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The Parisians, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 10 - Chapter 6 |
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_ BOOK X CHAPTER VI Graham had scarcely quitted Alain, and the young Marquis was about to saunter forth to his club, when Duplessis was announced. These two men had naturally seen much of each other since Duplessis had returned from Bretagne and delivered Alain from the gripe of Louvier. Scarcely a day had passed but what Alain had been summoned to enter into the financier's plans for the aggrandisement of the Rochebriant estates, and delicately made to feel that he had become a partner in speculations, which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Duplessis brought to bear, seemed likely to result in the ultimate freedom of his property from all burdens, and the restoration of his inheritance to a splendour correspondent with the dignity of his rank. On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted to professional business, Duplessis arranged that these consultations should take place in the evenings. From those consultations Valerie was not banished; Duplessis took her into the council as a matter of course. "Valerie," said the financier to Alain, "though so young, has a very clear head for business, and she is so interested in all that interests myself, that even where I do not take her opinion, I at least feel my own made livelier and brighter by her sympathy." So the girl was in the habit of taking her work or her book into the cabinet de travail, and never obtruding a suggestion unasked, still, when appealed to, speaking with a modest good sense which justified her father's confidence and praise; and a propos of her book, she had taken Chateaubriand into peculiar favour. Alain had respectfully presented to her beautifully bound copies of Atala and Ls Genie du Christianisme; it is astonishing, indeed, how he had already contrived to regulate her tastes in literature. The charms of those quiet family evenings had stolen into the young Breton's heart. He yearned for none of the gayer reunions in which he had before sought for a pleasure that his nature had not found; for, amidst the amusements of Paris, Alain remained intensely Breton--viz., formed eminently for the simple joys of domestic life, associating the sacred hearthstone with the antique religion of his fathers; gathering round it all the images of pure and noble affections which the romance of a poetic temperament had evoked from the solitude which had surrounded a melancholy boyhood-an uncontaminated youth. Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much disturbed from its wonted saturnine composure. "Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse de Tarascon? Can it be? You ask military service in this ill-omened war?--you?" "My dear and best friend," said Alain, very much startled, "I should have thought that you, of all men in the world, would have most approved of my request--you, so devoted an Imperialist--you, indignant that the representative of one of these families, which the First Napoleon so eagerly and so vainly courted, should ask for the grade of sous-lieutenant in the armies of Napoleon the Third--you, who of all men know how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant--you, feel surprised that he clings to the noblest heritage his ancestors have left to him--their sword! I do not understand you." "Marquis," said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding Alain with a look in which were blended the sort of admiration and the sort of contempt with which a practical man of the world, who, having himself gone through certain credulous follies, has learned to despise the follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they bewitch, "Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples had allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment not unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian, to whom France can look for rational liberty combined with established order. Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who on earth could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which the madness, I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a sovereign against whom you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance of placing the descendant of Henry IV. on his throne." "I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my country against the foreigner." "An excellent answer if the foreigner had invaded your country; but it seems that your country is going to invade the foreigner--a very different thing. Chut! all this discussion is most painful to me. I feel for the Emperor a personal loyalty, and for the hazards he is about to encounter a prophetic dread, as an ancestor of yours might have felt for Francis I. could he have foreseen Pavia. Let us talk of ourselves and the effect the war should have upon our individual action. You are aware, of course, that, though M. Louvier has had notice of our intention to pay off his mortgage, that intention cannot be carried into effect for six months; if the money be not then forthcoming his hold on Rochebriant remains unshaken--the sum is large." "Alas! yes." "The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect many speculative adventures and operations when at the very moment credit may be most needed. It is absolutely necessary that I should be daily at my post on the Bourse, and hourly watch the ebb and flow of events. Under these circumstances I had counted, permit me to count still, on your presence in Bretagne. We have already begun negotiations on a somewhat extensive scale, whether as regards the improvement of forests and orchards, or the plans for building allotments, as soon as the lands are free for disposal--for all these the eye of a master is required. I entreat you, then, to take up your residence at Rochebriant." "My dear friend, this is but a kindly and delicate