`I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely.'
`It is possible,' said the uncle, with great calmness. `For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!'
`I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one,' observed the nephew.
`I would not say happily, my friend,' returned the uncle, with refined politeness; `I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--his daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!'
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.
`We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also,' said the nephew, gloomily, `that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.'
`Let us hope so,' said the uncle. `Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.'
`There is not,' pursued the nephew, in his former tone, `a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery.'
`A compliment,' said the Marquis, `to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!' And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of indifference.
`Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,' observed the Marquis, `will keep tee dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,' looking up to it, `shuts out the sky.'
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the châateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in a new way--to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.
`Meanwhile,' said the Marquis, `I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our Conference for the night?'
`A moment more.'
`An hour, if you please.'
`Sir,' said the nephew, `we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong.'
`We have done wrong?' repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.
`Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?'
`Death has done that!' said the Marquis.
`And has left me,' answered the nephew, `bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored file to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain?
`Seeking them from me, my nephew,' said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger--they were now standing by the hearth--you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand.
Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,
`My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived.'
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of Snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
`Better to be a rational creature,' he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, `and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.'
`This property and France are lost to me,' said the nephew, sadly; `I renounce them.'
`Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?'
`I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow---
`Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.'
`--or twenty years hence---'
`You do me too much honour,' said the Marquis; `still, I prefer that supposition.'
`--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin?'
`Hah!' said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room. `To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.'
`Hah!' said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.
`If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people Who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; bat it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.'
`And you?' said the uncle. `Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?'
`I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day--work.'
`In England, for example?'
`Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other.'
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.
