VOLTAIRE
Luc dismissed Carola Koklinska from his thoughts as he would have
brushed a dead leaf from his coat, but he could not so easily banish
the sensation that something distasteful and sad had occurred; this
clung to him like the vague remembrance of an evil dream. His stately
lodgings seemed more lonely; the aspect of the city had something
hard, even cruel and menacing, in it; he felt farther from the
accomplishment of his desires. The usual letter from home awoke an
even deeper sense of responsibility and of yearning, the extraordinary
mingled feelings of desire for freedom from everything and desire to
fulfil his duty to the utmost towards those whom he loved and honoured.
Yet his sweet serenity lifted him above any sense of struggle; he was
like one waiting for commands.
If M. Amelot did not answer his letter within a day or two, he meant
to wait on him personally and force the issue. It must be possible
for a noble with talents and energy to obtain, without bribery or
intrigue, some honest post in politics. If, however, it was not so,
then Luc meant to violently alter his life, to in some way strike
directly for what his soul wanted, what it must have.
On the day following the pitiful little adventure with the Countess
Koklinska he again saw the graceful cavalier enter the house opposite.
This time a cloak and a low-pulled hat masked the features, but Luc
was sure of the remarkably fine and well-set figure; the stranger was,
too, just sufficiently above the ordinary stature to be conspicuous
anywhere, in any dress.
The man who waited on the chambers happened to be in the room, and Luc
remarked to him on the mysterious character of the house opposite.
He was answered that the place was commonly believed to be the
residence of one of the fortune-tellers with which Paris swarmed;
one of the houses where attempts were made to raise the Devil, to pry
into the future; where potions, charms, and maybe poisons were sold;
a place of rendezvous also for intrigues that had some reason for
concealment, or, in themselves, lacked the element of that mystery
that alone made them alluring.
Many great people, even the greatest, the man averred, would go to
these places, and take the utmost pains with their disguises--which,
however, very seldom deceived anyone, as all the world knew that
all the world went. But the mystery was the great charm, and many
adventures appeared palatable when undertaken in a cloak and mask
that would have seemed stale enough enacted in broad daylight.
“Of course,” finished the fellow, “since La Voisine was burnt in the
Place de la Grêve, they have been more careful, these people; but
nevertheless, Monseigneur, they become very bold, for they say the
King himself visits them often enough, and that everybody knows it;
and His Highness the Regent encouraged them to a great extent, though
they say he never raised the Devil.”
Luc smiled; he thought of M. de Richelieu. He wondered if such men had
_not_ raised the Devil, in very tangible form indeed, and set him up
as master over France.
So it was said that the King spent his leisure with these tawdry
prophetesses and cheap tricksters! Since he came to Paris Luc had
heard several ends of gossip about the King that, true or not, served
to a little blur his vivid picture of the young Louis he was so
ardent to serve, whom he _had_ served for ten strenuous years without
recognition or reward.
It was a frivolous age, a restless age, an age of change, of great
possibilities. France was brilliant yet corrupt, energetic yet
slothful. Paris did not dazzle so much to Luc’s near sight as it had
done to his distant gaze. Carola Koklinska became to him as a symbol
of the city--so calm, lofty, high, and bright from a distance, so
mean, dishonoured, falsely glittering near, yet with an immortal heart
concealed somewhere behind the gaudy shams.
Paris was great, was eternal, held the seed of all future thought,
was the theatre of all present action; yet her streets were thronged
by the foppish, the foolish, the ignorant, and the starving. Her
government was in the hands of men like M. de Richelieu, who in their
turn were influenced by women like Carola--greedy soldiers of fortune
who kept the point of view of the gutter from whence they came.
Luc’s heart swelled to a sense of agony--the agony of powerlessness.
