"Good!" he cried. "I like a man of your kidney. You have an opinion and the courage to support it. You are still less a Jesuit than a man.
Brother Jacques here might have acquiesced to all my theories rather than lose a thousand livres."
"You are wrong, Monsieur," replied Brother Jacques quietly. "I should go to further lengths of disapprobation. I should say that Monsieur le Marquis"s philosophy is the cult of fools and of madmen, did I not know that he was simply testing our patience when he advanced such impossible theories."
"What! two of them?" sarcastically. "I compliment you both upon risking my good will for an idea."
Chaumonot sighed more deeply. The marquis motioned him to his chair.
"Sit down, Monsieur; you have gained my respect. Frankness in a Jesuit? Come; what has the Society come to that frankness replaces cunning and casuistry? Bah! There never was an age but had its prude to howl "O these degenerate days!" Corrupt and degenerate you say?
Yes; that is the penalty of greatness, richness, and idleness. It began with the Egyptians, it struck Rome and Athens; it strikes France to-day. Yesterday we wore skins and furs, to-day silks and woolens, to-morrow . . . rags, mayhap. But listen: human nature has not changed in these seven thousand years, nor will change. Only governments and fashions change . . . and religions."
There was a pause. Chaumonot wondered vaguely how he could cope with this man who was flint, yet unresponsive to the stroke of steel. Had the possibility of the thousand livres become nothing? Again he sighed. He glanced at Brother Jacques, but Brother Jacques was following the marquis"s lead . . . sorting visions in the crumbling, glowing logs. As for the Indian, he was admiring the chandelier.
"Monsieur," said Brother Jacques, breaking the silence, but not removing his gaze from the logs, "it is said that you have killed many men in duels."
"What would you?" complacently. "All men fight when need says must. I never fought without cause, just or unjust. And the Roch.e.l.lais have added a piquant postscript that for every soul I have despatched . . ."
"You speak of soul, Monsieur?" interrupted Chaumonot.
"A slip of the tongue. What I meant to say was, that for every life I"ve sent out of the world, I"ve brought another into it," with a laugh truly Rabelaisian.
Brother Jacques"s hands were attacked by a momentary spasm. Only the Indian witnessed this sign of agitation; but the conversation was far above his learning and linguistic resources, and he comprehended nothing.
"Well, Monsieur Chaumonot," said the marquis, who was growing weary of this theological discussion, "Here are your livres in the sum of one thousand. I tell you frankly that it had been my original intention to subject you to humiliation. But you have won my respect, for all my detestation of your black robes; and if this money will advance your personal ambitions, I give it to you without reservation." He raised the bag and cast it into Chaumonot"s lap.
"Monsieur," cried the good man, his face round with delight, "every night in yonder wilderness I shall pray for the bringing about of your conversion. It will be a great triumph for the Church."
"You are wasting your breath. I am not giving a thousand livres for an "_Absolvo te_." Perhaps, after all," and the marquis smiled maliciously, "I am giving you this money to embarra.s.s Monsieur du Rosset, the most devout Catholic in Roch.e.l.le. I have heard that he has refused to aid you."
"I shall not look into your purpose," said Chaumonot.
"Monsieur," said Brother Jacques musically, "I am about to ask a final favor."
"More livres?" laughing.
"No. There may come a time when, in spite of your present antagonism, you will change your creed, and on your death-bed desire to die in the Church. Should that time ever come, will you promise me the happiness of administering to you the last sacraments?"
For some time the marquis examined the handsome face, the bold grey eyes and elegant shape of this young enthusiast, and a wonder grew into his own grey eyes.
"Ah well, I give you my promise, since you desire it. I will send for you whenever I consider favorably the subject of conversion. But supposing you are in America at the time?"
"I will come. G.o.d will not permit you to die, Monsieur, before I reach your bedside." The young Jesuit stood at full height, his eyes brilliant, his nostrils expanded, his whole att.i.tude one of religious fervor . . . so Chaumonot and the marquis thought.
