me! You never wrote to me!”
“No,” added the younger brother reproachfully, “you never wrote to us,
Luc.”
Luc admitted that he had not, beyond the first letter that told of his
return from Bohemia.
“I did not know if I should be able to come to Aix,” he said, “forgive
me, Monseigneur.”
“You have got leave now, my child?” cried the old Marquis, grasping
his shoulder.
“Yes, my father, I have some leisure now,” he answered rather sadly.
“Come into the house,” said his brother, who was much moved. “I can
hardly believe it is you--you have changed a great deal in nine years.”
They entered the house--the Marquise was abroad; the servants were
roused. Luc heard the orders for the preparation of his chamber and
the stabling of his horse with a thrill of pure pleasure; it seemed
that he had been very long away from home.
His father made him sit by his right at the long black table that was
now covered with wine glasses and dishes of fruit, and kept his eyes
fixed on him with an earnest look of affection.
“You are very pale and thin,” he said.
The brother touched the young soldier’s hand lovingly. “Have you been
ill, Luc?” he asked.
Luc blushed; he was conscious of his frail appearance, of his
occasional cough, of his languid movements.
“Yes, I was ill at Eger,” he admitted reluctantly, “after the retreat
from Prague.”
The other two men were silent. By that retreat M. de Belleisle’s name
had become accursed through France: in ten days he had lost nearly
twenty-two thousand men. The scandal and horror of it had brought M.
de Fleury to patch a hasty peace with Austria.
“And do you recall,” added Luc sadly, “Hippolyte de Seytres, Marquis
de Caumont, whom I wrote of to you very often? He was my ‘sous
lieutenant.’ I heard last week that he had died in Prague just before
the garrison capitulated in January.”
“I am sorry for de Caumont!” exclaimed the old Marquis, thinking of
the father.
“He was only eighteen,” said Luc, “and a sweet nature. M. d’Espagnac,
also, who came from Provence, died in my arms. I became delirious with
death.”
“It was very terrible?” questioned his father gravely.
“Ah, it was of all campaigns the most disastrous, the most
unfortunate. Let me not recall those black nights and days--those
marches with hunger and cold beside us, the disorder, the misery--the
poor remnant of a glorious army that at last reached the frontier of
France--leaving our blood and bones thick on the fields of Germany.”
His eyes and voice flashed and a clear colour dyed his cheek.
“Belleisle is punished,” he added. “His pride is cast down, his war
ended in failure. But is he humiliated enough for all the lives he so
wantonly flung away?”
“They say Cardinal Fleury cannot sleep at night because of it,”
remarked the old Marquis, “that he always sees snow and blood about
him. But you have returned to us, my son.”
Luc gave him a long, soft, mournful look, then glanced at his brother
Joseph.
“Yes, I lived,” he said thoughtfully; “but I have not come home
gloriously.”
“There is time ahead of you,” answered his father proudly. “I know
that promotion is slow. But M. de Biron told me he had no fault to
find with you.”
Luc sat silent. He was gazing intently at the fine figure and noble
face of the old man in his murrey-coloured velvet and delicate lawn
cravat, powdered peruke, and long embroidered satin waistcoat, his
firm right hand with the white cornelian signet ring that rested
on the table. His delicate features and steady eyes, his pose and
movements were all instinct with tradition, nobility of race, and
nobility of nature. He belonged to the pure stock of the provincial
aristocracy that had never waited at any court or been favoured by any
king, but who had been “grand seigneur” at the time of the Crusades.
The younger brother was like him and like Luc: sweetness and dignity
mingled in his features. He was dressed richly, but far from
extravagantly, and in a fashion some years old. His handsome brown
hair hung in natural curls round his face, unconfined by any ribbon.
His expression was at once more simple and less ardent than that of
the young captain, at whom he gazed with affection, respect, and
admiration.
Luc looked from one to the other of these two fair faces, both so
serene and loving in expression, and the paleness of his countenance
increased, a lustre as of tears came into his eyes. He put his hand
on to his father’s and clasped it so firmly that the signet ring was
pressed into his palm.
“No, not now,” he said--“not now.”
“What not now?” smiled the old Marquis.
“That is all I have to say, Monseigneur,” replied Luc, with a sudden
air of weariness. “Tell me what has happened in Provence.”
He turned his eyes on Joseph, who blushed and declared humbly that
the news of Aix was not worth offering to one who had seen Paris and
foreign countries.
“But heretics are spreading ever among us,” put in the older M. de
Vauvenargues. “And we very often hear the pernicious name of Voltaire.”
The captain’s hazel eyes dropped; he held his father’s hand even more
firmly.
“If there is a man who should be burnt in the market-place it is M.
de Voltaire,” continued the old Marquis. “He and his books and his
doctrines burnt--together.”
Luc removed his hand and rose; he asked if his mother would not soon
return, then raised his hitherto untouched glass of amber white wine
and drank it slowly. Joseph had a delicate feeling that his brother
would like to be alone with their father.
“I will see if your chamber is set,” he excused himself, and left them
quietly.
The Marquis was following him, but Luc set down his glass sharply and
said, “Father!”
The old man turned. He thought that this was the explanation of the
“not now” of Luc. He closed the door and returned to the table.
Luc stood with his head a little bent on his bosom, the sun, that
filtered through the beech leaves without, setting his silver
broideries aquiver with light and sparkling in the loosened threads of
his brown locks.
“My poor boy,”--his father took him gently by the shoulders--“you are
ill.”
Luc raised steady and beautifully smiling eyes. “No, Monseigneur, not
ill.” He paused a moment, then added, “But not strong--not strong
enough for a soldier.”
The Marquis did not comprehend. Luc laid his hands on his father’s
breast and a look of faintness came over his face, but his eyes glowed
more ardent and brilliant than ever.
“I must leave the army, father. I must send in my resignation
to-night. Bohemia broke my health. France--France has no further need
of me.”
“Luc!”
The old man stepped back and stood rigid, as if the words were so many
arrows to pinion him.
The young soldier took hold of the back of the dark mahogany chair in
which he had been sitting.
“Monseigneur,” he said with great sweetness, “I am a disappointment
to you that must be hard to bear.... I have been nine years in the
army and am no more than captain. I must now leave this honourable
employment with ruined health and a ruined fortune.”
The Marquis stood without movement. Luc proceeded to tell him, gently
and with courage, of the great expenses of the war, of his illness
at Eger, of the necessity he had been under of parting with most of
his property in Paris to meet his debts, of the doctor’s advice that
the bitter hardship of the retreat from Prague had sown the seeds of
perpetual weakness and suffering in his breast.
“But I shall live many years,” he finished, “and there are other ways
of glory.”
With these simple words was the tale told of his life’s hopes, his
dearest dreams utterly vanquished by brutal circumstance. Even his
father did not know what ambitions he had warmed in his heart only
a few months ago; even his father did not know from what horrors of
despair he had won his lofty sweetness of acceptance.
“You must not grieve, Monseigneur--soldiers expect such fates, and
I----” Then quite suddenly his voice failed him, and he turned away
his head, almost violently, and gazed at the placid gardens and the
gorgeous beech tree.
The Marquis’s chin sank on his bosom; he also had had his secret
dreams that he was now called upon to relinquish. This was his
favourite son standing before him and saying he was a useless invalid.
“A useless invalid”--the words surged up in the old noble’s throat
till he felt as if he had spoken them.
“Forgive me,” he muttered; “I was not expecting this--no, not
expecting this.” He raised his head and said in a firmer voice, “M. de
Caumont would be glad to be speaking to his son on any terms. I must
not be ungrateful--no, I must not be ungrateful.”
Luc turned towards his father eyes that seemed to have widened and
darkened. “I have thought of that,” he replied. “I once indeed wished
to die as Hippolyte and M. d’Espagnac, but I felt----” He paused
again; a certain diffidence that had always made him reserved and
a true modesty prevented him from uttering his deep conviction of
gifts--nay, genius--that must yet find expression and recognition.
No such thought consoled the old Marquis. He saw his son’s career
broken at the beginning and his son’s fortune lost. He was not himself
a wealthy man; he could do little more than give him a home--and it
was an inglorious end.
But the noble rallied.
“Your mother will be glad,” he said, with a pathetic smile. “I think
she has not had an easy moment since you went to the war.”
Luc could not answer. He saw that his father was looking not at
him, but at the famous uniform of the _régiment du roi_ that he
wore, and, like a picture suddenly thrust before his eyes, came the
long-forgotten recollection of the day his father had bought him his
commission and of their mutual pride in the trappings and symbols of
war: there had been a de Clapiers in the army for many hundred years.
Thinking of this, and seeing the old man’s wistful glance, Luc felt
the bitterness that had smitten him on his sick couch at Eger re-arise
in his heart.
“My God!” he cried softly, “it is hard to be a useless man.”
He kissed his father’s hand, and then went up softly to that chamber
he had left nine years ago in a tumult of glorious anticipation, of
surging ambitions, of pure resolutions. The anticipations had been
disappointed, the ambitions had ended, but the resolutions had been
kept. Luc de Clapiers had done nothing since he had left his boyhood’s
home of which any man could be ashamed.
He thought of his mother as he entered the room, for she had promised
to leave it untouched for him, and he saw at once how lovingly she
had kept her word. Certainly, the red and gold hangings on the bed
and the windows had been removed, but carefully preserved, for the
servants had already brought them out and laid them across the cabinet
by the window--the beautiful curved bow-window with the latticed panes
bearing the little coat of arms in each in leaded, coloured glass.
There were his chairs, his books, his candlesticks, his low, wide bed
with the four carved posts, his crucifix, his picture of St. Cecilia
with her music from the Italian, even his violin and his old torn
papers in a green portfolio. He went round the room, vaguely touching
these objects that were free even from a speck of dust.
Only one thing was missing--a wooden figure of St. George that had
stood on a bracket in the corner. Luc had been fervently religious
in his youth and passionately devoted to this image that he had even
wished to take to the army with him. His mother, he remembered, had
never liked this figure, which she had declared uncouth and hideous.
Now, it seemed, she had taken her revenge, for the bracket was empty.
Luc went to the window, where the chestnut leaves were peering against
the pane. The green of them, with the sun behind, was translucent as
jade, and the workmanship of the white curling flowers seemed a beauty
beyond bearing.
As Luc looked at them he took off his sword, his sash, his scarf,
his coat, and laid them across the old wand-bottomed chair in the
window-seat.
Then he crossed to the square tortoiseshell-framed mirror that hung by
the bed and looked at himself in the murky, greenish glass.
No longer a soldier ... he had taken off his uniform for the last
time. He stood the same as when he had last left this chamber, save
that it was then all before him, now all behind. He gazed at his own
face, white above the white shirt, still noble and pleasing, still
young, but frail and wasted and sad.
Instinctively he turned, as he had done in his childish troubles, to
the corner where St. George had stood. The loss struck him afresh as
he, for a second time, beheld an empty bracket, and was symbolic also,
for he had travelled far from the help of Christianity since he used
to pray to St. George; yet the vacant place smote him. He turned at
the opening of the door; a woman came towards him speechlessly, her
lips moving and her eyes full of a kind of trembling light.
He sprang to meet her and clasped her strongly; she thrust into his
arms what seemed a lump of wood.
