The Quest of Glory, Marjorie Bowen [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

bridge with busy

footsteps passing and never stopping gave him; all these people were

going to, or coming from, somewhere; all might be imagined as having

some definite occupation or pleasure or purpose; all might be considered

as knowing this city well, as having some claim on it, if only the claim

of familiarity, while he was a stranger with his place still to find.

 

He had been in Paris a fortnight, and it was extraordinary how like a

shut door the city still seemed to him; he felt more utterly apart from

the spirit, motion, and meaning of the capital than he had ever done

when in Aix.

 

Inscrutable buildings portentous with locked secrets, inscrutable river

laden with boats going with unknown cargoes to unknown destinations,

inscrutable faces of rich and poor passing to and fro, beautiful youth

in a chariot flashing across the public way to be absorbed in a narrow

turning and seen no more, old age on foot vanishing painfully in the

dusk; the crowd leaving the opera, the play, with pomp and laughter and

comment; the shopkeepers behind their counters, the idlers about the

cafés, the priests, the sudden black splendour of a funeral with candles

looking strange in the daylight and the crucifix exacting the homage of

bent knees, all inscrutable to those who held not the key of it, passing

and repassing about the river, and the Louvre and the church on the

isle.

 

Mingled with these actual objects were the spiritual forces of which the

city was full, and which were to Luc fully as potent as the things he

saw; the air was full of an extraordinary inspiration, as if every man

who had struggled and thought and died in Paris had left some part of

his aspirations behind to enrich the city.

 

A wonderful gorgeous history was held in the stones of the ancient

buildings, in the holy glooms of the churches, in the crooked lines of

the famous streets; her children bloomed and faded, but the city itself

was imperishable, a thing never to be touched with decay.

 

No one once loving this city could ever love another so well.

 

Luc found the immortal charm of Paris enwrapping him with a sad power;

she was the cradle of all the glory of the Western world, the epitome of

all that man had achieved in this his last civilization; she had seen

all his passions burn themselves out and live again. But as yet Luc was

on her threshold, unadmitted, unnoticed.

 

None of his three letters had been answered. The truth of M. de Biron’s

advice was being proved every day: he was neither wanted nor heeded;

there was no place ready for him nor any hand held out to welcome. Yet

Luc, leaning against the heavy parapet and listening to the steady sound

of the passing footsteps, watching the deep eddies of the water and the

grey outlines of the buildings, felt no discouragement; he measured his

soul against even the mighty city, and found it sufficient.

 

Last night he had walked past the hotel from which the Countess Carola

had written. There had been a festival within; all the windows were lit,

and the courtyard was blocked with carriages.

 

Luc had smiled to think of her dancing behind those walls—what if he

had come into her presence and asserted his claim to friendship based on

that march of horror from Prague?

 

He had not entered her mansion, nor did he think of waiting on her; why

he could not tell, save that all his life he had shrunk from putting his

dreams to the test of actuality: and he had dreams about the Countess

Carola, visions of her and pleasant imaginings, but no knowledge; he did

not care to alter this delicate attitude towards the only woman who had

ever interested him. No visions clouded his remembrance of Clémence de

Séguy: she stood out in his mind, clear-cut and definite; he thought he

knew her perfectly, to the bottom of her simple soul.

 

She was pleasant to think on; he conjured up her picture now, rosy,

enveloped in a multitude of frills and ribbons—the grey city seemed the

greyer by contrast.

 

Then the mighty currents of the river swept away her picture as a

rose-leaf is swept away by a torrent, and the swish of it against the

ancient bridge beat on the heart of Luc the three words:

endeavour—achievement—fame.

 

The dusk was gathering, blurring the lines of the city, and a fine rain

began to fall. Luc moved from his station, and walked slowly back to his

lodgings in the fashionable Rue du Bac; his father had insisted on his

living with proper magnificence, and Luc felt his only sting of failure

when he considered the so far useless expenses.

 

When he entered his quiet, handsome rooms he found a letter.

 

His servant had been to the inn that Luc had given as his Paris address,

and had found this missive, which had been left the previous day by a

lackey whose splendour had startled the host. Luc’s heart fluttered; he

thought of the King, of M. Amelot—

 

When he had torn the seal, he saw it was from M. de Voltaire.

 

The great man wrote with charm, with generous frankness: he praised his

young correspondent’s taste, yet pointed out where it went astray; he

warmly encouraged the love of literature, the thirst for knowledge—he

hoped the Marquis would write to him again.

 

Luc put the letter down with a thrill of pure, intense pleasure; the

blood flushed into his cheeks and his heart beat quickly; at that moment

he felt an adoration for its writer.

 

He did not notice the darkening room, the rain that was falling steadily

without; he sat motionless on the stiff striped sofa forming picture

after picture of endless glory, for all his winged fancies had been

stirred into life by this encouragement.

