PAUL BOURGET (continued 4)

It needed no more than a glance at those engravings for Landri's comparative tranquillity of the last hour to come to an abrupt end. The sight of those uniforms of the old régime recalled the scene of two days before, M. de Claviers pointing to the portrait of the lieutenant-general, and his exclamation about the uniforms and the dandyfied heroism of bygone days. The thought of the marquis recalled the old gentleman's other outbreak, only the night before, concerning the inventories, just as the memory of the Parrocel portrait revived the sensations born of the hideous falsehood of his birth. The associations of these various ideas resulted in a new idea which, when it had once entered his mind, could no more be expelled from it than could the hateful fact with which it was connected. It was only the continuation, the smoothing-off as it were in the lucid portions of the love-child's consciousness, of a course of reasoning that he had been working out, unknowingly, for twelve hours past.

"But have I the right, from this time on, bearing a name that is not my own, and knowing it, to act with that name as if it were my own?"

On the table lay a newspaper rolled about its stick. The young man took it up mechanically, and, from more habit, looked for the rubric, "Military Affairs." Another wave of ideas swept over him. If the inventories at Hugueville-en-Plaine and Montmartin should be taken, and if he should have to direct one of them to the point of breaking into the church, the account would certainly appear under that heading, printed in that same type. His name would be there, at the top of a paragraph describing his act. His name? A name is an inheritance, it is a piece of property, personal and collective at once. It belongs to him who bears it and to those who have borne and will bear it. All of their interests are united in him. Against this mutual responsibility Landri had contended throughout his youth, and no longer ago than the day before yesterday, when he proclaimed before Madame Olier, and again to the marquis's face, the right of the heirs of a great name to lead their individual lives.

It seemed—he himself had thought so at first—that the grievous discovery of the secret of his birth had finally snapped the chain, already so worn, of a hateful solidarity between the Claviers-Grandchamps and himself. True, if he had laid aside their name, if, realizing that he was not of their family, he had ceased to call himself by their name. But such an open rupture was impossible. Even if Landri had not loved the marquis too dearly ever to deal him such a blow, there was his mother's memory, which forbade him to dishonor her. But in that case, if he kept the name of Claviers, he was in their debt. He was no longer a free agent. When people should read, in that newspaper and in many others, that a Claviers-Grandchamp had dared to do something so absolutely opposed to all the traditions of the family, what would his conscience say to him? That he had done his duty? Nay, since it was not from any thought of duty that he had resolved, if occasion should require, to execute a task which he himself had called revolting. His companions had discussed too often in his presence that question of the limits of discipline, which functionaries no less insane than criminal have gratuitously raised of late years. He had reflected upon it too seriously himself not to understand that passive obedience is a phrase devised by enemies of that great school of praiseworthy energy that the army really is. He had meditated upon the wise and judicious terms of the officer's oath, which excludes every degrading order: "You will obey him in everything that he shall command you to do, for the good of the service and to carry out the military regulations." He knew that this problem of obedience to requisitions from the civil authorities, as it had presented itself in the recent religious disputes, is of the sort that become tragic in the most upright consciences. Excellent soldiers have solved it in one way. Excellent soldiers have solved it in another way. It is a crime, we repeat, on the part of a government, to place men of spirit in such dilemmas,—a crime against those who did not enter the army to perform certain tasks,—a crime against the fatherland, which is by this means robbed of some of its best leaders.

Landri, as we have seen, had solved the problem in a manner entirely personal to himself. He had said: "To obey is to remain in the service. To refuse to obey is to resign. I want to remain in the service. I shall obey." But now a new element had intervened: the evidence of a felony committed against the lineage of the Claviers, in which his mere existence made him an accomplice. His mother's sin had given him a place in that lineage. What became of his personal convenience when put in the scale with such usurpation? Did it not bind him on his honor—for he still had such a thing whatever he may have said in the first shock of the revelation—never to do any act for which that lineage, now incarnate in the marquis, could reproach him from its standpoint? The conclusion was inescapable. At an incident of his military life so public, so certain to make a noise in the world, as obedience to an order to proceed against a church, it was not his own opinion that he should follow, but that of the head of that house in which he himself occupied a stolen place. This indisputable obligation suddenly imposed itself on Landri with irresistible force, and for the first time he recoiled in spirit from the prospect of an occurrence which would place before him the alternative of making up his mind against the will, so clearly expressed, of the Marquis de Claviers, or of sacrificing the profession to which he was at that moment more attached than ever. His whole thought was bent upon rejecting the probability of that test. He could not bear to face it now.

"I am crazy. If they employ the dragoons for one of these inventories, they'll send more than one platoon. A lieutenant won't be in command, but a captain. I shall be second in command. If there's a door to be broken in, and the civil authorities don't furnish any men to do it, the captain will have to give the order, not I."

He harangued himself thus, pacing to and fro in the main courtyard while the instructors drilled the new recruits, under his superintendence. But upon whom would that responsibility fall, if Landri's supposition should be realized? In the absence of the captain commanding the squadron, to the captain next in seniority, who happened to be that very Despois with whom he had exchanged so hearty a greeting that morning. Landri at once remembered the letter written by that officer's wife, which Madame Olier had given to him. He had read the letter at the time—without reading it. He remembered nothing about it except Valentine's remark: "She says so well what I should say so badly." But then Captain Despois, if such an order should be given to him, would refuse to comply with it? As had happened before, the command would then devolve upon the officer next below him, in this case upon Landri! Such was now the young man's apprehension in respect to an emergency which was still only possible, and which he had hitherto faced with such firm determination.

He cut the drill short in order to return to his quarters the sooner and really read Madame Despois' letter. His hands trembled a little as they unfolded the sheet, which was badly crumpled from its sojourn in his pocket while he was rolling about in despair on the cushions of the railway carriage. He found there, near the end, after the narrative of a really touching interview between the captain and his wife, these lines, which, although they lessened one element of his anxiety, only intensified another, alas!

"So my husband has made up his mind," wrote Julie Despois. "He ended the conversation by repeating poor Captain Magniez' noble declaration: 'I prefer to be shot rather than commit sacrilege.'—If this thing happens to us, we shall be very poor, my dear friend. The education of our three sons will be seriously endangered. But I could do nothing but say to him: 'You are right. We are Christian folk. We have founded a Christian family. God help us!'—And you will recognize my dear Despois in this. His only anxiety is for his officers. He doesn't want to see the hecatomb at Saint-Servan repeated.—'If they call on me for sappers to break in the church doors, I shall refuse. I sha'n't give the civil authorities time to telegraph for further orders. I shall order all my men to remount, and return to Saint-Mihiel. In this way I shall be sure of being the only one to be disciplined.'—You see, Valentine, what a sad time we are passing through, so that we can't turn our minds to any other subject! In all the officers' families, nothing else is thought of. We shouldn't talk about anything else if we didn't know that to-day an orderly may be an informer listened to at headquarters. We are all wondering when these two inventories will be taken, and to whom they will be entrusted. Will anything happen or not? God grant that we are imagining chimæras, and that everything will go off peacefully, as it has in so many places! Whatever happens, I am writing down these conversations with my husband so that my sons may have them some day, when he and I are no more. They will see what sort of man their father was, and that their mother understood him."

Landri read the last sentence again and again. The captain's magnanimous determination made it possible for him to have no fear of consequences if Despois were in command.—But what followed? How could he fail to make a comparison between that simple-hearted helpmate of a gallant officer, devoted to her husband, so proud to esteem and admire him,—and another woman? Between those children who found at their humble fireside no reason for aught save respect,—and another child? Why had not his own mother understood the man whose name she bore? Why had she betrayed him? Why was a son born of that treachery? And why was not that son, who knew nothing of that horror for so many years, left in ignorance forever? Upon what trivial chances our destinies depend! Suppose that the train from Clermont had reached Paris an hour late yesterday? Doubtless Landri would have found the invalid of Rue de Solferino unconscious. The physician would not have let him in. He would have known nothing. He would not have had to undergo this inward agony which everything renewed—and when would it end? Oh, never! never!

"I am amusing myself with absurd scruples," he said to himself twenty-four hours later. It was afternoon. He was riding along the Meuse. He had received a despatch from the marquis to the effect that Jaubourg's funeral would take place on the following Friday at nine o'clock, and he had answered, by telegraph, that he could not be there. He had understood what the selection of that early hour in the morning meant, as well as a note in the newspapers stating that the deceased had desired a very simple ceremony, without invitations, and without flowers or wreaths. This insistence upon effacement after death avoided comments upon M. de Claviers-Grandchamp's presence behind the bier of his wife's lover. Therein Landri saw a new proof of the ominous secret. He would have been no less irritated by a showy funeral. His irritation manifested itself in a recurrence of the blind and almost savage revolt of the first moments. This feeling imparted its sombre hue to his renewed reflections on the possibility of his responsible participation in one of the inventories—the sole object, as Madame Despois had said, of the silent meditations of all the officers of the garrison. Three of his comrades, who were as sure of him as he was of them, had spoken to him about it in confidence that morning. He had evaded a reply, and he reproached himself bitterly for it.