“Safe, dear, safe. Did you think I had destroyed it?” she managed to
say.
He kissed her cheek and then her hands. She began crying with
pleasure. “St. George, Luc,” she murmured. “I have kept him very
carefully.”
The young soldier looked at the idol of his childhood; his emotions
reached the unbearable agony caused by dim recollections the hand of
tenderness beckons from the past. He laid St. George on the bed.
“Oh, my mother!” he cried, in a sinking voice. He fell on his knees,
hid his face, and wept.
CHAPTER VIII
CLÉMENCE DE SÉGUY
August had scorched the chestnut leaves and September withered them
into golden scrolls, and still Luc de Clapiers remained idle, but with
a burning heart, in the quiet home at Aix.
On a certain afternoon, when he was alone in his chamber writing,
the need for action, the thirst for fame blazed up through his sweet,
vain resignation beyond his power to restrain. The glory that he had
set himself to achieve had always been the glory of arms, and the
realization that this path was for ever closed to him came upon him
again suddenly as if he had but just been told that he no longer
belonged to the _régiment du roi_. He laid down his pen: he had been
writing an Elegy on the young de Caumont, for whom he had often,
during the war, written discourses on glory, and as he praised the
young soldier he had praised also d’Espagnac--the two, so young, so
beautiful, so brave, so pure, became one in his mind, and with them
there mingled the vision of another. He felt that he was lamenting
a third--his own youth, his own hopes that had been buried in the
snows of Bohemia. He had written of Hippolyte de Seytres, “He was
born ardent,” and it was true of himself. During these months of
idleness the fire of this ardour had increased in his heart until it
was unbearable. He sat quite still, with his hands clasped before him,
gazing at the thinning chestnut leaves and the blue sky behind them
that was spreading in all directions through a pile of loose clouds.
His serene face flushed with resolution. In that moment he felt a
scorn of himself that he had ever permitted poverty and ill-health
to hinder him in his designs on fortune. He was of a noble birth
that brought obligations, of gifts that brought obligations also;
he was young, laborious, serious, passionately desirous of serving
his country; and he was French, born at this most glorious period of
liberty of thought, splendour of achievement in every sphere. He must,
he could do something.
Of Paris and the great world there he knew only what he had heard
and read--the outside of it, glittering, young and hopeful, a
court led by a king whom France adored and Luc pictured as one like
himself--ardent, avid of glory, and with every opportunity to his
hand--and another court, no less powerful, of intellect and genius,
led by M. de Voltaire, a name that blazed in Europe. Luc had received
a scant education, and his long military preoccupation had given him
small leisure for study. He could scarcely spell out Latin, and he had
not read many books; but those he knew,--Corneille, Racine, Molière,
Pascal, La Fontaine, Boileau--he both loved and absorbed. They were as
so many torches to light his way.
M. de Voltaire himself he had always regarded with deep respect and
admiration. The daring atheist, the brilliant son of the people, the
caressed of kings and flattered of women, the greatest man of letters
of the age, the most decried and abused of human beings had no more
fervent disciple than the quiet young aristocrat who had watched his
splendour from afar. Luc thought of him now, and the tumult in his
heart rose higher.
“Shall I give up everything my soul urges me to because I had to leave
the army?” he murmured. “Must I live and die in Aix?”
But what was open to him? There was only one career worth comparing
with the military--that of diplomacy. He had studied law and history;
he felt capable of serving France by his pen as well as by his sword.
This thought of politics had come to him before; to-day it came and
would not be dismissed.
He rose impulsively and went to the shelf where his books stood; he
picked them up, one after another, and laid them down without opening
any of them.
An unnameable excitement had possession of him; an inner ecstasy made
his limbs tremble. He felt that the whole world was too confined for
his spirit; he felt that he grasped a sudden certainty that he would
and must attain glory.
He returned to his table, composing himself by a strong effort of
will, and wrote to M. de Biron, his former Colonel, asking his help
in his design of entering the diplomatic service.
When this was written and sealed his old calmness returned. He left
his room, gave the letter to a servant, and went into the garden.
The sky was one flushing dome of golden blue, glowing in the west with
the first hues of sunset. The leaves of the trees, the grasses, the
flowers, and herbs were all quivering in a low, warm breeze. The old
Marquis was seated on a stone bench by the carp pond, with his dogs
beside him; he was watching the water, stained a turquoise blue from
the sky and across which the blunt-faced carp floated, sparkling in
their scarlet, orange, and black scales.
Luc came up to the basin. His father smiled at him, but did not speak.
The young man was silent also; he was thinking, by some whimsical
connexion of ideas, of Carola Koklinska in her gay trappings as he
looked at the vivid fish.
He thought of her quiet ways, of her splendid clothes, of her great
strength. He, not she, had fallen ill after their ghastly march to
Eger. On his recovery he had been told that she had gone on with the
army to Paris.
She left a letter for him, in which she begged him to see her if he
could in Paris. She gave her sister’s name, which meant nothing to
Luc, but was well known in the capital, and said she was always to be
found at that lady’s hotel.
Luc had never written to her. She had become a curiously faint memory,
blotted with darkness and snow and horror, yet gleaming vividly in her
scarlet and gold through the Bohemian night.
The Marquis spoke and broke his thoughts. “You are very silent, Luc.”
The young man looked up instantly from the water.
“Monseigneur,” he said, “I have resolved to enter politics.”
His father flushed with surprise and pride. “I did not think you would
be long idle, Luc,” he answered affectionately; “but you have set
yourself a difficult career,” he added simply. “I have, as you know,
no influence at Court.”
“I have written to M. de Biron; he will give me introductions at
least. When I hear from him I will go to Paris.”
He spoke quietly, but in his eyes was a leaping light.
The old Marquis, both touched and pleased, rose and fondly laid his
hand on his shoulder.
“You are a true de Clapiers,” he said, then sighed a little, thinking
of the blue and silver uniform lying folded away in the chest in his
son’s room.
Luc divined the thought, the regret.
“I shall still serve France, Monseigneur,” he said.
“But I have no interest in Paris,” repeated the old noble half sadly,
“and I believe no one can succeed at Court without powerful friends.
And we--we are rather remote from the great world, here at Aix.”
Luc was not daunted by these words. Paris was to him a dream city
ruled by a dream king; there was nothing concrete in all the pictures
he formed of it. He knew he had ardour and talent and devotion to
offer, and he did not believe that these things were ever refused.
“If M. de Biron can give me no help I shall write to M. Amelot,” he
said quietly, naming the Minister for Foreign Affairs--“or to His
Majesty himself.”
For a nature that was reserved, almost timid, in all personal matters
this was an extraordinary resolution, and one that would not have
occurred to many men. The Marquis noted it with some amaze, but made
no comment. In these few months since Luc’s return from Bohemia his
father had learnt to recognize and respect something remarkable and
unfathomable in the character of his son.
The sunlight was fading with a sad rapidity. Luc left the garden to
return to the house; he entered the dining-room by the open windows.
A soft shadow was over everything, making the objects in the chamber
almost indistinguishable, but on the table showed the white square of
a letter. He picked it up and took it to the light of the pale length
of the window; it was heavily sealed with an elaborate and foreign
coat of arms and addressed to--
“MONSEIGNEUR
MONSEIGNEUR LE CAPITAINE LE MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES”
He opened it with inevitable curiosity, for the hand was unknown to
him; but as he broke the thick wax a strong Oriental perfume told him
the writer. It was from the Countess Koklinska. She wrote briefly
and with an air of serene friendliness, as might be used by one
writing from the Court to the country. She hoped that the Marquis was
recovered from his fatigues, and hoped she might see him in Paris. She
had heard that he had left the army, and asked abruptly on the last
line of her letter, “What is the next step in your career?”
At first Luc flushed as if she had said something insolent to his
face, then his blood stirred in answer to the challenge, and he
was, if anything, pleased by this reminder from one who, more than
either his father, his mother, or Joseph, understood his temper and
his ambitions. She had some right to ask; there was the true spirit
of heroism in her. She had been as a flame amid the horrors of the
retreat from Prague--a flame to light and warm--and had shown him that
a woman could tread the heights, as he conceived them. He recalled,
with a great tenderness, her poor, starved face bending over the sad
death-bed of Georges d’Espagnac, and he was grateful to her for the
last line, which showed that she also remembered.
And she hoped to see him in Paris. Paris! The word flashed with
untold possibilities; it dazzled with the name of King Louis and M. de
Voltaire. Luc was spurred by the desire to mount this moment and ride
to Paris, where the world’s thought, the world’s energy, the world’s
intellect were stored.
He crushed the letter into his pocket and began pacing up and down the
dark, old-fashioned room, where his father and Joseph would be content
to eat every meal until they died, but which to him was fast becoming
a prison, compared to which the steppes of Bohemia were preferable and
seemed, indeed, enviable liberty.
Here he could not mention the name of the arch heretic and infidel,
Voltaire; here he must still go to the church and listen to a service
that he felt outworn; here the new philosophy, the great dawn of new
ideas, new glories were unknown; and the soul of Luc was turning to
these things as the sunflower to the sun. He did not move when the
candles were brought in and placed on the mantelpiece and sideboard in
exactly the position in which they had stood for the last century, but
remained by the window looking out on to the evening.
The golden beech was veiled by the dusk; the gaudy autumn flowers
were unseen; the shapes of bushes and trees stood dark against a
translucent sky; a strong scent of herbs came and faded on the sweet
air.
In that moment Luc felt that life was endless, glorious, and
triumphant to those who had in their hearts this gift of energy,
this spur to achievement. He bowed his head in a kind of tumult of
thanksgiving, and such an agitation of joy filled his bosom that he
had to support himself against the tall window frame. The sound of the
opening door sounded, to his ecstatic mood, sharp as a pistol crack;
yet in reality the door was both opened and closed softly. Beyond the
candlelight stood a girl in a much-frilled rose-coloured muslin gown,
holding in her hand a bunch of drooping wild pinks.
She wore a chip straw hat tied under the chin with gold ribbons and a
white lace shawl over her shoulders.
When she saw Luc she laughed prettily and advanced to the table; her
extreme fairness seemed the greater by contrast with the shining dark
mahogany.
“Of course you do not recall me,” she said, in a delicate and pleasing
voice. “I am Clémence de Séguy, who saw you leave to join your
regiment nine years ago--when she was in the convent school.”
Luc made an effort to place and remember her; his instinctive courtesy
helped him, though his thoughts had been strangely scattered by her
sudden appearance.
“I remember no one like you, Mademoiselle,” he said, “in all Provence;
but your name is known to me as that of one of my father’s friends.”
She laughed as if pleased.
“Tell me about the war,” she answered.
As he looked at her he seemed to see the powerful face, slender
figure, and gorgeous garments of the Countess Carola standing beside
her in absolute contrast. The two could not have been more different;
the reality before Luc’s eyes was not so strong as the inner vision.
He put his hand to the fragrant letter in his pocket.
The Marquis entered and presented him with pretty ceremony. As Luc
kissed the girl’s fingers he thought of another hand that he would
soon salute in Paris--Paris.