All the pageant that passed by him he knew only by glimpses; he was
outside, he could do nothing--nay, worse than that, he was even
being swept along with the others, no better than they, a mere
inarticulate creature played upon by the devices of those he met. Even
M. de Richelieu, in his opulent consciencelessness, was expressing,
fulfilling himself, turning circumstances into what he wished them
to be, making his life what he wanted it; even Carola had forced the
hand of Fate to satisfy her sordid ambition; while he was baffled,
thwarted, like a thing chained.
He thought of the young man whom he had met in the pavilion at
Versailles, and whom he had just seen enter the house opposite.
He lulled his slothful soul by juggling with the poor lures of
charlatans. He could actually drive his lagging, empty days faster
by such spurs as these!
Luc had not yet conceived the task, the responsibility, the goal that
would satisfy the hunger of _his_ soul.
Ill-health, moderate means, an obscure position in the great
world--these were his disadvantages. And was it possible that the
fire of his desires could not surmount these paltry things?
Where was the secret by which men, poorer, meaner, more hampered
than he, had _forced_ glory out of their lives, had wrung greatness
out of their own souls? He sat with his elbows on the elegant ormolu
desk and his face hidden in his hands, shuddering, for his body bent
and shivered with the power of the passions that drove through it.
The damp broke out on his forehead, his heart struggled in his side,
his hands and feet were cold, his mouth dry, his closed eyes hot in
their sockets. He clenched his hands under his face till he felt the
bones of the palms with his finger-tips. Reality swung into a dazzling
darkness that pulsed before him, out of which he could force nothing
tangible but an enigma with the face of Carola. He raised his head at
last and sat back in his chair. At these moments his bodily weakness
asserted itself, and when he most wished to get beyond and above the
flesh he was reminded of it by a cold weight in all his limbs and the
heat of the blood in his temples.
He gave a little sigh, then quickly turned his head, seized with an
uncontrollable conviction that he was not alone. Yet it was with a
considerable start that he saw a slight, strange gentleman standing
inside the door keenly observing him.
Luc stared without rising; his visionary mood had scarcely cleared.
He gazed eagerly at his visitor in silence. He saw a man no longer
young, yet impossible to associate with any idea of age, dressed
richly and fashionably in brown velvet that glittered with gold braid,
erect, graceful, and of an extraordinary appearance of animation and
energy; his face, framed in a grey peruke, was so pale as to be livid;
the features were delicate, strongly cut, remarkable; there was an
upward slant to eyebrows and nostrils, and the mouth was wide, thin,
and smiling, while his brown eyes held a world of passion, power, and
force in their glance which was at once challenging, mocking, and
good-humoured.
He held an agate-handled cane and his hat under his arm. All the
appointments of his person were costly and modish; he wore patches,
jewellery, and fine ruffles.
“I have surprised you, M. le Marquis,” he observed, with a deepening
of his smile and in a voice changeful and melodious.
Luc sprang to his feet; he knew face and figure from a dozen prints,
from a hundred descriptions.
“Voltaire!” he cried.
The stranger bowed.
“I am welcome?” he asked.
“I am honoured beyond expression,” stammered Luc, with simple and
genuine self-abasement.
M. de Voltaire looked sharply at the man who had sent him such
remarkable letters, and of whom he had had such a remarkable account
from M. de Richelieu.
He was surprised to see one so young, so delicately beautiful,
so timid in manner, for Luc stood blushing like a child, and his
sensitive features expressed vast confusion. The great man seated
himself and threw back his head.
“M. de Richelieu gave me your address,” he remarked; “but I did not
wait for his company to make the acquaintance of one of whom I have
formed such a high opinion.”
“Monsieur,” answered Luc earnestly, “I fear I have been presumptuous
in forcing myself on your notice; but for the interest you have taken
in me I am passionately grateful.”
M. de Voltaire was secretly, immensely gratified. He had not climbed
from an attorney’s clerk to be a friend of kings without meeting very
severe rebuffs on the way. Even now, courted as he was, the nobles he
consorted with reminded him often enough, in covert ways, that he was
not ‘born.’ But here was a Marquis, a soldier, who sincerely bowed
down to him. He had been greatly flattered when he received Luc’s
first letter; now his vast vanity, quick to take offence, quick to
respond to admiration, was even more flattered by the young noble’s
ardent homage.
