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politics.”

 

The powerful eyes of M. de Voltaire narrowed and glittered.

 

“You know what the politics of France are? You know what kind of a world

this Paris is?”

 

Luc drew a deep breath; he thought of Carola, of M. de Richelieu, of the

young suicide of Versailles.

 

“Monsieur,” he replied earnestly, “my life has been passed in a kind of

seclusion, I being always with the army and often abroad, and I have had

little time even for meditation, and in truth I might well be engulfed

in this great world of which I know so little, and where I have already

experienced some falls, were it not that I have certain thoughts, ideals

so fixed that I cannot conceive them altering, and so I must go on.”

 

“Ah!” cried M. de Voltaire softly, “you will succeed; but not in the way

you think perhaps. Politics are poor scope after all.”

 

“Yet you are in them, Monsieur.”

 

“As I was in the Bastille!” flashed M. de Voltaire, “as I have been

everything and said everything and deceived them all—all the little

dolls who dance to whatever tune is played the loudest. I have been many

characters, I have laughed at all France, and now I am—Voltaire! And

all France steps to the pace I set—therefore I know something of kings

and queens and courtiers and beggars.” He paused and smiled, laying his

hand on his heart with a quick, passionate gesture. “I have tried most

weapons,” he continued, “and the pen is the most powerful of all.

Monseigneur, you have thought, you can express yourself—use your pen to

lift yourself above the age—write—write from your soul, never heed what

you know—write what you feel!”

 

Luc caught his breath.

 

“Monsieur—do you mean that I should write and—publish?”

 

Luc flushed. Instinct, training, tradition were too powerful for even M.

de Voltaire’s fiery urgings to move. Though he struggled against the

impression he felt as if he had been insulted; then he laughed, and the

great man before whom he had stood abashed was swept with that laugh on

to a different plane. In the next perfectly courteous words that Luc

spoke, it was the Marquis addressing the attorney’s clerk.

 

“But, Monsieur, I am a gentleman,” he said simply. M. de Voltaire looked

at him for a moment of silence. “Would you rather be such as M. de

Richelieu or such as I?” he asked at last.

 

Luc did not see the point.

 

“M. de Richelieu does nothing that a gentleman may not do,” he answered;

“he does not write books.”

 

“No—and he has all the seven deadly sins to his credit, which, I

suppose, makes a fine patent of nobility,” remarked M. de Voltaire

slowly.

 

Luc flushed; he found that it was necessary to explain.

 

“When one is ‘born’ there are things one cannot do, Monsieur. I could no

more publish my writings than—” he hesitated for an illustration—“than

a stage player could wear a sword.”

 

M. de Voltaire was very pale; his whole figure trembled.

 

“Monsieur le Marquis!” he said in a terrible voice, “you have ambitions,

you have desires, you have your soul to satisfy, you are searching for

glory—I do not doubt that you have in fancy scaled the highest peak of

achievement—and all the while you are bound and gagged and tied to

earth because you are born a gentleman. Are not your eyes open on the

changes about you? Do you not see that we—that I—are sweeping away God

and rank and all the barriers that come between man and man? You are

young, Monsieur le Marquis; you may live to see the day when kings are

cast down and peasants are called to the government of their country.

This is the age of light and freedom; your rank is but a clog to

you—your genius might raise you to be a light over France!”

 

He spoke with such force, passion, such energy of gesture and emphasis

that Luc had the sense that something new was being violently disclosed

to his view. He sank into the chair before the desk and fixed his eyes,

dark with emotion, on the extraordinary animated face of the speaker. He

had nothing to say; his own instincts, that were until then

unquestioned, taken for granted, never put into words, were unchanged,

for they were rooted almost as deeply as life itself.

 

“Go your way,” said M. de Voltaire more quietly—“spend your strength

for another ten years in politics as you have in war—give your talents

to the service of the superstitious young profligate who sleeps on the

throne of thrones.”

 

“Monsieur!” cried Luc, “do you speak of the King?”

 

“Of His Most Christian Majesty,” replied M. de Voltaire, “of Louis de

Bourbon, who is always on his knees to a certain Jesus Christ or a

certain Marquise de Pompadour, the lady who rules France and who is my

very good friend.”

 

“The King is the King,” answered Luc, reddening, “and I serve him.”

 

“If you have rejected their Christian God, why do you not reject their

Christian King?” demanded M. de Voltaire. “Make your court to the lady I

mention; she has great good sense. Use these things, bow down to them,

make your way through them, but do not believe in them.”

 

“I believe in the King,” returned Luc, in a tone of great agitation. “I

must believe in him whom I have seen hundreds die for.”

 

“Hundreds of thousands have died for Christ,” flashed M. de

Voltaire—“do you therefore believe in Him?”

 

“No,” answered Luc; “but I know there is a God, and I love not to talk

of these matters. As for His Majesty—if I did not believe in him could

I serve him?”

