PAUL BOURGET (continued 2)

"I used to call myself the emancipated gratin; if all of us were like you, I think I should very soon call myself the repentant gratin."

"What a memory!" said Charlus admiringly. "But my grandfather was always talking to me about your grandfather's memory."

"You'll give me those verses, won't you, Geoffroy?" besought Bressieux. "I am sometimes asked for mottoes to be painted on panels in hunting lodges."

"I am the repentant gratin," rejoined the marquis. "Yes, for having presumed to lecture the cleverest of Maries. My grandfather's memory? Yes, I have always been told that I resembled him. There's nothing left of the army of Condé, but for that!—You shall have the verses, Louis. Although as to the mottoes on panels—Humph! when one has a motto one keeps it. When one has none, one has none. But I must excuse myself, mademoiselle, and you, my friends. I am obliged to leave you. The carriages will take you home. I do not propose to inflict on you a long détour that I have to make before I go home. Landri will come with me. We will take the automobile, mademoiselle, and I will practise at the circuit. À tout l'heure, at the château." He had taken his son's arm and was leading him toward the motor, saluting on all sides, and addressing this one and that. "You won't forget, Travers? I rely on you for dinner this evening.—You dine at Grandchamp, Hautchemin. I will send you home.—Férussac, you dine at Grandchamp with Madame de Férussac, that's understood, isn't it? Eight o'clock. If you're late, we'll wait for you."

When they were seated in the motor, after telling the chauffeur the direction to take, he said to Landri: "We shall be more than thirty at table. I don't know just how many; fancy that! I ordered for forty, at a venture. I like that sort of thing! It's almost the open house of old times. What a generous and proud expression: open house! The men of to-day talk about the social question. But our fathers had solved it. What was a grand seigneur? A living syndicate, nothing else. Consider how many people lived on him, how many live on us! To spend freely a handsome fortune, from father to son, on the same estate, is to support a whole district for many generations. When people prate of the luxury of the nobles of the olden time, they always think of them as like Cleopatra, drinking pearls, selfishly. But that luxury was a public service! It was the fountain which monopolizes the water in order to distribute it. The fountain was overturned, and the water is dribbling away, turning to mud, and disappearing—that's the whole story!—Ah! Auguste is going wrong!" And, seizing the megaphone, he shouted: "To the left, to the left, and then the second avenue on the right. There are three oaks in a clump and a Calvary."—And turning once more to his son: "I know the forest, tree by tree, leaf by leaf, I have ridden through it so often and on such good horses. Do you remember Toby, my gray Irish horse, and how he jumped? We are going to Père Mauchaussée's."

"Our old gardener?" inquired Landri. "What has become of him?"

"He is what he always was.

But it's his son that I want to see. I made him second gardener when his father retired, do you remember? He crushed his foot last week, not on our land, but at his father's, cutting down a tree. The doctor thinks he won't be able to work any more. He is in despair. Fancy, a wife and five children! Chaffin wanted me to help him a little, and nothing more. 'We don't come within the law relating to accidents to workmen,' he said. 'I don't need their laws to tell me what my duty is,' I replied. 'He shall be paid his wages in full, as long as he lives, like his father.'—I am a socialist, you know, in the old way. It was different from the new way in this, that the poor received the money of the rich directly, whereas to-day the politicians keep it all. It's very up-to-date, as our young friend Marie de Charlus says. What do you think of her? She is charming, isn't she?"

"Charming," Landri replied; "but I am surprised that she pleases you, with such ideas as she has."

"As she thinks she has," the marquis corrected him. "That will pass off. It's the impulse of youth. What will not pass off, is the old stock. She has it to the tips of her fingers and toes. Did you look at her? Ah! she's a genuine Charlus, and signed! Do you know what I said to myself when I saw her on horseback to-day?—And how beautifully she rides!—That she would make the sweetest little Comtesse de Claviers-Grandchamp.—And do you know this too? That it depends on you alone? But it does. Tell me if it doesn't begin like a chapter in a novel? A year ago she was twenty years old. She was sought in marriage—by the little Duc de Lautrec, if you please. She refused. Parents astounded. She was so young, they left her in peace. Six months ago, another offer, from Prince de la Tour Enguerrand, the widower. Another refusal. A month ago, Lautrec comes forward again. She refuses again. Then follows an explanation with the mother. Who would have thought that the 'emancipated gratin,' as she calls herself, that girl who puts on so many twentieth-century airs, is still governed by sentiment after the old style—the only style, on my word, that is always good and always young! 'I will marry Monsieur de Claviers,' she said, 'or I will die an old maid.'"

"That is impossible," interposed the young man; "we just speak to each other at a ball two or three times in a winter."

"You are too modest, monsieur my son," rejoined the marquis. "It seems that two or three times have sufficed.—In a word, stupefaction of the mother; stupefaction of the father. They tell the story to Madame de Bec-Crespin, their cousin, who tells it to her mother, Madame de Contay, who tells it to Jaubourg, who tells it to me; and as such a daughter-in-law would suit me marvellously, and as I have a horror of beating about the bush, I invited them all three, mother, father and daughter, and I sent for you. The mother sent her excuses. She's a little put out; she won't see you. She knows you, plant and root, I venture to say.—Ah! everything is there: wit, spirit, charm,—I don't say great beauty, but what a figure, and what eyes! A hundred thousand francs a year at this moment, of her own, if you please, left her by her uncle Prosny. Later, three hundred thousand more. And such relations! No more mésalliances in that family than in ours. One of those superb trees that resemble a noble action continued for seven hundred years: all the younger sons officers, bishops or knights of Malta; all the unmarried daughters nuns, abbesses or prioresses; twenty of the name killed in foreign wars. I have not often annoyed you with suggestions of marriage, my boy. Your dear mother would have known so well how to choose a wife for you! I waited a while for you to open your heart to me. But you are approaching thirty. I am sixty-five. Your three brothers are dead. I have no one but you to keep up the family. I should like not to go away before I have put in the saddle a Geoffroy IX of Claviers-Grandchamp. You are Landri X. We must look to it that the Geoffroys overtake the Landris. Well! what do you say?"

"I say, father," Landri replied, "that I came to Grandchamp to-day, myself, with the purpose of speaking to you about a project of marriage—a different one," he added.

"With some one whom I know?" inquired the marquis.

"No, father, a young woman of twenty-seven, the widow of one of my fellow officers in the regiment, who has a child, and no fortune, or very little. It's a far cry from the marriage-portion of Mademoiselle de Charlus. But I love her passionately, and have for more than three years."

"Another chapter of a novel," said M. de Claviers, still without losing his good-humour. "This does not displease me. I will not deny that I have been just a little disgusted with you. I was afraid that you had some wretched liaison in your life. You have a real love. That's a different matter. I love to have people love, you see—love long and dearly and faithfully. No fortune?" He repeated, "No fortune? My dear boy, how I would like to be able to say to you: 'Don't let that disturb you!'" A cloud had passed over his face, which was as transparent as the blue sky of that waning afternoon, stretching above his beloved forest, all turned to gold by the autumn.—"This is not the time to discuss that question, which I have wanted to talk to you about for a long while. We have many charges on the estate. If it still produced what it did once, we could extricate ourselves more easily—and, perhaps, if I had known better how to handle our interests. Consider that there have been two generations over which this outrageous Civil Code has passed, with its compulsory partitions, which are grinding France to powder. Of the income of a million which your great-grandmother saved during the Revolution by not emigrating, and demanding her pretended divorce, how much have I had? Three hundred thousand francs a year, and, in addition, all the burdens of the old days! I say again, this is not the time to talk about it.—For three years?" he added, after a pause. "Who is it? What is her name?"

"Madame Olier," replied the young man.

"Ah!" exclaimed the father, "and she was born—?"

"Mademoiselle Barral."

"Olier?—Barral?—Why, in that case, she is not a person of your own rank? Answer me frankly, my boy. I am your father, the head of your family. You owe it to me. You are her lover? You have a misstep to repair? The child is yours?"

"No, father, I give you my word of honor. Twice in my life I have told her that I loved her. Once when her husband was alive. She refused to see me again except on my promise that I would never speak to her again of my sentiments. The second time was to-day. That was the reason of my being late."

M. de Claviers had listened to this confession with contracted brow and lips tightly closed. His blue eyes took on that sombre hue which his son knew too well. It indicated the clash of profound emotions in that violent temperament. There was between the two men a further pause coincident with the stopping of the motor before the Mauchaussées' house, a dainty structure which the châtelain of Grandchamp placed at the disposal of his former retainer, without rent. The curtains at the windows and the thread of smoke issuing from the chimney bore witness to the physical well-being of these vassals of his charity. He had, however, the countenance of a magistrate rather than an alms-giver as he alighted from the automobile, without speaking to his son, who did not follow him.

