Chapter II: A Grand Seigneur (1)

Madame Olier's prevision was just: that little unthinking gesture, as of a hand extended to prevent a fall, was destined to be one of the signs which should arouse in Landri the most painful of ideas, but not until later. That youthful heart--Valentine had read it accurately in this respect, as well--was too noble not to entertain an instinctive repugnance for suspicion, that calumny of the mind. How could he have made an exception in his mother's case? He had never ascribed a criminal motive, even for a second, nor imagined that any one could ascribe such a motive to the assiduities of one of the intimate friends of their family. The tears that he had shed on Madame de Claviers-Grandchamp's death had been the loving, sincere tears of a son, with no alloy in his veneration. And so, while he returned from Rue Monsieur to Place Saint-François, to get his automobile, no suspicion entered his mind. The imprudent entreaty that his friend had addressed to him not to see the invalid on Rue de Solferino was only a proof of an affection a little too easily disturbed, and he was the more touched by it.

"How I love her!" he exclaimed, echoing, and conscious of it, the passionate sigh which she, on her side, was breathing toward him. "And she loves me, too. She fights against it still, but I understood it, I saw it, I know it. I know that she will be my wife.--My wife!" he repeated, with an intimate quiver of his whole being which made him close his eyes. Suddenly Valentine's image brought before his eyes that of his father, and the memory of the undertaking he had entered into abruptly crushed that outburst of joy. "She is right," he said to himself, without transition, mentally repeating the very words that she had used. "I owe it to him to speak both of her and of all the rest. I owe it to him from respect for his noble heart. I will do it."

The bare thought of that explanation oppressed the young man with an agony of timidity. He had always suffered from it in the presence of that man whose name he bore, whose heir he was, whom he loved, and by whom he was loved, and he had never been able to open his heart to him fully, to explain himself concerning his inmost thoughts. His character, which was very manly in respect to important decisions, but extremely sensitive, and consequently easily disconcerted in its outward manifestations, had always been taken by surprise as it were by that of the marquis, so unhesitating, so dominating, so impervious to argument. His resistance to this moral despotism was not altogether conscious. It was that which incited him in his constant effort not to be an "émigré," as he said, to make himself useful, to belong to his own time, "to do his duty"--another of his phrases. We must repeat it. There are none more just. Many another young man of his class has felt, as he did, that magnanimous and praiseworthy appetite for efficient and beneficent action. Many have, like him, tried to rebel against the ostracism which France, the offspring of the Revolution, practises, by her customs as well as by her laws, against the old families. They have, like him, stumbled over obstacles. They have rarely felt them, as he did, as tragedies. This excessive and morbid view of his destiny betrayed in Landri a lack of equilibrium, of certainty. In truth, if, in certain directions, his ideas were absolutely opposed to those of his father, in others he underwent a veritable hypnotism at the hands of that powerful personality, and he was very near the point of doubting himself before an irreconcilability which he had not dared really to face but once, when it was a question of entering Saint-Cyr. His mind had been developed by reading, observation, reflection, all solitary, constantly held in check by the loud speech, the imperious intelligence, the steadfast and logical convictions, in a word, the decision, of the marquis. Landri, too, had decision, but by fits and starts, and when he had provided himself with very well-considered reasons therefor. His father had it always, gaily, buoyantly, as he walked, as he breathed, by an unfolding of his inward energy, if one may say so, which was as natural in him as the muscular development is in a lion. The prestige of that opulent and powerful nature maintained so complete a domination over the temperament, more refined perhaps, but less masterful, of his son, that he had been on the point of equivocating when Valentine asked him for that promise. He had given it, however. His lover's pride would have been too deeply humiliated to confess a weakness of which he was now sensible once more.

"Yes," he repeated, "I must speak to him--but how? Of her? That will be very difficult, but let him once see her and my cause will be won. She is so refined, so pretty, such a lady!--Of the inventories? It is impossible. She understood me at once, devout as she is. Their religion is not the same. To her the Church is the faith. Those who haven't it are simply to be pitied. To him the Church is like the monarchy, like the nobility, the essential condition of public order. It is the hierarchy that guarantees all the others. What answer can I make? I should think as he does if our time were not our time."

Soliloquizing thus he reached the side of the Church of Saint-François-Xavier, at the spot where he had left his automobile. His chauffeur, when he did not return, had left his car in the care of one of the numerous idlers who transform that isolated square into a club of bicyclists and tennis-players, and had gone to refresh himself at one of the wine-shops in the neighborhood.