CHAPTER IX
THE HERETIC
The answer from M. de Biron contained flat discouragement. In his
words seemed to lurk a smile at the simplicity of Luc: there were no
places at Court or even in obscure corners of France that were not
already allotted, long before they were vacant, to those who were
friends of pensioners of the Court favourites and the Ministers.
It was absurd to hope that anyone with no recommendation above his
talents could obtain even a clerk’s place in the Government, added
M. de Biron, and he advised Luc to spare himself the fatigue and
humiliation of further applications, and suggested that he should
abandon ideas that were certain to end in disappointment.
The letter was meant kindly, but it brought a flush of anger to Luc’s
cheek; then he laughed, and with the laugh his old serenity returned.
M. de Biron should not block his way; there were other channels. He
did not show the letter to his father, but merely told him that his
former Colonel could be no help.
The Marquis said nothing, but a few days later produced, with much
pride, a letter from M. de Caumont to M. de Richelieu, Governor of
Languedoc, asking for his interest for Luc, who was touched and moved
by his father’s thought.
Yet he was not altogether pleased. He had heard enough of M. de
Richelieu from Hippolyte, M. de Caumont’s son, who had never spoken of
him with anything but dislike, and he knew the Governor’s reputation
as the most famous man of fashion of the moment and a hard persecutor
of the Protestants in Languedoc.
But he could refuse neither his own father’s interest nor the help of
his dead friend’s father, and M. de Richelieu was a great gentleman
who could raise anyone where he would. It happened also that he was
now at Avignon, where he seldom enough made his residence, and Luc’s
direct enthusiasm resolved him to go there and present his letter
himself. His father was for sending it by messenger, and his mother
wished to detain him in Aix. He suspected her of tender little schemes
with regard to himself and Mademoiselle de Séguy, who had, with such
innocent coquetry, been sent in upon him that August evening, when,
as it happened, he had first made the resolve to enter politics. He
overruled this gentle opposition and left Aix in late September with
one servant and a good roan horse. Though his soul was serious it was
young. The freedom of the peaceful open country, the freshness of the
autumn air, the sight of the fields of grain--these simple things
affected his spirits to the height of exaltation. He felt his old
health return; he was as light-hearted as if he had never seen Bohemia.
But as they rode farther into Languedoc the surroundings changed: the
ground was neglected, the cottages mere huts, the peasantry silent and
ragged, the cattle poor and scarce. Luc, noticing this, fell into a
kind of gravity.
They took the journey easily. On the second day, when within easy
distance of Avignon, they stopped at a humble inn on the high road
shaded by a dusty grove of poplar trees.
Luc found two other travellers in the parlour. At the first glance
he was interested in them; he had a passion for studying character,
and could never observe strangers indifferently. He crossed to the
window, which looked on to a herb garden, and seated himself on
the chintz-covered window-seat and delicately watched the two, who
were engaged in eating omelette and salad at a round table near the
fire-place. One was a priest and a conspicuously handsome man, but
without attraction, for his dark face was hard and immobile and his
eyes, though very brilliant, expressionless; he wore the black robes
of a canon, which hung gracefully on his spare, powerful figure.
His companion was, as Luc knew at once, a foreigner; what else he
might be was not so easy to decide. His age might be between thirty
and forty. He was tall, well-made, and well-featured, with a rich
olive complexion and quickly moving brown eyes. He wore his own hair
hanging about his face, and there was more than a little of the
eccentric in his dress, which was of the brightest green silk lined
with black.
From the hard quality of his French, something vivid, self-confident,
gay, and yet indifferent in his manner and person, Luc believed he was
Italian.
He, on his part, was not long in noticing the slim young gentleman
in the window-seat, and, leaning back in his chair, he called out an
invitation to wine. Something in his cordial tone, his attitude, his
smile of gleaming, excellent teeth showed Luc that he was a fellow of
no breeding.
Without hesitation he civilly declined and left the room. As he closed
the door he heard the foreigner laugh good-naturedly and say something
to the priest in Italian marked by a beautiful Roman accent.
Luc had his own meal outside on one of the little tables under the
dusty vines, and before the middle of the afternoon rode on again,
meaning to reach Avignon before the night.
Towards evening they came to a miserable village, whose inhabitants
seemed in a considerable state of excitement: a great number of women
were talking and shrieking round the fountain in the market-place, and
three priests argued outside the porch of the poor little church.
The Marquis acknowledged their humble salutes, and was glad to be rid
of them and out in the open country again.
He had not long cleared the houses, however, before he overtook
a procession, which was evidently the cause of the commotion. It
consisted of four soldiers, a serjeant, and a prisoner, followed by
a crowd of peasants, mostly men and boys.
Luc’s hazel eyes flashed quickly to the prisoner, who walked between
the two foremost soldiers. She was a young peasant girl, finely made
and not more than eighteen years of age. Her blue skirt and red
bodice were worn, faded, and patched, her feet and arms bare; round
her coarse, sun-dried hair was a soiled white handkerchief. Her face,
though pale under the tincture of the weather, was composed and
serene, even though the crowd was assailing her with hideous names,
with horrible accusations, with handfuls of dirt and stones.
Her hands were tied behind her, and if her walk fell slowly the
soldiers urged her on with the points of their bayonets.
The Marquis reined up his horse to allow them to pass. He supposed
they were going to set her in the stocks for witchcraft or scolding;
that look on her face he supposed must be stupidity. The whole
spectacle roused in him sad distaste.
The rabble of peasantry, seeing that he was a gentleman, fell to
silence till they were well past him, then broke out again into shouts
and curses. The soldiers turned off the high road across a field that
led to a long slope and a little thin wood.
The Marquis remained still, with his patient servant behind him,
watching the little procession.
He noticed the girl stumble and saw one of the soldiers thrust at
her so that she fell on to her knees. The crowd at once broke into
laughter and pelted her with dirt.
Luc touched up his horse, crossed the field, and in a moment was among
them. One of the guard had dragged the prisoner to her feet; she was
being assailed by such horrid terms of abuse that he thought she must
be some shameless thief or murderess. He spoke to the serjeant with
quiet disgust, and his fine appearance, lofty manner, and long habit
of command served to win the man’s respectful answer: he could not,
he declared, keep the people off. As he spoke he threatened with his
sword the nearest of the crowd, which had already scattered at the
sight of the gentleman.
“The law,” said Luc, “is no matter for me to interfere with,” for he
saw the fellow pulling a warrant from his pocket; “but I will use my
whip on these should they further molest yonder wretch.”
He glanced at the prisoner, who stood for the moment isolated with her
head bent. Her feet and the edge of her dress were covered with mud;
her shoulders were bruised and her legs scratched and bleeding; her
face, which was handsome, but of low type, was flooded with sudden
colour and her wide lips twitched uncontrollably. The Marquis sickened
to see her; he was turning back when she looked up straight into his
face. Her eyes were large, far apart, and bloodshot, the lashes white
with dust. As she gazed at Luc her disfigured, almost stupid-looking
countenance was changed by a smile which was like a lady’s thanks for
courtesy.
Then she bent her head again and began to walk on painfully. The
soldiers closed round her, the serjeant fell in with a salute to the
Marquis, and the crowd followed, but at some distance and in silence.
Luc watched them till they were over the hill and out of sight; he
frowned in absorption and hardly troubled to notice two horsemen
who had joined him and reined their horses near his. When he turned,
indifferently, to look at them, he saw that they were the same
remarkable couple that he had noticed at the inn.
The Italian saluted him instantly.
“Monsieur,” he said with some eagerness, “where has the woman gone?”
“Over the hill,” answered Luc shortly.
The Italian rubbed his hands together softly.
“Well, well,” he said under his breath.
“What has the creature done?” asked the Marquis of the priest. “And
where have they brought her from?”
The priest named a village some leagues off, and the Italian remarked
that they had seen the procession earlier in the day, and that the
probable object of bringing her this distance was to terrorize the
countryside.
“What is her crime?” demanded the Marquis haughtily. He disliked
priests and foreigners in general and felt no reason to make an
exception for these two.
The priest fixed on him eyes that were metallic and twinkling in
their hardness; he made the sign of the cross and said, in a cultured,
toneless voice--
“The cursèd woman was a heretic.”
The Italian seemed amused.
“M. de Richelieu is working hard to purify Languedoc,” he remarked.
“What was her punishment?” asked Luc.
“An easy one,” returned the priest--“she will be hanged.”
Luc turned his head towards the speaker.
“Because she is a heretic?” he asked slowly.
“What else?”
The angry blood stained the Marquis’s delicate face. He knew these
things happened, but he had never before been brought close to them.
“You make me feel ashamed of my humanity,” he said.
“Are you a Protestant?” demanded the priest.
“No.”
“Perhaps you do not believe in the Gospels?” urged the other
maliciously.
Luc gazed at him with a kindling scorn.
“Neither in Gospels, nor Christ, nor God,” he said sternly, “nor any
of the symbols superstition uses--nor in anything you and your kind
worship.”
The priest was taken aback for a moment and did not answer, but the
Italian remarked cheerfully--
“A follower of M. de Voltaire.”
“A follower of no man,” returned Luc wearily. Some minutes passed
while the three horsemen seemed to be waiting silently. Then Luc moved
his horse away in the direction of the high road; he had seen the
soldiers, without their prisoner, and the straggling crowd coming back
over the crest of the hill.
The Italian cried after him--
“Are you for Avignon to-night, Monsieur?”
He answered without looking back. When he reached the main road again
the dark clouds that had been lowering all day broke and a steady rain
began to fall, hastening the short autumn twilight. After perhaps half
a league the road branched. The Marquis turned to the left, but soon
perceived that he had missed his way, for the dark was descending,
and there was no sign of the walls of Avignon on all the wide, gloomy
horizon.
The rain was steady, cold, and seemed not likely to cease. The only
building in sight was a deserted farmhouse with the roof half gone and
weeds and fallen masonry choking garden and yard.
Some of the lower rooms were, however, dry and sheltered, and in one
of them Luc, his servant, and the two horses took refuge for the night.
CHAPTER X
THE MAGICIAN
The Marquis, roused by his servant, woke to see the man standing in
misty moonlight by the square of window; with a languid distaste at
being called from sleep Luc rose.
“Monsigneur,” said the servant in a low voice, “there are those two,
the foreigner and the priest, and a third with them just gone into the
barn.”
He pointed to a building close to the house, from the large doorway of
which came a great blaze of light, strong and fitful, as if caused by
a bonfire.
The reflection of it trembled over the rough floor of the room, and it
was this that had aroused the servant to look from the window, when he
had, he declared, seen three men carrying lanterns cross the yard and
enter the barn; he swore to two being the Italian and the priest.
Luc considered; his curiosity was certainly roused and a sense of
distrust also. The barn was so lonely, the two strangers so peculiar
in appearance--and he recalled how the Italian had called after him,
“Are you going to Avignon to-night?” as if he wished to be sure that
he would be out of their way.
“What can it be?” he murmured to himself, and he thought of coining.
The light from the barn was increasing in intensity as he watched it,
and presently began to take on an artificial red tinge that lit up
windows and door with a lurid glow.
“I think they practise fireworks,” smiled Luc. He put on his hat,
took up his sword, and quietly stepped out into the dreary farm-yard,
followed by his servant.