The ten minutes which his father passed in the little house seemed immeasurably long to Landri. To be sure he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his heart: the first part of his confession was made, the part that had seemed to him the most formidable to put in words. It touched such a sensitive spot in his heart! Would he have the courage to make the second part, and to inflict another blow upon that man, whom he felt once more to be so impassioned, so loving and so impetuous? By what sort of an explosion would the wrath vent itself, with which he had seen that powerful brow suddenly overcast? Other questions arose in his mind: why had the marquis, whose repugnance for financial affairs was so intense, spoken with such detail of the wealth of the Charluses, and of his own with that reserve laden with hidden meaning? Landri was too unselfish to think of his own future and of the possible diminution of his inheritance. He knew that his father was very wealthy, and he had never wondered at a lavish expenditure which the marquis had seemed always able to support. He had never even asked for his own property after the guardianship accounts were once settled. The marquis gave him an allowance which represented the fifteen hundred thousand francs he had inherited from his mother. Did this enigmatic plaint mean that the grand seigneur would be compelled eventually to reduce an establishment which was as necessary to him as breathing and moving? At the same time that he revolved this question in his mind without putting it to himself so plainly, the young man was thinking of the negotiator of the Charlus marriage.

"What an idea of Jaubourg's to meddle again in my affairs! It's just as it was before about Saint-Cyr. He has never shown anything but antipathy to me, and he is always putting himself between my father and me. That is why he wanted them to send me up to him.—But the door is opening—I must prepare to sustain the assault!—Courage! it's for Valentine."

The charming image passed before his mind. It was exorcised instantly by a chorus of voices saying in the accent of the countryside: "Bonjour, Monsieur le Comte. Is everything right with you. Monsieur le Comte?"—It was the five Mauchaussée children, their mother, grandmother and grandfather, whom the marquis was driving before him toward his son. The wondering, laughing eyes of the little boys and girls, the timid and humble bearing of the two women, the jovial bloated face of the drunkard, supplied a comic illustration of the speech with which M. de Claviers presented them to their future patron.

"Do you recognize them?" he said. "The little monkeys are growing. They are pushing us aside, Mauchaussée, and you too, Madame Martine. Soon they'll be pushing you too, Landri, but you have the time. Come, children, shout, 'Vive Monsieur le Comte!'"

"Vive Monsieur le Comte!" chirped the five children.

"And vive Monsieur le Marquis!" exclaimed Mauchaussée. It was amid acclamations as paradoxical, in the year 1906, as the existence of M. de Claviers himself, that the automobile resumed its journey.

"To the château," he said to Auguste. Then, taking his son's hand and pressing it: "That is why you cannot make the marriage of which you spoke to me just now. It is because of the Mauchaussées and their like,—and they are legion,—who live on us, on the house of Claviers-Grandchamp; for there is a house of Claviers-Grandchamp. Surely you cannot wish to assist in destroying it. When one demolishes a roof, one destroys all the nests in that roof. When one cuts the trunk of one of these trees, all the branches die. Our family, as I told you just now, is like that of the Charluses. Not a mésalliance since 1260. One can count them on one's fingers, such lineages as that. You will not demean yourself."

"Is it demeaning myself," demanded Landri impatiently, "to bring you as your daughter-in-law a woman of irreproachable character, whom I love profoundly and who loves me,—pretty, refined and intelligent? One demeans one's self by lacking a sense of honor. Does it show such a lack to marry according to one's heart, without regard to money, without any secret prompting of ambition? In what way would Madame Olier, having become Comtesse de Claviers-Grandchamp, embarrass the Mauchaussées and all this generous task of supporting traditionary dependents, which forms one of the moral appanages of great families and a raison d'être of the nobility, I fully agree with you;—in what way?"

"In this,—that she is Madame Olier, born Barral, simply; that her child has Olier uncles and aunts and Olier cousins, and she has Barral cousins, perhaps brother and sisters,—a whole social circle. That circle, by marrying her, you make akin to us. That family you ally with ours. You ally it! Dig into that word, so profound in its significance, like all those in which the language simply translates instinctively the experience of ages. That means that between the Oliers, the Barrals, and the Claviers-Grandchamps, you establish a bond of fellowship, that all those existences are bound together.—I will suggest but one question to you: tell the Mauchaussées that Madame de Claviers' cousin keeps a shop, for instance, that he is like one of their own relations. Do you think that Madame de Claviers will retain the same prestige in their eyes? And let us assume that there are no Oliers, no Barrals in this case,—do you think that our kinsfolk, the Candales, the Vardes, the Nançays, the Tillières, in France, and all the others, and the Ardrahans in Scotland, the Gorkas in Poland, and the Stenos in Italy, will be altogether the same to your wife as if she were a Charlus? So that our family unity will be impaired. You will have diminished the importance of the house of Claviers, without failing in honor—that goes without saying. But, do you see, a name like ours is honor with something more."

"Or less," retorted Landri. "Why, yes," he insisted, as his father recoiled in amazement, "less life, life, to which all men have a right, but not I. No right to individual happiness,—you just told me so. No right to individual action. How much it cost you to allow me even to enter the army! What else is there for us to do? Defend tombs? You have the strength for that, but I haven't."

He had never said so much concerning his secret thoughts. It had been too painful to him to hear from the marquis's lips the same objections, in almost the same words, as from Valentine's. He had felt too strongly their implacable and brutal truth. The pain had been all the keener. He had no sooner uttered that cry of rebellion, than he had a passionate reflux of emotion toward his father. He took his hand, saying: "Forgive me!" while M. de Claviers returned the pressure, and answered in an affectionate voice, but so firm, so virile,—the voice of a man who, having reached the evening of his days, girds up his loins and declares that he has not gone astray in his faith.

"Forgive you, and for what, my poor boy? For loving, and for feeling an impulse of rebellion of your whole heart before an obstacle in which all boys of your age, and even of your class, would see to-day, as you do, only a prejudice? For being young, and for having this longing to employ your energy to some purpose, which you cheat by playing at soldiering,—for it is only a game and you know it perfectly well? Suppose that to-morrow the people who rule us order you to execute one of their infamous jobs, the burglarizing of a church, what shall you do?"

As he uttered these words, which by their unconscious divination proved how much he thought about his son, the marquis was looking at his idea. He did not notice the young man's sudden start. On the latter's lips was an exclamation which he did not utter. He listened to the words in which his father continued, with an interest all the more intense, because M. de Claviers was not in the habit of discussing his convictions. He asserted them by his mere presence. Doubtless his affection for Landri warned him that that was a fateful moment, such as most frequently occurs unexpectedly, in the relations of a father and son, when a word misunderstood may lead to tragic dissensions; and as if he were determined to justify in advance the sternness of his veto by arguments impossible of refutation even by him who was destined to be their victim, he explained himself, he confessed himself, or, better still, he thought aloud:—

"Do you think that I have not gone through such rebellions? Do you think that I, too, when my father spoke to me as I am speaking to you, did not ask myself if he were not a man of another century, who did not understand his epoch and who wished to involve me in his error? Do you think that I was not attracted by action, by actions of all sorts, by war, diplomacy, the tribune? that I never heard the voice of the tempter whispering: 'One does not serve the government, one serves France?' How many of my friends listened to that voice! I do not judge them. I could not do it, and I do not repent. This is why. Listen. What I am going to say will seem to you a long way from the starting-point of our conversation. But I do not lose sight of it.—No, I could not do it, because by dint of studying her, I realized that this France, offspring of the Revolution, had other workmen than me to employ, in its barracks, its public offices, its assemblies, and that we were very little able to serve her elsewhere. You have told me sometimes that I had the heart of an 'émigré.' It is true. But who saved France from dismemberment in 1815, if not the 'émigrés,' and Louis XVIII, first of all. Had there been no 'émigrés,' had not the King, supported by that handful of loyal subjects, made himself felt during twenty years in the councils of the coalition, the country would have been partitioned. What did they preserve for it, for that country which was so cruelly hostile to them?—A principle. Who will measure the strength of principles, of social truths, maintained by a group of men, by a single man sometimes, if he is called the King? Ah, well! the disease of France, offspring of the Revolution, does not lie in facts, nor in men, but in lack of principles, or in false principles, which is worse. I am not unjust to her, to this France I speak of. She has worked hard during these hundred years. She is working hard. And what endurance, what a sturdy will, what impetuosity! With all these is she bankrupt in all her aspirations—yes or no? Yes or no, does this country hold in Europe an inferior place to that she held in the worst days of the old monarchy? She is no older than England, however, her great rival in the Middle Ages! Has she progressed in social tranquillity? Has she found stability, that test of all political doctrines, as the regular beating of the pulse is the test of health? The fact is that the Revolution tried to base society on the individual, and that nature insists that it be based on the family. When I understood that great law, I understood the nobility. I understood then that our prejudices were profound social truths, elaborated by that result of experience during long ages which is called custom, and transformed into instinct. It is a profound social truth that there is no increase in the strength of a country unless the efforts of successive generations are combined, unless the living consider themselves as enjoying the usufruct only, between their dead and their descendants. But that is the law of primogeniture and entails! Another profound social truth: families must be deeply rooted in order to endure; they must have territorial interests, they must be amalgamated with the soil. But that means patrimonial domains, which are left undivided that they may not be sold!—Another profound social truth: there must be diverse environments, in order that there may be morals, and there are no environments unless there are classes, and distinct classes. But that means the three estates! Another profound social truth: every individual is simply the sum of those who have preceded him, a single moment in a long lineage. By marrying him to another individual at the same stage of development of her family, there is the chance of obtaining a superior creature, of solidifying acquired characteristics. But that means race!—All these truths the old France put in practice, and they were incarnate in the great Houses! The great Houses! On the instant that I realized their importance and that they were a working-out of the very laws of the family, the rôle of the noble in the presence of the Revolution was made clear to me: to maintain his House first of all. If we had all acted on that theory, what a reserve force France would have had for the hour of the inevitable crisis! However, there are still enough of us who fulfilled that duty, each as he could, especially in the provinces, and in that sturdy rural aristocracy which you will find in existence to-day, as in '71. But, even if I were alone of my kind, I should be no less assured of my duty. If we are fated never to be wanted again, let us at least make a noble end. Decenter mori. An aristocrat should either remain an aristocrat or die. I have remained one. The misfortunes of the time have not allowed me to add a page to the history of the Claviers-Grandchamps, but I have written that history, and I have maintained our house in its place. I have sounded the splendor of the name, as our ancestors said. What more can I say, Landri? Your father has continued his father, who had continued his. They all ask you by my mouth: 'Will you continue us?'"