"Deuce take it!" said the young man ill-humoredly, "Auguste isn't here! I shall never get to Grandchamp. I sha'n't have any lunch, that's all," he concluded. "But how is the machine?" and while the small boy who had been left in charge of the vehicle ran off to fetch the conscienceless chauffeur, he began to examine the different parts of the machine with a connoisseur's eye. That too was one of the small points upon which he had based his self-esteem as a "modernist." He understood how to repair and handle his automobile as well as a professional. "Everything is in order," he said. "I will drive myself. We shall go faster, and I shall not irritate my nerves by thinking." He began therefore to put on the cloak and cap and goggles and gloves of the profession, and Auguste had no sooner joined him, than he started his heavy machine with as much precision as if he had not borne the name of Landri, which denoted in the family of Claviers-Grandchamp pretensions more or less justified--but they date back to the twelfth century--of descending from the kings of the first race. And this car of the latest model bore on its panels the curious arms which, with the device, _E tenebris inclarescent_, symbolize that legendary origin: three frogs _or_ on a field _sable_. These were, according to some authorities in heraldry, the arms of our first kings. Géliot waxed wroth over it long ago, in his "Vraye et parfaite science des armoiries."[1] He saw therein only three roughly executed fleurs-de-lys. He would have enjoyed maintaining that opinion before the choleric marquis. "And to think," reflected the heir of the pseudo-Merovingian, "that it took years to make my father admit the mere idea of the telephone, of electricity and the automobile! But at last we have one, and of an excellent make. I shall be there before the hunt is over."

He had, in obedience to a childish whim in which all young men will recognize themselves, instead of driving straight along the boulevard, the Esplanade and the quay, taken Rue de Babylone, in order to pass Rue Monsieur. He longed to see once more the outside of the little hôtel of the time of Louis XVI. Valentine became once more so present to his mind that he was absorbed anew in that inward vision when he reached the house in which Jaubourg lived. Lovers, even the most affectionate,--especially the most affectionate,--are almost savagely insensible to what does not concern, either nearly or distantly, the object of their passion. He had no need to remember his promise, in order to avoid trying to see the invalid.

"There should be a bulletin in the concierge's lodge," he said to Auguste; "get down, copy it, leave my name and come back quickly. We haven't five minutes to waste."

The chauffeur jumped down from his seat, with the reckless haste of a servant who seeks to earn forgiveness for a fault. He disappeared like a gust of wind behind the door of the enormous porte-cochère which imparted a seignorial aspect to the abode of the unique personality, untitled, but of the most unexceptional elegance, that Charles Jaubourg had been. In order that his name should have been so much as mentioned in connection with Madame de Claviers-Grandchamp, it must have been that he, who came of such a widely different social caste, had been able to win for himself an exceptional position in society. Of that supremely refined man, of the great bourgeois, who had become, by dint of adaptability of manners, and, in due time, of wit, a notable member of Society, there remained only a poor tattered remnant, an old man at the point of death with pneumonia, behind those high windows. The straw spread upon the pavement to deaden the noise of passing vehicles attested the gravity of a condition of which Landri had a more decisive proof. His messenger reappeared, holding in his hand a paper on which was written this laconic and ill-boding bulletin: "A very bad night. Condition stationary.--Professor Louvet, Dr. Pierre Chaffin."

The officer read these words in an undertone; and with an indifference which, under the circumstances, was of an irony no less unintentional than cruel, he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, saying: "All right. Let's be off!"

"The concierge told me to tell Monsieur le Comte," interposed the chauffeur, "that Monsieur Jaubourg had given special orders to send Monsieur le Comte up to him when he came."

"Me?" exclaimed the young man, with unfeigned surprise and vexation. There was a gleam of hesitation in his eyes, and he started to get down. "But no, I really haven't time!" And with this exclamation, the irony of which was even more cruel, he started the automobile once more. It had already crossed the Seine, turned into Rue des Tuileries, passed the Opéra, the Gare du Nord, the barrier, and Saint-Denis, and entered upon the road through the forest of Hez, beyond which is the château of Grandchamp, before the mind of Madame de Claviers' son had even begun to detect behind that second little sign the mystery which was destined, a few hours later, to revolutionize his career forever.

"Jaubourg dying and wanting to see me? Why, when he has never in his whole life shown anything but antipathy to me? It's easily explained. My father had told him I would call. Really, I ought to have gone up. But what more should I have had to take to Grandchamp than this bulletin? And then, Chaffin is there. He must have been sent by my father, and he'll keep him posted."

