Chapter X: Part III: I (4)

“Forgive me, Hubert,” he said deep down in his heart, “I’m thinking only of your brother now. You must not think that I’ve forgotten you. You see, I am not free. To-morrow I’ll call to you and speak to you and weep for you. To-morrow I shall be yours. This evening I belong to all our race.”

Gently he set the picture down again. And putting aside his sorrow for the immediate necessities of the present, he began his work.

VII

JEANNE SASSENAY

AT the trial, in obedience to her father’s instructions, Margaret Roquevillard gave evidence, under the head of information, as to the money from her trousseau funds which she had lent to Maurice the evening of his departure for Italy, as well as what she had sent to him at Orta. Her testimony over, she had gone home in all haste, as if the fuss made about her generosity filled her with shame. In a feeble way she was to have been of use in the defence of Maurice, and she reproached herself with having shown so much weakness, with having replied so timidly to the interrogations of the presiding judge. Her courage was of the inner kind, and ill adjusted itself to public show. She deplored her modesty now, for to herself it seemed like cowardice, and she was afraid of having impaired the force of her statements by the hesitating way in which she made them.

What had taken place in the court-room before she was led in and after her flight? She could not have told anything about it; she was only conscious of an invincible fear from her first brief contact with justice. She had been shut up in a room with the other witnesses, and had heard the bailiff’s voice calling them one by one, and had seen them go out, her great-uncle Stephen and her Aunt Thérèse just before her. Her turn came last, and she had been conducted to the bar trembling like a new recruit pushed out before the footlights. She had seen a great crowd facing her as she came in, upstairs and down on the floor and in the balcony, a multitude of eyes staring at her, wounding and overwhelming her. All Chambéry was there, spying pitilessly on a young girl’s fear, as they had spied eagerly of late on her family’s death agony. She found herself at last before three magistrates in their red robes, with the rows of jurors on their right. She had thought she should faint when she gave her name, but her father’s voice had caught her ears, that firm, warm voice which she knew so well. It had fortified her instantly, like a cordial. The old advocate was standing erect in front of Maurice, whom he seemed to be protecting, and his presence was so calm that she was at once surprised and quieted by the contagion of it. He put in quite simple terms the questions to be put to her. She had made barely audible replies, and then had fled like a poor bird fluttering off into the brushwood.

“Father will be displeased with me,” she thought in self-reproach. “What a command he has over himself! How he controls himself, and how they all fear him! He stood up twice, and each time I felt a deeper silence in the room. His eyes flashed fire. He seemed young again. He is our whole strength and will.”

At half-past twelve Mr. Roquevillard came home for lunch.

“Serve us quickly, Melanie,” he called out from the doorway. “I’ve not much time.”

The look of battle was in his eyes, a frown on his brow, his gaze direct and piercing. The muscles of his face were taut, and his recent sorrow and anxiety had made him look much older; but his commanding will checked for the time being the ravages of age and fatigue and trouble.

“Well, father?” inquired Margaret piteously.

He reassured her in a few words.

“The hearing reopens in two hours.”

“It’s not over yet?”

“No, no.”

“What’s happened?”

“Didn’t you see anything of it, little girl?”

“Oh, no, father. I came away. Tell me every thing. See, I’m still trembling.”

“You mustn’t tremble, Margaret. Be brave.”

At table, while he ate his lunch rapidly, but with no appetite, he went over the arguments for her.

“You didn’t understand very much, no doubt,” he said, “about the selection of the jury, the administering of the oath to them, the challenging, and the calling of the witnesses.”

“I was near you in the hall, father. When I heard my name I rose, and they led me into a room, where I found Uncle Stephen and Aunt Thérèse.”

“The room where the witnesses wait,” said her father. “Then the depositions began, after the reading of the bill of accusations and the written report made by the police commissioner, stating the theft of one hundred thousand francs. Then came the examination of Maurice. He declared his innocence, but all the time refused to accuse any one else, in spite of the president’s insistence. Of the witnesses for the prosecution, the chief clerk at the Frasne office was the most obstinate against us. He’s the one named Philippeaux, who must hate us, I don’t know why. He testified with a perfect mania for denouncing and compromising Maurice. He tried to make incontrovertible proofs out of presumptions which he inverted and perverted wickedly.”

“What presumptions, father?”

“Knowledge of the deposit of money in the safe, the possible, though not proven, discovery of the combination in a note-book, Maurice’s staying late in the office with the keys the evening of the theft, his lack of personal resources, his departure for foreign territory, the impossibility of imagining any other criminal, et cetera. The other clerks repeated his testimony like well-learned lessons, though with less details and certainty. Finally Mrs. Frasne’s former maid, whom they must have cajoled in some way, pretended that, in her master’s absence, her mistress never went into the offices. What does that prove? Would Mrs. Frasne have called in her maids to help her embezzle? But I mustn’t accuse her myself, either.”

“And yet Maurice is no longer opposed to your doing so, father.”

“I won’t do it, though. We have paid her ransom. Let her keep it and never come back again. I had called as witnesses for the defence, besides yourself, your great-uncle Stephen and my sister-in-law Thérèse to establish the fact that Maurice had not gone away without funds; also the employee of the Society of Credit, the one who made out for you, some time last October, the draft for eight thousand francs on the International Bank of Milan to Maurice’s order; finally Mr. Doudain, the notary.”