"I revere you and love you," replied the young man; and it was true that that profession of faith, pronounced by the old nobleman among the trees of the hereditary domain, assumed an almost painful grandeur. After an interval of a hundred years the Claviers-Grandchamp of Condé's army expressed his thoughts by the mouth of his grandson with that self-consciousness which is one of the characteristics of the thoroughbred. He realized that, before they disappear, the social species like the animal species spend their last vigor in producing most perfect types in which all the excellences of all that have gone before are consummated. Once more Landri had a realizing sense of the superiority of that man who, for lack of a suitable environment, had spent his long life in attitudinizing, and for motives so profound, so blended with the most generous idealism! He was too intelligent not to understand the bearing of the lofty philosophy amassed by M. de Claviers in his solemn harangue. In spite of himself, as was so often the case, his mind acquiesced in ideas which, none the less, he did not choose to accept. In what utter solitude they had confined his father! His heart, too, rebelled against it. "The profound social truths," as the marquis had said, are but cold friends of mature years. A lover of less than thirty will always sacrifice them to a glance from two bright blue eyes, to a reflection of the light upon golden hair. Images of that sort were still floating before Landri's eyes; they gave him strength to argue with his father.

"But in that old France, which you claim to continue, the classes intermingled, and by marriages, too. Colbert's daughter was a duchess, Monsieur de Mesmes' daughter a duchess, Gilles Ruellan's daughter a duchess, and Colbert's father was a draper, Monsieur de Mesmes' father a peasant of Mont-de-Marsan, and Gilles Ruellan had been a carter."

"That is true," rejoined M. de Claviers. "But in those days France was sound. She was like those strong constitutions which can safely indulge in deviations from a regular diet. The great houses were not attacked. The great social truths which their existence alone represents to-day did not need to be defended in every detail. There is not enough 'irreconcilability' in our time, even among us, for me to renounce mine. I admired nothing so much in my youth as the attitude of the Comte de Chambord, when he carried his white banner,—and how many understood it, even among our friends? No, Landri, one does not compromise in the defence of a vanquished principle. One can never defend it too vigorously."

"Then, if I should come some day to ask your consent—" the young man queried, with a tremor.

"To marry Madame Olier? I shall refuse to give it."

"And if I should do without it?" he ventured to say.

"You will not do without it. She is the one, do you hear, she is the one who will not allow it. I know you, my Landri," continued the father, in an affectionate tone in striking contrast to the evident inflexibility of his decision. "For you to love this woman so dearly, she must be very pure and of a very delicate sense of honor. It was she who insisted that you should speak to me before she gave you her answer, was it not? Such a woman will never consent to marry you against your father's declared wish. If she were not magnanimous and high-minded to that degree, you would not love her."

"And if it were so, you would not be touched?"

"There is no question here of my emotions, my son, nor of yours. It is a question of our name. Military heroism is not the only sort. There is a family heroism. As a soldier, you would consider it a perfectly natural thing to sacrifice your life. A man of a certain name should consider it natural to sacrifice his happiness. But is there really so much at stake? It is a crisis, and it will pass away. In any event," he added, in a tone of affectionate banter, "you haven't asked for my consent. So that I have not refused it. We have talked about plans, probabilities, supposititious cases—nothing more. All the same, be agreeable to Marie de Charlus this evening. Don't be too angry with her for having distinguished you, as our grandmothers used so prettily to say. And now let us enjoy what my grandmother left us. Here we are out of the forest and in the park. If the fearless woman had not stayed here, during the Terror, everything would have been cut down, devastated, burned, pillaged. I never return to Grandchamp without giving her a thought."

He ceased to speak, and his blue eyes were filled with pious veneration as he looked at the château, a sedate and grandiose structure in Mansart's very earliest manner. In the eighteenth century a Claviers-Grandchamp, to whom a friend, in gratitude for a service rendered him, had bequeathed a fortune made in the Compagnie des Indes, had reconstructed it inside without touching the façade. In front lay an immense garden à la française. Twelve gardeners were required to keep up this marvel, laid out in flower-beds, ponds and tree-lined paths, with many bronze groups about the ponds, and stone statues in the paths. In that closing hour of a lovely day, in that atmosphere now so delicately tinged with gray, the garden was a beautiful sight. Like those of Versailles, and of the whole seventeenth century, it bore the physiognomy of nature respected in its strength and at the same time guided, regulated and harmonized in its expansions. It was in truth visible "order," the order of the society of olden time whence the Claviers-Grandchamps had sprung. The trees, which were still vigorous, but pruned and trimmed, did not put forth their leaves until they had been disciplined.

At the close of this conversation, Landri's wounded sensibility found a symbol of his destiny in the aspect of that garden. He, too, like those trees, bore witness to the effects of discipline. No more than they could he develop freely. He should never marry Valentine,—M. de Claviers reasoned too justly. She would never enter a noble family without the consent of its head. The allusion made by the far-sighted and implacable marquis to the possibilities of his military career, finished freezing his heart. What should he do, in either case? The tree in the hedge which pushes its branches beyond the line fixed by the gardener destroys the fine ensemble, and it will never bloom. It retains the marks of the hatchet that pruned it. In the hedge they added to its beauty. They are a mutilation when it stands by itself. Such is the fate of the member of a caste who cuts loose from it and essays to live for himself. But nobility, great houses, caste, mésalliances,—were not all these ideas a mere phantasmagoria, a superstition, the imaginary residuum of an abolished reality, an absurd anachronism in the France of to-day?—Away from his father the son would have answered yes. He could not do it at that moment, in that carriage where he could hear the slightest movement and the very breathing of that man, so intensely alive, who imparted to his beliefs that ardent flame of his individual life which gave them their inspiration. The prestige of his father's presence acted anew upon Landri, with such force that he could not even blame the paternal determination, against which he would rebel to-morrow, but at a distance,—and he fell into a fit of melancholy which M. de Claviers finally observed. With his temperament the "Émigré" was most worthy to utter the words of Don Diego, savage and sublime in his dauntless manliness:—

He had almost quoted it in characterizing his son's passion as a mere passing crisis, and once more there was a world of compassion, a world of affection in the tone in which he renewed the conversation, in order to divert his mind from his thoughts:—

"Can you imagine the existence of that woman here, under the Terror? You know that a denunciation against her was the cause of the proposal of that villain Roland, in a committee of the Legislative Assembly, in November, '92, that the decree of the 20th of September should be suspended so far as the wives of 'émigrés' were concerned. If it had not been for the procureur-syndic de Thury, a former gardener of ours, her being legally divorced would have availed her nothing, they would have taken everything from her, and her life with the rest. She never ceased to correspond with her husband. She went twice to see him, and she received him here three times. One shudders to think of those interviews! But what courage! What heroism, to repeat my former word! It was of us that she was thinking, she was determined to defend the inheritance, the House. With her jewels she might have passed all those years happily in Germany or in England, and she died, worn out with grief, in 1804. From veneration for her memory, my grandfather would never allow anything to be changed inside the château, nor my father, nor I. Nothing, nothing, nothing. When I am no longer here, I authorize you to have the telephone put in, as you are more up-to-date than your old father," he concluded, laughingly, "but that's all!—Ah! there's the worthy Bressieux conspiring with Chaffin again. They are far greater changes that he has in his head than the installation of a telephone. It seems that certain details are not in style, and thereupon Monsieur Chaffin comes and bores me with dissertations on door-knobs and tiles at the back of the fireplace, and shutter-fastenings, which Bressieux has taught him. Nothing, nothing, nothing! I will change nothing. I don't know where I have read that line of an English poet, 'The Siren loves the sea, and I the past.'—Come, come, Bressieux!" he cried in his strong, resonant voice through the window of the automobile, "don't spoil Chaffin for me altogether. He will end by refusing to live at Grandchamp any longer, because it's not pure enough."