Pierre Chaffin was the son of Landri's former tutor, become, under the more distinguished title of secretary, the marquis's steward and man of business. The younger man, formerly intern at a hospital, and very eminent in his profession, was now the head of the clinical staff of Louvet, who had been the Claviers-Grandchamps' physician from time immemorial.

"Besides," continued the lover, "I promised"; and his mouth, which was open to inhale the cool breeze caused by their speed, closed as if to place, despite the distance, a last kiss on his friend's burning hands. That recollection sent the blood coursing more hotly through his veins, and the automobile flew the faster through the wild flight of the houses, already beplumed with smoke, of the autumn crops, of the misty fields, of that whole landscape, which ordinarily was to Landri the source of reflections rather than of sensations. How many times, on his way to Grandchamp, had he noticed that multiplicity of small estates, which checker the land, isolate the châteaux, surround them, as if determined to conquer them! A symbol of the upward progress of the lower classes. To-day he saw nothing save space to be devoured, at the end of which he would stand face to face with his father and his promise. He had chosen to drive, in order not to think; and, despite himself, he formed and unformed in his mind the plan of that interview, while he drove on, leaving behind him, one after another, Saint-Denis and its basilica, Groslay and its moss-covered roofs, the forest of l'Isle-Adam and its white quarries, Beaumont and the long blue ribbon of the Oise, the charming nosegay of Cahet, the wood of Saint-Vaast, Cires-lès-Mello and its mills, Balagny, and peaceful Thérain, Mouny and its graceful gables.

"Thirty-three minutes past one," said the chauffeur, looking at his watch, when the first houses of Thury appeared at the end of the road, and the oaks of the forest of Hez. "That is travelling! And Monsieur le Comte never drove better."

"Now all we have to do is find the hunt," Landri replied. "It hasn't been a bad run, that's a fact. Take the wheel now, Auguste, please. I am going to search the avenues with my glass. Let's go toward La Neuville, and drive slowly, so as not to lose any sound."

The forest, over whose gravel roads they were now driving, told no less clearly than the fields the story of the parcelling out of old France. It formerly joined the forests of Compiègne and of Carnelle, and the whole formed, between the Seine and the Oise, a vast region teeming with game, of which only fragments remain. This of Hez occupies a plateau, of a slightly irregular surface, which the automobile traversed at a very slow pace. There were constant halts, to ask information of some passer-by, to investigate with the glass the interstices in the hedges, and above all to listen for the baying of the hounds. Several times Landri had thought that he detected a "Vue!" or a "Bien allé." Suddenly he put his hand on the chauffeur's arm. He heard distinctly a blast of the horn.

"Why, that's a _hallali_!" he exclaimed. "So soon?--Yes.--And it's not far away. To the left, and a little speed. There we are. I see the hunt. Stop a moment while I look! Oh! what a beautiful sight!"

A sharp turn of the road had disclosed a depression in the ground. At the end of the avenue appeared one of the infrequent clearings of that dense forest. In a frame formed to perfection by the horn-beams and beeches, which blended their rusty foliage with the pale gold of the birches and the dark verdure of the firs, was being enacted the final scene of that too short day. Victorias and automobiles were arriving at the cross-roads. They drew up in line along one of the roads. In the centre a considerable crowd had already gathered in a circle, composed of country people come to assist at the finish, guests who had followed the hunt in carriages, and hunters, whose costumes in the colors of the hunt--Spanish snuff-color with blue lapels--heightened with a dash of brilliancy that truly charming and picturesque little tableau. Here grooms were covering with blankets the horses heated by the ardor of the chase. Farther on servants were bringing baskets filled with provisions for the lunch. The mellow autumn light bathed with its invigorating rays those groups, over whose heads rang out blasts of the horn, blended with the baying of the restless hounds; and each blast, by its few notes, explained to Landri the movements which were taking place in the crowd, and which he amused himself by following with his glass.--The horns blew the _mort_. The dogs were led away from the game. The first huntsman cut off the right fore-foot and handed it to the master of the hunt. The horns blew the honors of the foot. The master presented the foot to one of the ladies whose three-cornered hats could be seen beside the velvet caps of the men. The horns blew the _mort_ anew. The baying of the pack redoubled. From his post of observation Landri could distinguish quite plainly all the details of the _curée_: the whipper-in, standing astride the stag, waved the head, by the antlers, before the slavering jaws, held in respect by the raised whip of the huntsman. Another blast. The whips had fallen. The dogs had hurled themselves on the bleeding mass of which already nothing remained.