"Yes, absurd! With respect to him"—he was still unable to name M. de Claviers in his heart, as he was to name the other elsewhere,—"with respect to him, I cannot have any duty. The mere fact that I am breathing is an insult so dishonoring to him that I can never add anything to it. All that I can do is to avoid contact between us. He will follow the body to-morrow. I shall not be there. Nobody shall see us walking side by side. Hereafter it must be so in life. My impulse yesterday was the best, the wisest one. Yes, if I am ordered to take part in the expedition to Hugueville or Montmartin, so much the better! If I have to break into one of those two churches, so much the better! That will be irreparable. The name of Claviers-Grandchamp will be dishonored because a soldier has made every other sentiment yield to discipline. That theory can be supported, too. A proof of it is that Despois hesitated, and he's a professed Christian. Even Valentine, who is very religious, but who knows what our profession is, accepts the idea!—He will condemn me. But he won't be able to despise me, in his heart. And it will be all over, all over, all over! He will suffer, suffer terribly. And shall I not suffer when I no longer have him to call 'father,' when I can no longer live with him in that heart-to-heart intimacy which was complete,—I realize it now!—despite the differences in our ideas! I understand them now, those differences which used to surprise me—they were Race. He is right. There is such a thing as Race. I hadn't the instincts of a true noble. Nor have I those of a true bourgeois, either. What a terrible word that is, to which I never gave a thought—adultery! And how just it is! It is the stranger at the hearth. It is a forged Race. It is the creation of a hybrid personality like mine. That is the secret of the vacillations of my nature, of the contradictions that I never could explain: why I have never loved in my inmost heart any of the women of my caste, and why, even to-day, I cannot bring myself to a simple and definite decision. I shall come to it. My relations with him are impossible. That is the one fact to which I must cling, firmly, irrevocably. Let the occasion come to dig the abyss, and I will dig it!"

This second line of reasoning corresponded too nearly with the actual situation not to prevail in the young man's mind. He retained, none the less, deep down in his heart, a hope, almost a certainty, that he would not be required to adapt his conduct to it. One need not have in his veins blood imbued with contradictory inherited characteristics, to be subject to such incoherences. It is enough to be passionately attached to some one from whom one deems it necessary to part forever. So that he felt a shock that was most painful to him, as he was returning from his ride, upon meeting, in one of the streets of the town, the colonel of his regiment, on foot,—the one who did not like "names with currents of air." He was the son of a petty government official who had reached his present rank by a combination of energy and shrewdness,—a good officer with fundamentally false ideas, in whose heart were fermenting those extraordinary anticlerical and anti-noble passions of which sincere Jacobinism is made.

The expression of his superior, by whom he knew that he was detested, froze Landri's blood, it betrayed such ironical and fiendish delight. He did not mistake its meaning. The supposition hitherto treated as imaginary was coming true. It began to take shape. The hostile colonel's face expressed the satisfied hatred of one who knows with certainty that misfortune is about to befall his enemy. The affair of the inventories was about to be solved, and he, Landri, was involved in it in some way or other.

Five minutes later this presentiment became an established fact. As he dismounted, his orderly handed him a note from Captain Despois, begging him to come to his quarters about an important matter connected with the service.

"That's what it is," said Landri to himself. "We are to go."

He found the devout officer, whose most secret thoughts he knew, so intimate was their confidence, busily writing, in the exceedingly modest salon that he used as an office. Despois was a man of forty-five, very tall, with a bony, tanned face, his temples worn smooth by the rubbing of the helmet, hair already almost white, reddish mustache, and light greenish-gray eyes. The eyes were clouded with so sad an expression that Landri was deceived.

"It is he who is ordered to command us," he thought. He remembered the letter he had read the day before. His heart swelled with pity for that father who was evidently making ready to sacrifice his military future to his faith. But from his first words Landri understood that he himself aroused a like pity on the part of that excellent man, who said as he handed him two sheets of paper the official size of which betrayed their source:—

"Will you run your eye over this, my dear Claviers?"

The first of the two documents had at its head:—"General orders relating to the assistance to be furnished by the troops in making inventories of church property"; and the second: "Supplementary instructions for the lieutenant commanding the 1st and 2nd platoons of the third squadron of the 32nd Cavalry, who is to sustain the action of the police and gendarmerie during the operation of taking the inventory of the church property at Hugueville-en-Plaine." The "general orders" stated that both inventories would be taken on Friday, November 16, at nine o'clock in the morning. The "supplementary instructions" added that the duty of the officer despatched to Hugueville would consist in these three points: "to form barriers across the different streets leading to the church, according to the general scheme of the annexed sketch"; "to support the action of the police and gendarmerie, in maintaining order, dispersing the crowds, and looking to the evacuation of the church if necessary"; and thirdly, "to enable the official recorder to perform his duties."

Prepared as Landri should have been, by his reflections of the past week and of that very afternoon, for the possibility of this event, he turned pale as he read the words. He did not hesitate a second, however, but replied:—

"Very good, captain; I will obey orders."

"Did you read it carefully?" said Despois, pointing to one sentence in the first paper: "Six sappers supplied with the necessary tools to perform, in the absence of civilian workmen, such work of demolition as there may be occasion to do."—"In the absence of civilian workmen," he repeated. "You will take the greatest pains, therefore, to assure yourself that civilian workmen cannot be found; cannot be found," he insisted.

Evidently he was anticipating the case of the lieutenant refusing to execute the commissioner's orders, and was preparing to shield him, if necessary, before the court-martial.

"I will make sure of it, captain." And, in a firm voice, "I hope that we shall not come to that point, but if we do my sappers will do the work."

Not a muscle moved in the Catholic Despois' impassive face. If Landri had not been acquainted with his real thought, he might have believed that the peculiarly painful character of this expedition was a matter of indifference to the old trooper, who began at once to give him detailed orders concerning the equipment of the men. It was not until they rose, after half an hour of professional conversation, that he let certain words escape him which proved how his heart was beating under his undecorated tunic. It was unhoped-for good fortune, that he was not given the command of the detachment on this occasion. But as he was incapable of selfish exultation, so he gave no thought to his own interests. His expression had grown even more gloomy since the other had made that declaration which left no room for doubt. As he accompanied his visitor to the door, he detained him in front of a mediocre engraving, the Last Cartridge. He was neither a collector with the taste of an Altona, nor a connoisseur of art like a Bressieux, was poor Captain Despois. He was something higher in the scale of human culture,—a good soldier. All the martyrdom of the army, of the army forced by shameless politicians into such tragedies of the conscience, quivered in the tone in which, calling his lieutenant's attention to that wretched lithograph of a scene of disaster, but of an heroic disaster and face to face with the enemy, he repeated simply the famous line:—

VI THE WILL

It was not quite eight o'clock the next morning when Landri and his dragoons came in sight of Hugueville-en-Plaine, so named to distinguish it from Hugueville-en-Montagne. It is a large village, three leagues from Saint-Mihiel on the map and as the crow flies. The network of roads in those ramparts of the Forest of Argonne stretches the twelve kilometres to seventeen. An extensive wood bounds the village on the east, so that the sixty men of the little detachment were able to approach unseen.

It was another typical day of early autumn, with a pale blue sky, veiled by transparent clouds, like the preceding Monday, when Valentine Olier's lover stopped his automobile at the door of Saint-François-Xavier, to pay a surreptitious visit to his friend. In his black overcoat, with his helmet on his head, the officer, who had led his two platoons for the last two hours through clumps of elms and aspens at first, and then, as the ground rose higher and higher, through thickets of oak and beech, recalled with poignant sadness that other day, so near—only four times twenty-four hours—which seemed to him so far away! He had lived more in those four days than in his twenty-nine years of childhood, adolescence and youth.

The march was accomplished in a silence which demonstrated the troopers' lack of enthusiasm for the expedition in which they were taking part. Even the anarchistic Baudoin, still sheepish over the lesson of the day before, had not tried to proselytize his comrades. They rode in fours, closely wrapped, because of the nipping air of that rugged country, in their ample blue cloaks, against which gleamed the barrels of their carbines. The sappers were distinguishable by the axes hanging from the saddle-bows. Another lieutenant brought up the rear. There was no sound save that of the horses' shoes on the frozen ground and the clinking of the sabres against the stirrups.

Those sounds would not have sufficed to announce their approach. The people of Hugueville-en-Plaine and the neighboring villages had been warned, no doubt, by the swift and inexplicable circulation of news in the country districts, the most amazing example of which was the contagious terror of the summer of 1789, which spread in a few days from one end of France to the other. In the patois of the Centre it is still spoken of as "the great pourasse."

"Aha!" said Landri, between his teeth, "we are expected."