“Why was he called?”

“To corroborate the payment of one hundred thousand francs that I turned over to him for Mr. Frasne. He told also the name of the real purchaser of La Vigie. The president, after having conferred with Mr. Latache, president of the chamber of notaries, released him from his professional secret, and he had to tell the truth to the jurors about Mr. Frasne’s fruitful speculations.”

“Was it Mr. Frasne, then, who bought La Vigie?” asked the girl; “for himself, to go and live there instead of us?”

“Didn’t you know it?”

“I couldn’t believe it. There are so many things that I don’t understand. Even last year at the vintage he appeared to be going round making an inspection. He ferreted round everywhere.”

“Yes, little girl, he’s the one who takes the Roquevillards’ place there now, and carries on our traditions. The whole place is his, gratis.”

His voice sounded bitter for a moment, then he continued again with his story.

“His lawyer began speaking at eleven.”

“Who was his lawyer, father?”

“A Mr. Porterieux, from Lyons. There was no one of the bar in Chambéry who would take the case.”

“On your account, father?”

“No doubt.”

“And what did he dare to say about Maurice?”

“He’s a clever man, though, with a very insinuating manner and a kind of cold and calculated violence. He began by tracing a very unflattering portrait of Maurice--a modern young man whom nothing could check, very much imbued with the idea of individual rights; keen to develop his personality and achieve happiness in his own way, whether it trampled down other people’s or not; a young man who would not be bound by the rules of organised society; in short, one of those intellectual anarchists who pass so easily from words and ideas to deeds. ‘Ask his comrades,’ he went on, ‘his friends. They cannot deny that in his daily talk he disparages and tears to pieces the established order of things, and that his special admiration is the pernicious theories of a German philosopher for whom a superior type of humanity, the superman, builds his fortune on the ruin and sorrow of the common lot, the humble and the feeble. And it was not a secret from any one in Chambéry that he was not on good terms with his father, and chafed under his authority.’”

“He said that?” murmured Margaret, in a shocked voice.

“Yes; I’m giving you the tone of his address. Even from myself he drew an adverse argument. From our family he got another; the accused could not, he said, invoke the excuse of a bad education, a lack of instruction, a bad example, or the extenuating circumstances of an unhappy childhood, which might have spoiled his character forever. I pass over his premeditated and self-interested seduction of Mrs. Frasne.”

“Self-interested?”

“Yes, in his moral nihilism Maurice coveted at the same time both the wife and the money, unscrupulously. Having thus made the abuse of Mr. Frasne’s confidence seem probable, or believing he had, Mr. Porterieux took up the accusation, and what he did not hesitate to call its material proofs. Mrs. Frasne consented to run away, he said. Her husband was absent, the day propitious, the opportunity unique. Her lover, unprovided with any personal fortune, sought, and had to seek, for some way to defray the expenses of their voyage. He knew that a deposit had been made from the proceeds of the sale of Belvade; he discovered in a memorandum book the secret of the safe; he had the keys given to him, and arranged to be left alone in the office. He took the money and fled to foreign parts with his mistress. Not only was he guilty, but the only one guilty.”

“And Mrs. Frasne?”

“Mrs. Frasne? Let him accuse her, let him just dare to accuse her. He had nothing to say at the examination, he says nothing at the trial. ‘I defy him to incriminate her,’ concluded the advocate, perhaps imprudently informed by Mr. Battard of Maurice’s generous obstinacy: and this silence, too, which is virtually an admission, condemns him.”

From the dining-room they had passed into the study. Margaret, in this bitter and yet impartial review of the plaintiff’s argument which her father made, heard the rumble of her father’s fury and despair, and was upset by it completely.

“Father,” she murmured, “aren’t we lost? Have you still hope?”

“As if I hadn’t!”

“When will it be over?”

“At two o’clock, in forty minutes more, Mr. Porterieux will resume his argument.”

“Hasn’t he done enough harm to us?”

“It appears not. He has one more argument to enlarge on.”

“What is it?”

“The new admission that comes, according to him, from my making restitution of the one hundred thousand francs. By three o’clock I suppose my turn comes. At four or four-thirty I shall be done.”

And he added, in an easy tone, to reassure her:

“Charles’s train gets in at one. Your brother-in-law ought to be here now.”

A little later, in fact, Charles rang the bell.

“What news, my dear father?” he asked as he came in. “Germaine cried this morning when she said good-bye to me, and the three children imitated her. Your telegram last night caused us so much sorrow. Poor Hubert!”

“I was waiting for you, Charles. Your place is by my side. Margaret will talk to you about things while she gets your lunch. Let me be by myself a few minutes. Be ready at five minutes to two.”

“I’ll be ready. And oh, I must warn you that I’ve made my arrangements for restoring half of Germaine’s dot to you. Later you shall have it all.”

The young lawyer made this announcement with rather an ill grace, being a man little accustomed to benevolence, and trying to disguise it. He, too, had been overborne by sympathy for the common cause; but as his mind followed his heart protestingly, he did not like to advertise his defeat.