In the front rank of the spectators of this ancient and savage ceremony, the young man had had no difficulty in making out his father's imposing profile. In his costume of master of the hunt, completed according to the old fashion by a three-cornered hat turned back with a copper button, the Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp instantly justified, by his aspect alone, the sobriquet of "Émigré" which his son often bestowed upon him. He inevitably recalled the image of one of those sportsmen represented in the charming paintings of the staircase at Fontainebleau, or that exquisite picture at Versailles which depicts one of the hunting-parties of the Prince de Conti in the neighborhood of l'Isle-Adam.

The marquis was a man of sixty-five, whose sturdy old age put to shame the worn-out middle-aged men of to-day. He was very tall, very straight, and was still slender, although powerfully built, with a handsome face, high-colored, of which his snow-white hair intensified the ruddy hue. His long, delicate, tapering nose, a little too near the epicurean and clever mouth, gave to his profile a vague resemblance to that of François I. He was conscious of it, and he emphasized the likeness by the cut of his beard, which was snow-white, like his hair. His face did not need that adventitious aid to make even the most ignorant say of him when they first saw him: "He's a walking portrait." Everything in him was eloquent of race, the prolonged existence of a family in the constant enjoyment of energy, wealth, and domination. His whole person was instinct with kindliness of nature, and yet there emanated from it an indescribable atmosphere of dignity, and the self-assurance of one who has always maintained his rank, not only through himself, but through all his kindred.

At this moment his eyes, deep-blue and piercing none the less, expressed, as did his whole haughty countenance, the most complete and heartfelt satisfaction. His lips laughed gaily and disclosed his large white teeth, of which not one was missing. He had beside him two men of his circle whom Landri knew very well, a M. de Bressieux and a M. de Charlus. The latter, who was very small, almost puny, seemed a dwarf beside the superb master of the hunt. His refined features also savored of race, but of a meagre and worn-out type. He was only fifty-five, but he was the older man. Bressieux, who was younger, was more comely of aspect, and yet there was in his face a something which vitiated it, and his cold arrogance contrasted no less strangely with the simple grand manners of the marquis.

At that short distance Landri was able to study the group in detail with almost photographic accuracy, and he felt once more the sentiment of which he had told Madame Olier, a heartfelt admiration for his father. Monsieur de Claviers-Grandchamp realized in every respect the physically and mentally superior type of aristocrat, of the best. He was built of a more ample, richer human material. What a difference between his generous, his magnificent way of carrying off his rank, and the bickerings of Charlus about questions of precedence! That was the sole, contemptible occupation of that most refined and upright man, who was nevertheless hypnotized by trivial details concerning his nobility, though it was of the most authentic! What a difference, too, between the spontaneous geniality of Monsieur de Claviers and the obsequiousness of a semi-sharper which Bressieux displayed beneath his assumption of importance, in order to maintain the course of an ultra fashionable life by doubtful expedients. Very well born and well connected, endowed moreover with taste, education, shrewdness and much dexterity, he acted as intermediary between people of his own station, who were straitened in their circumstances, and the dealers in curios or wealthy collectors. Upon what terms? No one had ever dreamed of asking the question of that individual with the face of a gambler and duellist, ruined by cards and women, but who had retained the most impeccable manners and the most virile courage of his race.

In Charlus and in Bressieux their caste was drawing near its end. In the marquis, however, caste might be unemployed, but it was intact. To his son he seemed so perfectly the _grand seigneur_ in his bearing even at that moment, when the picturesque amusement of the day came to an end in the most bourgeois of occupations: a cold luncheon eaten in the open air! He went from one to another of his guests, from carriage to carriage, assisted in that hospitable duty by a young woman in a riding habit, who had followed the hunt on horseback, without taking part in it. Landri recognized one of his partners at the infrequent balls which he had attended during the last two winters.

"Poor Marie de Charlus!" he muttered; "she hasn't grown beautiful!" And he added, aloud, to his chauffeur: "I am going inside, and we will go on. I have certainly earned my luncheon."