The first objects that he beheld were three horses fastened to the
stump of an elder tree: two, those ridden by the travellers he had
met yesterday; the third, a black horse of great beauty. Keeping in
the shadows of the house, and avoiding the long trails of flickering
light, Luc and the servant gained the barn and crouched against the
wall of it, endeavouring to find some aperture. Voices raised loudly
and angrily came from within, among them the tones of the Italian
speaking in his own language with great vehemence.
At length Luc found a considerable hole in the loose and rotting
beams that composed the walls of the barn and, looking through, saw
an extraordinary scene.
In the centre of the building stood an iron brazier, which held a
large fire of vivid leaping flame; round this was drawn a chalk circle
marked with various figures and symbols, and beyond that a ring of
dead frogs and snakes.
Behind the brazier stood the Italian attired in a sweeping black robe
and a scarlet skullcap; he held in one hand a long white wand and in
the other a closed parchment-covered book.
Beside him stood the priest regarding him with an expression of
impatience and vexation. The exceeding brightness of the flames threw
over the features of both a glow of red, and gave even their dark
garments something of the colour of blood.
A third man was facing these two. He was standing quite close to
Luc; he had his hands behind his back, and wore a long tabinet
riding-cloak; his slight figure, scarcely of the medium height, was
of a remarkable grace; his hair was clubbed and unpowdered. Luc could
only see his profile, which was sensitive, attractive, and high bred.
This last man was manifestly a noble, which caused Luc some surprise.
He was gazing at him with curiosity when the priest suddenly moved and
disclosed a fourth occupant of the barn. Luc gave a long shudder of
horror and moved back from the hole.
It was the dead body of the heretic peasant woman, sitting upright
in a rude chair with the rope still round her swollen throat and the
harsh flare over her disfigured face, dropping jaw, and staring eyes.
“What is it, Monseigneur?” asked the servant eagerly.
“Have your pistols ready,” answered Luc in a stern whisper, “and get
to some vantage where you can see what is going on within.”
The man obeyed, creeping away through the mingled moonlight and
firelight until he found another notch in the wood of the wall.
Luc again looked into the barn. The priest had now thrown on some
powder that filled the whole building with smoke, the Italian was
shouting short sentences in an uncouth language, and the third man had
sprung forward and was staring at the corpse through the soft film of
the bluish smoke.
“She does not speak!” he cried. “She does not speak!”
The priest gave a furious exclamation and cast something dark and
heavy into the flames, and the Italian tore a chain from his neck
and flung it in the lap of the dead woman. A towering red and orange
flame, that seemed as if it would set the roof on fire, suddenly shot
up from the brazier, an unearthly and awful voice called out--
“Beware of she who comes from Bohemia!”
This was cut short by a passionate ejaculation; who it came from Luc
could not tell. All three men seemed to run together; the brazier
was overturned, and there was perfect darkness, broken by a shriek, a
groan, several short cries of fury, and the rip of unsheathing swords.
Luc ran round to the doorless opening that was the main entrance to
the barn; as he reached it a man came rushing out with a weapon in his
hand, bare in the moonlight. Luc seized him and flung the sword away.
The servant had come up now and stood ready with his pistol.
“Explain yourself,” demanded the Marquis.
The other, completely taken by surprise, wrenched himself free, but
made no attempt to escape.
“Are you the Devil?” he asked, with more eagerness than fear.
“No,” answered Luc in brief disgust.
Before he could say more the priest came out of the barn carrying a
lantern.
“What is this foul mummery?” asked Luc sternly. “I shall speak to the
Governor.”
Seeing his companion in the power of a stranger, the priest gave a cry
and made as if he would fly into the night.
But the other turned on him fiercely.
“By God, you are wanted here!” he cried, and the priest came back
instantly.
“This is a creditable affair for one of your cloth to be involved in,”
said Luc.
The priest ignored the comment, but his companion remarked with a
great degree of haughtiness--
“I suppose I have been disarmed by a gentleman?”
“Oh yes,” answered Luc quietly. “Take up your sword.”
The stranger turned and looked for it by the aid of the priest’s
lantern.
“Where is the Italian?” asked Luc.
“Escaped,” returned the other carelessly, slipping his weapon into the
scabbard.
“The rascal ran out by the back way,” added the priest.
“He hath left his horse,” remarked Luc, glancing at the three beasts.
“Being far too frightened to think of it,” was the answer, and the
stranger, with a sudden show of pleasantness, came up to the Marquis
and laid his hand on his shoulder.
“Come, my dear fellow,” he said, “do not look so grave. We have been
endeavouring to raise the Devil and have made a failure of it, that is
all.”
“A stale game,” said Luc scornfully. “And you were profaning the dead,
Monsieur.”
“A peasant! A heretic!” cried the other, with an instant return of
haughtiness. “And who are you to call me to account?” At this the
priest touched him on the arm, and he added in a quiet tone, “You
are scarcely a spy, Monsieur.”
“No,” said Luc wearily. His anger had changed into mere disgust.
“No--you know you were doing an illegal thing, a foolish thing, and a
horrible thing; but I am no judge of your actions. I will forget you,
Monsieur. Only I ask you to give that poor creature decent burial.”
He was turning away when the other caught him by the sleeve.
“Who are you?” he asked curiously. “I should like to know you. You
speak like M. de Voltaire.”
Luc had instantly resolved not to give his name.
“I am a private citizen of Provence,” he answered, “and I have
business in Avignon. The rain is over and I have had some rest, also
I do not care to remain here, so I will now ride on to the town.”
He made a grave bow and was turning away when the other again detained
him.
“You cannot ride to Avignon till it is light. Come with me--my name is
Armand, Monsieur Armand--I do not ask yours.”
“And I have not yours,” answered Luc.
The other laughed.
“Armand for to-night--and I swear it is my christened name. There is
supper in the house--I give you an invitation.”
The priest seemed impatient to be gone and annoyed at this
conversation, but Luc, despite his distaste of the whole thing,
was interested in the stranger, in his very shamelessness, in his
peculiar, gentle address, in his mention of M. de Voltaire. He felt
curious to see this man’s person, for they stood now in the shadow of
the barn, and the priest kept his lantern turned carefully away.
“Monsieur,” answered Luc, “at present I should not know you again; if
we go into the house I shall see your face.”
“I trust you,” answered M. Armand. He beckoned to the priest, and the
three entered the farm and the room next to that where the Marquis had
slept, and where his horse still stood. Luc found that it was in good
repair and rudely furnished, as if frequently used.
A deal table occupied the middle, and when the lantern was set on this
it showed several chairs, a cupboard, a plain couch with a coverlet,
and a stout box or chest with brass locks. M. Armand ordered the
priest to light candles; they were taken from the cupboard and placed
on the table in iron holders. The room was now in bright light,
and Luc and the stranger instantly looked at each other with calm
curiosity.
The Marquis beheld a man still young, but not so young as he had at
first believed, dressed in a dark grey riding-suit without ornament or
jewel, wearing high boots and a plain sword with a basket shell.
His face, which was singularly attractive, was rather broad for its
length and very finely shaped; it expressed wit, energy, and a great
deal of humour. His eyes were dark brown, large, and powerful. His
hair grew low on his brow, and was of a dull auburn, lacking in
brightness and colour, but of great length and thickness.
Luc, quick at reading men, could not read this one; he only knew
that there were great possibilities in that face, and that the whole
personality was not one to be ignored. His wonder at the hideous
ceremony in the barn increased.
The priest, with a heavy air of annoyance and displeasure, was
unpacking a basket of provisions which stood on the table; Luc
remembered seeing it behind his saddle the previous day.
There were a round of beef, a couple of loaves, a small cheese, and
a large pie in an earthenware dish, besides three bottles of wine.
M. Armand produced knives, forks, and plates from the cupboard, and
invited Luc to join them; his air was one of careless good-nature.
But the Marquis could not eat; he ignored the priest, and addressed
himself to M. Armand, who had seated himself on the corner of the
table and was taking his supper with good appetite.
“You spoke of M. de Voltaire,” he said. “Do you know him?”
“Oh, every one in Paris knows him.”
“But you know him?” insisted Luc.
“Yes.”
“And yet you, by the aid of a Christian priest, seek to raise the
Devil!” exclaimed the Marquis.
“I wanted to know something. The Devil should have entered into the
heretic and answered my questions; but the fellow cheated. Faugh! Do
not let us speak of it.”
Luc fixed his eyes on the handsome, pleasant face.
“What did you want to know?” he asked, with a smile.
“Something about a woman.” Monsieur Armand cut himself a slice of pie.
“I had that rascal fetched from Venice on purpose. The whim cost me
something.”
“I truly marvel at your folly,” said Luc calmly.
“Oh, there _is_ a Devil,” returned the other, with a sideway glance,
“and one might raise him, you know. But you have the fashionable tone
of Paris.”
“I have never been there save for a day in passing,” answered Luc
simply. “And I speak from conviction, not fashion.”
The priest, who had touched neither food nor wine, suddenly addressed
Luc.
“Where is your servant, Monsieur?”
“In the next room--where should he be?” Luc turned from him coldly.
“And now I will be on my way.”
He rose, and the priest made an instantaneous movement to guard the
door.
“Take some supper,” said M. Armand. “And do not be in such a hurry.”
Luc glanced from one to the other.
“I will go on my way,” he said sternly. “Do you seek to detain me?”
M. Armand was eating his pie leisurely; he looked at the priest
reflectively.
“You should have thought of the servant before,” he remarked.
“I have promised not to speak, and I can answer for my servant,”
answered Luc, guessing his thoughts.
“Do you think I am afraid?” asked the other, languidly raising his
bent brows. “We are not very likely to meet again,” he added.
“No,” assented the Marquis. “You interest me, though. I think your
priest here would like to kill me. I wish you joy of your holy
companion.”
“If I had my way, you would not leave here alive,” said the priest, in
a low, calm voice. “You are an atheist and a blasphemer, and a menace
to Holy Church.”
“And to your safety, Father,” smiled M. Armand. “But go, Monsieur. You
are a noble.”
Luc bowed.
“I will see the heretic is buried,” added M. Armand, “though she would
not speak. Adieu. I am sorry you would not have any supper.”
“Adieu,” returned Luc gravely. The priest moved from the door, and he
stepped out; the last glimpse he had of M. Armand was the picture of
him seated on the table finishing his pie.
On reaching the yard he found the priest had followed him, and was
standing a few paces off watching his movements. He called his
servant, and the man came round the corner of the farm leading the
two horses.
“Where have you been this while?” demanded the priest.
The fellow answered respectfully that he had been making the animals
ready.
Luc mounted and was turning out of the yard when the priest came to
his stirrup.
“Swear to me on the Gospels, on the Cross, that you will be silent
about what you have seen to-night,” he said, in a low voice.
“You heard my word,” answered Luc coldly. “And I have told you I
believe in neither Cross nor Gospels. Stand away--your habit smells
rank to me.”
The priest stepped softly back; the servant mounted, and the two rode
away.
They had gone perhaps half a league before the Marquis recollected
that he still did not know the road to Avignon; in his haste to be rid
of his companions he had never thought of this.
Instantly checking his horse, he looked back at his servant.
The dawn was breaking, and the man’s face appeared of a strange pallor.
“We do not know the way,” said Luc.
“Any way, Monseigneur,” answered the servant, “as long as we do not go
back.”