 

“Serve France,” interrupted M. de Voltaire. “Put aside all prejudice,

superstition, your rank, your family, come to Paris, go into a

garret—be one of us—start as I started—be free, express your own

soul, write your thoughts, and laugh at the world!”

 

Luc looked at him with steady hazel eyes, then shook his head.

 

“I cannot,” he said, in firm, positive tones and with a faint smile.

CHAPTER IX # REFLECTIONS

Luc was no more moved from his way by M. de Voltaire’s impetuous entry

into his life than he had been by the unveiling of Carola or by the

glimpse he had of the frivolous, cynical Court.

 

M. de Voltaire was alive, vivid, great. Luc admired him almost to

adoration for his intellect and his courage, but he did not in the least

waver from the plain path he had set himself, nor did the words of the

fiery philosopher affect his scheme of life.

 

He was going along the way prescribed by tradition, by his instinct, by

his birth. He was a noble, a soldier; he owed allegiance to the King,

respect to his father, reverence to his name and blazon. That he could

not believe in the dogma of the Church was no reason for him to

disbelieve in loyalty and honour.

 

Certainly he had wished to be free, but had always rejected the thought

as a temptation; and to give up his rank, his family, his noble

ambitions to devote himself to literature seemed to him pure sacrilege.

He did not even dwell on the suggestion long, but dismissed it as an

impossibility.

 

If the King were nothing in himself—well, he was a symbol, and Luc,

with the obstinacy of the idealist, refused to believe that the world

was what the caustic vision of M. de Voltaire saw it.

 

When the first excitement of the great man’s visit was over, Luc

returned to his old serenity, went to his desk, and wrote another letter

to M. Amelot. Whatever the Court was, it was a vehicle. He had never

supposed that he could attain his goal without stepping through some

mud; there were only two ways open to a man of rank—the army and the

Court.

 

“Unless,” thought Luc, “the heavens open to direct me I will tread the

way my father trod.”

 

He had parted from M. de Voltaire with friendly courteousness on each

side, based on real liking and admiration. Luc had been inspired and the

older man piqued by the interview; it had ended on a mutual laugh and a

promise of future intercourse. The Marquis in no way abated his homage

of M. de Voltaire, who, on his side, had taken a sudden liking for the

young soldier.

 

That evening a letter arrived from Aix. The old Marquis spoke out at

last: Would Luc return home and marry Clémence de Séguy? Her father was

more than willing, she was a good girl of rank and qualities, a match

for the honour of the house, in every way suitable. Might not he

formally request her hand?

 

Luc put the letter down and set his lips. He had just decided to hug his

chains, to be loyal to every tie, to fulfil every duty, to take up the

life his ancestors had led—therefore he had no excuse to refuse this

match, and Clémence shone brightly beside the tarnished image of Carola.

He wrote immediately saying that if he obtained an appointment, or the

sure promise of one, he would return to Aix to marry Mile de Séguy, and

as he sealed the letter he felt like a man who has made his own decision

irrevocable. The suggestion was not unexpected; but even yesterday he

would not have been sure of his answer. Now M. de Voltaire’s bold speech

had shown him clearly enough his own mind.

 

Later that day, when his letters were dispatched, he left the house and

walked up and down the pleasant quays by the river, possessed by a great

sense of peace and exaltation. It had been a day overbrimming with

sunshine, and now, in the hour of twilight, there was a soft glow left

over water, trees, buildings, and sky—a reflection of light; rosy,

clear, tender, and melancholy.

 

Luc passed by M. de Voltaire’s house near the Rue Bréa, and walked

slowly on towards the island of the city and the great church of

Notre-Dame de Paris with her two mighty towers. Here the houses began to

get poorer and meaner, there were more beggars and fewer sedan-chairs,

the shops were more frequent and dirty, the churches looked neglected.

Luc paused to lean over the narrow wall of the embankment and look at

the great river that widened here to divide into the arms that clasped

the island and the church. The water swirled, deep and ruddy coloured

from the last glow of the sun, round the piles of the bridge that led to

the splendid porch of Notre-Dame; beyond the darkening pile of the

church it rolled in a silver-grey flood between flat banks and isolated

groups of buildings now beginning to show black against the paling sky.

 

Luc was lost in deep, sweet, and nameless thoughts when he was roused by

the practised whine of beggary loud and insistent in his ear.

 

He turned to see a creature in the most miserable attire thrusting out a

trembling, grasping hand for charity.

 

Luc started, for the face of this being was so broken, tortured,

disfigured (almost beyond likeness to humanity) by the most violent

ravages of smallpox that it seemed more some kind of sad-beaten ape than

a man.

 

The monotonous demand for money continued to issue from the bloodless

lips; the half-blind eyes winked and peered at Luc with a stifled

appeal. The Marquis pulled out his purse and gave the fellow a silver

coin in silence, his delicate senses revolted beyond expression at the

nearness of the wretched creature.

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