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the

moonlit lake.

 

“Waste time!” repeated the other; “you use extraordinary words. How can

one waste what is so endless, so wearisome?”

 

Luc paused, with his hand on the pale, glimmering door. His impulse was

to leave without more words, but as he looked at the other man the

circumstances of his first knowledge of him, and the sumptuous beauty of

this spoilt favourite of fortune, moved him to further speech; curiosity

and a certain almost passionate contempt stirred him. For this man was

not like M. de Richelieu; he redeemed himself with no gaiety or wit or

energy, but seemed too proud or too supine to make the least effort to

please or even to comprehend others.

 

“How old are you?” asked Luc abruptly.

 

“Twenty-seven,” was the answer, given in a kind of haughty surprise.

 

“And tired of life!” smiled the Marquis. “Is there anything in the world

you have not enjoyed to satiety? is there anything under heaven you are

not weary of?”

 

The other answered with deep melancholy.

 

“You are quite right, Monsieur, there is nothing that can give me the

least pleasure; I find everything very miserable and stale.”

 

“Yet,” said Luc, thinking of the black coffin, “probably you are afraid

of death.”

 

The cynic crossed himself with a trembling hand and paled perceptibly.

 

“How dare you use that word?” he cried. “Have I not said that I will not

hear it? But those who believe are saved,” he added, with more animation

than he had yet shown, “and I am saved, for I believe. No one can say

that I am not a religious man.”

 

“You hang between loathing of life and fear of damnation, then,”

returned Luc, marvelling. “Monsieur, I very greatly pity you that your

superstitions bring you no greater comfort.”

 

“Superstitions?”

 

“I take it you are a Christian,” said the Marquis calmly. The other

shrank back from him.

 

“And you?” he asked.

 

“I follow a creed that enables me to smile at death and hell-fire,” said

Luc simply.

 

“An atheist!” murmured the stranger. “Well, you are damned,” he added

with a sullen satisfaction. He crossed himself again and muttered a few

words of a prayer. “There are too many of you in France,” he continued,

“and now I think you begin to creep into the Court.”

 

“We speak of matters too deep, Monsieur, for our acquaintance,” answered

the Marquis.

 

“An atheist!” repeated the other. “How can God’s blessing be upon us

with such corrupting France?”

 

The grossness and superstition of this man’s slavish religion fired Luc

to a sudden fine wrath.

 

“It is such as you, Monsieur, who corrupt Court and city and nation,” he

said quietly; “such as you, dulled by luxury, enervated by ease, afraid

of death, afraid of life, staled by amusement and frivolity, cynical of

any good in others, contemptuous of honour and glory—it is such as you

who cause the people to curse the nobility—yea, even to shake them in

their loyalty; it is such as you who have no right to serve the King

with your weary flatteries; it is such as you who are not needed in this

our splendid France.”

 

“I—not needed?”

 

“I speak as a soldier and plainly. I am no older than you, Monsieur, and

not of your doubtless great position, but I have seen things—seen men

live and die with no hope or reward save the glory of serving the King

of France.”

 

Luc’s grey eyes lost their dreaminess as he thought of the young monarch

who was his lodestar.

 

“Little can I offer His Majesty but an unstained sword; but that is more

worthy of his acceptance than anything your wealth could bring.”

 

The wonderful blue eyes darkened with a sneer. “You have a high

conception of the King!”

 

“Yes,” smiled Luc proudly. “I know what real loyalty is—no courtier

can teach me. I have walked among the dying, who eased their torments by

murmuring the name of King Louis. I have beheld men spurred to great

achievement by the thought of him; his name is a power that you perhaps

cannot conceive of. I believe with thousands that he will, in the

splendid ardour of his youth, lead France to greater glories that she

has yet attained. Louis the Great will be overshadowed by Louis the Well

Beloved!”

 

His thin cheek flushed with enthusiasm; he looked beyond the gorgeous

pavilion to the exquisite night.

 

“His Majesty is to be envied,” said the

other coldly.

 

Luc drew a deep breath.

 

“To be envied! Imagine, on such a night as this, to stand beneath the

heavens, young, a king—and King of France! The whole world waiting to

give you her best—the power, the scope, the ardent love and devotion at

your feet. Ah, Monsieur, to be such a man is to almost pass humanity.”

 

He turned impetuously to find his listener watching him curiously with

the same expression of cold melancholy, and a certain chill came over

his own ardour.

 

“I do not know why I speak so,” he said with a flush, “nor why I have

been drawn to talk at all.”

 

“Because,” replied the other wearily, “you are a fool.” He yawned and

then gave a little sigh.

 

Luc’s instant anger as instantly died, for there was something tragic in

the beautiful face so utterly hopeless, so blind to the spiritual, so

weary of the senses.

 

“Good night, Monsieur,” said the Marquis gravely.

 

The other made no answer. His blue eyes fluttered lazily from Luc and

rested on the floor; his chin sunk on the jewelled laces on his breast.