In truth, some three hundred people were on the lookout at the entrance to the main street, and they ran off at once toward the centre of the village, shouting: "The dragoons! The dragoons!" They were only the rearguard of a crowd assembled around the church on the square, a sketch of which was annexed to the "supplementary instructions." There were more than twelve hundred peasants there, men and women, who opposed a living barrier to the horses. It took the troopers nearly fifteen minutes to reach the square, forcing back the enthusiasts with the cautious consideration which was expressly enjoined upon them. Their greatest difficulty was to control their horses, excited as they were by that great crowd singing with its thousand voices the well-known chant: "Nous voulons Dieu!" Another quarter of an hour was required to execute the same operation in front of the church and to establish the lines as ordered.

About half-past eight the little square had the aspect of a veritable halt in war-time. The horses were collected in the centre, held by the troopers, each of whom had charge of two. The rest of the men formed barriers at the ends of the streets. Behind them one could see the heads of the peasants, close together and constantly moving. The steps leading to the church, which stood on a sort of platform of earth, were still filled with kneeling women, who had begun to recite, at the tops of their voices, the litanies of the Blessed Virgin. There was something at once heart-rending and grotesque, brutally ugly and no less idiotic, in that display of military force to subdue the possible resistance of those humble creatures who cast upon the peaceful air of the lovely morning such pious appeals as "Refuge of sinners! Consoler of the afflicted! Salvation of the infirm!" And the crowd replied, from the lanes barred by dragoons: "Pray for us!"

"Upon my word they've given us a dirty job to do," said Vigouroux, the other lieutenant, in an undertone to Landri, having joined him on the square. After stationing their men, they were walking back and forth in the space left clear. "It's a hard mouthful to swallow."

"All the same, it must be done," rejoined Landri.

"Is it you who say that, Claviers?" exclaimed Vigouroux in evident amazement.

"A soldier knows only his orders," replied the other sharply.

"Oh, well! I'm not the one to blame you!" said Vigouroux. "It suits me, as you know, to have you think that way."

They continued to walk side by side without further speech. In declaring to his comrade, as he had done to his captain the evening before, his determination to go on to the end, Landri was perfectly sincere. He was keeping himself up to the mark by declarations which did not, however, make it any the less true that he had had but a single thought that day and that not of his orders! By virtue of a contradiction only too natural in a heart so deeply wounded, the nearer he approached to the moment when he might be called upon to take the decisive step after which he would have broken either with the army or with M. de Claviers, the image haunted him, ever more distinct and more touching, of that man who had not ceased to love him as his son, and whom he loved so dearly! That image was there, between Vigouroux and himself, gazing at him, and saying with those limpid blue eyes the words of the victim to his murderer: "And thou, too, my child!"

Landri did not yield to that entreaty, he was determined not to yield. It was to banish it from his mind that he had spoken so to Vigouroux. Moreover, it seemed that affairs were not likely to assume a very tragic aspect, judging from the disposition of the crowd, evidently due to orders from the curé. Those peasants were protestants, they were not rebels.

But the affair assumed a very different aspect on the arrival of a landau, preceded by gendarmes, from which three persons alighted: one in a uniform embroidered with silver, another with a scarf across his breast, the third in a frock coat. They were the sub-prefect, the special commissioner, and the recording clerk.

No sooner had they set foot to the ground, than the responses of the litany were succeeded by threatening cries of "Down with the robbers!" which attracted from the house adjoining the church a fourth personage, the curé of Hugueville himself. He was a handsome old man, bare-headed despite the cold. Two other priests accompanied him. He came forward as far as the porch of his church, the keys of which he could not, upon his soul and his conscience, surrender. He was very pale. He, too, was assuming a terrible responsibility. Blood might be shed. He raised his aged arms which had so many times exhibited the monstrance to his flock, and which at that moment implored rather than commanded respect for his wishes. The gesture was instantly understood, so unbounded was his authority, readily explained by the aspect alone of that ascetic apostle. The insulting outcries were not repeated, and a vast silence overspread the multitude, while the newcomers ascended the steps, among the women who made way for them with visible terror.

Abbé Valentin—that was the curé's name—stepped forward, and there ensued between the priest, whose face had lost its pallor, and the officials, a conversation the words of which did not reach any of the others. They noted its expressive pantomime: the curé shaking his venerable head so that his white hair fluttered in the wind, as one who meets urgent insistence with a categorical refusal, the sub-prefect almost imploring, the commissioner threatening, the recording clerk exhibiting papers. At last Abbé Valentin withdrew and the three civil functionaries, having taken counsel together, descended the steps, while the crowd, interpreting this retreat as a victory for the priest, shouted his name and began the chant:—

"I fancy that's settled," said Vigouroux, "and that we have no further business here."

"On the contrary, it's just beginning," said Landri. "They have gone to fetch the workmen."

A half-hour passed, during which the crowd ceased its singing to engage in excited conversation. The constant repetition of the words, "a locksmith," proved that the officer had guessed aright. At last the three functionaries reappeared, followed by a man visibly livid with fright; he was the public drummer of Hugueville, with his drum hanging from his neck. A prolonged howl greeted him, then abruptly ceased, to be succeeded by breathless curiosity. The commissioner, instead of ascending the steps as before, passed through the cordon of soldiers and went up to Landri.

"I have not found any workmen in Hugueville, lieutenant," he said, "to break in the door. They have all left their workshops, to avoid doing it. Their curé has made fanatics of them. I am going to ask you to give me your assistance. Here is my requisition."

And he handed the lieutenant a paper which he ran through with his eyes. The spectators of this tragic episode—one more incident in the lamentable tale of the most criminal of religious wars—saw only the helmet bending over the document, which the constantly increasing wind seemed to try to tear from the hand that held it.

"I have brought the drummer to make the announcement," added the commissioner.

"Very good," said Landri, in a voice choked with emotion, "let him do so."

In the same hollow voice he ordered the six sappers to take their axes and follow him. He began to mount the steps, while the three rolls of the drum announced the imminence of the catastrophe. They were followed by several minutes of painful anticipation. Landri, standing now on the platform, had halted, and he said no word. As he ascended the steps, he had looked up at the great clock over the portal of the church. It marked almost nine o'clock. At that moment the Marquis de Claviers was on Rue de Solferino. They were about to remove the bier of the man for whom he wept as a friend, as a brother. Tears were streaming down his noble face. His great heart was torn with grief.

That vision had arisen before the lieutenant with a distinctness which brought him abruptly to a standstill. He, the son of the Judas, was on the point of making that heart bleed from another wound!

"Well, lieutenant!" said the commissioner. "I believe the time has come."

"No," replied Landri, rousing himself forcibly from his abstraction and speaking now in a firm voice, "no, I refuse."

"You refuse?" said the sub-prefect, coming forward. "But have you duly considered the consequences, monsieur—Article 234 of the Penal Code?"

"I refuse," reiterated the young man; and with a military salute to the three officials, who were motionless with amazement, he ran rapidly down the steps which he had climbed so slowly, followed by the sappers.

"To horse!" he cried, when he reached the foot; and in the next breath, "By fours, march!" Five minutes later there was not a single dragoon on the square, but an enthusiastic crowd followed on the heels of the officials as they returned to their landau, with shouts of "Vive l'armée! Vive le lieutenant!"

"I can't understand it at all," said the commissioner, as the carriage moved away; "I'd have sworn that that officer would obey. As you saw, he didn't argue, as they usually do, about the text of the requisition."

"I thought as you did," replied the recording clerk; "I said to myself: 'We sha'n't have to come to this port again,' and I was mighty glad. If it hadn't been for the curé those beasts would have done us a bad turn."

"Do you know what his name is?" queried the sub-prefect.

"Wait," said the commissioner, looking through his papers. "Lieutenant de Claviers-Grandchamp."

"A noble!" cried the sub-prefect; "that explains everything. He was evidently very desirous to obey orders, and then, at the last moment, he balked. Why? I'll tell you; but first listen to a little story."—He was an old boulevardier and fond of telling stories.—

"Under the Empire there was a journalist of the opposition who wrote very violent articles in a 'red' newspaper. One fine day some one discovers that he writes, under a false name, others just as violent but on the other side, in a government sheet. 'There's nothing left for me but to disappear,' he groaned, and he talked about blowing out his brains.—'Bah!' said one of his friends, 'you'll get clear of it by changing your café.'—He was not wrong. Everything can be arranged in life, so long as one can change his café. But the nobles, they can't do it. There's the whole story of your lieutenant. He thought he wouldn't be well received at the Jockey Club. That's what comes of having too swell a café."

While the jovial-minded servants of a régime in which people have, in truth, changed their cafés a good deal, were laughing carelessly at the philosophic sub-prefect's outbreak, that short-lived tragedy, which lacked not even the requisite irony, came to an end with the dispersion of the actors. The protesting peasants rushed into the church, which was opened at last, and the hoof-beats of the horses, mingled with the jangling of the scabbards, died away in the yellowing woods that lie between Hugueville and Saint-Mihiel.