“What is the matter?” asked Luc sharply, for the fellow was plainly in
a fright.
“Monseigneur, I did not mean to tell you. I thought we should both be
murdered.”
“I thought that possible too,” replied the Marquis calmly. “Anything
else?”
“Oh, Monseigneur--there _was_ murder. I went back to the barn to fetch
my hat. I had the little lantern--and I could not forbear looking in;
and there was the foreigner lying dead from a sword-thrust.”
CHAPTER XI
M. DE RICHELIEU
Luc felt instantly that his servant spoke the truth, and saw instantly
how he had been deceived. There was no back door to the barn; the
young man, discovering he was being cheated, had run the poor
foreigner through and left him there to die. The priest knew it, and
hence his anxiety about the servant: he had dreaded the very thing
that had occurred--namely, that the fellow should return to the barn
and see the second corpse.
The Marquis’s first feeling was one of intense anger that a dissolute
young noble had been able so to fool him; he had accepted the tale of
the Italian’s escape like any child, and had sat down to bandy words
with one who was fresh from a miserable, cowardly murder.
“Why did you not tell me before?” he asked.
“Monseigneur, I thought you might wish to return, and then we stood a
good chance of being murdered.”
“Why?” demanded Luc sharply. “We were two to two, and one of them a
priest.”
“But, Monseigneur, he was armed under his habit, and I saw evil
intention in his face--and how could we tell how many more were in
hiding? With respect, Monsieur le Marquis, they were dealing with the
Devil.”
“Are you sure that the man was dead?” asked Luc.
“Monseigneur, perfectly sure. He lay in a strange attitude with one
leg drawn up, and I crept into the barn and felt him, and he was cold
with a hole in his chest and his fingers all cut where he had snatched
at the sword--and with the dead frogs and snakes and that other corpse
in the chair----”
The Marquis cut him short.
“You will be silent about this, Jean, until I give you leave to speak.
I shall not go back--now, at least.”
Jean, only too thankful that his master was not returning to what he
feared might be an outpost of hell, promised readily enough. They
proceeded along the straight road, looking out for some habitation
where they could ask their way.
Luc felt depressed, angry, and disgusted. He recalled the Italian’s
healthy face, his callous laughter, then the hideous little scene in
the barn with the horrid, foolish details of gross superstitions;
lastly, the calm serenity and haughtiness of the young man whose
careless manner had so deceived him; and the priest, in his mockery of
a habit--Luc wondered that he had not made some attempt at a disguise.
Evidently all of them had been pretty sure that they were not likely
to be interrupted; yet Monsieur Armand, as he called himself, had not
seemed very concerned, or even surprised, at being discovered.
Luc, riding along in the grey dawn, wearily followed out the
consequences of this wretched episode.
They would burn or bury the body of the foreigner, who was not likely
to be missed; they would probably burn the whole barn--who was to make
inquiries?
M. de Richelieu did not keep such a strict policing of Languedoc that
it was likely to come to his knowledge--well, the affair would be
hushed up; and he, Luc, saw no good in soiling his lips by any mention
of it, though he felt himself no longer bound by the promise he had
made the young rake.
The Italian charlatan had perhaps not lived so as to look for a better
end--let the whole thing be forgotten; Luc only hoped that he might
meet neither priest nor patron again.
As the sun rose above the horizon they came upon some poor scattered
farms where a peasant driving pigs put them on the road to Avignon,
which town they reached about noon of a misty autumn day. Luc put
up at a quiet inn, and, having ascertained that the Governor was in
residence but would soon be leaving for Paris, he sent his servant at
once with the introduction from the Marquis de Caumont and a letter
from himself requesting an interview.
Jean dispatched on this business, the Marquis shifted his linen,
breakfasted, and sat at the inn window overlooking the unfamiliar main
street of beautiful Avignon.
His head ached, his limbs were full of lassitude, and the incident
of the night hung unpleasantly before his mental vision. He tried
to replace this picture with others: with that of Clémence de Séguy
in her frilled rose-coloured muslin; with that of young d’Espagnac
kneeling in the chapel of St. Wenceslas. As he drove his thoughts back
to the Hradcany, he suddenly recalled that the voice last night which
the Italian had feigned to issue from the poor heretic’s dead lips had
said, “Beware of her who comes from Bohemia!” It was a coincidence
curious and distasteful that the wretched magician’s last words should
have been these; doubtless they referred to some intrigue of his
patron, but to Luc they recalled the Countess Carola, and he did not
care to think of her in any such connexion.
Her dark, gorgeous image, resolute among the snows, against the
sombre, pure background of silver firs and frozen skies, came before
him suddenly. He felt swiftly heartened as he pondered upon her; she
was a vision of mingled fire and ice that passed the allurement of the
senses and exquisitely attracted the spirit.
Luc shook off the depression of yesterday’s sordid adventure, and
his dreams all rushed back to his heart. His modest confidence that
something would come of his interview with the Governor occupied him
anew; he even allowed himself to picture his father’s pleasure at his
return with news of success.
Early in the afternoon Jean reappeared with a courteous note from M.
de Richelieu’s secretary: His Highness was departing for Versailles
to-morrow, but would M. le Marquis wait on him to-night at eight of
the clock?
Luc sent the servant back with his answering thanks for the
appointment, and went upstairs to unpack his finest suit; it was plain
enough, and the work of a country tailor, but Luc attired himself
gravely, with no thought for the fashion, and went out to find a
barber to powder and dress his hair. When this was done, it was
already dusk.
He could scarcely eat any dinner, and reluctantly admitted to himself
that he was nervous. His natural reserve made him shrink from waiting
on the great, and inherited pride made him shrink from asking a
favour; neither had his long soldier’s training fitted him for dealing
with a courtier like M. de Richelieu.
He felt he would be at a disadvantage with such a man, and the old
powerful longing for the army, for the career on which he had set his
heart, and to which he had devoted his best energies and earliest
youth, assailed him; but he angrily controlled this weakness, and
broke his thoughts by opening a little volume of Pascal he always
carried in his pocket.
At the appointed time he rode up to the Governor’s residence and gave
his name. He was at once ushered into a great painted antechamber with
a domed ceiling and white walls covered with a confusion of cupids,
wreaths of flowers, tambourines, flutes, masks, and garlands all very
elegantly drawn and coloured.
In each panel of the wall hung an oval mirror which had above it a
gilt sconce of perfumed wax candles; the chairs were of delicate
ash-wood and Aubusson tapestry. On a low green marble-topped table by
one of the windows was a portfolio of prints and a book bound in calf;
the name of the author caught Luc’s eye--it was M. de Voltaire.
Luc was not insensible to the charm and elegance of the apartment; he
was keenly sensitive to all beauty. The taste that he had never been
able to cultivate was accurate; he knew that paintings, furniture, and
every detail of the chamber were the most exquisite possible, and his
spirit expanded in the atmosphere; he did not even notice that he was
being kept waiting longer than was courteous.
Turning presently, thinking that he heard some one approach, Luc
caught sight of himself nearly full length in one of the oval mirrors.
He saw a slight, pale young man, with a serene and delicate face,
thoughtful hazel eyes, and a clear complexion, precise grey curls, and
a plain suit of violet cloth trimmed with silver, a rich lace cravat
tied very carefully, a simple sword, and a black ribbon round his
throat.
The strange surroundings made his own person appear strange; he looked
at himself as he might have looked at a mere acquaintance, critically,
yet almost disinterestedly.
He was still searching his own face when the folding-doors at the
end of the room opened, and a black page wearing a scarlet tunic and
turban silently motioned him to advance.
The Marquis followed him into the next room, and the beauty of the
little apartment was such as he had never seen; it steeped his soul in
sudden pleasurable languor. The page disappeared, and Luc looked about
him eagerly.
The walls were of pale ash-wood, smooth and watered like satin; the
carpet was of the same hue, but scattered with a design of dull pink
roses; the chairs were gilt and violet velvet; and the window was
hung with curtains of pale mauve and pink heavily fringed with gold,
and looped so as to show the ivory satin lining. One entire side of
the wall was covered by an exquisite piece of tapestry in a hundred
melting hues, showing the legend of Europa and the Bull; on the pale
carved wood mantelpiece stood a clock and candlesticks of rock crystal
and enamel, and a fine china bowl of lilacs, camellias, tuberoses, and
white syringa.
The whole was faintly lit by a silver and crystal lamp that hung by
slender chains from the ceiling, which was covered by drawn grey silk.
A cabinet of beautiful workmanship inlaid with painted china plaques,
a desk of marquetry and ormolu covered with rich articles, and an
exquisite lute of ivory and ebony tied with jade green ribbons
completed the furniture.
In one corner a white, violet, and gold brocade curtain was half drawn
away from a low couch that stood in an alcove; as Luc glanced at this
he saw with a start that a man was lying there, asleep or dozing, with
his head turned towards the wall.
He wore a soft blue satin dressing-gown and a cravat of flimsy lace
that hung in a cloud to the ground; his hair, which was curling
and unpowdered, flowed over his bosom and shoulders; his breeches,
waistcoat, and stockings were white; his feet thrust into gold
slippers.
His whole figure was considerably in shadow, but by his even breathing
he was certainly asleep.
Luc was first amused and then vexed; he made no doubt that this was
the Governor.
“M. de Richelieu,” he said, in a firm voice. “Your Highness----”
The sleeper stirred lightly, raised his head, and sat up.
Luc was looking at the “Monsieur Armand” of last night’s sordid
happenings.
CHAPTER XII
THE DIAMOND RING
Despite the different light, surroundings, and dress, the recognition
was instantaneous on each side. For a breathless instant the two men
gazed at each other. M. de Richelieu was the first to speak.
“So you are M. de Vauvenargues!” he said, and put his gold-slippered
feet to the ground and threw his head back with a cold haughtiness.
“I am M. de Vauvenargues,” answered Luc.
“You were introduced unceremoniously,” returned the Duke. “I did not
expect you so soon. Be seated, Monsieur le Marquis.”
Luc took one of the delicate chairs and fixed his eyes on the pale
carpet; he was conscious of a wretched feeling of disappointment, of
disgust, of a sense of personal failure.
“You look rather pale, Monsieur,” remarked the Governor, in those same
gentle tones that Luc had heard last night. “I trust you have had an
easy journey from Aix?”
The Marquis bowed in silence.
M. de Richelieu supported himself on his elbow on the pile of cushions
at the head of his couch.
“You bring the best of introductions,” he said. “M. de Caumont speaks
of you warmly--you were Hippolyte’s friend, and with him in Prague,
were you not?”
Luc was impressed, almost bewildered, by his composure, his quick
assumption of the courtly, gracious manner. Last night this calm had
surprised him; now he found it astounding. M. de Richelieu had not
changed colour, and was regarding him with unfaltering eyes.
But it was not in Luc to take up the matter on these terms; he
revolted against the situation, against the part he was evidently
expected to play. The slim, gorgeous young Governor, the sumptuous
little room became hateful to him. He rose.
“Monseigneur,” he said coldly, “I came here on a misunderstanding.”
M. de Richelieu interrupted.
“You came, I think, Monsieur, because you are desirous of entering
Government service--M. de Caumont asks my influence on your behalf.”