The absolute indifference of his manner was a marked discourtesy. The

Marquis gave him a narrowed glance and left him.

 

As Luc saw the water, the sky, the roses, and the moonlight, the image

of the jaded, sad, and sneering young man went from his mind; he could

not think melancholy thoughts on such a night of gold and pearl, dark

trees and fragrant flowers.

CHAPTER IV # DESPAIR

As Luc stood at the window of his modest bedroom the night of the fête,

he was thinking of two definite themes, curiously woven and twisted into

one strand of reflection.

 

The first theme was the diamond ring he had seen the Countess Carola

wearing. He wondered how she came by it, and he was rather vexed by the

thought that perhaps the page had never told his master it had been

refused, but kept and sold it secretly; for that it was the same jewel

he had held in his hand in the Governor’s house at Avignon that was now

in the possession of the Polish lady he did not, in his heart, for a

moment doubt.

 

The second theme, in no way connected, yet mingled, with the other, was

the man he had held that curious conversation with in the fairylike

pavilion at Versailles—a man with life strong within him, yet tired of

life, the most melancholy of spectacles, and one new to Luc.

 

While men like this one and M. de Richelieu held the great places of the

land, perhaps M. de Biron was right in saying that penniless,

unsupported zeal would find no scope in Paris.

 

Perhaps, after all, Roland was dead at Ronçesvalles, Charlemagne buried,

and all the peers perished, taking chivalry with them to their graves.

 

The moon had long since set, and a vivid dawn was spreading above the

housetops of the little town.

 

Luc softly opened the window and looked out, up and down the bare,

silent little street, fresh and clean in the new light. Supposing it was

all a delusion, supposing glory always evaded him, vanished into clouds

of disappointment, supposing he was always met by the cold look those

blue eyes had turned on him last night?

 

Ah, well, in that case it would have been far better if he had died with

Hippolyte de Seytres in Prague or with Georges d’Espagnac among the snow

and darkness. And Carola—his highest thoughts had clung to the vision

of her very tenderly. But what did he know of her?

 

In the cold silence of the dawn he asked himself if he loved her, if she

was worthy to be loved; also what her eyes had said when she raised them

from the wallflower stalk she was turning about in her long, expressive,

smooth fingers.

 

He thought those eyes, so full of inspiration and courage and eagerness,

had said, “This is love—somewhere between us—shall we find it or lose

it?”

 

He trembled at the thought, which he had, till now, never dared

formulate; but he could not dismiss it. That look of hers had touched

his conception of her with fire. He now admitted to himself that he had

been stung keenly to see her wearing a jewel once in the possession of

M. de Richelieu; it caused him to think of the wretched magician’s last

words, addressed to the young Duke: “Beware of her who comes from

Bohemia!” He found himself wishing that she was neither so wealthy nor

so highly placed; yet it was no matter to him. If she was worthy to be

loved he could love her as Rudel loved the Lady of Tripoli, and she need

never know it even. He sternly checked his thoughts. What did he know of

her? She was a foreigner; her conduct towards him had been always cold;

and he—he had his place to find, his way to make, his goal to achieve.

 

He closed the window and sat down rather wearily, resting his head

against the mullions. The little room was full of a melancholy light,

the furniture enveloped with heavy shadows. A large black crucifix above

the curtained bed showed distinct and gloomy; it recalled to Luc the

noble of the pavilion, with his horror of death, his distaste of life,

weighed down by the shadow of the Cross, blind to the roses, yawning in

the face of the moon.

 

He rose with a little shiver and began pacing up and down the room; his

old fierce yearning for his former life suddenly rushed over him. He

wanted to be away from all these people, out on the march again with his

beloved companions, Hippolyte and Georges.

 

He paused and clutched the back of a chair in his effort to control this

sudden passionate desire for the past, and fixed his eyes on the square

of lightening sky above the roofs that were slowly beginning to take on

colour and shape and shadow.

 

A decided but light knock at his door recalled him to commonplace

things. He glanced instinctively at the brass bracket clock near the

window; it was a little after three o’clock. He wondered who could be

rousing him at this hour, and almost persuaded himself that he had not

heard the knock, when it was repeated, firmly, twice.

 

The Marquis went to the door at once and opened it. Immediately outside,

half obscured by the dim shadows of the landing, was a young man, fully

dressed like himself.

 

“Your pardon, Monsieur,” he said at once, in an even, sweet voice; “are

you not an Abbé?”

 

“No,” answered Luc, greatly amazed.

 

“Ah, forgive me; I thought I had been told that an Abbé lodged here.” He

seemed slightly disappointed, but made no movement of leaving.

 

“Are you staying in this house, Monsieur?” asked Luc.

 

“Yes; I have the chambers opposite.” He glanced with a smile at Luc’s

blue velvet and black satins, court sword and powdered hair. “You have

not been sleeping either, I perceive,” he added.

 

“I was at the fête last night,” answered the Marquis,

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