The detachment rode more rapidly. The sun, shining clear at last, warmed the air. It shone on the metal of the helmets and the gleaming flanks of the horses, which tossed their heads impatiently, scenting the road to the stables. Having given his orders, Landri had taken his place at the head of the column, with so savage an expression that his men, indifferent as they were to the moral crisis through which their leader had passed, were impressed by it. Vigouroux in fact had more definite reason than the commissioner for surprise at a volte-face which absolutely gave the lie to the words they had exchanged a few moments earlier. But upon him, too, his comrade's face made too deep an impression for him to try to speak to him. He rode along in the rear, secretly well pleased, in spite of himself, at the thought that paragraph 9 of Article 2 of the fifth part of the Military Annual was about to undergo a slight modification. He would advance one step on the seniority list of lieutenants of cavalry. But the artless wish to have a third galon on one's cap a little sooner does not debar excellence of heart, and he was quite sincere when he pressed Landri's hand in the courtyard of the barracks, at the end of the march.

"I thank you, Claviers," he said. "If you hadn't remounted us, the sub-prefect would have telegraphed. The command would have been turned over to me, and I don't know whether I should have had your courage, on which I congratulate you."

"One doesn't congratulate an officer on having broken his sword," retorted the other with a brusqueness which disconcerted Vigouroux.

"If that's how he feels," he thought, as he watched Landri walk away from the barracks at the rapid pace of one who would be alone, "why did he do what he did? He rarely goes to mass. He adores the profession. He has no political opinions.—It's inconceivable! There must be a petticoat underneath it all.—Aha! I have it. He seemed to be very much in love down here with poor Olier's little wife, who's a finished bigot. She wants to get married, parbleu! She's in Paris. She must have heard of the thing from her friend Julie Despois, and have made a bargain with my poor Claviers.—Decidedly, Lieutenant Vigouroux, the best thing for us is not to care too much for pretty women."

With this aphorism of practical sagacity, this other, more inoffensive, philosopher, bent his steps, no less hurriedly, toward the mess. He had eight hours of horseback in his limbs, and he was of those fortunate folk whom excitement makes hollow.

This judgment of an exceedingly honest but exceedingly commonplace youth supplemented that of the jovial prefect. Thus it is that the painful dramas of our lives are enacted before the unintelligent eyes of half-informed witnesses. There are cases in which the sufferer prefers that sort. They assure him of secrecy at least, and it was secrecy that Landri craved, it was lack of comprehension. But who could have divined the real explanation of a sudden change of purpose at which he was himself confounded—that irresistible and passionate movement of the heart toward the most generous of men.

And now, seated, crouching rather, on one of the easy chairs in his apartment, he waited. As if he had already resigned, instead of making the report to his captain, called for by the regulations, he had written a note to the colonel in person to inform him of the manner in which his mission had ended. In what shape would he be dealt with? Withdrawn from active service, dismissed on half-pay, cashiered—so many synonyms to his mind of a single phrase, with which he had replied so bitterly to Vigouroux's warm and inopportune grasp of the hand: he had broken his sword. He no longer belonged to the army except for the purpose of undergoing the last rigors of a discipline which he had knowingly violated.

They were announced to him in a letter which arrived almost immediately, in reply to his, and which ordered him to consider himself strictly under arrest, "until a decision should be reached on the subject of the provisions of law concerning his case." Below this threatening line the colonel had written his name, "Charbonnier." The ferocious curl of the C, and the vigor of the concluding flourish proved that the plebeian officer, entrusted by the hierarchy with the right to punish the aristocratic officer, was hardly putting in practice the sage recommendation of the regulation concerning internal government: "Calmness on the part of the superior officer shows that in inflicting punishment he is animated only by the good of the service and by a realization of his duty."

What did Landri care for such a trifle? Having read this laconic and imperious message, he looked at the clock on the mantel-piece, as he had looked at the clock on the front of the church at Hugueville. The hands pointed to one o'clock. His mind reverted to the melancholy ceremony, the vision of which, suddenly evoked, had effected that abrupt change in his resolution. It was all over long ago. Doubtless M. de Claviers had returned to Grandchamp. The dead man was laid to rest in the grave which the workmen would have filled by evening.

"This is my 'Here lies,' this paper," thought the young man, pushing away the colonel's letter, "the 'Here lies' of the soldier." This coincidence between the burial of his real father and the event that put an end to his career as an officer, tore his heart. "At all events," he added, "before I go before the court-martial, I shall have a little solitude."

He looked about him, to allay his soreness of heart in the security of his prison. How many hours he had passed in that salon-library in the last three years, reading and writing—and dreaming of Valentine! He took from his table drawer a case containing a portrait, the only one that he had of her. It was a head only, which he had cut from a group taken by an amateur in the country. To separate it from the others he had had to cut off the wings of the broad garden hat she wore. But the pure, intelligent glance, the half-smile, the pose, slightly inclined, of the lovely head,—ah! it was all Valentine! He gazed long at those features which he had seen alight with love, upon which his lips had drunk burning kisses, and he said aloud:—

"I have sacrificed the other thing; I will not sacrifice her!"

As if to renew the solemn pledge that united them thenceforth, he pressed his lips to the poor card whereon there shone a reflection of that charm, unique in his eyes, and, seating himself at his desk, he began a letter to Madame Olier which should describe the decisive episode of the morning, or, rather, which should try to describe it. He was constantly obliged to pause in order to choose among his thoughts. How painful that careful surveillance of his words was to him! Complete confidence is so natural, so necessary, with the person one loves! It is the very breath of the heart.

That letter finished, he took another sheet to write another. It must not be that the marquis should learn from the newspapers of the episode of the Hugueville inventory. Landri owed it to himself as well as to him to conduct himself in his relations with him exactly as if the terrible revelation had never been made. But by what name should he call him? Thrice the young man dipped his pen in the ink and thrice he laid it down. His hand refused to trace the two affectionate syllables. At last, with a sort of devout horror, he wrote, "Dear father."—Rapidly, without choosing his words,—he was simply narrating facts now,—he filled four pages with his long, nervous handwriting, and signed, as usual, "Your respectful and affectionate son."

"I am entitled to it," he said, as he closed the envelope, which he sealed with the Claviers arms; "I have paid dearly enough for it."

These letters written and mailed, Landri was surprised to feel a sort of peace, depressed and gloomy to be sure, but peace none the less. How he had dreaded that turning-point of his destiny, that hour when he must cease to serve, when he would become once more, to use his own words, "an idler and useless,—a rich man with the most authentic coat-of-arms on his carriage,—an émigré within the country!" That hour had struck, and he was almost calm. The misfortune that has happened has this merit at least: the tumult of ideas aroused by uncertainty subsides before the accomplished fact, and there ensues within us a sudden silence, as it were, which gives to the heart a simulacrum of repose. Assuredly Landri was very sad at the thought that he had taken part for the last time in the life of the regiment. But at all events he knew that it was for the last time. The discomfort of indecision was at an end. During those long days of enforced retirement he would be able to apply the powers of his mind to his plans of a new future, without wondering whether or no that future was possible. It was possible—less simple, less in conformity with the aspirations of his youth than if he had remained a soldier while marrying Valentine; but as he still had Valentine, nothing was lost.

On that first afternoon of his compulsory seclusion, in order not to abandon himself to discouragement, he tried to concentrate his thoughts upon the plan of that existence à deux, wherein he would find, if not happiness, at least a balm for the smarting wound open forever in his heart. He looked on his shelves for books relating to the different French provinces, in order to study the conditions of an establishment in the country. That was what he looked forward to—a life of retirement on a large estate, at a distance from Paris, with all that an extensive rural undertaking represents in the way of profitable activity.

But ere nightfall the inward silence was broken and the tempest of ideas swept down upon him anew. He had been for years too zealous an officer not to feel a certain remorse, which was sure to increase upon reflection, for having been governed, throughout the incident of that morning, by motives so entirely unconnected with the military service. He had transformed an act in the line of his duty into an episode of his personal, sentimental life. That was a much more serious offence, from the professional point of view, than the breach of discipline. He would not have felt remorse if he had had, for refusing to act, the motives of a Despois, the subordination of military law to religious law, which latter such men regard as primordial and imprescriptible. He, Landri, had acted upon impulse. He had not even been governed by the argument he had used upon himself from the first day—that of a debt that he owed the Claviers-Grandchamps. Had he, in truth, acted at all? He had been acted upon, in the literal meaning of the words. The marquis's powerful personality had, as it were, prevailed with him from afar.

To this remorse for having consulted, under such circumstances, not his conscience, but only his affection and compassion for that man, was added the fear that the same influence would find him weak once more in the second assault that he would have to repel. He did not suspect that, with his inheritance as a love-child, he would display far greater energy in defending his passion. In him the source of strength was not in the reasoning power, it was in the heart. He was not to learn that until he was put to the test. What he did know was that, with the most imperative motives for making an irreparable breach between M. de Claviers and himself, the opportunity had been offered him and he had not grasped it. He could not do it. Those motives were still as strong as ever. The affection by which he had allowed himself to be mastered when he was on the point of doing what would set him free, was a wounded and poisoned affection. It had made him incapable of inflicting great suffering on that man. It would make him incapable of living with him, as he would be called upon to do, every day, now that he was free. How could he fail to say to himself again and again that, even outside the binding engagement that he had entered into with Madame Olier, to throw away this second opportunity to break with the marquis was to condemn himself in the future to an endless succession of painful scenes in one of which his secret would be discovered. M. de Claviers could not fail to see that he had changed. He would be anxious about it. He would investigate.