Louis de Bressieux was in fact standing at an angle of the château, intently considering—so it seemed, at all events—the detail of the decoration of a window on the ground floor. He had not yet changed his hunting costume, and the visor of his velvet cap concealed his eyes. Beside him stood a man of small stature, thick-set, with hair once red, now turning gray,—one of those men whose crabbed countenance leads one at a glance to judge them to be very frank and downright. His gleaming eyes, shifting and impenetrable, indicated that he concealed many complexities behind the rough bonhomie of his manners. He was Landri's former tutor, promoted twelve years before to the rank of general factotum, which was not likely to be a sinecure with the very large income of the Marquis de Claviers, and his expenditures, which, alas! were much larger. He called him, it will be remembered, "my good Chaffin," as he said "my good Jaubourg," and "the worthy Bressieux." A learned connoisseur of human nature has said: "He who does not make up his mind to be a dupe will never be magnanimous"; and the admirable Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp was truly magnanimous. How surprised he would have been if, at the moment when he called to Bressieux, one of those modern machines—the objects of his half-sincere, half-simulated aversion—had been at hand to record and transmit to him the conversation which his sudden arrival had interrupted!

"The affair must be settled within ten days, at the latest," Bressieux was saying. "The two American dealers are to sail December eighth. I know them. They won't postpone their sailing. They want to carry the tapestries with them. If the thing drags, they'll back out. The other dealers haven't the means to make up the whole amount. In that case it's a public sale, with all its risks. Everybody will know that the marquis is embarrassed. You won't find the four millions. It's in his interest that I speak to you."

"And it's his interest that I have in mind, no less," replied Chaffin. "Four millions? The debts would be paid,—the largest ones,—and perhaps he would consent to cut down his establishment. But he won't allow me to mention the subject. I didn't dare even to show him the summonses last week. He refuses to acknowledge, what he is well aware of, however, that he is ruined. The idea that I, who know how attached he is to this whole château,—he wouldn't let so much as a cup be sold,—should suggest to him to sell everything at one stroke, tapestries, furniture, portraits!"

"But is he absolutely driven to such a sale, or is he not?"

"He is."

"Has he any way whatever of escaping it?"

"He has not, unless millions should fall from the sky."

"Or a friend, Jaubourg, for example, should leave him his fortune?" insinuated Bressieux.

"He would leave it to Monsieur le Comte Landri," said Chaffin hastily, "who would not accept it." He continued, after a pause during which the two men avoided looking at each other, like people who know a thing, know that they know it, and do not choose to admit it: "Oh, well! it's through Monsieur le Comte Landri that I will act. I owe it to him, to him as well, that his fortune shall not be swallowed up in the pit. I will tell him the truth, and that this offer to purchase all the treasures of the château in a lump is an unhoped-for piece of luck, the only way of gaining time. It will be enough for him to revoke the general power of attorney that he gave his father, and to demand his principal. Monsieur le Marquis cannot give it to him. To avoid undergoing that humiliation before his son, he will give way.—But I hear his voice. This very evening I will speak to Landri. You shall have his answer at once."

And they went forward together to meet the motor from which M. de Claviers and Landri were alighting. The two confederates had not uttered a word which placed them at each other's mercy, and yet the real basis of this interview was one of those villainous piratical "deals" of which the international traffic in antiquities has made more than one of late years in France and elsewhere, involving the relics of historic fortunes. The "good Chaffin" was simply an unfaithful steward who had wallowed at his ease for ten or twelve years in the careless prodigality of his lord, and he was preparing to retire, pocketing a handsome percentage of a sum offered by a syndicate of dealers in curios for the treasures preserved intact at Grandchamp by the heroism of the grandmother. Louis de Bressieux, for his part, had got wind of the dealings of the wicked servitor with the second-hand trade, and had succeeded in assuring himself a broker's commission by interesting in the affair the two most famous American dealers in antiquities. It was quite true that such a sale, effected at that moment, might save the rest of the property, and that pretext was the ostensible cloak of a transaction which the two managers of the unclean intrigue were craftily carrying forward, unknown to the alleged beneficiary thereof. This silence convicted them. Such is the commanding prestige of a certain quality in man, that the felonious manager and the profit-sharing friend felt a vague remorse that embarrassed them with respect to each other when the marquis said to them with a cordial, loyal laugh:—

"It's of no use for you to try to debauch me, Chaffin and Bressieux. While I live, nothing in the château shall be touched; when I am dead, I hope that it will be the same," he added, laying his hand on his son's shoulder.

III THE TRAGIC UNDERSIDE OF A GRAND EXISTENCE

"Nothing in the château shall be touched!" repeated Chaffin half an hour later. He was climbing the grand staircase on his way to the apartment that Landri occupied when he came to Grandchamp,—the apartment of the eldest son. It was twelve years already since the last-born, become the only son, had been installed therein.—"Everything shall be touched, monsieur le marquis!" And the disloyal steward's face expressed the hatred that wicked servants feel for their betrayed masters while he looked at the Beauvais panels on the walls, one of the glories of the château, the complete set of tapestries representing Chinese scenes after Fontenay, Vernensaal and Dumont. Princes, in rich Asiatic costumes, were seated on Persian carpets. Princesses, arrayed in white stuffs embellished with precious stones, rode in palanquins. Servants carried parasols. Negro boys offered fruits under canopies enwreathed with foliage.

It was long, long ago that Chaffin had first climbed those stairs and marvelled, with the stupefaction of a petty bourgeois suddenly transported into a scene of fashionable life, at all that magnificence befitting the "Thousand and One Nights!" He was then a poor professor, unattached, married, with a family of children. He had just been introduced into the château by the chaplain, as tutor to the youngest son. The priest, who had educated the older sons, was too old to undertake another task of the sort. He dreaded the presence of another ecclesiastic. Being instructed by the marquis to find some one, he remembered an instructor whom he had met in a religious boarding-school in Paris. He, on being appealed to, suggested his colleague Chaffin.

In consenting, as he had done, to entrust Landri's education to a chance tutor, M. de Claviers had conformed once more to the classic type of the Grand Seigneur. One is amazed at the extraordinary facility with which, in all times, people who bear the greatest names abandon their children to uncertain influences. Even princes are no more painstaking in this respect. A youth upon whom the future of an empire depends will sometimes have been educated by a withered fruit of the University, comparable for refinement to the Regent's Dubois! Luckily for Landri, Chaffin still had, at that time, the habits of a father of a family, if not genuine virtues. Married and having children of his own, his guaranties of honorable conduct were real. But, as he had passed his fortieth year without succeeding in anything, he was already embittered and very near looking upon humble toilers of his own sort as social dupes. The atmosphere of great luxury, which he had entered thus without preparation, spoiled him. It was agreed that he should live with his pupil. This arrangement, separating him from his home and his former life, had made him helpless against his new environment. Thereupon Chaffin had undergone the secret, gradual process of corruption inevitably forced upon the poor plebeian, when he is essentially vulgar, by the discovery of the hidden immoralities of the nobly born and the wealthy. It is a genuine apprenticeship in depravity, is this official pessimism, compounded of secret envy and mean espionage.

When the marquis—his son's education being completed—had offered him the post of secretary-manager, Chaffin was ripe for the rôle of intendant "after the old manner." M. de Claviers' expression is only too appropriate here. This appointment was for the châtelain of Grandchamp an heroic resolution: tired of the constant waste, he had determined to administer his fortune himself. That is generally the moment at which, with persons of his rank, the final ruin begins. After three months the so-called secretary settled the accounts alone, and before the end of the first year the peculations had begun. They had multiplied from settling-day to settling-day, to reach their climax in the detestable conspiracy already mentioned, which a group of usurious dealers in curios was about to execute upon the treasures of Grandchamp, with his assistance.

By what steps had the conscience of the former professor descended to that degree of dishonesty? The change in his features during the last years told the story. The arrogant unrest of the thief, always on the brink of detection, distorted his face, sharpened his eyes, imparted uncertainty to his movements. But we cease to look at the persons whom we see every day. The marquis had not observed those tell-tale indications, nor had Landri. Moreover, the moment that the knave was in their presence, he kept watch upon himself with a circumspection that became more rigid as his villainies multiplied. So it was, that, when he had reached the top of the staircase and stood before the door behind which he knew that he should find the young man, he did not knock until he had paused a moment, long enough to compose his features; and when he entered, upon the response from within to his knock, the harsh and sneering cynic had disappeared. There was only the humble and faithful retainer of the family, deeply moved but self-restrained, upon whom his devotion enjoins the most painful of measures. He hesitates no longer. His secret chokes him. He must cry out. This rôle was all the easier to maintain under the circumstances because Chaffin was hardly going to lie. His plan, formidable in its very simplicity, by which he expected to ensure himself for all time against any suspicion of complicity, consisted in setting before the marquis's heir the true situation of the house of Claviers-Grandchamp in the year of grace 1906. He proposed to be silent only concerning his own peculations and his understanding with the leaders of the final assault.

"What is it, my good Chaffin?" inquired the young man. To receive his visitor, he had risen from the lounging chair in which he had passed some terrible moments, since he had left his father, in going over again and again the details, so cruel to him, of their conversation. "What has happened? You frighten me."

At sight of his former tutor's discomposed countenance the thought of an accident suddenly flashed through his mind—that the marquis had had a stroke.