“I won’t accept it, my dear Charles,” replied Mr. Roquevillard. He was more moved by this cooperation than the opposition that he had been prepared to combat, and he added:

“Embrace me, Charles.”

Thus family ties were stronger than ever in misfortune.

The advocate shut himself up for a quarter of an hour to gather up the threads of his arguments. The review he had made for Margaret, under the influence of high nervous excitement, had served as an outlet for the anger and shame that had been accumulating in him all morning as he listened to the infamous accusations made against his son. Now his nerves relaxed, and the pounding of his heart grew calm, like the sea when the wind falls. When the moment came for going back to the court-house Margaret saw that his face was less stormy, and that his glance had again the serenity which his visit last evening to La Vigie had given him.

“Until to-night, father,” she said. “May God help you.”

On the doorstep he replied briskly: “Until to-night, little girl--with Maurice.”

The girl had just shut herself in her room to pray when Jeanne Sassenay called at the house.

“Miss Margaret, if you please,” she demanded of the servant who opened the door.

The maid, more rigid and circumspect since Raymony Bercy’s invasion, dismissed this inopportune question in a peremptory tone.

“Miss Margaret is tired. She is seeing no one.”

“So much the worse. I’ll come in, nevertheless.”

And passing by the frightened servant before she had time to bar the way, Jeanne went through the hall on a run, as far as her friend’s room, which she knew of old. She knocked smartly, entered and threw herself into Margaret’s arms.

“It’s I, Margaret,” she said. “Don’t send me away. It’s not Melanie’s fault.”

“You, Jeanne? Why are you here?”

“Because you are alone and tired. Such a lot of people have gone to the hearing, just as if it were a party. And so I--well, I thought my place was here with you. I love you so much.”

Margaret patted her friend’s cheek.

“You are good, Jeanne.”

“Oh, no. It’s just that I’ve so much friendship for you. When I was quite little even, I admired you. And I should like so much to be like you.”

Then in a mysterious tone she changed the subject abruptly.

“Just imagine,” she said, “those ladies all dressed themselves up so for the court-house. As carefully as if they were going to a matinée.”

“Who?”

“Oh, all of them.”

“Yes,” said Miss Roquevillard bitterly. “It’s a question of our honour--quite a spectacle.”

Jeanne Sassenay took her hand.

“I’m not anxious, myself,” she said; and in a learned tone she cut the whole debate short: “On the whole, what do they reproach your brother with that’s so serious? That he ran away with some one? That’s nothing.”

In spite of her sadness Margaret could not keep back a smile, and Jeanne took this for encouragement to go on.

“You know quite well a woman doesn’t let herself be removed as if she were a spot on your clothes. If any one tried to carry me off I’d scratch and bite and hurt him frightfully.... Unless I was going away with him anyway.”

“Keep still, Jeanne.”

“Oh, you never can tell. When you’re in love you’ll do anything. To be in love--it’s something terrible.”

“Jeanne, what do you know about being in love?”

“Why shouldn’t I know? I’m not a little girl any more.”

Thereupon Miss Sassenay gave a poke to her hat, which was losing its balance on her blonde hair, verified the curls that fell over her forehead, and assumed an air of great detachment, to hide her blushing, as she asked:

“He doesn’t love that bad woman any more, does he?”

“Maurice? I don’t believe so.”

“Are you sure?”

“He never speaks of her.”

“She’s never seen him again?”

“No.”

“So much the better. I detest her. In the first place, she wasn’t so good-looking as all that. Fine eyes, yes, but she used them a little too much. And her smiles, and her sly looks, and her grimaces! She was always balancing her head, and craning her neck, and heaving her shoulders and wriggling her hips.”

She got out of her chair quickly and walked across the room in imitation of Mrs. Frasne, caricaturing the gestures and the constant play of movement by which the woman’s inner restlessness was betrayed.

“Jeanne, please stop,” cried Margaret.

“No, no,” continued the girl, fairly launched now. “I tell you brunettes can’t be compared with blondes, for colouring or for grace either. You, Margaret, with your chestnut hair, have the beauty of them all, but you don’t do anything to help yourself.... And then, I detest her anyway....”

“Detest whom, Jeanne?”

“Mrs. Frasne, of course. She’s a fatal woman, and brings bad luck. Your brother has been well punished. She has made him unhappy. She didn’t love him. She’s the one they should have put in jail. As for your brother, they’ll acquit him. You know papa and mamma are for him. Papa looked glum about it at first, but I scolded him. I should have liked to go and see the acquittal. You must congratulate him for me. It must be fine to be acquitted.”

She was babbling on without stopping. Margaret gently interrupted her.

“Will you pray with me, Jeanne?” she asked.

“If you wish.”

The two girls knelt side by side. But scarcely had they begun their orisons before some one knocked at the door.

“It’s the postman,” said the maid, handing some letters to Margaret.

“Will you permit me?” the latter asked of her companion. “It was Hubert’s day.... Oh, a letter from him.... I half expected one.”