All this Landri told himself. His conclusion was that at any cost, and at the earliest possible moment, the marquis must be informed of his betrothal. And then he doubted his courage to make that declaration, reminding himself how he had weakened, how he had suddenly lost heart on the platform of the church at Hugueville, to which he had gone up with such firm determination! Thereupon he wondered if it would not be the safer way to take advantage of his arrest to write. Colonel Charbonnier certainly would not depart from his customary severity so far as to authorize him to receive a single visit, even from his father. Consequently, if M. de Claviers were informed by letter of the marriage engagement between Landri and Valentine, he would be unable to express his dissatisfaction otherwise than by letter.

The lieutenant was too manly, despite the reflex action of a sensitiveness that was very near being morbid, and he had too much respect for his affection for Valentine, not to shrink from so cowardly a proceeding. The explanation must be, should be, by word of mouth, from man to man. It should take place the first time that he was alone with the marquis; and to cut short a state of vacillation that humiliated him, he said to himself aloud:—

"Yes, the very first time. I pledge my word of honor."

It was on Friday evening that he made this pledge, which was so definite that it procured him another interval of comparative tranquillity. Saturday passed with his mind still in a state of feverish confusion, but with his resolution unshaken.

Sunday brought three new facts in the shape of three letters, one from the marquis, one from Valentine, one from Métivier the notary. The old nobleman was not a letter-writer. He congratulated Landri, "in the name of all the Claviers-Grandchamps, past, present and future;" and then concluded: "You will exalt your old father's joy and pride to their highest point by talking to the judges as he suggested."

How like blows from a dagger were such words from him! And again, how like such blows were the words in which the gentle recluse of Rue Monsieur poured forth all her sympathy! She spoke to him whom she regarded as her fiancé of the happiness that the Hugueville incident must have afforded his father! Had she not then guessed the whole truth? The young man foresaw a new source of torture in the efforts that the dear woman would make, when they were united, to reconcile him to the marquis, and his own efforts to resist that pressure without betraying himself. Ah! he had not come to the end of his suffering!

The notary's letter was, also, very short, but it contained one line so enigmatical that Landri, under existing circumstances, could not help being disturbed by it. Maître Métivier apologized for answering somewhat tardily on the ground that he had desired first to institute a little investigation. He added that Landri's presence in Paris was not at all necessary, and that, thanks to "the unexpected incident of which he was aware," the deplorable affair was on the road to speedy and final adjustment. What incident? Was Chaffin really dishonest, as his former pupil had intuitively suspected, and as Jaubourg had declared on his death-bed? Had they detected him and discovered a way to put an end to his manœuvres? Had he confessed? Or—Already, it will be remembered, Landri had trembled at the thought that Jaubourg might have made his will in his favor.—But no; he would have been officially advised ere this. In such perplexity, the best way was to request from Métivier, at once, an explanation of that obscure passage in his letter. That was the simplest and wisest solution. But so great is the emotional strain, the anxious anticipation of misfortune, caused by a too violent shock, that Landri had not the courage to adopt it. If it did not refer to a legacy from Jaubourg, the "unexpected incident" was really a matter of indifference to him. If the contrary were true, he should know it soon enough.

In fact the Monday was not to pass before he was fully informed and found himself face to face with another problem of conscience, more painful perhaps than those of the preceding days. Tragedy engenders tragedy, by virtue of a law in which consists the hidden moral of this too truthful narrative of private life. It rarely happens that this is not the consequence of one of those deep-rooted sins whose expiation survives the person who committed it. It is one of the forms of that transmission of sin, whereof it has been said with much truth that nothing is more distasteful to us, and that "notwithstanding, but for this, the most incomprehensible of all mysteries, we should be incomprehensible to ourselves."

During the afternoon of Monday, then, Landri was alone in his salon, apparently occupied in reading, but in reality absorbed in one of those fits of melancholy meditation of which he had undergone so many during the past week, and would, he felt, undergo so many more in the months and years to come! The sound of the bell announcing a visitor roused him from his abstraction.

"They're coming to notify me of the inquiry," he thought; "so much the better!"

He heard his servant go to open the door, and in a moment a loud voice reached his ears and made him jump to his feet. That imperious accent, that tone of command—it was M. de Claviers fighting against the order of seclusion.

"But I am his father!" he said. "I tell you, I'm his father! A father has a right to see his son, it seems to me, and I will see him.—However, here he is."

Landri had, in fact, come out of the salon, completely upset by his father's arrival. He was too familiar with the marquis's indomitable will not to know that he would throw the orderly aside, with his still powerful hands, rather than go away.

"Ah! I see you at last, my dear, my son!" He took the young man in his arms and pressed him to his heart, repeating passionately: "My son! my son! At last I can say to you what I wrote so badly and briefly! The pen and I are not on the best of terms since my eyes began to fail. I feel my age. But not in my heart; and that old heart leaped with joy and pride when I read your letter. Yes, I am happy. Yes, I am proud. I should have come Saturday, but I had to see Métivier about some tiresome business matters,—I'll tell you about it,—and again yesterday, although it was Sunday. This morning I read in a newspaper that there is talk of putting you under arrest in a fortress. 'Not before I have embraced him,' I said to myself, and I did as I did the other day, when I went to see poor Charles,—I jumped into the train. I shall return to-night, and I shall be in Paris in good time for my appointment with Métivier. For that business isn't finished yet. Just fancy—But later, later. Let's talk about you. Are you well? Let me look at you. A little thin and pale."

"That's because I don't go out," the young man replied. "I am in strict confinement."

"I shall not be the cause of your being punished more severely, shall I? If necessary I will go and ask the colonel for a permit. Although, according to what you have told me—"

"It's not at all necessary," replied Landri hastily; and he added: "There's nothing more they can do to me."

In his mouth these words were only too true. The shock that the marquis's sudden appearance had given him had changed instantly into inexpressible grief—the same grief that he had felt with such intensity on their meeting in Jaubourg's death-chamber. M. de Claviers' gestures, his glance, his voice, his breath, moved him to the lowest depths of his being; and the other, seeing his perturbation, but attributing it to disappointment because of his shattered career, said to him:—

"You are sad when I hoped to find you happy to take your leave of the army with that fine gesture, which I partly suggested to you! Do you remember? And you must remember, too, how often I have told you, and again only the other day, in the forest, that you could not stay with these people. One by one they'll drive all men of heart out of the service. What they want, these wretched successors of the Dantons and Carnots, who at least had some patriotism, is a national guard surrounded by spies!—Stand straight, Landri. Have the pride of the blow you have dealt them. We will prepare your defence together. It shall be a manifesto. We'll show these Blues, who think they have exterminated us, that there are still Whites in the land. We will argue once more a cause that has been pending more than a hundred years, from the decision of which we must appeal untiringly,—the cause of Condé's army. We will proclaim that the country is not one more than half of living Frenchmen, as their idiotic theory of majorities would have it; that the law is not one more than half of the representatives of that one more than half. In the word country [patrie] there is the word father [père]—patria, pater—The country is France as our fathers made it, or it is nothing. The law is tradition, as they handed it down to us to maintain, or it is nothing. We will say that, even in 1906, we nobles do not recognize 1789, that we have never recognized the night of the 4th of August, that we are gentlemen, and that a gentleman does not perform tasks of a certain sort. You must let me select your advocate and instruct him. A manifesto, Landri,—I propose to have a manifesto, which will stir up others!—Come, tell me the whole story. The newspapers are full of lies. They claim that you hesitated, that you went up the church steps with the sappers.—How did it happen?"

"Why, just as they say," replied the young man.

"You hesitated?" rejoined the marquis; and, gazing at Landri, with infinite affection in his clear blue eyes, he continued: "I understand your pallor now. The sacrifice was very painful. For it is a sacrifice that you have made to us, that you have made to me," he added, not realizing how true his words were.

The "Émigré" had been speaking with all the passion of a partisan, who, being unable to fight the government except in thought, indulges in that pastime with all his heart. Now he made way for the father.