"No, nothing has happened," replied Chaffin, "nothing as yet! But I cannot bear to be silent any longer. If you had not come to Grandchamp to-day, I should have gone to Saint-Mihiel. Things cannot go on so. I should go mad. I should kill myself.—Landri, Monsieur de Claviers won't let me speak to him. I have the title of secretary, which means that I am the manager of the property. Well! if things go on as they are going, Landri, I shall be manager of nothing. There will be no property, do you hear, no property, nothing, nothing—"

"You say that my father won't let you speak to him," Landri interrupted. "You surprise me beyond measure. He is giving much thought himself to the situation of affairs. He complained to me to-day of the heaviness of his burdens. Come, calm yourself, my dear master;" and he added these words, so absolute was his confidence in that man who represented to him his early youth: "Your affection for us makes very trivial difficulties seem tragic, I am sure. Tell me what they are."

"I will give you the figures," rejoined Chaffin simply, "and you can judge whether I exaggerate. Do you know how much Monsieur le Marquis owes on his real estate—Grandchamp, the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, your houses in Plaine Monceau, and the villas at Cabourg—all told? Two million five hundred and fifty thousand francs, divided as follows: seventeen hundred and fifty thousand francs to the Credit Foncier, and eight hundred thousand to another creditor. We have on this account more than a hundred and fifty thousand francs of interest a year to pay, before any other outlay."

"If it were anybody else but you I should think that I was dreaming," said Landri, after a pause. He repeated: "Two million five hundred and fifty thousand francs? And my father has an income of more than four hundred thousand! Is it possible? He doesn't gamble. His life is beyond reproach. He has no racing stable. Where has all that money gone?"

"You shall know in a moment," replied the implacable Chaffin. "First let us finish with the debts. There are others. Besides the mortgages there are the unsecured notes. Under this head he owes more than two millions more,—I mean for sums borrowed on his signature. I say nothing of overdue accounts with tradespeople, wages in arrears, and all the rest. That's another million perhaps, but it's a floating debt with which I deal as best I can. It's a daily battle. I fight it and win it! With these negotiable notes, I can do nothing. Look you, Landri. When I have told you everything you will share my desperation. The two millions, as you can imagine, are not a single debt. There are ten, fifteen, twenty different debts. There were, I should say. For to-day—But let me go into details. You are going to learn how these debts have reached such fantastic figures by the brutal piling-up of interest, very simply, and why I used the past tense. There was, for instance, a Gruet debt. I select it for it is typical, and because in connection with it the bomb has burst. In 1903 we were absolutely in need of three hundred thousand francs. Maître Métivier, our notary, obtained them for us through one Monsieur Gruet, an honest broker,—for there are such; there is this one, for instance, as you can judge,—with an office on Rue Lafayette. The loan fell due July 15, 1905. We were not ready. Gruet himself tells me of a money-lender, not overgrasping, one Madame Müller, who keeps a second-hand shop on Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. I go there on the chance. To my great surprise she consents. She reimburses Gruet and the notes are assigned to her before a notary. Nothing more correct, as you see. But on July 15 last the three hundred thousand Gruet francs had become three hundred and forty-six thousand five hundred Müller francs: two years' interest to the date of maturity in 1905, thirty thousand, plus sixteen thousand five hundred for 1905-1906. Let us follow it out. On this 15th of July the like inability to pay. Appeals to Madame Müller, entreaties,—it was I who made them. I would submit to much worse things for Monsieur le Marquis! A little time was given me, and one fine day this Gruet debt, which had become a Müller debt, has become an Altona debt. The first notice is served on us. I conceal the fact from Monsieur le Marquis, understand, and I go at once to this Altona. I find a man installed in a magnificent mansion on Place Vendôme, with the air of a grand seigneur I should say, if I did not know Monsieur le Marquis and you, Landri—and beautiful antiques all about him. It was a stock in trade arranged as a collection—a museum for sale at retail. This Altona receives me with the manners of a prince, and composedly, calmly, he informs me that the Müller claim is not the only one he has bought. A quantity of our other notes are in his hands or in those of his men of straw. Not all of them, but almost all. He has them to the amount of more than fourteen hundred thousand francs. He has accumulated all that he could. With no less composure he declares that he is acting for a syndicate of his brethren. There is a large number of them who have had their eyes for years on the treasures preserved at Grandchamp. How did they obtain their information concerning Monsieur le Marquis's embarrassment? How did they succeed in learning the names of the money-lenders to whom we had to apply? How did they negotiate with them? I can not tell you. I know nothing about it. This much is certain, that that first bailiff's notice was the shot that opened the engagement. In short, they are in a position to proceed against us and to have us sold up by process of law. Altona did not conceal from me his purpose to proceed mercilessly unless—"

"Unless what?" demanded Landri, as the other paused. "Finish your sentence."

"Unless we accept the offer he made me on behalf of his partners—that is evidently the coup they have prepared. 'We have calculated,' he said, still with his perfect courtesy, 'the risks of a public sale. We may gain by it, we may lose. Certain pieces which we can place advantageously at once may escape us. We prefer to make you a proposition to buy the whole in one lump. We will give you four millions cash for the lot, that is, for all the articles enumerated in the pièce justificative No. 44, in the appendix of the book on the "History of the House of Grandchamp." Both you and we will do a good stroke of business. You too avoid the possible loss of an auction. You have your debts paid and more than two millions in cash to put you on your feet again. As for us, our profit is assured. We have with us two Americans who will give fifteen hundred thousand francs for the tapestries alone. You have a fortnight to decide.'—I repeat what he said, word for word.—A fortnight! It was six days ago that I had the interview with this Altona, and I haven't yet found the courage to inform Monsieur le Marquis! And you expect me not to feel as if my brain was going."

"I am the one to tell him," cried the young man, "and instantly. You have lost six days, Chaffin, six days out of fourteen! You have failed seriously in your duty. Let us go to him."

"And tell him what?" queried the secretary, placing himself before the door toward which Landri had already taken a step.

"Why, the facts, just as they are."

"And with what result? With the result that he'll refuse to believe you, against all the evidence, and say: 'Touch Grandchamp!—they'll not dare!'—Or else he'll use the week in looking for money, enough to pay the Altona gang. It may be that he'll find it, for, after all, the tapestries and furniture and pictures and bronzes are here, and we know they're worth at least four millions, as the other man offers that. Well, then, Monsieur le Marquis finds the money. At what price? He borrows at twenty, thirty, perhaps fifty per cent. And in a year we're just where we are now, with this difference, that our two millions due on those notes will have become two millions three hundred thousand, to say nothing of getting four or five hundred thousand francs more to continue during that year a sort of life that must at any price be changed. You hear, Landri—it must! You have reproached me for neglecting my duty. It is true that I haven't been able to say to your father those horrible words: you must. Consider that all this wreck of his vast fortune is due to the fact that he would never consent to say to himself those two little words: I must. You ask me where that fortune has gone. Why, in living at the rate of five hundred thousand francs a year, when he and Madame la Marquise had four hundred thousand—as you said just now—when they married. With a pencil and paper and two columns, one of income, one of outgo, I will show you the whole thing in a nutshell. The marquis was determined to keep up the same establishment at Grandchamp that his father did with almost twice his income, and his grandfather with three times as much. Madame your aunt and madame your great-aunt carried the rest with them to the Nançays and the Vardes. Monsieur le Marquis is always cursing the Civil Code, and he is quite right. But it is the Civil Code, and it's stronger than we are and than he is. He has kept up the château as if he were your grandfather and great-grandfather. Do you know what that means? In the first place, a hundred thousand francs for the park, gardens and conservatories, plus sixty thousand for the hounds, forty thousand for the shooting, thirty-five thousand for the stables. We have got to two hundred and thirty-five thousand at once. And so with the rest. The table? We have forty people at dinner to-night, and the marquis would consider himself disgraced if his chef were not cited as one of the best in Paris! The servants? You know how many there are, and you know too that Monsieur le Marquis never dreams of parting with an old retainer without giving him a pension. We had a discussion only yesterday about young Mauchaussée. Twelve hundred francs to the father, and a house; twelve hundred francs to the son. There are more than thirty others taken care of in the same way. That makes forty thousand francs. And there are demands all day to which Monsieur le Marquis makes but one reply: 'Give.' And we give—for brotherhoods and sisterhoods, for hospitals and churches, for schools, and for the elections. Without counting the private alms, which don't pass through my hands. A hundred thousand francs put in Monsieur de Lautrec's hand, without a receipt, just when we are so straightened, to settle a gambling debt! I have the proof of it. I spoke to Monsieur le Marquis about it. I had the courage.—'If we don't help one another,' was his reply, 'who will help us?'—That he should do such things the first or second year, in '66 and '67, even down to the war, was natural. But when he saw the income of the property decreasing, the mortgages growing bigger, the unpaid bills piling up, that he did not try to stop is extraordinary. But it's the fact. I understand it so well. Every economy was a degradation of the house of Grandchamp, and degradation of a concrete sort, which he could have seen with his eyes and touched with his hands. Economies, do I say? There were the hedges trimmed every three years,—but in the interval? the avenues not so well kept,—but after the rains?—Fewer flowers in the beds, fewer horses in the stable, stag-hunting with fewer dogs and fewer whippers-in! His heart was nearly broken. He went back the next year. The debt increased. It whirled him off in its eddies. And then, he has always hoped; yesterday, it was a fortunate investment,—Monsieur Jaubourg had put him on the track of a good thing. He gained a hundred and twenty thousand francs. A drop of water in the desert! Day, before yesterday, one of your cousins. Monsieur de Nançay, died and left him a hundred thousand francs. Another drop of water. These unexpected windfalls misled him with a mirage which harmonized only too well with his hereditary instinct. It would be easier for him to break off his habits altogether, than to change—that is the conclusion at which I have arrived. On that account, Landri, I look upon this offer of Altona's as providential, you understand. Monsieur le Marquis must accept it. Grandchamp once emptied of its furnishings, which are sacred reliques to him, he will never want to come here again. No more gardens à la française. At all events we will reduce the cost of keeping them. No more stag-hunting, no more open house. With what is left he will still have enough to live very handsomely. We will let the shooting, the château perhaps. Then we will begin to redeem the mortgages. The house of Claviers-Grandchamp will be shorn of its splendor for a few years. But it will live up to its motto: E tenebris inclarescent. It will not go down forever."