With trembling hands she unsealed the envelope, which was postmarked from the Soudan. From the other side of the gates of Death the young officer was taking his part in the family drama. There are few sensations so poignant as that of receiving tidings from those who are no more. Margaret, whose shy patience had hitherto been like calm, let a long moan escape her as she read. Jeanne, discreet and much moved herself, did not dare console her. By her own force of will the girl controlled herself. This was not the time to be weak or give way. Had not her father shown her the proper way to act?

“Hubert!” she murmured.

She seemed to hesitate a moment what to do.

“I must--I think I must go to the court-house, at once,” she said.

“Why?” asked Jeanne.

“Oh, because Hubert, too, has thought of us.”

“Hubert?”

“Yes. He knew he was going to die. In the first part of his letter he tries to deceive us, to cheer us up. And then--and then he writes--there, wait a moment. God help me! I can’t see any more. He writes: ‘If, however, I must stay here always, I offer my life in sacrifice for the honour of our name, for Maurice’s salvation....’ You see, he gives me my orders. I must go.”

Jeanne burst into tears. Already Margaret, in an uplifted mood, was putting on her hat and veil. “I am sure father needs this letter. I can’t hesitate about it.”

Some mysterious connivance seemed at work in the family, between the living and the dead, something that mysteriously made them work together and united them across space and time.

“I’ll go with you,” said her friend, as resolute as she.

“Yes, come,” said Margaret. “I shall be braver if you come with me.”

And the two girls hurried out, passing along by the castle, its glowing walls warm in the winter sunshine; they took a short route through little streets, and beyond the market reached the court-house in a few minutes.

“The court-room, sir?” asked Margaret humbly of the doorkeeper.

“There, madame, on the ground floor. But the hall is full. You can’t get in.”

“But we must go in,” Jeanne Sassenay interrupted, with great assurance. “We have a letter, a very important one, to give to the lawyer for the defence, A very important document.”

“Impossible, ladies. The argument is going on. It’s too late. Who are you?”

The sister of the accused raised her veil.

“Miss Roquevillard.”

“Oh, very good. Follow me.”

Impressed by this name, he led them as far as the door reserved for the use of witnesses.

“You can just open the door, miss. The lawyer’s bench will be before you, a little to the left. Afterwards you can go out that way, or maybe you can find a seat.”

And being a prudent and timid functionary, he added, as he left the two girls:

“But be sure and don’t say it was me who let you in.”

Margaret, who went first, put her hand on the latch. She could hear the voice of some one speaking on the other side. It was not her father’s voice. Behind this door, the destiny of her brother, Maurice, the fate of all the Roquevillards, was running its course at this hour. On behalf of Hubert she was bringing up the last reserves.

VIII

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

THE girls entered. It was a little more than half-past two o’clock: Mr. Porterieux, venomous and insolent, was finishing his argument. In the galleries and on the floor the public was crowded; people of fashion and from the lower ranks confused together, eager to seize upon the warm quarry of which this lawyer, like an expert and cruel hunter, was laying bare for them the palpitating heart. People noticed the presence of the young girls, who hesitated to come further forward, once inside the door.

“They are on the lookout for husbands,” explained the lawyer Coulanges, who, assisted by Mr. Paillet in the first row of the balcony, did the honours of the trial to several ladies of society. It was an occasion on which he believed that a certain show of wit was expected of him.

“Dear me!” cried one of the ladies, choking with indignation. “Just look at that brazen girl.”

While Margaret was approaching her father and handing him Hubert’s letter, her companion, Jeanne, with a quiet boldness, had the satisfaction of defying the whole town by turning ostentatiously toward Maurice Roquevillard, in his seat of shame, and waving her hand to him with the most gracious smile.

She was immediately rewarded for her courage by the look of gratitude that lighted up the young man’s face, a face that had grown thin and drawn and as if contracted by the impassiveness which he had forced himself to wear under his injuries and calumnies. The little incident was over in a moment, but already excited the commentaries of the entire room. Margaret, with her head bent, had no suspicion of it. She, too, had saluted her brother, but more discreetly, and now murmured in her friend’s ear:

“Let’s go.”

“Oh, no, I’m going to stay,” replied the latter, only too eager to be present and hear the speeches.

Mr. Roquevillard, with a brief gesture, indicated some empty places on the witness bench for them. The sun came in through the windows, leaving the jurors, who were seated facing the light, in shadow, but it lit up especially the court, the advocate-general, the lawyers and the prisoner, as if it were a light thrown on the stage during some performance in a theatre. Mr. Porterieux appeared in a full blaze as he was summing up and condensing in a final charge the various items of his argument. He repeated and reaffirmed the list of his accumulated presumptions, and still another time paraded as indisputable avowals the silence of the accused as to Mrs. Frasne and the payment of the one hundred thousand francs. Finally he called loudly, as if it were some right due him, for a severe and withering sentence on this young man who practised such a utilitarian love, who, like a new Cherubino in a practical epoch, did not hesitate to make off at one and the same time with the husband’s funds and the wife’s honour. His peroration, delivered with a complete semblance of anger and indignation, provoked a numerous and mysterious murmur in the room as he sat down, coming from the lips of all the crowd, without anything to show where it had begun, like the sound of waves. His argument had been a perfect volley of poisoned arrows, following each other directly and incessantly. One would even have said that across the son he aimed at the father, too, whom he represented as driven by shame to make his restitution; that through the son and father he sought to attaint the whole race and sink it in the mire with the unhappy Maurice. He had shown himself more incensed against his victims than was necessary, a too implacable enemy, ready to trample their dead bodies under foot. Of a verity the notary had chosen his spokesman well. He could not have desired more gall and venom in a single mouth. Mr. Roquevillard, now and then during this speech, when the worst thrusts were delivered, turned quietly toward his son or son-in-law, reassuring them by his calm and even countenance, and showing that his soul was not distressed by this tempest that waged about him.