mode of relieving me from the dangers of war. I have, as you must be conscious, no practical knowledge of business. Hebert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry out your views with a zeal equal to mine, and with infinitely more ability." "Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to Hebert; if you wish to get your own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder to the wheel." Alain coloured high, unaccustomed to be so bluntly addressed, but he replied with a kind of dignified meekness: "I shall ever remain grateful for what you have done, and wish to do for me. But, assuming that you suppose rightly, the estates of Rochebriant would, in your hands, become a profitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage, and the sum you have paid Louvier on my account, let it pass to you irrespectively of me. I shall console myself in the knowledge that the old place will be restored, and those who honoured its old owners prosper in hands so strong, guided by a heart so generous." Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words; they seized him on the tenderest side of his character--for his heart was generous, and no one, except his lost wife and his loving child, had ever before discovered it to be so. Has it ever happened to you, reader, to be appreciated on the one point of the good or the great that is in you--on which secretly you value yourself most--but for which nobody, not admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit? If that has happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when the fittest representative of that divine chivalry which, if sometimes deficient in head, owes all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to the professional moneymaker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged that a compliment to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose qualities of heart had never yet received a compliment! Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, "Listen to me, I love you--I never had a son--be mine--Rochebriant shall be my daughter's dot." Alain returned the embrace, and then recoiling, said: "Father, your first desire must be honour for your son. You have guessed my secret--I have learned to love Valerie. Seeing her out in the world, she seemed like other girls, fair and commonplace--seeing her--at your house, I have said to myself, 'There is the one girl fairer than all others in my eyes, and the one individual to whom all other girls are commonplace.'" "Is that true?--is it?" "True! does a gentilhomme ever lie? And out of that love for her has grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her--something that may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to ancestors, nothing to themselves. Do you suppose for one moment that I, saved from ruin and penury by Valerie's father, could be base enough to say to her, 'In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant'? Do you suppose that I, whom you would love and respect as son, could come to you and say: 'I am oppressed by your favours--I am crippled with debts--give me your millions and we are quits.' No, Duplessis! You, so well descended yourself--so superior as man amongst men that you would have won name and position had you been born the son of a shoeblack,--you would eternally despise the noble who, in days when all that we Bretons deem holy in noblesse are subjected to ridicule and contempt, should so vilely forget the only motto which the scutcheons of all gentilhommes have in common, 'Noblesse oblige.' War, with all its perils and all its grandeur,--war lifts on high the banners of France,--war, in which every ancestor of mine whom I care to recall aggrandised the name that descends to me. Let me then do as those before me have done; let me prove that I am worth something in myself, and then you and I are equals; and I can say with no humbled crest, 'Your benefits are accepted:' the man who has fought not ignobly for France may aspire to the hand of her daughter. Give me Valerie; as to her dot,--be it so, Rochebriant,--it will pass to her children." "Alain! Alain! my friend! my son!--but if you fall." "Valerie will give you a nobler son." Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily; but he said no more in deprecation of Alain's martial resolves. A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, however philosophical he may be, who does not sympathise with the follies of honour--who does not concede indulgence to the hot blood of youth when he says, "My country is insulted and her banner is unfurled," may certainly be a man of excellent common sense; but if such men had been in the majority, Gaul would never have been France--Gaul would have been a province of Germany. And as Duplessis walked homeward--he the calmest and most far-seeing of all authorities on the Bourse--the man who, excepting only De Mauleon, most decidedly deemed the cause of the war a blunder, and most forebodingly anticipated its issues, caught the prevalent enthusiasm. Everywhere he was stopped by cordial hands, everywhere met by congratulating smiles. "How right you have been, Duplessis, when you have laughed at those who have said, 'The Emperor is ill, decrepit, done up.'" "Vive l'Empereur! at least we shall be face to face with those insolent Prussians!" Before he arrived at his home, passing along the Boulevards, greeted by all the groups enjoying the cool night air before the cafes, Duplessis had caught the war epidemic. Entering his hotel, he went at once to Valerie's chamber. "Sleep well to-night, child; Alain has told me that he adores thee, and if he will go to the war, it is that he may lay his laurels at thy feet. Bless thee, my child, thou couldst not have made a nobler choice." Whether, after these words, Valerie slept well or not 'tis not for me to say; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess that her dreams were rose-coloured. _ |
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