"Thanks," he said, and pressed his son's hand. "But, do not deceive yourself," he continued; "it is for France as well that you have made this sacrifice. You remember that I told you also the other day that I understood you only too well, that I too had heard, in my youth, the voice of the tempter: 'One does not serve the government, one serves France.' One of our princes said it at the trial of the traitor Bazaine: 'France was involved!'—That is why I allowed you to enter Saint-Cyr. Besides, to wear the sword is no degradation. Only follow the logic of your own idea, and you will meet mine, for the truth is one.—Once more, what was your object in putting on the uniform? To serve your country.—What service could you render her that would be more complete, more serviceable than this—to maintain intact, before the eyes of all men, the type of the soldier-chevalier? The chevalier, you see, is the ideal code of regulations, always permanent under new forms, and summed up in the words: the flag, military honor, the good of the service. It is the Chevalier whom the Revolution pursues with its hatred to-day, under the cape or the cloak, as of yore under the coat of the bodyguard or the light-horse. It was against him that it invented the abominable phrase, 'a national army,' which means, 'no army at all, but the common people armed with muskets, pikes and cannon!'—Well! by refusing to march against a church you have asserted once more the permanence of the Chevalier type. In the old days, on their reception they were presented with a sword in the shape of a cross. Admirable symbol of our ancestors—force ruled by faith, that is to say, by justice and mercy! That is what the Cross is, justice tempered by mercy. You have proclaimed aloud that the Soldier and the Chevalier are but one. You have made yourself the example. Therein is the whole of military duty. You and those men who have previously done as you have done have postponed the hour when France will cease to have an army, by steadfast adherence to principle. You know the value that I attach to such adherence. You understand now that one must sometimes lay down life in order to keep intact the germ of the future—principle, always principle! That is what the ancients did when they left their cities but took their gods with them. I have always loved that symbolism. It is Christian even in its paganism! I have an idea that in the future you will agree better with your old father. And then, too, you will help him grow old. You are my witness that I have never complained. I have never attempted to impose upon you the exactions of my selfishness. But why should I not confess it? Grandchamp has sometimes seemed very empty to me, and the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré—very empty. My friends are going, one after another, witness my poor Charles. At my age one is weary of burying, weary of surviving. You will help me to drive away these black devils. We will not part any more.—But what's the matter?"

"The matter is," the young man replied, "that I cannot bear to hear you talk like this."

He had made a gesture to stop the marquis, and he let a cry of pain escape him, of which he had at least an explanation to give, although it was not the true one. Whatever the cost, he felt that he must interrupt an effusion which caused him too much suffering, and a declaration of principles which were so unwittingly but so fiendishly ironical when addressed to him, the child of sin, the nobleman by imposture. It was necessary to have done with it.

"No," he insisted, "I cannot. This life together that you speak of, you will not care to live with me when I have told you what I am bound to tell you. The other day, during our conversation in the forest, to which you just referred, I spoke to you about a marriage. It is going to take place. Since last Tuesday I have been engaged—"

"Engaged?" cried the marquis. "Don't tell me, Landri, that it's to that Madame Olier."

"It is to Madame Olier. I have asked her for her hand. She has promised it to me. We have exchanged our troths. She will be my wife."

"You asked her for her hand?" M. de Claviers exclaimed. "Then you knew—"

"That you would refuse your consent? Yes," said the young man.

"And does Madame Olier know that I refused it?"

"I did not tell her that I had spoken to you of her."

"And she agreed to become engaged to you, without troubling herself about what I would do, your father?"

"She had faith in me," replied Landri.

Could he explain under what conditions of supreme grief, almost of agony, he and Valentine had united their destinies? And yet that M. de Claviers should judge her wrongfully, should take her for an adventuress, was terribly painful to him! He knew his way of thinking. He had still in his ears the words: "She must be very pure, very sensitive. She will never consent to marry you against your father's wish. If her ideas were not exalted to that point, you would not love her."—And he implored:—

"I ask you not to speak of her. As she is mine now, I cannot permit anybody to utter in my presence a word derogatory to her—not even you."

"Begin yourself by not telling me of actions on her part which are not those of the woman that I took her for after your confidences. I say nothing of her. I don't know her. I speak of your conduct toward our family. Will she or will she not be of our family if you marry her? Am I or am I not the head of that family? Have I the right to defend the name of Claviers-Grandchamp?"—He had risen and he bore down upon his son, with folded arms and a rush of blood to his aged face, of that blood whose claims he was asserting—and to whom! "And it is just when I have lost my dearest friend that you have done this to me, when you knew that I should be so stricken with grief!—In Heaven's name, who is this woman, who has so perverted your heart?—But what can she be if not a seeker of titles and wealth, having planned what she has planned in order to force herself upon us, upon me first of all, whether I will or no, by virtue of the accomplished fact?—But no! the fact shall not be accomplished. This marriage shall not take place. I, your father, do not wish it to take place—do you hear, Landri,—I do not wish it."

The young man submitted to this formidable attack without replying. He shuddered when he heard that judgment of Valentine. But M. de Claviers was the only being on earth against whom he could not defend the woman he loved. Whence did he derive the right to raise his voice against him, even if he had the strength? And yet in the attempt to arrest that torrent of indignation, as to which he could not foresee how far it would carry the marquis, in view of his natural violence, he said simply, or, rather, groaned:—

"I shall not defend her against you. Not a word shall come from my mouth that lacks the respect that I owe you. Because of that, remember that she is a woman and that I love her."

"She has forgotten that I am your father," retorted the irascible marquis. But he had not lied when, a few moments earlier, he had uttered with a sympathetic accent the word "chevalier." The legendary meaning of that venerable word, profaned by the most unwarranted usage, was still to him a living truth. That the young man should make that appeal to him was sufficient to induce him to interrupt his indictment of one who was absent. He reseated himself, and with his elbows on the table, and his head in his hands, he continued after a pause, in a tone in which wrath had given place to sadness:—

"Then you will send me a respectful summons,[5] I suppose?"

"I shall have to," replied Landri, "if you do not give your consent."

He realized that he was lost if he yielded to the emotion with which that plaint, so affectionate in its manly simplicity, had filled his heart anew. This constant laying bare to the quick of his sensitive nature by that man's mere presence proved to him once more how necessary it was that he should muster energy to complete the rupture. He loved him, he revered him too deeply to be able to live in falsehood with him.

"My consent?" echoed the marquis, and his anger flared up once more. "Never! No, never! This is no mere caprice, as you must know. It concerns the thing that has been the mainspring of my whole existence. As for the authority in the name of which I forbid—you understand, I forbid—this marriage, you can defy it and violate it. The shocking laws of the present day allow you to do so; but if you dare, you will do a worse thing than if you had broken in the door of Hugueville church the other day. You will insult your father.—I prefer to believe," he continued, after another silence, during which he had visibly striven to control himself, "I prefer to believe that you will reflect. You hesitated at Hugueville, and then the Claviers blood won the day over the poison of modern ideas with which I cannot see how you have become infected. This marriage out of your class is another case of revolt against prejudices. If our ancestors had not had them, these prejudices, for well-nigh eight hundred years, you and I would not be Claviers-Grandchamps. If you choose, from weakness, from aberration of mind, to cease to behave like one of them, an infamous code forbids me to prevent you, but know this, that I shall die of despair!—Nothing! he cares nothing for that!" he continued, rising and pacing the floor. "He does not answer!—When I see you thus, speechless, obstinate, insensible to my suffering, I do not believe my eyes. But answer me, pray! Speak to me! Ask me for further time, at least, so that I may not go away upon those horrible words, that threat against your father. For you did threaten me. You said: 'I shall have to! I shall have to!'—Come, Landri, say that you will regret those words, say that I have moved you."

"You tear my heart," the young man replied. "But I have given my word. I shall keep it. I shall marry Madame Olier."

"And I," exclaimed M. de Claviers, exasperated to the highest pitch by this renewed resistance, "I give you my word that if you do, I will never see you again.—Enough of this!" he continued in an imperious tone. "For an hour past I have shown you all the affection, all the love that I have in my heart for you, and all my grief as well, and you defy me. God knows that I did not come here with the idea of speaking to you as I am going to do. But you shall not defy the paternal majesty with impunity!" And it was true that at that moment majesty did emanate from him,—the majesty of the fathers of an earlier time who, as private dispensers of justice, condemned their sons to imprisonment, and sometimes to the galleys.[6] "You will ask my pardon, you understand, for what you have presumed to say to me, or I will never see you again. And to prove that this sentence of separation between us, if you do not obey, is final on my part, I shall begin as soon as I reach Paris, to-morrow morning, to segregate our property. We have been engaged of late, Métivier and I, in adjusting my affairs which Chaffin's improvidence had allowed to fall into an unfortunate condition. I shall take advantage of the opportunity to surrender to you your power of attorney and all your property. I will spare you the necessity of demanding them."

"I?" cried Landri. "You cannot believe—"

The names of Chaffin and Métivier had suddenly reminded him of the financial catastrophe the imminence of which had so alarmed him. He had asked the notary to say nothing, and he was quite sure that his correspondence with him was unknown to the marquis. So that he could not have interpreted it as a step suggested by Valentine to obtain possession of his fortune. But what if Métivier had been lacking in professional discretion? What if that last little sentence signified such a suspicion?