“I call upon the advocate-general to speak,” articulated the presiding judge, in a mournful voice, as much as to say, What use is there in a second charge?

Mr. Vallerois, attracted by curiosity, had come into court and seated himself behind the advocate-general, Mr. Barré, who was in the section reserved for the public minister. He bent forward to address some words to his colleague on the floor. But the latter seemed to scorn his advice as importunate, and confined his remarks to saying that he relied upon the good sense of the jurors to find for the plaintiff, the case being already adjudged against the defendant by default.

“I call upon the defence,” began the president more briskly, evidently pleased to have escaped a long harangue.

“Are you ready?” asked Mr. Hamel of Mr. Roquevillard, who was seated by his side.

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“Then you speak first. If necessary, I’ll supplement you.”

Mr. Roquevillard saw that the old gentleman was still reeling beneath an attack whose methods, according to his old-time traditions, were inadmissible, and proposed to reserve his efforts in case his colleague should be overcome by emotion in his speech or his argument be inferior or incomplete.

During these special conferences, bits of conversation broke out again here and there among the audience, rising and spreading like dust in the wake of a procession.

“The Roquevillards,” remarked the lawyer Coulanges, who ranged himself on Mr. Frasne’s side, “will never raise their heads again after such a drubbing.”

“Oh, well, now,” objected Mr. Paillet, who was always in a good humour, “wait till you hear the father’s reply, and then look out for Mr. Porterieux.”

A man of the people, a frequenter of court trials, overheard him.

“Yes, the old man is tough,” he commented more racily.

And Mr. Paillet laughed and insisted:

“You’ll see whether he knows how to bite yet, and if his teeth are sharp.”

“He looks very tired,” murmured a lady compassionately.

“Say, rather, he looks quite broken up,” replied Mr. Coulanges, tidying some small matter about his clothes. “Two old men aren’t worth one young one,” he added, with a manner that was as much as to say, “especially with women.” Then he pointed down to the two lawyers, who were exchanging their observations not far from where Mr. Battard sat, with his fingers in his beard, watching to see the defence’s final downfall.

Mr. Roquevillard took off his lawyer’s cap and stood up. He glanced in turn, quite deliberately, at his daughter and his son, and gathered hope and confidence from the sight of them. Silence fell on the room immediately, a silence deep and throbbing with expectation, that made people hold their breath and their hearts stand still. This man with the almost white hair, this old man with his record of more than sixty years of probity and talent and upright living, who stood forth as the sole representative of so many generations of honourable and patriotic men, uttered, by the mere act of rising to his feet, an eloquent protest against the calumnies and defamation with which the long argument for the plaintiff had tried to overwhelm his race. Had they not insinuated even that La Vigie had been sold to pay back money that had not all been squandered by the thief? It was a protest made before a word was spoken, and one that all the Battards in the world could not have impressed more forcefully upon the audience.

The court-room clock marked the hour of three. The old lawyer had risen slowly to his feet, and now drew himself to his full height; his head, erect, showed clearly in the broad band of light marked out by the rays of the pale sun, too pale now to inconvenience those on whom it fell. His high, bare forehead, his finely accentuated features, dulled by age, but nevertheless still full of pride, his stiffly curled moustache, made up a fighter’s face, a leader’s, that one could not behold without an impression of forcefulness and keen and eager living. But the flame that dwelt habitually in his deep eyes, once so sharply imperious, now shone with complete serenity rather than with any lust of conquest.

“Broken down, do you say? Just look at him,” protested the lady under Mr. Coulanges’s escort.

“And yet I don’t recognise him any more,” observed Mr. Paillet.

Margaret and Mr. Hamel, on the contrary, all attention, and quite vibrating with anxiety, recognised in him the same superhuman exaltation that he had brought back from that strange walk to La Vigie the night before. He began his remarks in a voice that was rather low, a fact which inspired Mr. Battard, not without some satisfaction, it must be confessed, to remark that: “His fine organ isn’t what it was.”

Then, abruptly, as a curtain is drawn apart, his voice opened up clearly, sounded the rallying call, the summons to the dead, who last evening on the icy shadowed slopes of the hills had made up his phantom army. There was a living silence in the room, heavy and storm-laden, and he plowed through it like a vessel through the sea.

To pass judgment on the prisoner, he said, it was incumbent on the jurors to know him, and to know him they must go back to what he came from. For it was the uncertain destiny of man, born in such and such a corner of the earth, of such and such a race, to follow a predestined course, and by his own force of will to work his way through to efficiency and his destined end.