Engrossed by the heat of his demonstration, Chaffin had made a false step. He had changed his tone as he dwelt upon the figures,—a terrible commentary on the harangue delivered by the marquis to his son in the forest two hours earlier, on the splendor of the name! To be sure, the heartless jubilation of the ascent of the staircase no longer gleamed threateningly in his yellow eyes; but his despicable sentiments toward his imprudent and magnanimous employer made themselves manifest in the pitiless clearness with which he thought and spoke of the disaster. He thought that he knew Landri well, knowing him to be eminently impressionable, and having formerly contributed, by dint of surreptitious criticism, to detach him from his milieu. He had seen how he stood out against the marquis on the subject of Saint-Cyr. Moreover, was it not now a question of the swallowing-up of his future inheritance? He was aware neither of the extent of the young man's unselfishness nor how deeply the genuine poesy of M. de Claviers' character stirred the chords of that tender heart. That poesy the brutal draftsman of the balance-sheet of ruin did not even suspect. His picture of the marquis's life, so foolishly ill-ordered but so generous, his indictment rather, wherein he had emphasized the grand seigneur's craze for appearances, without sufficiently setting forth his idealism and his charity, was strangely at variance with the attitude of a faithful and growling watch-dog which he ordinarily affected. Landri felt the difference, by instinct only. The revelation of the impending catastrophe impressed him much too painfully. It was enough, however, for him to feel an unconquerable longing to identify himself with his father, and he replied:—

"What? You entertain that idea, you, Chaffin? The furniture of Grandchamp sold? The treasures that our grandmother rescued so heroically in '93, dispersed? My father driven from his house by that vile crew? Never! I would rather sacrifice my own fortune!"

"Well!" insinuated Chaffin, "ask him for it."

"Don't tell me that it is swallowed up, like—" exclaimed the young man. He did not finish the sentence, but said emphatically: "I know that's not true!"

"It isn't true, in fact," rejoined the secretary. "Monsieur le Marquis still has a capital much larger than the fifteen hundred thousand francs that you inherited from Madame de Claviers. After he rendered his accounts as guardian, you gave him a general power of attorney which included the right to sell and to mortgage. You did it because he inherited a fourth of your mother's property, say five hundred thousand francs. That property consisted in part of houses. You insisted that it should remain undivided. It is sufficient, therefore, for him to be all straight with you, that he should turn over to you the fifteen hundred thousand francs, the income of which he has always paid you in full; he can do it, but on one condition, and that is a sine qua non: he must sell the personal property at Grandchamp,—the only thing that he can realize on. The lands and buildings are so loaded down with mortgages and so hard to turn into cash,—we need not talk of that. How long should you have to wait, do you suppose? And you would not be a privileged creditor. You have come of yourself to the point to which I was trying to bring you. That is the whole motive of my action, Landri. You can get Monsieur de Claviers out of this cul-de-sac, you and nobody else, and you can do it by demanding your fortune."

"I? of him?"

"Yes, you, and by withdrawing your power of attorney. He will not choose, that you should for a second suspect him of having misused it. He won't have any peace until he has restored it all to you, on the spot. If Altona's four million is offered him at that moment, he'll accept it. Grandchamp stripped of its treasures is horrible to think of, I agree. But one can refurnish a dismantled château. One can not reconstruct a squandered fortune, and with five years more of this life yours is gone, forever. I owed you the truth. I have told it to you. Make up your mind."

While Chaffin was formulating these suggestions Landri looked at him in such a way that the other had to avert his eyes. For the first time the former pupil of the dishonest steward asked himself this question: "Is this really the same man?" In the flare of a sudden intuition he caught a glimpse of the dangerous plot woven about the ancient estate, one of the artisans of which was this man who advised him—to do what? To commit moral parricide, in view of M. de Claviers' character. But it was only a gleam. This cruel advice might, after all, have been suggested to the steward, at his wits' end, by the desperation born of one of those crises in affairs in which humanity vanishes before the implacability of figures. However that might be, Landri had been wounded too deeply in his instinctive delicacy, and a restrained indignation trembled in his reply.

"I will not do that," he said. "I prefer anything to losing his heart. My first impulse was the true one. I must tell him everything, and instantly. The future of the family is at stake, and he is its head. It is for him to decide, not me. Let us go."

"I have done all that I can," said Chaffin. "You refuse. Let us go."

He opened the door, and instantly the two men found themselves face to face with Landri's valet. The man was waiting in the corridor, ready to go in as soon as his master should be free.

"Was he listening?" said Chaffin to himself. "Bah! they've known it all for a long while."

He slandered the man, who was the son of one of the old lamp-men of the château. Grandchamp was lighted throughout by oil, and it required three men specially assigned for that service!—This valet had a message to deliver, the mysterious nature of which disturbed him. Such was the exceedingly simple explanation of his standing sentry.

"A person wishes to speak with Monsieur le Comte at once. It is very urgent and very important, but it's only for a word. The person is waiting in Monsieur le Comte's bedroom."

"If it's only for a word," said Landri, himself astonished, even in his trouble, by that message and the messenger's insistence, "I will go. I will return in a moment, Chaffin, wait for me. Do you, Jean, go and find where Monsieur le Marquis is just now."

"Landri will tell Monsieur de Claviers nothing," repeated the former tutor when he was left alone. That meeting of their glances, a few moments before, had revealed to him an unsuspected energy and perspicacity in his pupil. He had accepted without further remonstrance the proposition to tell the marquis the truth, for fear of arousing suspicion. He answered it in anticipation, mentally: "But then, let him tell him all. What does it matter to me? My accounts are all straight. I have never acted without written authority.—No. He won't tell him anything. No one can speak to that man. Landri will think better of it. He's going to Paris to-morrow. He'll take advice. Advice? From whom? Jaubourg perhaps. No, he doesn't like him, and he loves, yes, adores, the marquis! The voice of the blood is like their wonderful Race; what an excellent joke!" Chaffin sneered. In thought he insulted his master twice over, in his person and in his ideas. "Landri will go and see Métivier, the notary, it's more likely. Yes, that's the better way. Métivier will send for me. When he knows the situation of affairs, he'll agree with me. This Altona offer means, at one per cent, forty thousand francs for me. By the same token, for them it means salvation."

The cunning calculator hardly suspected that if, resorting to the degrading practice of which he had instantly accused the valet, he had placed his ear against the door of the next room, he would have heard arrangements made for one of the very interviews that he had imagined. The "person"—as Jean discreetly said—who was awaiting Landri was the maître d'hôtel of the invalid on Rue de Solferino, who had come all the way from Paris to say to the young man:—

"When Monsieur Jaubourg learned that Monsieur le Comte had called to inquire for him without going upstairs, he was very much put out—more than put out, distressed. I must needs take the first train for Clermont. He is absolutely determined to see Monsieur le Comte. I am to insist that Monsieur le Comte come to-morrow if he passes through Paris again.—Monsieur Jaubourg is so ill, Monsieur le Comte! If he lasts two or three days, the skies will fall! He was very particular to tell me not to show myself, so that Monsieur le Marquis should not know of my coming. He was afraid of disturbing him too much. However, here I am."

"Tell Monsieur Jaubourg I will come to-morrow at eleven o'clock," replied Landri. The care taken by a dying man to spare his old friend a pang touched him. He felt the delicacy of it all the more keenly because his heart was frozen, as it were, by the deferential brutality of formal respect, so cruel in reality, of his former tutor. At any other time, the peculiarity of the proceeding, sending this servant a two hours' journey by railway, would have puzzled him; but a too genuine and too present anxiety suspended in him all morbid labor of the imagination, and while he was going down the stairs with Chaffin, it mattered little to him what Jaubourg's reasons were for desiring so earnestly to see him, or whether it was or was not for the purpose of insisting on his marriage to Marie de Charlus.