The limousin began to descend the slope, while the young man removed the mask, the cap, the gloves and the cloak in which he had arrayed himself. If the marquis had arrived at that stage of concession at which he recognized the existence of the automobile, he was still savagely hostile to the hideous accessories which that style of locomotion multiplies from day to day. This childlike precaution against the possible ill humor of his father would have made Landri himself smile under other circumstances. But the sight of Mademoiselle de Charlus had suddenly rearoused his preoccupation, which had been somewhat allayed, in spite of everything, by the fatigue and distractions of the journey. He foresaw an additional reason for sparing the marquis's least prejudices. The monomaniacal gentleman's daughter in no wise deserved the contemptuous apostrophe with which he had saluted her. To be sure, Marie de Charlus had not regular features. Her mouth was too large, her nose too short, her forehead too protuberant, but her eyes saved all the rest by their brilliancy, and, if she was not beautiful, she possessed that charm of the "ugly-pretty girl" which so many men prefer to beauty. Rather small, like her father, but of a very good figure, dancing and riding with a grace at once bold and maidenly, she too had, in her original physiognomy, that "portrait" aspect which is so frequent in stationary classes. Those who are most impervious to the theory of heredity must needs resort, in spite of themselves, in the face of this fact, to the vulgarized, indefinite and indefinable, yet accurate term, "atavism."

Landri was more capable than most men of grasping the interesting character of that young girl's face, closely resembling one of those eighteenth-century faces of which La Tour has noted the intelligent expression,--but he was in love with another woman, he had come to Grandchamp with the purpose of disarming his father's hostility to a marriage which he passionately desired, and already well-meaning persons had spoken to him of Marie de Charlus more than once in a very significant tone. Did not her presence at this hunt, after the marquis had insisted so earnestly that he should attend it, accord with these hints? Certain it is that she was the first to espy the young man, even before the motor had stopped. A faint blush rose to her cheeks. She said a word to the marquis. He turned. He saw his son descending from the heavy vehicle, and at the wave of his hand over the surrounding heads, Landri felt, as usual, the warm blood rush to his heart. This was perhaps the strangest detail of their strange relations--never had the son approached the father without an impulse of enthusiasm and affection; and the next instant he recoiled, withdrew within himself. He literally bore in his breast two hearts: one which felt a thrill of emotion upon contact with that powerful vitality, another which was, as it were, terrified and thrown into confusion by it. This time, however, the second impulse did not follow at once. The young man, in his anxiety, felt a too grateful surprise when he realized that there was no trace of reproach in that greeting, although he arrived when the hunt was over, after a downright objurgation to be prompt. He passed through the line of carriages, exchanging hand-shakes, and salutations with the hat. M. de Claviers' first words to him were accompanied by one of those hearty laughs which always rang true--the old nobleman would not have been the admirable and knightly person that he was, if his frankness had not been absolute, in the most trivial no less than in the most important circumstances.

"Well, Landri, you won't boast again of the convenience of the automobile! Your train arrived at Paris at nine o'clock, and now it's two. Ah! the horse! the horse! The four good post-horses that made the trip without a stop! However, here you are. It's a pity. You have missed a fine run. It was hotter than the result would indicate. The attack was sharp. But Tonnerre has an admirable scent for doublings. He did not allow the dogs to make a mistake, and the stag was in sight almost all the time. He was in the water only a few moments. The beast was winded by the pace. We finished with a run of a kilometre. That's what your trouble-machine has made you miss."

"I'll make him change his mind about the automobile, Monsieur de Claviers," said Mademoiselle de Charlus gaily, addressing Landri, "I pledge myself to do it. On the next _circuit_ I am going to take him with me, and we shall go a bit fast. He'll find that it's as amusing as a fine run to hounds. I have sworn to make him _up-to-date_."

She looked at the new arrival with a glance most desirous to please, as she uttered that untranslatable Americanism, which, indeed, might well have been her motto. Marie had that characteristic common to certain women of her class, which is traceable to a reaction against the monotonies of their environment: an unwillingness to go slow. While Landri was a modernist, she prided herself on being ultra modern. "Not in the train, in the express," she would say; "in all the expresses"; which did not prevent her thinking about the substance of things exactly as her father and the marquis did. By an unexpected contrariety the young man disliked her and the "Émigré" liked her. Behind her poses the marquis divined the immutable "one does not mix with the canaille when one has a name like ours," of the pure-blooded aristocrat; and then, too, she loved his son, and he knew it. Landri, for his part, blamed the young woman for that defiant air, that radicalism which was like a caricature of his own ideas. And above all, he guessed that she loved him, and he loved Valentine! He replied neither to her glance nor to her words, but said to the marquis:--

"I had no trouble, father. I was simply detained in Paris a little longer than I expected."

"Did you go to Jaubourg's?" asked M. de Claviers. "Did you see him?"