At this moment the Chevalier and his company of friends arrived; and they created some noise in making their entrance. To gain the dining-hall, where they always congregated, the company had to pa.s.s through the grand salon. The Chevalier had taught his companions to pay no attention to the marquis, his father, nor to offer him their respects, as the marquis had signified his desire to be ignored by the Chevalier"s friends. So, led by De Saumaise, who was by now in a most genial state of mind, the roisterers trailed across the room toward the dining-hall, laughing and grumbling over their gains and losses at the Corne d"Abondance. The Chevalier, who straggled in last, alone caught the impressive tableau at the other end of the salon; the two Jesuits and the Indian, their faces _en silhouette_, a thread of reflected fire following the line of their profiles, and the white head of the marquis. When the young priest turned and the light from the chandelier fell full upon his face, the Chevalier started. So did Brother Jacques, though he quickly a.s.sumed a disquieting calm as he returned the Chevalier"s salutation.
"What is he doing here?" murmured the Chevalier. "Devil take him and his eyes;" and pa.s.sed on into the dining-hall.
When the Jesuits and their Indian convert departed, the marquis resumed his former position, his chin on his hands, his hands resting on his cane. From time to time he heard loud laughter and s.n.a.t.c.hes of song which rose above the jingle of the gla.s.ses in the dining-hall.
"I am quite alone," he mused, with a smile whimsically sad.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LAST ROUT
Time doled out to the marquis a lagging hour. There were moments when the sounds of merriment, coming from the dining-hall, awakened in his breast the slumbering canker of envy,--envy of youth, of health, of the joy of living. They were young in yonder room; the purse of life was filled with golden metal; Folly had not yet thrown aside her cunning mask, and she was still darling to the eye. Oh, to be young again; that light step of youth, that bold and sparkling glance, that steady hand,--if only these were once more his! Where was all the gold Time had given to him? Upon what had he expended it, to have become thus beggared? To find an apothecary having the elixir of eternal youth! How quickly he would gulp the draft to bring back that beauty which had so often compelled the admiration of women, a d.u.c.h.esse de Montbazon, a d.u.c.h.esse de Longueville, a Princesse de Savoie, among the great; a Margot Bourdaloue among the obscure!
Margot Bourdaloue. . . . The marquis closed his eyes; the revelry dissolved into silence. How distinctly he could see that face, sculptured with all the delicacy of a Florentine cameo; that yellow hair of hers, full of captive sunshine; those eyes, giving forth the velvet-bloom of heartsease; those slender brown hands which defied the lowliness of her birth, and those ankles the beauty of which not even the clumsy sabots could conceal! He knew a d.u.c.h.ess whose line of blood was older than the Capets" or the Bourbons". Was not nature the great Satirist? To give n.o.bility to that d.u.c.h.ess and beauty to that peasant!
Margot Bourdaloue, a girl of the people, of that race of animals he tolerated because they were necessary; of the people, who understood nothing of the poetry of pa.s.sing loves; Margot Bourdaloue, the one softening influence his gay and careless life had known.
Sometimes in the heart of swamps, surrounded by chilling or fetid airs, a flower blossoms, tender and fragrant as any rose of sunny Tours: such a flower Margot had been. Thirty years; yet her face had lost to him not a single detail; for there are some faces which print themselves so indelibly upon the mind that they become not elusive like the memory of an enhancing melody or an exquisite poem, but lasting, like the sense of life itself. And Margot, daughter of his own miller--she had loved him with all the strength and fervor of her simple peasant heart. And he?
Yes, yes; he could now see that he had loved her as deeply as it was possible for a n.o.ble to love a peasant. And in a moment of rage and jealousy and suspicion, he had struck her across the face with his riding-whip.
What a recompense for such a love! In all the thirty years only once had he heard from her: a letter, burning with love, stained and blurred with tears, lofty with forgiveness, between the lines of which he could read the quiet tragedy of an unimportant life. Whither had she gone, carrying that brutal, unjust blow? Was she living? . . . dead? Was there such a thing as a soul, and was the subtile force of hers compelling him to regret true happiness for the dross he had accepted as such? Soul?
What! shall the atheist doubt in his old age?