“I will not put you to that trouble, Highness,” answered Luc wearily.
The Duke laughed in his princely way, as if he was too great to be
easily offended; yet Luc thought he was vexed too, perhaps a little
confused.
“I shall be able to give you a position, Monsieur, immediately.”
Luc flushed almost as painfully as if some one had offered him money.
“You mistake me,” he said gravely.
“No, I think I estimate you fairly well,” answered the Governor
decidedly.
“In this you mistake me,” replied Luc, with a sudden flash in his
voice. “There is nothing in your gift, Monseigneur, that I would
accept.”
A look of wrathful amaze glimmered for an instant in the Duke’s brown
eyes, but he smiled, though coldly.
“For one who hopes to succeed in diplomacy,” he said, “you are
singularly simple.”
“Not so simple, Monseigneur, that I do not see the attempt of your
Highness to bribe a man who holds an unpleasant secret.”
M. de Richelieu did not alter the regal ease of his attitude, but he
suddenly changed his tone.
“Forgive me, my dear Marquis,” he said pleasantly, “but we evidently
do fail to understand each other, and that is a pity----”
Luc interrupted.
“Highness, this is the truth. I know that the wretched Italian was
murdered last night, and I know whose sword struck him down. You
deceived me easily,” he added simply, “and I know you are a great
man, who can amuse himself as he pleases--you have the law in your own
hands. But there is no employ under the Governor of Languedoc that I
would take.”
With the effort of saying these words the colour flooded his face; he
did not speak them with any grandeur, but with a frowning distaste.
M. de Richelieu flashed into fierce haughtiness.
“Do you imagine that you will better yourself by taking this story to
Versailles? You think you can ruin me, perhaps----”
“Monsieur!” cried Luc, raising his head.
M. de Richelieu was on his feet, a glittering, winning figure,
difficult to associate with the miserable scene in the barn.
“Well, if you think, Monsieur,” he said quietly, “that you would
gain a hearing against me, remember I am Armand du Plessis,” and Luc
realized suddenly what a great man, what a notable person he was
defying. He thought of his future career, and his heart sank; what
could he hope to achieve commencing with such a powerful enemy?
Something of this thought showed in his sensitive face, and the
Governor was quick to perceive and follow up his advantage.
“I have used _lettres de cachet_ on less occasion,” he said gently.
Luc turned so as to face him.
“Scarcely on men of my position, M. de Richelieu,” he answered
haughtily. “I am not of the bourgeois, to be threatened.”
He was stung now out of his shyness and reserve; he faced the Governor
as an equal and unabashed.
“As to last night, my own wish is to forget it,” he said sternly. “I
shall not speak for the sake of speaking--you know that. I should not
be silent for any threat’s sake if honour bade me speak--you know that
also, Monseigneur.”
M. de Richelieu was clearly puzzled; if at the same time vexed, or
alarmed, he did not show it. His face expressed wonder and even
amusement.
“It was only a jest last night,” he said lightly, “a common amusement.”
“It cost a man his life,” answered Luc wearily. “But I pray your
Highness not to speak of it.”
“Well,” returned the Duke, with utter callousness, “he was a knave,
and deserved it. He was cheating, and I had him brought from Venice on
purpose.”
Luc did not answer; he felt tired, disappointed, and downcast. His one
desire was to get away from this house and from Avignon.
“I can make yesterday’s meeting fortunate for both of us,” continued
the Duke. “I liked you from the first. I require another secretary----”
“I must refuse,” interrupted Luc. “I will take nothing, Monseigneur.”
M. de Richelieu looked at him narrowly.
“Where have you lived all your life?” he asked abruptly.
“In Aix and in camp,” replied Luc. His dreamy eyes brightened. “I have
been ten years with the army.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Because my health broke,” said Luc briefly. “There were not many of
us, Monsieur, who survived the retreat from Prague.”
“And now you wish to become a politician,” said M. de Richelieu. “I
suppose you are an idealist?”
Luc smiled to think of the utter hopelessness of endeavouring to
express his aspirations to this man.
“I have ideas,” he answered simply. “I think I could succeed in
statecraft.”
“Tell me some of your ideas--tell me something of what you would do
were you in power.”
The Duke was standing now in front of the many-coloured tapestry; his
slight figure, his elegant features, and rich dressing-gown gave him
an almost feminine appearance. A faint mockery curved his nostrils and
touched his speech.
“I would not have men like M. de Richelieu Governor over any province
of France,” answered Luc calmly.
Again that look of great haughtiness hardened the face of the Duke.
“You know nothing about M. de Richelieu,” he said.
He seated himself on the slender-legged chair under the tapestry and
began turning over a tray of engraved gems that stood on a little
tulip-wood table; yet absently, and with his brown eyes on Luc.
The two men whose lives, characters, and experiences were so
absolutely different that an impassable gulf existed between them
looked at each other as they might have gazed across the borders
of some strange country that they would never penetrate. M. de
Richelieu’s career had blazed high above the heads of men for all to
see, but it was unknown to Luc, who was ignorant of all the scandals
and gossip of his time; and Luc, to the Governor, was a man who came
from absolute obscurity, who was interestingly novel, but mainly to be
noticed because he held an uncomfortable knowledge of an unfortunate
incident the Duke wished forgotten. As he gazed at Luc, he was
considering what to do. Though he had been involved in many affairs
as doubtful and as dangerous as that of last night, though careless
recklessness was the keynote of his character and he was confident
in his great position and powerful name, yet a creditable witness to
a murder connected with an unlawful ceremony to which his confessor
was privy was not to be too lightly suffered to depart. The Duke had
enemies; if they knew of this, they could make a story of it that the
King would not dare disregard. From a spark like this might rise a
flame that would burn the very foundations of his greatness.
Malice was not in his nature, and he felt no unkindness towards the
cold young officer who so manifestly disliked him, but rather a
curiosity to know more of him and a half-amused liking.
“Monsieur,” he said at length, “this must be adjusted some way between
us. You seem to refuse my advances. Perhaps you think I am setting
some snare for you, but it is not so.”
This had never entered Luc’s thoughts. His outlook was so simple that
the other could never have guessed it; he merely wished to get away,
to forget it all, and try another road to success.
“Monseigneur,” he answered wearily, because his head was aching, and
the rosy light of the room and the scent of the flowers, that had at
first so pleased, now oppressed his senses, “we have nothing to fear
or gain from each other. Permit me to take my leave.”
With his stiff military bow he moved towards the door. M. de Richelieu
stepped forward and, with an almost affectionate gesture, caught his
arm.
“Be reasonable,” he said. “I lost my temper last night; but after all
the fellow was of no account--’tis over now.”
“So I wish it to be, your Highness,” replied Luc.
“But there is no need,” continued the Duke, “that it should prevent me
from doing you the service you came to request.”
Luc was silent; he was not insensible to M. de Richelieu’s beautiful
grace, to the complete attraction of his person and features that his
life, whatever it had been, had not in the least coarsened or spoilt.
Such was the power of this charm, delicate, manly, strong, that Luc,
though he despised the Duke without affectation, yet felt his scorn
overwhelmed in this physical nearness.
“Secretary to the Governor of Languedoc is not a post easily
obtained,” insisted M. de Richelieu. “And I think we should work well
together, Monsieur.”
“It is not in your power to give me what I seek, Monsieur,” replied
Luc sadly. “Indeed it is impossible.”
The Duke drew back a step.
“I implore you allow me to depart,” continued the Marquis. “We shall
never understand each other.”
M. de Richelieu twisted his fingers in the curls on his bosom.
“What object have you in keeping silence about last night?” he asked
shortly.
“What object,” returned Luc proudly, “have I in speaking?”
“Oh, you seem to have a great sympathy with heretics and charlatans
and the baser sort. And what of your servant?”
“He did not see your Highness in the full light. Besides, he was
a soldier, and is devoted to the house of de Clapiers; you may,
Monseigneur, be assured he will not speak.”
“That means that I have taken two obligations from you--my sword
last night and your promise now,” said the Duke very proudly. “It
is impossible, Monsieur le Marquis, that you should refuse to take
anything from me.”
“I want nothing of your Highness,” replied Luc; for he thought of the
Duke’s offers as so many bribes, nothing more.
M. de Richelieu was galled and angry; it was the first time in his
life that he had felt himself obliged to anyone. He was an adept in
bestowing favours, but had never before received one save from the
King. His breeding, however, took the defeat gracefully.
“I hope,” he said coldly, “that some day I may be able to balance
this.”
“There is nothing to balance,” returned Luc earnestly, for the whole
interview was irritating him. “Let your Highness forget it all and
forget me.”
“Will you go to Paris?” asked the Duke abruptly.
“Perhaps,” said Luc. His plans were all dashed to the ground, and he
had not yet formed others.
“Come to me, then, if you ever need help,” said M. de Richelieu, with
sudden and characteristic recklessness. “A Puritan like you is like to
get into trouble some way.”
“I am no Puritan,” returned Luc, flushing slightly, “but an atheist.”
M. de Richelieu crossed himself and, at the same time, laughed.
“Some day I must introduce you to Monsieur de Voltaire. As for me, I
see I can do nothing with you. I wish you success, Monsieur, but I am
not very hopeful.”
He did not hold out his hand, but bowed very grandly and rang a little
bell that stood near the tray of gems.
Luc returned the bow in silence, glad to take his departure; the black
page appeared, and conducted him from the mansion. Luc passed through
the beautiful apartments without any sense of pleasure now; he felt
exhausted, and even faint. He longed to be out in the night and under
the stars.
When he was on the threshold of the street door another page
breathlessly overtook him.
“Monseigneur, you left your glove,” he said.
Luc took the riding gauntlet, and felt something heavy in the palm.
The colour throbbed in his face; he shook out on to his hand a diamond
ring of exceptional beauty and remarkably set with sapphires.
“Yes, it is my glove,” he said to the page, who was hurrying away,
“but take this back to M. de Richelieu--it is a mistake.” He held out
the ring.
“Monseigneur said the jewel was yours,” returned the page.
“Well, then,” replied M. de Vauvenargues proudly, “take it as your
guerdon for bringing me the glove.”
He flung it on the carpet at the boy’s feet and left the Governor’s
house.
CHAPTER XIII
THREE LETTERS
Luc was back at Aix in the peace, the confinement, the even atmosphere
of his own home.
He told his father that M. de Richelieu had not been able to do
anything for him, and the old Marquis advised him to give up all
thoughts of any further career and settle down in Aix.
Luc listened patiently, but no advice could have shown less
understanding of his character; even while he listened his heart
was throbbing and his blood tingling with the desire of life, of
liberty, of action, of glory. The very moment he had stepped across
the threshold of his father’s house he had felt the ordered, sluggish
days fall round him like a chain; he saw the years stretch ahead in an
uneventful avenue, with an undistinguished tomb at the end, and every
nerve in his being cried out against it. His fruitless journey, the
heavy disappointment caused by coming into actual contact with one
of the men ruling France and finding him like M. de Richelieu, the
persecution, the degradation, the misery he had witnessed in riding
through Languedoc were but so many goads to urge him to a further
attempt on fortune.
Paris blazed even brighter in his visions, and he thought long and
often on the name of M. de Voltaire.