And a finer feeling than vanity moved M. de Voltaire’s great generous
heart; he thought that he saw in this frail, boyish-looking, blushing,
slightly awkward soldier a kindred soul.
On his part Luc was struggling with an overwhelming sense of humility
in being thus suddenly sought out by the man whom, of all others, he
most admired and respected.
“Oh, Monsieur!” he exclaimed, “you cannot guess how much I have hoped
to one day meet you.”
“A soldier,” smiled M. de Voltaire, “and yet you found time for
philosophy and the arts!”
Luc, who was standing like a scholar before his master, answered in
nervous haste--
“I know nothing about either, Monsieur, nothing----”
The great man interrupted.
“I gather from your letters that you are in quest of glory--therefore
you know a great deal about both. If you have the penetration to see,
M. le Marquis, that there is nothing in the world like even the dim
sparkle of glory--I, at least, can teach you nothing.”
As he spoke his eyes flashed as if a positive red fire sparkled from
them; so strong was the effect of his presence that Luc felt as if he
were being physically touched and held.
M. de Voltaire rose. He had the grand manner consciously--not
unconsciously like M. de Richelieu--yet defined from the theatrical
by his passionate genius that gave his very flourishes an air of
conviction. He stepped up to the Marquis and held out his hand.
“Monseigneur,” he said, with a large air of grandeur, “I should like
to be your friend.”
Luc clasped the thin right hand that had been so active and powerful
in the cause of truth and freedom, and tears lent a lustre to his eyes.
“Monsieur,” he answered, “I have nothing to offer one like you but my
devotion--I have had very few friends--but if you will be troubled
with me I will pledge my service to you--always.”
M. de Voltaire looked at him thoughtfully.
“You have the spirit,” he said--“yes, you have the spirit that
is to waken France and re-create her. Do you not feel it, see it
everywhere--the dawn of something better than we have ever known?”
He began walking up and down the room, as if his restless heart could
not brook his body to stand still.
“What are you going to do with your life?” he asked abruptly.
It was Carola’s demand, as Luc instantly remembered with a sense of
pain.
“I wish to fulfil myself,” he answered. “I can do that by serving
France. I am in Paris now, waiting my chance.”
M. de Voltaire paused before the high white marble chimneypiece.
“In what way are you hoping to serve France?” he asked sharply.
Luc answered with a grave enthusiasm--
“I served in the army ten years, Monsieur, and unfortunately lost my
health during the retreat from Prague. It is now my ambition to enter
politics.”
The powerful eyes of M. de Voltaire narrowed and glittered.
“You know what the politics of France are? You know what kind of a
world this Paris is?”
Luc drew a deep breath; he thought of Carola, of M. de Richelieu, of
the young suicide of Versailles.
“Monsieur,” he replied earnestly, “my life has been passed in a kind
of seclusion, I being always with the army and often abroad, and I
have had little time even for meditation, and in truth I might well be
engulfed in this great world of which I know so little, and where I
have already experienced some falls, were it not that I have certain
thoughts, ideals so fixed that I cannot conceive them altering, and so
I _must_ go on.”
“Ah!” cried M. de Voltaire softly, “you will succeed; but not in the
way you think perhaps. Politics are poor scope after all.”
“Yet you are in them, Monsieur.”
“As I was in the Bastille!” flashed M. de Voltaire, “as I have been
everything and said everything and deceived them all--all the little
dolls who dance to whatever tune is played the loudest. I have been
many characters, I have laughed at all France, and now I am--Voltaire!
And all France steps to the pace I set--therefore I know something of
kings and queens and courtiers and beggars.” He paused and smiled,
laying his hand on his heart with a quick, passionate gesture. “I have
tried most weapons,” he continued, “and the pen is the most powerful
of all. Monseigneur, you have thought, you can express yourself--use
your pen to lift yourself above the age--write--write from your soul,
never heed what you know--write what you feel!”