"I didn't see him," Landri answered. He too was incapable of lying well. It was his turn to blush as he added, evasively: "He is so ill! But I have brought you the bulletin."

"Give it to me," said M. de Claviers eagerly. He read the ominous lines aloud. "Pierre Chaffin!" he repeated. "I am glad Chaffin's son is there. His father must have sent him, on my account, because he knows how fond I am of Jaubourg. He didn't tell me anything in order not to disturb me. Good Chaffin! And good Jaubourg! I dined with him at the club last Wednesday--not a week ago. He complained of lassitude and headache. I said to him: 'You've taken a little cold. Don't worry about it. It's nothing.' It was the first symptoms of pneumonia and perhaps he will die of it!"

"He'll have a fine sale," said Bressieux. He had the affectation of speaking with the ends of his teeth, as if he nibbled at his words. "I know of two Fragonards that he has, of the very choicest. Those that were in the poor Duc de Fleury's collection, don't you remember, Geoffroy?" This other Merovingian name was borne by the marquis, but few persons were privileged to call him by it; Bressieux never lost an opportunity. "He was a good buyer," he continued; "he had a deal of taste."

"And for a man who was not _born_," interposed Charlus, "he was wonderfully well brought up. I knew of but one fault that he had: he was not religious."

"A man so _comme il faut_!" said Marie sarcastically; "it's surprising. Never fear, papa, he won't have a civil burial. He won't inflict that on you." As she was really kind-hearted, she was a little ashamed of having scratched a dying man on the petty absurdities of his life, and she added: "No matter, even if he was a bit of a 'snob', he was an excellent man."

"Excellent!" echoed the marquis; and with the simple benignity which had always touched his son so deeply, he continued, with tears in his eyes: "I have known him more than thirty years. He has been a perfect friend to me. A friend, that is something not to be replaced at my age, nor at any age! We are happy, breathing freely, going our ways; I see him suffering, and--" He paused, then continued in a deep voice: "If he must go, I wish I had bade him adieu." He paused again, and as the wonderful vitality of his blood naturally inspired his brain with optimistic thoughts, he said: "But we are in a great hurry to bury him, and the bulletin does not suggest an aggravated case. Let us hope. I couldn't go to Paris to-day, on account of the hunt. To-morrow we shall shoot a few partridges. I will go day after to-morrow."

Plainly he had felt a twinge of remorse because he was not at the bedside of the friend he loved. He had yielded, he yielded again to the hereditary passion which decreed that Louis XVI should hunt the stag while the Jacobins were taking away his throne. And, shaking off his sad thoughts definitively, he said to his son:--

"You must be tired, my boy. You must have something to eat."--And, to a servant: "A plate.--Some foie gras? Here." He began to serve Landri himself.--"The liver of my own birds, mademoiselle, and I am proud of it!--A glass of champagne? I am hungry too."--He ate again.--"But it's a healthy hunger, of the sort that your circuit in an automobile won't give me, mademoiselle, no. A four hours' gallop in my forest, and I breathe in life through every pore. These woods have been ours for three hundred years. That's a long lease!--Ah! so you propose to make me _up-to-date_! On the contrary I will make you 'old France.' You recited some decadent verses to me just now. I am going to recite you some of the sixteenth century. They're by Jacques Grévin, the physician of Marguerite de France. It's a description of this very forest of ours:--

"'Dedans ces bois et forests ombrageuses
Sont les sangliers et les biches peureuses,
Les marcassins, fans de biches et daims,
Les cerfs cornus, familiers aux silvains,
Bref, le plaisir et soulas et bonheur
Que peut avoir ès forests le veneur.'"[2]

He repeated these verses in a sympathetic tone which proved that he felt their archaic charm, and that the sportsman had a nice taste for letters. He needed not to borrow a pen to write the famous work on the "History and Genealogy of the Family of Claviers-Grandchamp," a chef-d'œuvre in its way, one of those "livres de raison" to be placed on the same shelf with the eloquent "History of a Vivarois Family," published that year by another heir of a very great name. Marie de Charlus was too refined, even in her affected bad form, not to feel the picturesqueness and pathos of that figure of an old nobleman, whose originality, so vigorous to begin with, had emphasized its salience by its reaction against a too hostile age. The force of the type he represented measured the degree of his solitude. She replied, half mischievously:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He is what he always was.

"'Qu'ils sont doux, bouteille, ma mie,
Qu'ils sont doux, tes petits glouglous!'

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

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

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

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

"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?"