"I believe nothing," rejoined M. de Claviers, "except that on certain roads one does not stop."—Then, to prove that he proposed to be just, even in the execution of his sentence upon his rebellious son: "But as you haven't yet reached that point, and as you may still have some scruples, considering that I spoke to you about my burdens,—let me tell you that my difficulties are all at an end, thanks to the devotion of a friend. Charles Jaubourg had none but distant relations, of whom he had reason to complain. He has left me his whole fortune by his will. I came to tell you this news also," he added with a sigh, "and to read you the provisions of the will. Nothing could be more lofty in sentiment, more delicately expressed. I have accepted the legacy, in the first place, because it's absolutely honest money: Charles's father was probity itself; secondly, because I do not injure any one—his cousins are all rich and he never saw them; and finally because I loved him as much as he loved me. One can count the attachments in life that do not deceive one.—However I need not tell you that, without this legacy, your fortune was intact. I will order Métivier to communicate with you about the settlement. As for me, when the day comes that you desire to recover a father, you know the conditions.—Adieu."

Landri had listened with, an indescribable mixture of fear and disgust—fear of betraying his excessive emotion, disgust at the infamy of which he was the helpless witness. This then was the ghastly means devised by Jaubourg to leave his whole fortune to his son! And should he, the son, permit that money to be accepted thus, with such touching and confiding gratitude, by that nobleman, so proud and of such magnificent moral integrity? If, by his silence concerning what he knew, he should make himself an accomplice in that final act of treachery, would he not cap the climax of the outrage by his false generosity? The cry of protest was on his lips, and he did not utter it. There was something more atrocious than the failure to warn that honorable and terribly abused man, and that was for his wife's child to tell him what that wife had been.

M. de Claviers had walked to the door. He seemed to await a word, a gesture, a glance; and Landri stood silent, with downcast eyes. The marquis himself started to turn back. Then, in face of the young man's obstinate immobility, his dense eyebrows contracted, his eyes became stern. He repeated:—

"Adieu. Do you understand that I am bidding you adieu?"

"Adieu," said Landri, without raising his eyes, while the dispenser of justice, with a shrug of his powerful shoulders, left the room to avoid giving way to the fresh wave of indignation that swept over his great heart.

VII ALL SAVE HONOR

Four weeks had passed since the young man had listened to the Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp's wrathful stride through the reception-room of his apartment, without calling him back to cry out the truth, to prevent that deplorable injustice: the debts incurred by his imprudent but generous and chivalrous prodigality paid with the money of his wife's lover! After those twenty-nine days Landri found himself once more, in the same place and at the same hour, surrounded by the same familiar objects amid which his period of arrest had passed.

He was free now. On the preceding day he had been sentenced by the court-martial at Châlons, by five votes against two, to a fortnight's imprisonment, to date back to his original arrest. On his return from Châlons to Saint-Mihiel, he had found in his room an official communication, stating that "by presidential order, under date of this day, Lieutenant de Claviers-Grandchamp is retired from active service on half-pay." That sheet of paper was the veritable "Here lies" of the soldier, rather than the letter that he had received from the colonel on his return from the Hugueville expedition. Landri had crumpled it up and thrown it aside, paying no further heed to it. All his attention was given to a telegram which he read again and again, an indefinite number of times, seated, with his head in his hands, at the same table and in the same attitude as the marquis the other day, while his valet and the orderly went in and out, packing his trunks.

Landri was to return to Paris by the night train. The telegram in which he was so absorbed was from M. de Claviers' maître d'hôtel. It was a reply to the only letter that he had written the marquis since their interview. He had sent it on the adjournment of the court-martial, to inform him of the verdict. It contained a careful but very distinct allusion to his proposed marriage, and stated that he proposed to go to Paris unless his "father"—he continued to call him by that name—should see any objection to his doing so. He read and reread the despatch acknowledging the receipt of that letter.

"Monsieur le Marquis, being obliged to leave for Grandchamp, instructs me to say to Monsieur le Comte, in reply to his letter, that he will expect him at Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré to-morrow.

GARNIER."

That M. de Claviers had not put aside his severity, this missive, so deliberately impersonal and at such a time, was a sufficient proof.

"However, he is willing to see me!" said Landri to himself. "This interview will be another very painful one, but I must not shirk it."

Upon receipt of the despatch he had devoted all the energy of his mind to looking at the impending meeting from the point of view that he had constantly maintained during that month of almost absolute solitude. He had passed the whole of it in trying to define his duty, and he had always come at last to the twofold necessity: silence and separation, separation and silence. During those interminable hours of reflection he had not had one moment's doubt. Not for a moment, either, had he ceased to suffer at the thought of Jaubourg's will, of the shocking abuse of confidence committed for his benefit by his real father, and in which he could not avoid being an accomplice, rather than commit a still more shocking crime by breaking the heart of the most loyal of men, by dishonoring his own mother. His grief finally took the shape of remorse for his compulsory participation in this vilest of falsehoods. Every time that he had remembered, during those four weeks, the petrifying revelation, he had thought instantly of the method resorted to by the dead man to leave him his fortune, and had shuddered with impotent abhorrence.

Nothing that had happened had diverted his mind from that obsession: neither the questions asked during the official inquiry, nor the consultations with his counsel, nor his appearance before the judges, nor the manifestations called forth by his act. Expressions of sympathy had come to him by hundreds from every part of France, from superior officers and comrades, even from privates. He had received also a great number of letters and postal cards filled with low-lived insults. This was a proof that the Marquis de Claviers was right, and that the fine gesture of refusal before the door of the church to be burglarized, since it exasperated the enemies of the army, evidently answered a deep-rooted craving of the military conscience. But alas! it was only a gesture, only a pretence. The officer had obeyed a sentiment which none of his admirers or his insulters could even suspect. Praise and criticism affected him no more than other impressions of the external world. Madame Olier's letters alone had discovered the secret of communicating to him a little of their tenderness. He had received one each day. Evidently the dear woman realized that she had hurt him the first day by speaking of M. de Claviers. Never after that, in the course of those chats with pen in hand, did she so much as hint at the marquis's existence. "Somebody has told her about the legacy," was Landri's conclusion, "and she understands."

He had guessed aright. Madame Privat, who had come to Paris for Jaubourg's funeral, had paid Valentine a visit. She had told her, with the acerbity of a disinherited relation, about her cousin's will.

"You remember what I told you about his passion for Madame de Claviers-Grandchamp? Now he leaves Monsieur de Claviers all his property! Privat insists that he can't see anything wrong. He claims that it's the surest proof that nothing ever happened.—You must confess, my dear friend, that it has an evil look."

Madame Olier had made no reply. But her heart had overflowed with pity. She had seen Landri as he was at their last meeting, in turn paralyzed and convulsed by grief, and she had divined the terrible truth. Her affection had assumed a gentler, more caressing phase, across the distance, and on that afternoon preceding his return to Paris, as he bent over that enigmatical despatch, the certain precursor of fresh struggles, the convicted officer, to exorcise his troubles, evoked the image of his only friend, his betrothed and his comforter.

"I shall see her to-morrow," he said to himself. "I shall be able to keep the secret that honor commands me to keep, and she will read my heart and pity me. She loves me! He is going to ask me to give her up. I had the strength to resist the first attack. I am sure of having still more against the second.—But is that really what he wants to talk to me about?—What else can it be?"

In this question which Landri asked himself, or rather, which asked itself in his mind, in his own despite, another supposition was comprised. If it were true that Madame Olier had heard of Jaubourg's attentions to Madame de Claviers,—and of that he had no doubt,—others must have heard of them, too, others would be talking of them. In the first shock of the revelation that had been the son's first thought. The reader will remember that, after he had started for his club on Rue Scribe, after the scene on Rue de Solferino, he had fled wildly, like a madman, with the terror of a culprit flying from a witness of his shame, simply because he saw a member of the club cross the threshold. Charles Jaubourg's will must have revived all the gossip, aroused anew the slumbering malevolence. Who could say that the marquis had not received anonymous letters, that his suspicions had not been awakened?

One fact had surprised Landri more than all the other incidents of those four weeks. As he dwelt upon the hidden meaning of the despatch, his mind reverted to that fact which suddenly assumed very great importance. How was it that M. de Claviers had done nothing in respect to one of the matters discussed in their interview—the choice of an advocate? The motives that made him irreconcilable on the subject of the marriage to Valentine were respect, worship, idolatry of his name. Would not those same motives naturally have led him to persevere in his original purpose? The heir to that name was summoned before a court-martial. That was a public fact which had no connection with their private disagreement. How was it that the "Émigré" had not insisted that the accused should be defended—that was his own word—on the ground of the principle to which he devoted his life: the honor of the noble? It was not necessary to communicate with his son for that. It would have been enough to send the young man a defender duly "instructed," according to another expression of his. He had not done so. Why? Landri had had to apply to Métivier the notary, who had sent down a kinsman of his, a distinguished practitioner, but purely professional. The marquis and the counsel had never met. Why? Did it mean that some new event had intervened? What was it? The awakening of suspicion? Or was the wrath of outraged paternal authority sufficient to explain his abstention?