“You who come from lines of honest forefathers, and yourselves have founded families, must listen to this history of a family that I shall tell you, before you decide upon your verdict....”

To the peasants from the plains and mountains, of whom the jury was composed, who, by nature and reflection, could not but be sensible to this actual human chronicle, the truthfulness and example of it striking true to their honest minds, he then told the long story of successive Roquevillards: the first ancestor of them all, who had laid the first stone of the old house, planting the roots of his tree of life in his native soil, the struggle of successive generations adding their efforts, one to another, clearing the ground by the sweat of their brows, showing their doggedness with the stubborn soil, or in the face of intemperate or hurtful seasons, the chance destruction of crops by hail or frost, their sobriety and content with a few things, their thrift, which, at the expense of their personal enjoyment, made provision for the future--a thrift at once disinterested and in itself an act of faith in the coming generations. Thus the beautiful estate of La Vigie, whose vines and woods and fields and orchards produced so abundantly, laughing in the sunlight, in the time of harvest, represented the economy and endurance of a whole race, straight as a line of tall and growing poplars. For land that is cultivated by man assumes a human face, and when we behold our properties we are gazing on the countenances of our ancestors. And yet to what end had all this collective labour of the Roquevillards been reduced? To-day their domain belonged to the plaintiff, their adversary, who had gotten it for nothing. Had the Roquevillards laboured for five hundred years to make this present to him? No, but with their patrimony which they had patiently and painfully built up they were ransoming this last Roquevillard of them all. Who, then, had been despoiled, and which was the thief? For one hundred thousand francs paid down Mr. Frasne was receiving, accepting, a property worth almost twice that sum. Who was getting rich, then? Who was being ruined? In the name of the dead who paid this ransom, the accused must be acquitted.

But was not a family just a great material force, visibly expressed in the continuity of its patrimony, by its mutual obligations permitting the payment of the debts of some by the fruits of others’ toil? Was it not indeed something else, too, less palpable but more sacred--a solid chain of traditions, a common heritage of honour, probity and courage? What use was it to transmit life if you were not to supply it with a worthy setting, support and comfort from the past, opportunity for a well-stored future? For to transmit life was to admit life’s immortality.

And he recited the public services of the Roquevillards, all the outward ways of existence, useful and sometimes illustrious even, that their forefathers had followed. This one, the county magistrate, had died at his post during an epidemic in the town, which he had been the foremost in resisting. Another, later, in a period of troubles and disorders, had administered the finances of Chambéry and restored order in its involved affairs. Whole-hearted magistrates of the Savoyan Senate, soldiers killed by the enemy in the great wars, they had worn, beneath toga or uniform alike, the same bold, brave hearts that had beat beneath the peasant blouses of the first forefathers of them all. The last of them all, Hubert, dying for his country, alone in a strange land, far from all who were dear to him, under a fierce and hostile sun, had given voice to the final vow of his race when he had written: “I offer my life as a sacrifice for the honour of our name and my brother’s safety.”

Could the gentlemen of the jury reject this offering? As well forget all the victims for centuries past that had signalised the constantly renewing virtues of this family, like the fires which cleansed their fields at evening of the withered herbage. He threw the weight of accumulated merits in the balance and made the scales tip.

The entire army of the dead, who had come down from La Vigie the evening before, to leap across the valley in the dark and join their chief as he stood erect at the foot of the old tree on the Saint Cassin plain, filed by in a long parade.

To the merits of the dead he added the virtues of the living. This was not a time to be modest and defer to reticence. He would give all honour to Felicie in the hospital at Hanoi, and again to his sisters, who had made themselves poor in order to suppress even the suspicion of fraud on their brother’s part. For the payment delivered into Mr. Frasne’s hands had not, and could not be, in the eyes of the culprit’s family or of the jurors, either a restitution or an admission, but a definite rejection of all complicity in the theft, even an unknowing or involuntary one.

He barely excused himself for enumerating and insisting upon the rendering of so many services, and reproaching the plaintiff with ingratitude for neglecting them. On the other side they had not scrupled to forget them, or worse still, to make them appear as faults on the part of the accused. What the plaintiff really wanted to do was to build on the pretended guilt of the defendant and overwhelm with one blow the defences of his past; he was unjust enough to deny the accused the right to its protection. Yet the merits of a race constitute a true defence of it until and unless the sum of its demerits weighs it down, unless it wilfully provokes its own downfall. Was there any one who pretended to believe that the sum of the Roquevillards’ demerits had yet borne them down? No, the dead could go moral bail for this last of the Roquevillards, as they had just supplied his material bail in the sacrifice of La Vigie. Even if he had his faults, his judges could not justly declare him guilty in this instance.