Jean had returned to say that M. de Claviers-Grandchamp was in the dining-room. And it was there that the son and the secretary found the improvident owner of the treasures coveted by the Altona band. The grand seigneur still wore his hunting costume. He had not had a quarter of an hour to himself since his return. He was engaged now with his major-domo—another example of his grand manner—in arranging the seats around the enormous table, which was all laid and ready. Innumerable lighted candles already shone upon the silver plate engraved by Roëttiers. The flat dishes displayed their edges of interlaced ribbons on the brilliant whiteness of the cloth, around the central épergne, a masterpiece signed by Germain. It represented the abduction of Europa, on a large rocaille pedestal. Wainscoting rebuilt in the eighteenth century, in the style of Gabriel, covered the walls of the octagonal room. Eight pillars at the eight angles, fluted, and topped by Corinthian capitals, imparted a majestic aspect, which was enlivened by four high Gobelin tapestries, of Oudry's hunting series, alternating with mirrors. On occasions like this these panels prolonged on the walls the day's amusement, as did the hunting-horns surrounded by laurel-branches, chefs-d'œuvre of Gonthière, which could be distinguished in the decorations. The cream-white tone of the woodwork harmonized with that of the cane-seated dining-chairs, and with the reflection of the central chandelier, of Venetian glass,—a caprice of one of the châtelaines of former days, the wife of the restorer of Grandchamp, whose portrait by Parrocel was set into the wall over the white marble chimneypiece. He was on horseback and wore the uniform of a lieutenant-general,—which he had earned by being wounded at Fontenoy,—the cuirass under the light blue coat, the white scarf, the red ribbon, and held in his hand the baton of a general.

This ensemble, with the soft and vivid hues of the flowers, blended with the glistening of the glasses, imparted a touch of grace amid all the magnificence, which suddenly assumed a tragic aspect in the young man's eyes. The figures set forth by Chaffin appeared on the walls as distinctly as the Mene-Tekel-Upharsin of the Biblical feast; and as suddenly he was conscious of that impossibility which the other had foreseen—the impossibility of inflicting the pain of a similar vision upon the impoverished and superb "Émigré," whose last joy this sumptuous entertainment might prove to be—a childish joy, but heartfelt and earnest in its bountiful outflow.

"Forty!" he cried as soon as he saw his son: "there will surely be forty of us. An Academy!—I made up the number by inviting our neighbors the Sicards, and some friends they have with them, the Saint-Larys. Two charming couples! I will indulge my old eyes with their youthful happiness.—Well, Chaffin, was I right in ordering dinner for forty? You won't accuse me of wastefulness again." And he laughed his frank, hearty laugh. "Look at our Parrocel, Landri. Hasn't he a look of the place? To think that I shall never see you dressed like that, even if you're a general some day and I am still in this world! Ah! the fine bright uniforms of the old days! And the spruce young officers who went into battle as to a fête, in those colors! Everything is sad with us, even heroism. But you must help me. I was seating my company. First of all I had placed Madame de Férussac opposite me, and you over here, beside—" He showed his son a card on which was written the name of Mademoiselle de Charlus. "I am putting them all awry. You are the one to sit opposite me."

"Why, no, father," said Landri hastily, "I beg you to leave me where you had put me. I assure you that I prefer that."

"Really? do you mean it?" said M. de Claviers. There was so much artless gratitude in his expression, that preoccupation about a change of seats at the table disclosed such a loving regard for the susceptibilities of the young man's heart, that the tears came to his eyelids, and when his father asked him,—

"Well, what is it? Why were you looking for me?"

"To ask you if I shall see you to-morrow before I go," he replied. Already he was preparing to postpone the revelation which he had insisted should be made instantly.

"I think not," replied the marquis. "You take the train at Clermont, don't you? At ten o'clock? In that case, surely not."—And Landri did not protest!—"You passed the night on the railway, and you are travelling again to-morrow. You must have a good rest. And I have to go and see one of my farmers, a long way off, who is asking for some repairs. You know, Chaffin, Père Chabory. He won't get them, I promise you. I will be immovable. There's no claim in his case. I shall take advantage of the errand to try my new roan a bit. A splendid beast that Régie Ardrahan sent me from Dublin—another Toby. But the English have never learned to teach a horse to trot. I shall start at half after seven, so as to have returned when my guests wake.—No, we shall not see each other again. And this evening doesn't count! We will make up for it at your next visit. I was going up to your room to urge you to call at Jaubourg's when you go through Paris, and to see him yourself, if you can. You can telegraph me how you found him."

"Landri will do as he pleases," Chaffin interjected, "but I have a despatch already—from my son—received just now, and which I came to tell you of. Monsieur Jaubourg is better, much better."

"Ah! that's good news!" exclaimed M. de Claviers. "You take a weight off my heart, Chaffin. The fête will be perfect then. This morning a ten-branched stag"; and he hummed the refrain:—

"And to-night a dinner of the sort that Lardin knows how to serve."—Lardin was his cook.—He hummed another hunting-song, La Bourbon:—

"But we must go and dress, my dear Landri, so that we may be on hand when they arrive, these 'belles'!"

"You see," said Chaffin to Landri in an undertone, as they left the dining-room behind the marquis, "you didn't speak to him, you couldn't. To-morrow you won't be able to any better. You felt it. I was sure you would. Look the situation in the face. You will do what I have advised. It's the only way. I shall wait forty-eight hours more before I tell him."

He walked away in the direction of his office before Landri had found a word to reply. He felt humiliated by the consciousness that he had justified, by his own attitude, the silence for which he had warmly rebuked his former tutor. He realized fully, however, that the motive of passionate affection to which he yielded in postponing the awakening from that blissful dream on the brink of an abyss had nothing in common with the obscure schemes of a decidedly double-faced personage. Landri had received this impression anew when the other spoke of the despatch alleged to have been sent during the day by his son. The message that he had himself received a half hour before contradicted this improvement, which was clearly fabricated by Chaffin. For what purpose? As a chance shot, and to diminish the probabilities of a consultation with the shrewd Jaubourg concerning the course to be pursued. The young man was unable to divine this reason. But it was equally true that he could no longer tell himself in good faith that it was "to spare my father anxiety." The first shock of surprise was past. His new-born reflections revealed too many riddles in the performance, and first of all this persistent abandonment of the contest, this acceptance of an event which should have been the outcome of nothing less than a desperate resistance. But in that case Chaffin was not loyal? This supposition opened horizons so dark that Landri rejected it. His memories of childhood and youth cried out against it. "He has warned me," he said to himself. "What forced him to do it? My God! how I wish I knew the truth, and above all things what my duty is!"

What was his duty? He had no sooner propounded that question than it occupied the whole field of his thought. How gladly he would have asked advice of some one! But of whom? As he passed through his library again, after he had dressed, on his way down to the salons on the ground floor, his glance fell upon a portrait of his mother, and he stopped to gaze at it, as if the face of the dead might take on life to sustain him, to give him a hint. Alas! to no purpose would his filial piety have questioned for days and days the delicate and deceitful features which had been those of the beautiful Madame de Claviers. He would have derived nothing but doubts concerning her, had the denunciator carried to the end his confidences concerning the secret sorrows of the family. That portrait was of 1878. Landri was just born, and Madame de Claviers was thirty years old. She was painted sitting down, in a red velvet evening gown, which left bare her lovely arms, her supple shoulders, her neck, a trifle long, about which gleamed a row of enormous pearls. She had a very small head, with an abundance of chestnut hair, a mouth of sinuous shape, upon which flickered a smile, but impersonal and seemingly forced. The eyes, whose expression was at once dreamy and observing, passionate and guarded, contradicted the artificial banality of that smile. It was the image of a woman, very sweet and very simple at first glance, very complex at the second, and quite unintelligible,—a happy woman, but whose happiness was of that deep-seated and perturbed sort that never comes to fruition, being condemned, by sin, to remain concealed.

Landri, without quite understanding why, had never cared overmuch for that canvas, which he preserved as a relique. His mother had bequeathed it to him expressly, in a will made during the last days of the terrible illness of which she died. Obsessed by the anxiety which consumed him, he suddenly detested that picture, and hurriedly walked away from it. That grande dame, in her festival costume, who had reigned over that life of extravagance while bearing her part in it, had no moral aid to offer him! Nor had the grandfathers and grandmothers, whose old-time faces covered all the walls of the salons once inhabited by them according to the same principle of unbridled expenditure. The marquis's guests were beginning to crowd the rooms, and the young man contemplated those family portraits over their heads: young women and old women of bygone centuries, lords and prelates, ambassadors and field-marshals, commanders of the Saint-Esprit and Grand Crosses of Saint-Louis. Those faces, by their presence alone, seemed to entreat the inheritor of their name to labor to spare them that last great outrage—to be carried away from the ancestral dwelling, to become simply a Rigaud or a Largillière, a Nattier or a Tocqué, a Drouet or a Vigée-Lebrun, in some random collection. To spare them that outrage—but how? And Landri felt that his uncertainty increased.—Yes, what was his duty? But what if Chaffin were sincere, if his outlook were just, if, in order to save his father from a final crash, it were necessary, man-fashion, to sacrifice those portraits and everything else,—the Gobelins and that series by Boucher, the Noble Pastorale, and Natoire's Mark Antony, and the Beauvais tapestries, and the gilded wainscotings of Foliot and Cagny, and the carpets from La Savonnerie, and the bronzes, and the hangings, and all that array of beautiful objects, whose frivolous magnificence inevitably demanded such assemblages as that of this evening?

Passing from inanimate things to people, Landri studied one after another, first in the salons, afterward in the dining-hall, the familiar faces of M. de Claviers' guests and of M. de Claviers himself. On the day when those Férussacs and Hautchemins and Traverses and Sicards and Saint-Larys and all the rest, and Louis de Bressieux and Florimund de Charlus, should learn of their host's downfall, would they pity him much more than his secretary did? Their egoisms, their fickleness, their indifference seemed to become visible to the son's grief-stricken imagination.

