The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
“You say the academy flourishes?” he asked presently.
“It does. I have two assistant instructors. I could employ a third. It is hard work.”
“That should mean that your circumstances are affluent.”
“I have reason to be satisfied. I have far more than I need.”
“Then you’ll be able to do your share in paying off this national debt,” growled the nobleman, well content that — as he conceived it — some of the evil Andre–Louis had helped to sow should recoil upon him.
Then the talk veered to Mme. de Plougastel. M. de Kercadiou, Andre–Louis gathered, but not the reason for it, disapproved most strongly of this visit. But then Madame la Comtesse was a headstrong woman whom there was no denying, whom all the world obeyed. M. de Plougastel was at present absent in Germany, but would shortly be returning. It was an indiscreet admission from which it was easy to infer that M. de Plougastel was one of those intriguing emissaries who came and went between the Queen of France and her brother, the Emperor of Austria.
The carriage drew up before a handsome hotel in the Faubourg Saint–Denis, at the corner of the Rue Paradis, and they were ushered by a sleek servant into a little boudoir, all gilt and brocade, that opened upon a terrace above a garden that was a park in miniature. Here madame awaited them. She rose, dismissing the young person who had been reading to her, and came forward with both hands outheld to greet her cousin Kercadiou.
“I almost feared you would not keep your word,” she said. “It was unjust. But then I hardly hoped that you would succeed in bringing him.” And her glance, gentle, and smiling welcome upon him, indicated Andre–Louis.
The young man made answer with formal gallantry.
“The memory of you, madame, is too deeply imprinted on my heart for any persuasions to have been necessary.”
“Ah, the courtier!” said madame, and abandoned him her hand. “We are to have a little talk, Andre–Louis,” she informed him, with a gravity that left him vaguely ill at ease.
They sat down, and for a while the conversation was of general matters, chiefly concerned, however, with Andre–Louis, his occupations and his views. And all the while madame was studying him attentively with those gentle, wistful eyes, until again that sense of uneasiness began to pervade him. He realized instinctively that he had been brought here for some purpose deeper than that which had been avowed.
At last, as if the thing were concerted — and the clumsy Lord of Gavrillac was the last man in the world to cover his tracks — his godfather rose and, upon a pretext of desiring to survey the garden, sauntered through the windows on to the terrace, over whose white stone balustrade the geraniums trailed in a scarlet riot. Thence he vanished among the foliage below.
“Now we can talk more intimately,” said madame. “Come here, and sit beside me.” She indicated the empty half of the settee she occupied.
Andre–Louis went obediently, but a little uncomfortably. “You know,” she said gently, placing a hand upon his arm, “that you have behaved very ill, that your godfather’s resentment is very justly founded?”
“Madame, if I knew that, I should be the most unhappy, the most despairing of men.” And he explained himself, as he had explained himself on Sunday to his godfather. “What I did, I did because it was the only means to my hand in a country in which justice was paralyzed by Privilege to make war upon an infamous scoundrel who had killed my best friend — a wanton, brutal act of murder, which there was no law to punish. And as if that were not enough — forgive me if I speak with the utmost frankness, madame — he afterwards debauched the woman I was to have married.”
“Ah, mon Dieu!” she cried out.
“Forgive me. I know that it is horrible. You perceive, perhaps, what I suffered, how I came to be driven. That last affair of which I am guilty — the riot that began in the Feydau Theatre and afterwards enveloped the whole city of Nantes — was provoked by this.”
“Who was she, this girl?”
It was like a woman, he thought, to fasten upon the unessential.
“Oh, a theatre girl, a poor fool of whom I have no regrets. La Binet was her name. I was a player at the time in her father’s troupe. That was after the Rennes business, when it was necessary to hide from such justice as exists in France — the gallows’ justice for unfortunates who are not ‘born.’ This added wrong led me to provoke a riot in the theatre.”
“Poor boy,” she said tenderly. “Only a woman’s heart can realize what you must have suffered; and because of that I can so readily forgive you. But now . . . ”
“Ah, but you don’t understand, madame. If to-day I thought that I had none but personal grounds for having lent a hand in the holy work of abolishing Privilege, I think I should cut my throat. My true justification lies in the insincerity of those who intended that the convocation of the States General should be a sham, mere dust in the eyes of the nation.”
“Was it not, perhaps, wise to have been insincere in such a matter?”
He looked at her blankly.
“Can it ever be wise, madame, to be insincere?”
“Oh, indeed it can; believe me, who am twice your age, and know my world.”
“I should say, madame, that nothing is wise that complicates existence; and I know of nothing that so complicates it as insincerity. Consider a moment the complications that have arisen out of this.”
“But surely, Andre–Louis, your views have not been so perverted that you do not see that a governing class is a necessity in any country?”
“Why, of course. But not necessarily a hereditary one.”
“What else?”
He answered her with an epigram. “Man, madame, is the child of his own work. Let there be no inheriting of rights but from such a parent. Thus a nation’s best will always predominate, and such a nation will achieve greatly.”
“But do you account birth of no importance?”
“Of none, madame — or else my own might trouble me.” From the deep flush that stained her face, he feared that he had offended by what was almost an indelicacy. But the reproof that he was expecting did not come. Instead —
“And does it not?” she asked. “Never, Andre?”
“Never, madame. I am content.”
“You have never . . . never regretted your lack of parents’ care?”
He laughed, sweeping aside her sweet charitable concern that was so superfluous. “On the contrary, madame, I tremble to think what they might have made of me, and I am grateful to have had the fashioning of myself.”
She looked at him for a moment very sadly, and then, smiling, gently shook her head.
“You do not want self-satisfaction . . . Yet I could wish that you saw things differently, Andre. It is a moment of great opportunities for a young man of talent and spirit. I could help you; I could help you, perhaps, to go very far if you would permit yourself to be helped after my fashion.”
“Yes,” he thought, “help me to a halter by sending me on treasonable missions to Austria on the Queen’s behalf, like M. de Plougastel. That would certainly end in a high position for me.”
Aloud he answered more as politeness prompted. “I am grateful, madame. But you will see that, holding the ideals I have expressed, I could not serve any cause that is opposed to their realization.”
“You are misled by prejudice, Andre–Louis, by personal grievances. Will you allow them to stand in the way of your advancement?”
“If what I call ideals were really prejudices, would it be honest of me to run counter to them whilst holding them?”
“If