To please his parents, he still retained the forms of Christianity,
and never hinted that he held that doctrine of free-thinking which his
father so abhorred. But this reserve was another chain: he desired to
be with those with whom he could exchange ideas, from whom he could
gain wisdom, experience, and encouragement; not to have to be for ever
deferring to those opinions, habits, and traditions that he no longer
shared nor admired.
Hence the very affection that surrounded him at Aix, and which he had
often longed for when with the army, became first a useless thing to
him, and then another burden, another chain to hamper and clog him.
As, gradually and day by day, his father’s love made insidious demands
on him, as almost imperceptibly he found his native sweetness giving
way on many little points of difference, as he perceived affection
laying hands on the most secret sensations of his soul, he began to
revolt against this obligation of affection, of duty, of respect; he
longed to stand, a free man, with his own life to make according to
his own standards, unhindered by this fear of giving pain to those
who loved him--the fear which had already made him deny his beliefs,
and which now urged him to abandon his choicest hopes. His soul
rose up against this exacting, tender love, that burdened him with
responsibility; morally and mentally he stood alone, not desiring
support, and strong to meet anything, yet through his heart and
affections he was made captive to his father’s chair and his mother’s
apron.
Autumn passed into winter. Joseph married and left home; this was
another reason for Luc to remain. His mother clung to him with piteous
fondness; his father deferred to him in matters of business, relied on
him, treated him with courteous affection, dismissed all idea of his
leaving them--had not M. de Biron and M. de Richelieu both declared
politics hopeless?
Luc listened and waited; the chains became heavier every day. The
Marquise was preparing another in the shape of Clémence de Séguy,
a good girl, beautiful and well-dowered. Luc, looking into her fair
countenance, knew that she had never known an aspiration nor a sorrow
in all her life; she bloomed in Aix like the late lilies he had seen
in the garden the day of his return; pure flowers, modest with their
own sweetness, they kept their heads bent towards the earth, and never
lifted their petals towards heaven or the sun. Luc never looked at
Clémence that he did not think of the Countess Carola; red like the
trellis roses he pictured her, and, like them, for ever climbing and
breathing perfume to the utmost clouds.
Yet these days were not wholly wasted; in the evenings, he would
revive his forgotten knowledge of music, and play the clavichord to
his mother’s harp; and then his thoughts would fly wide, and drink at
immortal wells of unquenchable longing, and see the ineffable hues of
skies only to be glimpsed at by mortals.
Sometimes, when he was playing thus in the dark parlour, he would have
flashing premonitions of immortality in which this life seemed a mere
nothing that he could afford to waste; there was all eternity in which
to join Hippolyte and Georges in the quest for glory.
In these moments he felt an unbounded ecstasy, and his playing would
take on a richness and colour that transfigured the light music
he interpreted; then a veil would be dropped over the vision, and
there would come unbidden thoughts of the hopelessness of all high
endeavour, the sad end, the open failure of all noble, unselfish
lives, the uselessness of all great enthusiasms, all the gallant
efforts of the pure minorities of the world, all the eager aspirations
of reformers, preachers, prophets, swept away and forgotten in the
commonplace corruptions, needs, vices, failings, and blindness of
humanity. And these reflections were as a bitter blankness of soul to
Luc, and the comfortable room would darken round him like the jaw of
hell itself.
But with equal conviction would come the afterthought that these
broken lives, these lost causes, these ridiculed endeavours, these
failures, these minorities had handed on the light from one century
to another, and kept alive truth, courage, and all that is beautiful
in the heart of man. Luc felt the intense force of the stirrings in
his own bosom to be a response to these prophets, martyrs, lonely
standard-bearers who were calling him to be one of them, to come
forth from the sheltered happiness of common men and join the shadowy
multitude who had climbed and perished and left a glimmering name
behind. Life was little, yet tremendous; it was all a man had. Though
its doings, its greatest events were so small, yet some could make
marvels out of those few short years.
Millions did nothing with their lives, but all were not the same; the
oak is large compared to the cherry tree, thought Luc, and some men
can lift themselves. After the playing was over, and he was alone in
his chamber, he would put some of his thoughts on paper for want of a
better confidant--carefully concealing them, for his father considered
it degradation for a gentleman to compose a line of verse or prose.
So the winter passed, and Luc remained in Aix doing homage to custom
and family pride and family tradition and family affection. It
happened that, at Christmas, a friend came from Paris and spent a
few days with the de Clapiers; he was neither fashionable, nor of
the Court, nor any admirer of M. de Voltaire and the new school of
thought, but his speech unconsciously betrayed knowledge of a world
that was alive with energy, change, and endeavour. Luc did not speak
much with him, and never questioned him on any of those subjects on
which he was burning to be enlightened; but when the visitor had
left, Luc went to his chamber and wrote two letters, one to the
King, one to M. Amelot, Minister for Foreign Affairs, both with the
same request--that they would find him some employment for his eager
abilities.
It was an extraordinary act of courage on the part of a nature
reserved, shy, and socially timid; no one who knew him would have
credited him with it; but he made no confidant of any. When the two
letters were written, sealed, and lying ready for dispatch, Luc, with
a flush like fever in his cheek, took up the pen again and wrote a
third----
To M. de Voltaire.
A thousand hopes and questions rose in his bosom, eager for
expression; but modesty and pride together forbade that he should
put anything intimate before a stranger. He made the subject of his
letter his opinion of Corneille and Racine; he asked the judgment of
the great arbitrator of letters as to the relative merits of the two
geniuses; he expressed the criticism he had conceived on the rival
masters, and begged to know if he was right or wrong. He gave the
address of an inn he knew in Paris, and prayed that the answer might
be sent there, if M. de Voltaire deigned to answer.
He sealed this letter with more agitation than he had felt when
writing either to the King or to the Minister, and with all three in
his pocket went downstairs to post them.
When he reached the hall, he hesitated a moment, then turned into the
sombre withdrawing-room in the front. The candles had just been lit
and the curtains drawn, for, though not late, it was a wet, dreary day.
Round the hearth sat his mother, Joseph’s wife, and Clémence de Séguy;
Joseph was at the clavichord, his father on the sofa with a little
book in his hand.
The tender figures and light dresses of the women were surrounded with
soft shadows from the rosy firelight; Clémence held up a pink silk
hand-screen which cast a full glow of radiant light over her small
sweet features and pale curls.
The pretty whisper of talk was hushed as Luc entered and there was
a second’s pause, caused, though he did not guess it, by the instant
impression of extreme delicacy he made as he stood before the open
door, the candlelight full on him, and behind him the background of
the dark shadows of the hall.
He was unusually pale, and his eyes were too lustrous, too wide and
bright, too deeply shadowed for health. His dark, simple, and rather
careless dress, the plain waves of his smooth hair, accentuated the
impression he made of something uncommon, exceptional; but this sense
of difference was mainly caused by his expression, by a certain smile
and flash in his eyes, by an extraordinary sweetness in the lines of
the mouth and chin, by a proud look of motion in his carriage which
was like swiftness arrested.
His sudden silent appearance made all who gazed at him realize in a
flash his exceeding, uncommon beauty; it was as if they regarded a
stranger, they even felt afraid of him.
He, all unconscious, came to the table where his mother’s tambour
frame lay, and affectionately turned over the lengths of silks.
“How quickly you work!” he smiled.
Joseph, to conceal an unaccountable sense of confusion, commenced
playing a little old-fashioned “coranto,” which was the only piece he
knew perfectly by heart.
Clémence expressed her sense of the inexpressible in another way.
“How silent we all are!” she exclaimed, and rose.
Luc looked up instantly.
“I fear I disturbed you,” he said; she had come a few steps from the
hearth, and their eyes met.
“You look strange to-night,” murmured Clémence, as if they had been
alone.
“I have come to a resolution, that is all,” he answered quietly.
“Nothing so very momentous.” He smiled, and looked from the girl to
his father.
“Monseigneur, I have decided to go to Paris.”
The old Marquis put down his book.
“I thought you wished to remain in Aix,” he said, in a low voice.
“I cannot,” replied Luc. “Father, I must go.”
There was a note of almost entreaty in his voice, for his mother had
risen and Joseph ceased playing, and he foresaw protest and complaint;
Clémence had hung her head; all the old chains tightening about him.
“I must go,” he repeated.
“You have been away so much,” said the Marquise. “Will you not stay at
home now, Luc?”
“Madame,” he answered, “I shall return, but I must go, and soon, to
Paris.”
His father rose.
“But, dear Heaven, what chance have you in Paris?”
“I must make my own chances,” smiled Luc.
The old Marquis and Joseph both surveyed him with a certain pride. Luc
was indescribably touched to see that mingled look of satisfaction and
solicitude on their faces.
He crossed impulsively to the clavichord and the sofa, and held out
his hands, one to his father, one to his brother.
“Do not think I am eager to be gone,” he said, with a fine flush. “It
is only that I have not earned this home--yet.”
Joseph thought he referred to his fortune spent at the war, leaving
him dependent on their father, and blushed furiously.
“Luc----” he began desperately.
Their father interrupted.
“Joseph, he must go. I understand. He will be the head of the family,
and, bred a soldier, he finds this a poor life.... You shall go, Luc,
but we must see you back soon.... Your place is at Aix.”
PART II
THE QUEST SORROWFUL
“Voyez ce que fait la gloire: le tombeau ne peut l’obscurcir,
son nom règne encore sur la terre qu’elle a décorée; féconde
jusque dans les ruines et la nudité de la mort, ses exemples
la réproduisent, et elle s’accroît d’âge en âge. Cultivez-là
donc, car si vous la négligiez bientôt vous négligeriez la
vertu même, dont elle est la fleur. Ne croyez pas qu’on puisse
obtenir la vraie gloire sans la vraie vertu, ni qu’on puisse
se maintenir dans la vertu sans l’aide de la gloire.”--MARQUIS
DE VAUVENARGUES.
CHAPTER I
PARIS
Luc de Clapiers stood on the Pont Neuf gazing over the great city.
Below him curled the strong grey river that surged and swirled round
the stout central pier of the bridge; barges and boats with drab and
russet sails were passing up and down on the tide; from either bank
rose the fine tourelles, the splendid buildings, the straight houses
and tall churches of Paris.
The day was sunless, the sky heavy with loose clouds; the steady,
cheerful life of the city passed Luc in chariots, coaches, sedans, on
foot, and was absorbed into the fashionable quarters on the left and
the poorer quarters on the right.
Luc was acutely aware how complete a sense of isolation and of
loneliness this standing against the parapet of a bridge with busy
footsteps passing and never stopping gave him; all these people
were going to, or coming from, somewhere; all might be imagined as
having some definite occupation or pleasure or purpose; all might be
considered as knowing this city well, as having some claim on it, if
only the claim of familiarity, while he was a stranger with his place
still to find.
He had been in Paris a fortnight, and it was extraordinary how like
a shut door the city still seemed to him; he felt more utterly apart
from the spirit, motion, and meaning of the capital than he had ever
done when in Aix.