 

Presently, before the room was quite dark, he wrote the following letter

to M. Amelot:—

 

“MONSEIGNEUR,—I am sufficiently disappointed that the letter I have had

the honour to write to you, and that which I sent under cover to you for

the King, have not attracted your attention.

 

“It is not surprising, perhaps, that a Minister so occupied should not

find time to examine such letters; but, Monseigneur, permit me to tell

you that it is this discouragement, given to those gentlemen who have

nothing to offer but their loyalty, that causes the coldness so often

remarked in the provincial nobility and extinguishes in them all

emulation for court favour.

 

“I have passed, Monseigneur, all my youth far from the distractions of

the world, in tasks that render me fit for the position towards which my

character impels me, and I dare to think that a training so laborious

puts me, at least, on a level with those who have spent all their

fortune on their intrigues and their pleasures. I am well aware,

Monseigneur, that the hopes that I have founded on my own ardour are

likely to be deceived; my health will not permit me to continue my

services at the war. I have written to M. le Duc de Biron asking him to

accept my resignation, and there remains nothing to me in my present

situation but to again put my case before you, Monseigneur, and to await

the grace of your reply. Pardon me, Monseigneur, if this letter is not

sufficiently measured in expression.—I am, Monseigneur, your devoted

servant,

 

“VAUVENARGUES”

 

This letter was written in a breath and on the instant sealed and

dispatched; the inspiration to write it had come from the few lines of

M. de Voltaire’s note. It was not a letter many would have sent to a

Minister. Luc was not versed in the method of addressing the great; he

wrote from his heart, urged on by the burning desire for action, for

achievement, for fame.

 

When the letter had gone he went to the window and looked out on the

steady rain and straight-fronted houses, lit with the glimmer of oil

lamps, that hid Paris from his vision.

 

What was the cloud, the confusion, the barrier that came between him and

the attainment of his desires? There was some key somewhere that

unlocked the door of Paris, of life—of that life which meant the scope

to exercise, to strain the energies, to put the utmost into endeavour.

Where was such a life?

 

For ten years Luc had been waiting—always round the corner was the

promised goal—everything had been beautiful with the glamour of

romance. But, looked at coldly, what had these ten years been but

wasted? Luc was starting fresh on another road, and seemed as far as

ever from the summit of his ambitions. Yet it could not be possible that

he was going to remain for ever obscure; he could not believe that.

 

There was a little narrow balcony with a fine railing before his window.

Luc drew the curtains, opened the wet glass, and stepped out. The air

was pure and clear, the rain fresh and delicate. The long twisted length

of the Rue du Bac glistened with the reflected light of the pools

between the cobbles.

 

Luc thrilled to the mystery and inspiration of the silent city with its

hidden activities, to the subtle pleasure of the rain and the lamplight.

He thought—he knew not why—of the King, young, ardent, brave, with the

riches of the world rolled to his feet—the King—of France!

 

Luc shivered even to imagine the glorious pride of that position. He

leant on the railing, regardless of the rain that was falling, and

looked up and down the street that was all he could see of Paris.

 

A sedan-chair came from the direction of the river, carried by two

bearers in plain livery; it was—though Luc did not recognize it as

such—a hired chair. It stopped at the house nearly opposite Luc. A

gentleman put his head out and said something in a low voice; the chair

moved a few doors higher up. Meanwhile from the opposite end of the

street came two other men carrying, not a sedan-chair, but a large black

coffin, on the lid of which was a shield-shaped plate that threw off the

hesitating rays of the lamplight.

 

Luc watched with interest; his mood was too exalted to feel any horror

at the sudden appearance of this sombre object. These little pictures

shown him by the great city attracted him strangely. The sedan-chair had

stopped; a tall gentleman had alighted and paid the bearers, who turned

back the way they had come. None of them noticed what was being borne,

shoulder high, towards them.

 

The sedan passed round a turn of the street out of sight, the late

occupant hesitated a second, then came back to the house exactly

opposite Luc, who stood only a few feet above him, and could observe him

perfectly in the strong beams of the powerful lamp which at this point

was swung across the street by a rope from house to house.

 

The gentleman was unusually tall and of an unusual grace and perfect

balance in his walk. He was wrapped in the close, elegant folds of a

fine fawn cloth cloak, and wore a black hat pulled well over his eyes.

He approached the door and, putting out a hand gloved in white doeskin,

knocked four times in succession.

 

At this moment the coffin-bearers, with a slow, steady, silent step, had

reached the point where he stood, and he, all unconscious, stepped

backwards and looked up at the windows of the house where he sought

admission (which were all in darkness), and in so doing ran against the

foremost man and the foot of the