Landri was so desirous to believe the latter that he went to the trunk in which his books were already packed, and took out the work wherein the marquis's ideas were collected and marshalled: "The History and Genealogy of the House of Claviers-Grandchamp." The mere title made Landri tremble, but he remembered having read a note, which he must find at any price. When he had found it, he spelled out all the syllables, word by word, in a low voice. He longed to read therein an explanation of the attitude of the Feudalist, thwarted in one of his most firmly rooted convictions. It was a fragment of a discourse delivered by the eloquent Duveyrier before the Parliament of Paris, in 1783. M. de Claviers had cited the passage apropos of the severity of one of his ancestors toward a younger son, with enthusiastic approval and emphasizing the last lines as if to make them his own.

In this argument Duveyrier was supporting a father's denunciation of his own daughter to the authorities.

"Can we," he said, "can we, without distress, reflect upon the immense interval that separates us from those who handed our laws down to us? By what steps of progressive enfeeblement we have substituted for that mental energy, for the power of genuine virtue, a factitious sensibility which takes fright at the slightest effort; not the healthy sensibility, inseparable from kindness of heart, which has compassion for the criminal while punishing the crime, but that flexibility of character, that flabbiness of heart which leads us to purchase the indulgence of others by our own indulgence, and which we call sensibility in order to legitimize our weakness, to ennoble it, indeed, if that were possible! In the last days of the Republic, when discord was ushering in depravity, Aulus Fulvius deserted Rome to follow Catiline. His father called him back. That citizen, a rebel against his country, was still a dutiful son. He obeyed. He submitted to the sentence of death pronounced by his father. Our ancestors admired this example of sublime virtue. We deem it harsh. Our grandsons will call it barbarous. We are beginning to be surprised that a father should exercise the right that the law gives him, to avenge his betrayed honor, his contemned authority. We shall end by depriving him of that right. From the impossibility of punishing the children will result contempt for the father, insubordination rebellion, and universal anarchy."

"That's his way of thinking, and he's profoundly in earnest about it," thought Landri, as he closed the bulky volume. "That's enough to make my opposition exasperate him, so that he won't have anything more to do with me until I have given way.—Where were my wits? He wants to see me to-morrow about those same matters that he had Métivier write me about. Must I imagine, too, that he has mysterious reasons for dividing our property? He told me in this very room of his purpose to do that. That alone proves how much weight he attaches to my offence against him. In his eyes it's a crime. I ought to congratulate myself that he is so rigid in his convictions."

This explanation was very plausible. But it did not allay the vague anxiety that the telegram had caused Landri. For this reason: Maître Métivier had sent him numerous papers to sign, about a fortnight before, accompanying them with a long letter, of a more personal sort. He said in it that he strongly approved of this segregation of the property of the father and son, and that he saw therein good augury for the future. He added that M. de Claviers had, upon his advice, entrusted the liquidation of his indebtedness to a former clerk of his, Métivier's, one M. Cauvet, an advocate who made a specialty of notarial practice. This Cauvet had discovered a serious irregularity almost immediately. Chaffin had been dismissed. "Perhaps Monsieur le Marquis was a little severe," observed the cautious Métivier. "Although the fraud was highly probable, it was not absolutely certain."

"So I was right," was Landri's instant thought, "Chaffin too was a traitor." And he had gone no farther. In his present reflections matters assumed a different aspect. Such violence under excitement was certainly a pronounced feature of M. de Claviers' temperament. No other reason was necessary to explain it than the discovery of a breach of trust. But the consequences? Landri remembered that the son of the steward thus summarily dismissed was Pierre Chaffin, the physician who had watched at the bedside of the dying Jaubourg. Suppose that that fellow had repeated to his father what he had unquestionably overheard? And suppose that the father, to revenge himself, had in his turn repeated that secret? Suppose that he had written to the person most interested?

"No," Landri answered his own questions, "Chaffin may have been tempted by the money that passed through his hands, and have become a thief. But he is not a monster. And Pierre is a physician. There are still some of them, yes, a great many, who keep professional secrets. No; nothing can have happened in that direction, nor in any other. Our conversation of the other day is quite enough."

Despite these arguments, the return to Paris, under such conditions and in obedience to that telegram, inspired the young man with an apprehension that he could not overcome.

"It's being shut up in this apartment, where I have too many sorrowful thoughts to disturb me," he said to himself; and he went out, to try to conquer his weakness by walking.

He employed the last hours of the afternoon in paying farewell visits. But they did not give him, after such a succession of violent shocks, the peace of mind which he was very near requiring physically. He might have measured the extent of the change wrought in him during those few weeks, by this trivial fact: during that last walk from one end to the other of the town where he had done his last garrison duty, he did not feel a moment's nostalgia for the profession to which he had been so attached. One anxiety overtopped everything else, of the same nature as that which he had undergone before the telegram came, and had tried to shake off: to ascertain whether the news of the infamous will had reached the ears of his comrades, and what they thought of it.

Landri had heard vaguely long ago that Major Privat was a distant cousin of Jaubourg. He had no sooner set foot on the sidewalk than he remembered it. That officer had retired the previous winter. He had certainly continued to correspond with some of his comrades in arms. Had he written them the news, and if so, with what comments? In that case what interpretation would those straightforward, simple hearts, whose uncompromising loyalty he knew, place upon M. de Claviers' acceptance?

Such an idea was not of the sort that permits the intrusion of others. In vain did the pictures of military activity on the streets of Saint-Mihiel multiply themselves about the cashiered lieutenant, as if to remind him of his youthful dreams and their destruction. He paid no heed to them. Thus he was able to pass, without being suffocated with despair, the headquarters gate, which he had entered only the other day with the firm determination to retain his uniform. He met, without a tearing at his heart-strings, several troopers of his former command, led by his successor, who was mounted on Panther herself, become in those few weeks a docile and spirited cavalry mare. He recognized Baudoin's insolent and sneering profile, and Teilhard's face, already less frank and open, evidently recaptured by anarchistic influences. That is one of the bitterest pangs that a real leader of men can feel,—to see the living tool that he has hoped, and has begun, to shape, go astray in other hands. Landri was hardly moved by it. On the other hand, he was intensely relieved to find that neither Despois nor Vigouroux, the first two officers whom he called upon, had the slightest suspicion of the legacy left to the Claviers by Privat's cousin. He had the courage to mention the former major's name to both of them. Plainly, they had not thought of him for months. They had many other cares in their heads, which they both poured into his ears, each after his manner.

"So you are lost to the army," said Despois. "Such an excellent officer—what a pity! I blame most the wretches who are governing us, for not understanding that, especially among us, a man cannot be replaced. A man! When they have one who wants to serve, they ought to do everything to keep him. In a campaign, one man is worth ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred, yes, a thousand others! One would think that our tyrants were afflicted with a vertigo that impels them to eliminate from the army the men of heart, that is to say, the loyalists, the men from whom their Republic has least to fear. The officer who refuses, as you did, to break down a chapel door, is the officer who doesn't conspire, because he has scruples, and those fools don't comprehend it!—I, too," he added, "I shall leave, and very soon. I don't think that I can stand it. Yesterday they made us march against the churches, to-morrow we shall be called upon for a campaign against the strikers. That is no more a soldier's work than the other. The army may be employed, in exceptional cases, to see that the laws are executed. But it must be one of the exceptional cases. The reason for the existence of the army is war, not police duty. Our politicians have a horror of war, of that manly and sanctified school of heroism. They have the degraded taste for armed demonstrations in the streets. Look you, they are talking of sending us next week to adjust matters at the forges of Apremont.—For heaven's sake, gentlemen, give us a policy of internal peace and of proud dignity externally!—Adieu, Claviers. I wish that we may meet again, you can guess where; foot to foot, charging the enemy. But will there still be any cavalry to follow us?—I am wrong. We have no right to despair, so near Vaucouleurs. What can you expect? It breaks your old captain's heart to see you go away."

"Well! so they've slit your ears, my dear Claviers!" Such was Vigouroux's first exclamation. "Ah! the—" And the lieutenant of dragoons, who adhered to the great traditions of the Klébers and Cambronnes, hurled a mess-room epithet at his comrade's persecutors. "Do you know that the same thing came near happening to me? And why? Because I exchanged two or three words with you when we dismounted on our return from Hugueville. Gad! they didn't waste any time. That same afternoon the colonel sent for me.—'Is it true that you congratulated Monsieur de Claviers in public?' he asked me.—'I did talk with Claviers,' I replied, 'but privately, when we were off duty; and if anybody claims to have been present at our interview, he lies.'—Charbonnier hesitated a moment. For all that he has the ideas that you know of, he's a good fellow. And then, Vigouroux, Charbonnier—those names have a similar sound, whereas Claviers-Grandchamp—However, 'I'll let it pass this time,' he said. 'But be less talkative, young man. You may fall in with another colonel than me.'—That's all there was to it. You see, two minutes' conversation, and we were spied upon. It poisons life. Claviers, to be surrounded by blackguards. It spoils the cooking at the mess, which really hasn't been so bad this year. I can't eat without talking, and no one dares to speak at the table now. If all the good men like you, the staunch ones, should disappear, what would become of us? But no matter, Charbonnier and his curs may say what they please, I congratulate you again, and I authorize you to say everywhere that Vigouroux cried 'bravo' twice over."