Inscrutable buildings portentous with locked secrets, inscrutable
river laden with boats going with unknown cargoes to unknown
destinations, inscrutable faces of rich and poor passing to and
fro, beautiful youth in a chariot flashing across the public way to
be absorbed in a narrow turning and seen no more, old age on foot
vanishing painfully in the dusk; the crowd leaving the opera, the
play, with pomp and laughter and comment; the shopkeepers behind their
counters, the idlers about the cafés, the priests, the sudden black
splendour of a funeral with candles looking strange in the daylight
and the crucifix exacting the homage of bent knees, all inscrutable
to those who held not the key of it, passing and repassing about the
river, and the Louvre and the church on the isle.
Mingled with these actual objects were the spiritual forces of which
the city was full, and which were to Luc fully as potent as the things
he saw; the air was full of an extraordinary inspiration, as if every
man who had struggled and thought and died in Paris had left some part
of his aspirations behind to enrich the city.
A wonderful gorgeous history was held in the stones of the ancient
buildings, in the holy glooms of the churches, in the crooked lines
of the famous streets; her children bloomed and faded, but the city
itself was imperishable, a thing never to be touched with decay.
No one once loving this city could ever love another so well.
Luc found the immortal charm of Paris enwrapping him with a sad power;
she was the cradle of all the glory of the Western world, the epitome
of all that man had achieved in this his last civilization; she had
seen all his passions burn themselves out and live again. But as yet
Luc was on her threshold, unadmitted, unnoticed.
None of his three letters had been answered. The truth of M. de
Biron’s advice was being proved every day: he was neither wanted nor
heeded; there was no place ready for him nor any hand held out to
welcome. Yet Luc, leaning against the heavy parapet and listening
to the steady sound of the passing footsteps, watching the deep
eddies of the water and the grey outlines of the buildings, felt no
discouragement; he measured his soul against even the mighty city, and
found it sufficient.
Last night he had walked past the hotel from which the Countess Carola
had written. There had been a festival within; all the windows were
lit, and the courtyard was blocked with carriages.
Luc had smiled to think of her dancing behind those walls--what if he
had come into her presence and asserted his claim to friendship based
on that march of horror from Prague?
He had not entered her mansion, nor did he think of waiting on her;
why he could not tell, save that all his life he had shrunk from
putting his dreams to the test of actuality: and he had dreams about
the Countess Carola, visions of her and pleasant imaginings, but no
knowledge; he did not care to alter this delicate attitude towards
the only woman who had ever interested him. No visions clouded his
remembrance of Clémence de Séguy: she stood out in his mind, clear-cut
and definite; he thought he knew her perfectly, to the bottom of her
simple soul.
She was pleasant to think on; he conjured up her picture now, rosy,
enveloped in a multitude of frills and ribbons--the grey city seemed
the greyer by contrast.
Then the mighty currents of the river swept away her picture as a
rose-leaf is swept away by a torrent, and the swish of it against
the ancient bridge beat on the heart of Luc the three words:
endeavour--achievement--fame.
The dusk was gathering, blurring the lines of the city, and a fine
rain began to fall. Luc moved from his station, and walked slowly back
to his lodgings in the fashionable Rue du Bac; his father had insisted
on his living with proper magnificence, and Luc felt his only sting of
failure when he considered the so far useless expenses.
When he entered his quiet, handsome rooms he found a letter.
His servant had been to the inn that Luc had given as his Paris
address, and had found this missive, which had been left the previous
day by a lackey whose splendour had startled the host. Luc’s heart
fluttered; he thought of the King, of M. Amelot----
When he had torn the seal, he saw it was from M. de Voltaire.
The great man wrote with charm, with generous frankness: he praised
his young correspondent’s taste, yet pointed out where it went
astray; he warmly encouraged the love of literature, the thirst for
knowledge--he hoped the Marquis would write to him again.
Luc put the letter down with a thrill of pure, intense pleasure; the
blood flushed into his cheeks and his heart beat quickly; at that
moment he felt an adoration for its writer.
He did not notice the darkening room, the rain that was falling
steadily without; he sat motionless on the stiff striped sofa forming
picture after picture of endless glory, for all his winged fancies had
been stirred into life by this encouragement.
Presently, before the room was quite dark, he wrote the following
letter to M. Amelot:--
“MONSEIGNEUR,--I am sufficiently disappointed that the
letter I have had the honour to write to you, and that which
I sent under cover to you for the King, have not attracted
your attention.
“It is not surprising, perhaps, that a Minister so
occupied should not find time to examine such letters;
but, Monseigneur, permit me to tell you that it is this
discouragement, given to those gentlemen who have nothing to
offer but their loyalty, that causes the coldness so often
remarked in the provincial nobility and extinguishes in them
all emulation for court favour.
“I have passed, Monseigneur, all my youth far from the
distractions of the world, in tasks that render me fit
for the position towards which my character impels me,
and I dare to think that a training so laborious puts me,
at least, on a level with those who have spent all their
fortune on their intrigues and their pleasures. I am well
aware, Monseigneur, that the hopes that I have founded on
my own ardour are likely to be deceived; my health will not
permit me to continue my services at the war. I have written
to M. le Duc de Biron asking him to accept my resignation,
and there remains nothing to me in my present situation but
to again put my case before you, Monseigneur, and to await
the grace of your reply. Pardon me, Monseigneur, if this
letter is not sufficiently measured in expression.--I am,
Monseigneur, your devoted servant,
“VAUVENARGUES”
This letter was written in a breath and on the instant sealed and
dispatched; the inspiration to write it had come from the few lines of
M. de Voltaire’s note. It was not a letter many would have sent to a
Minister. Luc was not versed in the method of addressing the great; he
wrote from his heart, urged on by the burning desire for action, for
achievement, for fame.
When the letter had gone he went to the window and looked out on the
steady rain and straight-fronted houses, lit with the glimmer of oil
lamps, that hid Paris from his vision.
What was the cloud, the confusion, the barrier that came between him
and the attainment of his desires? There was some key somewhere that
unlocked the door of Paris, of life--of that life which meant the
scope to exercise, to strain the energies, to put the utmost into
endeavour. Where was such a life?
For ten years Luc had been waiting--always round the corner was the
promised goal--everything had been beautiful with the glamour of
romance. But, looked at coldly, what had these ten years been but
wasted? Luc was starting fresh on another road, and seemed as far as
ever from the summit of his ambitions. Yet it could not be possible
that he was going to remain for ever obscure; he could not believe
that.
There was a little narrow balcony with a fine railing before his
window. Luc drew the curtains, opened the wet glass, and stepped out.
The air was pure and clear, the rain fresh and delicate. The long
twisted length of the Rue du Bac glistened with the reflected light
of the pools between the cobbles.
Luc thrilled to the mystery and inspiration of the silent city with
its hidden activities, to the subtle pleasure of the rain and the
lamplight. He thought--he knew not why--of the King, young, ardent,
brave, with the riches of the world rolled to his feet--the King--of
France!
Luc shivered even to imagine the glorious pride of that position. He
leant on the railing, regardless of the rain that was falling, and
looked up and down the street that was all he could see of Paris.
A sedan-chair came from the direction of the river, carried by two
bearers in plain livery; it was--though Luc did not recognize it as
such--a hired chair. It stopped at the house nearly opposite Luc. A
gentleman put his head out and said something in a low voice; the
chair moved a few doors higher up. Meanwhile from the opposite end of
the street came two other men carrying, not a sedan-chair, but a large
black coffin, on the lid of which was a shield-shaped plate that threw
off the hesitating rays of the lamplight.
Luc watched with interest; his mood was too exalted to feel any horror
at the sudden appearance of this sombre object. These little pictures
shown him by the great city attracted him strangely. The sedan-chair
had stopped; a tall gentleman had alighted and paid the bearers, who
turned back the way they had come. None of them noticed what was being
borne, shoulder high, towards them.
The sedan passed round a turn of the street out of sight, the late
occupant hesitated a second, then came back to the house exactly
opposite Luc, who stood only a few feet above him, and could observe
him perfectly in the strong beams of the powerful lamp which at this
point was swung across the street by a rope from house to house.
The gentleman was unusually tall and of an unusual grace and perfect
balance in his walk. He was wrapped in the close, elegant folds of
a fine fawn cloth cloak, and wore a black hat pulled well over his
eyes. He approached the door and, putting out a hand gloved in white
doeskin, knocked four times in succession.
At this moment the coffin-bearers, with a slow, steady, silent step,
had reached the point where he stood, and he, all unconscious,
stepped backwards and looked up at the windows of the house where he
sought admission (which were all in darkness), and in so doing ran
against the foremost man and the foot of the coffin. The street was
narrow indeed at this place, and the men, in endeavouring to avoid a
collision, made a misstep and thrust the gentleman against the wall
with the side of the coffin.
He gave a cry that Luc heard distinctly--a terrible sound of terror,
amaze, and despair--and threw up his hands, dropping the cane he
carried. The coffin-bearers recovered their balance and passed on
muttering, but the gentleman remained crouching against the wall,
staring after them, with no effort to move. His terror was so
evident and so incomprehensible that Luc held his breath to watch.
The stranger’s hat had fallen off, and his full powdered curls were
uncovered. Luc could see his breast heaving and his hands clutching
at the wet wall behind him. Presently he raised his face and flung
back his head, as if he were faint or gasping for breath. The garish
lamplight fell full on his countenance, which gave Luc a genuine start
of surprise. It was the most perfectly beautiful, the most attractive
face he had ever seen in man or woman, in painting or sculpture, or,
indeed, ever imagined. M. de Richelieu’s charm was as nothing compared
to the grandeur of this face, which seemed to hold the flower and
perfection of human loveliness even now, when the eyes were closed and
the colouring hidden by the ill-light.
The expression of the man was as remarkable as his beauty. Luc
had never seen such anguish, such fear, such utter terror on any
countenance of all the dying and dead he had ever looked on in the
war; it was a haunted look--the look a poet might conceive for a
damned soul.
After a full moment the man pulled himself together with a long
shudder and knocked again desperately. This time the door was opened
almost instantly, and he staggered into the house, leaving his cane
and hat on the cobbles.
A second after the door was opened again and a servant stepped out,
picked up the beaver and cane, retired, and softly closed the door.
The curious little incident seemed over. Luc stepped back into his
room, now in total darkness, and was about to call for candles when
the window directly opposite suddenly flashed full of crystal light.
From where Luc stood he had a complete picture of the interior of this
room where the light had appeared; it was a very luxurious apartment,
and gleamed the colour of an opal across the dusky street. But Luc’s
attention was arrested, not by the room, but by the two people within
it: one was the gentleman who had just entered the house, the other
a woman of exquisite fairness wearing a gown of white lace and grey
silk. When Luc first looked across she was holding the man by the
shoulders and gazing anxiously into his face; with a languid movement
of loathing and fear he put her hands down. An overblown white rose
fell from his cravat and scattered its petals on the polished floor
between them. The lady made a movement of considerable alarm and
distress, and the gentleman, who seemed never to look at her, cast
himself along a gilt couch, and Luc had another glimpse of his perfect
face, with the expression of almost unendurable fear and gloom, as he
raised it for a moment before hiding it in the satin cushions.
The lady, who was herself of great beauty, seemed both angry and
frightened. She retreated from the couch, then, with an obvious start,
saw the uncovered window, came across the room and impatiently lowered
the heavy velvet curtain, which, falling into place, completely shut
the rest of the little scene from Luc’s gaze.