How indeed could he be guilty now? By what phenomenon could the descendant of so many honest men be suddenly stirred to crime? What definite proof could they furnish of his crime? What weight, in the face of the moral presumptions of his family and surroundings, which flowed round him like the water of a torrent, could they give these miserable presumptions that chance had hatched out and circumstances twisted incriminatingly? The keys of the office--they had passed from hand to hand. The number of the safe’s combination--how could the defendant have hunted it out, guessed its use? And when had the clerk Philippeaux written it in his memorandum book? Did the jurors dwell on his lack of personal resources? He had himself paid all the expenses of the journey, large and small, without exception, either with money that he had taken away with him, as to which the examination of witnesses had given a full account, or with what he had received at Orta. The hotel bills which the defence had recovered and exhibited proved this. What, then, had been done with the stolen one hundred thousand francs, if all his expenses had been defrayed by advances from his family? If he had put it away somewhere, as was insinuated, why had he come back and surrendered himself to the law the moment word came to him of the judgment that had been entered against him by default?

Nothing was left of the accusation against him, nothing but the animus of revenge, a spirit of revenge that could not even resist the temptation to make a profit out of its own humiliation. It was a singular affair, indeed, in which the victim carried off the spoils from the pretended thief.

Mr. Roquevillard brought his argument to an end in a few words:

“Gentlemen of the jury, I have finished. In the name of all our families’ dead, whose long line makes up our everliving honour, in the name of our land slowly acquired and laboriously cultivated by succeeding generations, but given up to-day and fully sacrificed to consolidate our honour, I ask you to restore to me my son. Give him back to me, not for pity’s sake, but in justice; not as a favour, but with all your hearts. All his race and I myself will answer to you for his innocence....”

He sat down. He had spoken only an hour. When his voice, which had been calm and sonorous, always under control, rising and swelling like the grave notes of a hymn, ceased speaking, there was a prolonged silence in the room for some moments, the solemn and religious silence that one hears in church. People had heard, not the explosion of wrath and bitterness that they had expected as their due from this redoubtable old lawyer in answer to the hateful violence of Mr. Porterieux: not the scandal of a lover’s recriminations against his mistress that they had counted on; but a proud defence that disdained invective, confident in its authoritative, moral force, admirable and moving along its straight and simple lines, like the proportions of those serene and motionless statues that purify desire and stir the spirit. And the name of Mrs. Frasne had not once been uttered.

All of a sudden a cry rang out:

“Hurrah for the Roquevillards!”

It came from Mother Fauchois, and she threw her whole heart into it. The crowd in the court-room had been overborne, dominated and conquered; it broke into long applause. While the presiding judge rapped on his desk to check this demonstration, which nevertheless had put the irritated Mr. Battard to flight, Mr. Vallerois leaned forward once more to Mr. Barré. The latter now asked leave to speak, as Mr. Hamel had declined, excusing himself from availing himself of his right to speak in rebuttal after having neglected to use his right to sum up.

“I have heard, like you,” Mr. Barré said in substance, addressing the jurors, “the plea made by Mr. Roquevillard. No, the guilty party is not this young man here. And since the accused has had the generosity not to designate any one, I’ll not myself indicate things any further. I will denounce, however, the too clever machinations of this plaintiff, who disarms our sympathy by having used his private sorrows to build up a fortune. Make haste and bring in a verdict of acquittal for Maurice Roquevillard; restore him to his father, who is an honour to our bar. If the young man has been reprehensible in his private life, he need not nevertheless be retained any longer on this charge of abuse of confidence.”

The day was waning, leaving the whole room filled with the evening light. The jury retired to its deliberations, and brought in immediately a unanimous verdict of acquittal.

“Bravo!” cried Jeanne Sassenay approvingly, in a loud voice.

“Father,” murmured Margaret softly, “mamma would be so happy.”

And the spectators, turning and going out, exchanged their comments on the way. Mr. Latache, winding up his remarks before a little group, shook his head sententiously.

“It’s a good rap over the knuckles for Mr. Frasne,” he said. “After being publicly reprimanded by the public minister, he ought to shut up his offices and leave the country.”

“He’ll sell La Vigie again,” declared Mr. Paillet.

The lady whom Mr. Coulanges was seeing home expressed her delight at the way things had turned out, to take her cavalier down a peg or two, a pastime in which she seemed to find great pleasure.

“And the little Sassenay girl will buy it back. She has a big dot. Did you notice the look she gave the young prisoner, the triumphant Maurice? She’s going to marry him.”

“Yes, that will be the way of it,” said Mr. Coulanges, gloomily summing things up; “the Roquevillards have always been lucky.”

IX

THE WILL TO LIVE

THE good will of the presiding judge hastened the formalities of liberation, and while the crowd, having left the court-room, massed itself in the space outside the court-house, to watch for Maurice and his defender to come out, and to cheer them, the more enthusiastically because their remorse was tardily shown, Mr. Roquevillard was waiting for his son in the inner court. He was alone, for he had asked Charles Marcellaz to see Mr. Hamel home. The struggle over, he felt tired and worn, and was lost in his meditations. A timid voice called to him:

“Father.”

“Is it you, Maurice?”

Instead of throwing themselves into each other’s arms, quite simply, they stood motionless, as if frozen. The lack of some first gesture is enough sometimes to create separations, to make obstacles. On his son’s face the father read admiration, gratitude, filial piety; on the father’s face the son read love and goodness, but also the new stigmata of weariness and age. They said nothing; sorrowfully, with a shyness they could not overcome.

In the street outside they heard the noise of cheers.

“Come,” said Mr. Roquevillard brusquely.