Meanwhile the dinner had begun. The servants in the Claviers-Grandchamp livery were passing to and fro behind the guests. The light fabrics of the décolleté gowns alternated with the black coats, eyes shone, lips laughed, the dishes succeeded one another, wine filled the glasses, and the marquis, at the centre of his table, contemplated the fête with eyes sparkling with life. It was as if all the Claviers-Grandchamps were entertaining in his person, superbly. Hardly more than a suspicion of dissatisfaction veiled his eyes, when, turning in his son's direction, he observed his evident preoccupation. "Poor Landri is thinking of his Madame Olier!" he said to himself; and his magnanimous old heart felt a vague remorse which he banished by raising his head and gazing at the portrait of the lieutenant-general, wounded at Fontenoy.

The voices rose higher and higher. The laughter became more and more uproarious. Complexions tingling with the country air assumed a ruddier hue in the atmosphere of the dining-hall. Landri's suffering became more and more acute. Was it possible that this fête was really the last? But what was he to do? What was he to do? He could scarcely force himself to talk of indifferent subjects with his two neighbors in turn, one of whom, at his left, was the pretty, fair-haired and insignificant Madame de Férussac. The other, clever Marie de Charlus, carried her jovial humor to ever greater lengths as the dinner proceeded. She realized that she did not exist, so far as Landri was concerned, and she yielded to the instinct that has ruined the happiness of so many love-lorn women: to make an impression at any cost on the man they love, and to disgust him rather than not be noticed at all by him. Ascribing her conduct to the atmosphere, she began to run through a long list of satirical sobriquets, such as it was the fashion in Paris, last winter, to distribute at random.

"And Bressieux," she said at one moment, "do you know what they call Bressieux? Monsieur le Vicomte de la Rochebrocante. And poor Jaubourg, on account of his swell associates among us? Jaubourg-Saint-Germain. For my part, I call it very amusing!"

"Jaubourg-Saint-Germain?" said Sicard, the spiteful damsel's right-hand neighbor. "I don't know him. True, it is amusing!"

The most amusing part of it was that the Sicard couple had their own nick-name—unknown to the parties concerned, of course:—"The three halves." This wretched pun signified that the very diminutive Madame de Sicard, married to the very diminutive M. de Sicard, was supposed to have a tender penchant for the very diminutive M. de Travers. The historian of contemporary manners would apologize for noting, even cursorily, such trifles, were it not that they have a slight documentary value. This innocent fooling of a society so threatened measured the degree of its heedlessness.

Ordinarily these idiocies of the prevailing mode annoyed Landri de Claviers. That refined and intelligent youth lacked, it must be confessed, the precious gift of smiling, which the marquis had, and which the English call by an untranslatable phrase, "the sense of humor." He took everything alike too much au sérieux. However, he did not think at that moment of taking offence at Marie's wretched taste. The epigram concerning Bressieux had suddenly reminded him that his father and himself had surprised the gentleman-broker in conversation with Chaffin. He looked at him across the table and saw that the other was looking at him. Was Bressieux mixed up in the schemes of the Altona gang? Was that possible, too?—Oh! what to do? what to do? And, above all, how to learn the truth?

The second of the sobriquets mentioned by Mademoiselle de Charlus started Landri's mind upon another scent.—Jaubourg? But he was to see Jaubourg to-morrow. Suppose Jaubourg, who knew everybody in their circle, as that absurd name indicated, suppose that Jaubourg, too, knew that imminent peril menaced their house? Suppose that was what he wanted to speak about to his friend's son, being unable to induce that friend himself to listen? And in the event that he knew nothing, why should not Landri tell him the truth, in order to obtain the advice for which his longing became more and more intense? Jaubourg was really fond of M. de Claviers-Grandchamp. The young man's mind fastened upon this idea, which he did nothing but turn over and over all the evening.

How long it seemed to him before the last carriage, rumbling over the pavement of the courtyard, had borne away the last guest! And no less long the beginning of the night, when, having gone up to his room, and being left to himself, he tried to formulate an appeal to the experience and affection of a man with whom he had never felt at his ease! He had too often encountered M. Jaubourg's interference, always concealed, in matters that concerned only M. de Claviers and himself. He had never learned anything of it except by chance. So it was to-day with this Charlus project. And with it all, Jaubourg had never manifested to Landri that good-humored affection which is the privilege of old family friends who have seen us grow up. He had kept the child, and, later, the young man, at a distance, by an attitude of constant criticism, courteous and scornful at the same time. There had always been an atmosphere of constraint between them. Chaffin's prevision was accurate on this first point. Nor had he gone astray upon the second. The more Landri dwelt on the idea of relying upon Jaubourg, the more the wonted antipathy revived. "Besides," he concluded, "sick as he is, incapable of taking any active step, ignorant of the Code, of what assistance can he be to me, if there's a conspiracy to be foiled and legal precautions to be taken?"

Then it was, as the thought of possible litigation came to his mind, that he remembered Métivier, the notary. "Where were my wits?" he thought. "Métivier's the man I must see. One can appeal from a judgment. One can resist. A notary knows how to do it. He knows the ways to borrow money. My fortune is still intact. Chaffin admitted as much. Métivier will tell me if I can use it to save Grandchamp, and how to go about it."

He reflected that, as he was to pass only half a day in Paris, he had not time to make an appointment with Maître Métivier, a very busy man, who, perhaps, would not be at his office. He did not go to bed until he had written a long and very succinct letter, which he proposed to leave at the notary's in case of his absence. He set forth in detail the whole story that Chaffin had told him, giving the names of Madame Müller and Altona, the figures given to him, the advice insinuated by his former tutor, his determination to sacrifice his personal interests absolutely in order that the château might be kept intact. He added that, being obliged to return to Saint-Mihiel, he would arrange to be at Paris as soon as his presence was necessary.

As he read the letter over he was amazed to notice how easy it seemed to him, now, to apply to his colonel for another leave, which had seemed to him impossible that morning, in view of the prospective inventories. Chaffin's revelation had changed the whole course of his thought. Other revelations, more tragical, were about to supervene, and to lead him in still another direction. He had no more suspicion of them than he had had of these the night before, when he deemed himself so unfortunate, and when the whole drama of his life seemed to him to be comprised in those two desires: not to quit his profession as a soldier, and not to lose the woman he loved. He had not, however, forgotten her, that friend who was so dear to him. As he fell asleep, at the close of that day so full of events, which preceded another day of even more cruel trial, he reverted mentally to his conversation of the morning in the little salon on Rue Monsieur. He marvelled at the unexpected détours of life, which keeps such surprises in store for us, and he reproached himself, like a true lover, for having given Valentine no place in his thoughts during the last few hours.

"But it is for her, too, that I shall go to see Métivier to-morrow," he said to himself. "This disaster to my father, which should part me from her, will draw me nearer to her, if I prove to him how devoted I am to him. Let me save Grandchamp, and he will no longer oppose my marriage. If we are ruined, Mademoiselle de Charlus's great fortune will become an argument.—And even if he should persist in saying no, my conscience would be at rest, having sacrificed myself to him, as I wish, as I am determined to do."

IV THE TRAGIC UNDERSIDE OF A GRAND EXISTENCE (Concluded)

This sweet and tender image of the adorable woman upon whom Landri had formed the pious habit of letting his thoughts rest every night, for years past, before closing his eyes, was there again when he woke. Such is the sorcery of a passionate love in youth. To be sure, he was much engrossed by the step he was arranging to take with respect to Maître Métivier; the confusion in their financial affairs disclosed by Chaffin was most serious, and brought with it threatening consequences in the future. Moreover, none of the obstacles against which he had bruised himself the night before had disappeared. He was still likely to receive, before the end of the week, an order to proceed to take one of the two church inventories announced as about to be taken in the neighborhood of Saint-Mihiel. He knew too well, despite the sophistical reasoning of his desire, that his father's opposition to a mésalliance would not readily give way. But he was to see Valentine Olier at two o'clock, and in spite of everything, an intimate joy had possession of him. While he was dressing and breakfasting, he constantly interrupted himself to gaze admiringly at the depths of the blue sky, at the forest bronzed by the autumn, at the garden à la française spreading beneath his windows, and at the statues, whose white lines stood out against the dense dark foliage of the yews, trimmed in the shape of balls and pyramids.

That same blue sky enveloped the château as with an aureole when he turned to look at it once more, in the carriage that was taking him to the Clermont station. He had had the good fortune not to fall in with Chaffin as he was leaving,—he had dreaded such a meeting a little,—and he had the additional good fortune to meet his father in person at a turn in the road, mounted, as he had said, on his new horse.

"I was determined to introduce him to you," cried the old nobleman as soon as his son was within earshot, "and also to bid you good-morning. Did you rest well? Good!—My farmer has hoodwinked me—he was sure to. He'll have his repairs. Chaffin will scold me.—As for this old fellow," and he patted the arched neck of the powerful Irish horse which was dancing nervously, "he tried hard to unseat his new rider.—Whoa! whoa! I am not in favor of divorce, my boy.—I have taken him down a little all the same, by giving him a chance to gallop. As for the trot, we shall not say anything about that for some time. But I'll show you what he can do."