Luc caught his breath.
“Monsieur--do you mean that I should write and--publish?”
“Yes.”
Luc flushed. Instinct, training, tradition were too powerful for even
M. de Voltaire’s fiery urgings to move. Though he struggled against
the impression he felt as if he had been insulted; then he laughed,
and the great man before whom he had stood abashed was swept with that
laugh on to a different plane. In the next perfectly courteous words
that Luc spoke, it was the Marquis addressing the attorney’s clerk.
“But, Monsieur, I am a gentleman,” he said simply.
M. de Voltaire looked at him for a moment of silence.
“Would you rather be such as M. de Richelieu or such as I?” he asked
at last.
Luc did not see the point.
“M. de Richelieu does nothing that a gentleman may not do,” he
answered; “he does not write books.”
“No--and he has all the seven deadly sins to his credit, which, I
suppose, makes a fine patent of nobility,” remarked M. de Voltaire
slowly.
Luc flushed; he found that it was necessary to explain.
“When one is ‘born’ there are things one cannot do, Monsieur.
I could no more publish my writings than”--he hesitated for an
illustration--“than a stage player could wear a sword.”
M. de Voltaire was very pale; his whole figure trembled.
“Monsieur le Marquis!” he said in a terrible voice, “you have
ambitions, you have desires, you have your soul to satisfy, you are
searching for glory--I do not doubt that you have in fancy scaled
the highest peak of achievement--and all the while you are bound and
gagged and tied to earth because you are born a gentleman. Are not
your eyes open on the changes about you? Do you not see that we--that
I--are sweeping away God and rank and all the barriers that come
between man and man? You are young, Monsieur le Marquis; you may live
to see the day when kings are cast down and peasants are called to the
government of their country. This is the age of light and freedom;
your rank is but a clog to you--your genius might raise you to be a
light over France!”
He spoke with such force, passion, such energy of gesture and emphasis
that Luc had the sense that something new was being violently
disclosed to his view. He sank into the chair before the desk and
fixed his eyes, dark with emotion, on the extraordinary animated face
of the speaker. He had nothing to say; his own instincts, that were
until then unquestioned, taken for granted, never put into words, were
unchanged, for they were rooted almost as deeply as life itself.
“Go your way,” said M. de Voltaire more quietly--“spend your strength
for another ten years in politics as you have in war--give your
talents to the service of the superstitious young profligate who
sleeps on the throne of thrones.”
“Monsieur!” cried Luc, “do you speak of the King?”
“Of His Most Christian Majesty,” replied M. de Voltaire, “of Louis
de Bourbon, who is always on his knees to a certain Jesus Christ or a
certain Marquise de Pompadour, the lady who rules France and who is my
very good friend.”
“The King is the King,” answered Luc, reddening, “and I serve him.”
“If you have rejected their Christian God, why do you not reject their
Christian King?” demanded M. de Voltaire. “Make your court to the lady
I mention; she has great good sense. Use these things, bow down to
them, make your way through them, but do not _believe_ in them.”
“I believe in the King,” returned Luc, in a tone of great agitation.
“I must believe in him whom I have seen hundreds die for.”
“Hundreds of thousands have died for Christ,” flashed M. de
Voltaire--“do you therefore believe in Him?”
“No,” answered Luc; “but I know there is a God, and I love not to talk
of these matters. As for His Majesty--if I did not believe in him
could I serve him?”
“Serve France,” interrupted M. de Voltaire. “Put aside all prejudice,
superstition, your rank, your family, come to Paris, go into a
garret--be one of us--start as I started--be _free_, express your own
soul, write your thoughts, and laugh at the world!”
Luc looked at him with steady hazel eyes, then shook his head.
“I cannot,” he said, in firm, positive tones and with a faint smile.