He led Maurice to the other side of the courtyard, where a gate opened on a public garden, luckily now deserted. He crossed it with rapid steps, hurried quickly over the iron footbridge beneath which rolled the muddy waters of the Leysse, and the two men reached the cemetery presently without having exchanged a word.

The cemetery at Chambéry lies to the eastward of the town, at the beginning of the vast plain which stretches as far as Lake Bourget; over it the rocky hill of Lemenc stands guard, and beyond that the regularly storeyed peaks of Le Nivolet. The shadows of night were already settling down over the sacred field, and little by little reaching the hills, but the setting sun still covered the mountain, stirring its whiteness as with a flow of blood--one of those fine winter evenings that are cold and calm, naked as marble images, and of a divine purity.

Maurice could distinguish, opposite him, the thin columns of the Calvary where his heart’s love had overwhelmed him. A last ray of light threw their outlines into relief, then they seemed to recede against the walls of the little monument and lose themselves in it.

“How far away it all is!” he thought.

Some cypress trees, with branches like lance-heads, sprinkled with hoar-frost, stood grave as sentinels set to guard the enclosure. Passing these, they went on and on, past the graves of the poor, scarcely distinguished by the mounds beneath the snow, until they came finally to the broad avenue of perpetual concessions.

“Father, I know where we are going,” murmured Maurice at last, thinking of his mother.

“We’re going to our family tomb,” explained Mr. Roquevillard; “to thank our dead for having saved you.”

“Father, it was you that saved me,” said Maurice.

“I was speaking in their name.”

As they drew near the end of their pilgrimage, they made out, across the empty graveyard, a black figure kneeling before the gravestone which stood just before a wall covered with inscriptions.

“Father, look; there’s some one there,” said Maurice.

“It’s Margaret! She has got here ahead of us.”

The girl heard the dull noise of their footsteps on the trodden snow, and turned her head. She blushed on recognising them, and rose, as if she would go and not be in the way at their first interview.

“I came here to be near mamma,” she said.

“Don’t go,” her father bade her gently.

Along the slopes of Le Nivolet the evening was mounting upward. Only the snow on the higher levels still fought with the shadows, the light slipping and flowing over it in a cascade of gold and purple. With one last flash, as if of apotheosis, the victorious shadow scaled the highest grade and occupied the summit.

The wall opposite them bore a single family name, their own, but beneath it there were given names and dates in great number. A branch of perennial ivy climbed over it with its green leaves, and fell half forward, like a crown of spring.

“Listen,” said Mr. Roquevillard. His face bore the same stamp of serenity as at the trial. “It’s night,” he said, “and we are in the field of the dead. And yet from every corner of the earth you hear only the strongest words of life. Look, before the shadows hide it; all round you spreads the country that your heart loves best. And here, too, lies your family, at rest.”

In his turn Maurice knelt, and remembering his mother, who had gone without farewell to him, and his brother, who had made the sacrifice of his life for him, he hid his face in his hands. But his father touched him on the shoulder, and spoke to him in a firm voice.

“My boy,” he said, “I am an old man now. You will soon succeed me. You must listen to me now, this day, when I feel it is my duty to speak to you. Here are the symbols of all that is enduring. To care for the dead is in a sense the fulfilling of our immortal destiny. What is a man’s life, what is my life, if past and future don’t give it its true meaning? You had forgotten this when you went in search of your individual destiny. There is no set destiny for the individual, no greatness in life, except in servitude. We serve our family, we serve our country, God, art, science, an ideal. Shame on the man who only serves himself! You, Maurice, you have found your strongest support in us, but your dependence too. Man’s honour lies in accepting his due place in life.”

Maurice, rising from his knees, saw the Calvary of Lemenc before him in the twilight, and the thought came to him sadly, “What of love?”

His father guessed what he was thinking of.

“Such a little thing, dear boy,” he said, “may divide the honest and the dishonest impulses in a man. Love breaks this barrier down. The family keeps it strong. And yet, even at this hour, Maurice, I won’t speak ill of love, if only you know how to understand it. Love is our heart’s sigh for all that lies beyond our grasp. Cherish this longing in your heart. It is yours to cherish. You will find it again in doing good deeds, in nature, in fulfilling your destiny without fear or frailty. Don’t misunderstand it. Don’t mistake it any more. Before you give your love to a woman, remember your mother, think of your sister; think of the happiness that may be in store for you some day of having a daughter of your own to bring up. I was glad when you were born, and at your brother’s birth and your sisters’ I rejoiced. With all my strength I have protected you. At my death, I tell you, you will feel as if a wall had crumbled down before you, and left you face to face with life. Then you will understand me better.”

“Father,” murmured Maurice, breaking down. “I shall not be unworthy of you.”

“My boy!” replied Mr. Roquevillard quite simply. And Margaret, seeing them at last in each other’s arms, remembered the vow she had made her mother.

In the deepening sky, toward La Vigie, an early star began to shed its light. Mr. Roquevillard, holding to his heart this son whom he had won back, this last and only son, marked it as a sign of hope. And in the darkened graveyard, where he had come to return the dead their visit to him of the night before, even though he felt that he was menaced, too, by death, the head of the family made his confession of faith in life.