For more than half an hour the marquis barred from his sight the scene surrounding, and wandered in familiar green fields where a certain mill-stream ran laughing to the sobbing sea; closed his ears to the shouts of laughter and s.n.a.t.c.hes of ribald song, to hear again the nightingale, the stir of gra.s.ses under foot, the thrilling sweetness of the voice he loved. When he recovered from his dream he was surprised to find that he had caught the angle of his wife"s eyes, those expressive and following eyes which Rubens left to posterity; and he saw in them something which was new-born: reproach.
"Yes," said the marquis, as if replying to this spirit of reproach; "yes, if there be souls, yours must hover about me in reproach; reproach not without its irony and gladness; for you see me all alone, Madame, unloved, unrespected, declining and forgotten. But I offer no complaint; only fools and hypocrites make lamentation. And I am less to this son of yours than the steward who reckons his accounts. Where place the blame?
Upon these shoulders, Madame, stooped as you in life never saw them. I knew not, conceited gallant that I was, that beauty and strength were pa.s.sing gifts. What nature gives she likewise takes away. Who would have dreamed that I should need an arm to lean on? Not I, Madame! What vanity we possess when we lack nothing! . . ."
From the dining-hall there came distinctly the Chevalier"s voice lifted in song. He was singing one of Victor"s triolets which the poet had joined to music:
"_When Ma"m"selle drinks from her satin shoe, I drink the wine from her radiant eyes; And we sit in a cas.e.m.e.nt made for two When Ma"m"selle drinks from her satin shoe With a Bacchante"s love for a Bacchic brew!
Then kiss the grape, for the midnight flies When Ma"m"selle drinks from her satin shoe, And I the wine from her radiant eyes!_"
"Madame, he sings well," said the marquis, whimsically. "What was it the Jesuits said? . . . corrupt and degenerate? Yes, those were the words.
"Tis true; and this disease of idleness is as infectious as the plague.
And this son of mine, he is following the game path through which I pa.s.sed . . . to this, palsy and senility! Oh, the subtile poisons, the intoxicating Hippocrenes I taught him how to drink! And now he turns and casts the dregs into my face. But as I said, I make no plaint; I do not lack courage. A pleasant pastime it was, this worldly lessoning; but I forgot that he was partly a reproduction of his Catholic mother; that where I stood rugged he would fall; that he did not possess ardor that is without fire, love that is without sentiment. . . ."
A maudlin voice took up the Chevalier"s song . . .
"_When Ma"m"selle drinks from her satin shoe With a Bacchante"s love for a Bacchic brew!_"
"Reparation, Madame?" went on the marquis. "Such things are beyond reparation. And yet it is possible to save him. But how? Behold! you inspire me. I will save him. I will pardon his insolence, his contempt, his indifference, which, having my bone, was bred in him. Still, the question rises: for what shall I save him? Shall he love a good woman some day? Mayhap. So I will save him, not for the Church, but for the possible but unknown quant.i.ty."
There was a chorus, noisy and out of all harmony. At the end there came a crash, followed by laughter. Some convivial spirit had lost his balance and had fallen to the floor, dragging with him several bottles.
Without heeding these sounds, the marquis continued his monologue. "Yes, I will save him. But not with kindly words, with promises, with appeals; he would laugh at me. No, Madame; human nature such as his does not stir to these when they come from the lips of one he does not hold in respect.
The shock must be rude, penetrating. I must break his pride. And on what is pride based if not upon the pomp of riches? I will take away his purse. What was his antipathy to Mademoiselle de Montbazon? . . . That would be droll, upon honor! I never thought of that before;" and he indulged in noiseless laughter.
The roisterers could be heard discussing wagers, some of which concerned horses, scandals, and women. Ordinarily the marquis would have listened with secret pleasure to this equivocal pastime; but somehow it was at this moment distasteful to his ears.
"My faith! but these Jesuits have cast a peculiar melancholy over me; this frog"s blood of mine would warm to generous impulses! . . . I wonder where I have seen that younger fanatic?" The marquis mused a while, but the riddle remained elusive and unexplained. He struck the bell to summon Jehan. "Announce to Monsieur le Comte my desire to hold speech with him, immediately."