The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗

begin to grow old.”

 

The Duke laughed.

 

“Old!” he repeated. “Old!” He rose. “My God! do you think I am old?

Look at me, Monsieur—am I old?”

 

Luc turned his head towards him.

 

“I can scarcely see you at all,” he said serenely. “I only see something

gold and purple. I am, Monsieur, half blind.”

 

The Duke stared at him.

 

“If I was stricken like you, I would fall on my sword!” he exclaimed

impulsively.

 

“Each has his own courage,” replied Luc.

 

“How long will you stay here?” asked the Maréchal abruptly.

 

“Until I die, Monsieur.”

 

“By Heaven, no. Come to the Hôtel d’Antin. You are a great man. Since I

am growing old I need a philosopher at my side, and—I always liked you,

Luc de Vauvenargues.”

 

The Marquis rose.

 

“I suppose it was you who obtained me the Spanish appointment after

all?” he asked suddenly.

 

“Do you bear me malice for that?”

 

“No,” said Luc, “no. But I am glad that I have chosen a way where I can

walk unaided.”

 

“Will you come to the Hôtel d’Antin?”

 

“Monseigneur, this time I have not come to Paris to become a pensioner

of the great.”

 

This answer, spoken with pride, but sweetly, caused the blood to flush

to M. de Richelieu’s side curls.

 

“So my philosopher rejects me!” he cried. “And I have prostrated myself

at the feet of the wise man without learning the secret of perpetual

youth or happiness! Farewell, Monsieur de Vauvenargues.”

 

He bowed and stepped towards the door. When he had opened it he paused

with the latch in his hand.

 

“Where is she buried?” he asked.

 

Luc did not answer.

 

“I mean La Koklinska,” insisted the resplendent Maréchal.

 

“In our hearts,” answered the Marquis swiftly. “Let her lie at peace.”

 

“Your pardon,” said M. de Richelieu. “I would have dedicated something

to her memory.”

 

“You can, Monsieur—your silence.”

 

The Duke bowed again.

 

“My silence, then, until we three meet in the Elysian Fields, when we

shall be able to have an interesting conversation. Again, and till then,

farewell.”

 

“Farewell, Monsieur le Maréchal.”

 

The door closed on the gorgeous courtier, and Luc was alone as usual in

the cold, darkening room, with the fire sinking on the hearth and the

sun fading without over the roofs of Paris.

 

CHAPTER VII # THE ROSES OF M. MARMONTEL

 

Luc stood again on the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and watching the

river and the people passing to and fro.

 

It was midsummer of the year ‘46, and unusually hot. Most of the women

wore roses—red, white, and pink. There were many boats on the river,

and an air of gay carelessness over Paris; yet the war had not been so

brilliantly successful of late. The English mastery of the seas was

ruining commerce, and the Saxon troops were marching on Provence. The

taxes were heavier than ever, and starved faces and bitter tongues more

frequent in the poorer quarters where Luc lived.

 

If anyone had remarked a slim young noble, richly dressed, looking with

earnest eyes at the river from this old bridge of St. Germain some three

years ago, and had happened to pass this spot now, they would not have

recognized that graceful figure in the prematurely aged man in the

shabby clothes who leant heavily against the parapet, whose face was so

disfigured and expressionless, who wore no sword, but helped himself

with a black cane.

 

But Luc de Clapiers was happier than he had been when last he mused

above the Seine. As his body fell into decay and painful feebleness his

spirit seemed to mount more and more triumphantly. Sometimes he felt as

if he held all the thought of all the world in the hollow of his hand;

as if he soared above and beyond his age with the great immortals who

rule over eternity. In his dreams he beheld most beautiful landscapes;

when he lay down on his bed vistas opened up of strange and gorgeous

countries, exquisite almost beyond bearing, and a path would run from

the bare boards of his garret straight to the heart of some woodland

that dipped to uncharted seas of delight.

 

Music came from a boat that passed beneath the bridge; the sound of it

across the water was tremblingly sweet to Luc’s ears. He thought there

was something sublime and sad in the notes; that there was a message in

them that no human voice could convey.

 

He straightened himself against the parapet, then went on his way. At

the corner of the bridge he met a beggar woman dragging a child. She

cast an appealing glance at Luc, who paused, fumbled a silver coin from

his pocket, and gave it her. The action reminded him that he had only a

few gold pieces left in the world. He had planned his resources to last

twice as long, but it had been easy to deny himself everything but

charity. That it was not in his nature to forgo, nor were the instincts

of a life at a moment to be altered. He never chaffered, and therefore

paid double what every one else did in the Isle.

 

Last winter the man who lived in the room opposite his, a clarionet

player at the Opera, had been ill, and Luc had paid to prevent the

fellow being turned into the street, paid the expenses of his short

illness, and finally his humble funeral.

 

For his book he had received nothing. For the next edition that he was

revising, with the advice of M. de Voltaire, he also expected to receive

nothing. He had friends,—Voltaire himself, Saint Vincent, and

others,—but the noble blood in him prevented him from ever considering

their possible assistance. He could only think of writing pamphlets, or

doing translations; but he knew little Greek or Latin, and only a scanty

Italian.

 

As he returned home through the sunny streets he recalled his father’s

words: “Not a louis from me, if you are starving—as, in your folly and

wickedness, you will starve.”

 

He thought of his parents, of Joseph, and Aix, with great tenderness. He

was glad he had resisted the bookseller’s entreaty to put his name to

his book, even though by his refusal he had probably lost a good chance

of ensuring the success of his labour; for he had spared the proud old

aristocrat the shame of seeing his name on the title-page of a work of

philosophy; of hearing his name associated with Voltaire, with

literature, with poverty, with the ignominy of writing and printing a

book.

 

“He would say,” thought Luc, “how right he was—what an utter failure I

am.”

 

He opened the door of his room, and entered with great weariness. The

stairs, steep and dark, fatigued him immensely. The garret, being

directly under the roof, was suffocatingly hot. He felt his head ache

and his limbs tremble. The food placed for him on the table near the

window he turned from, though the little girl who waited on him had

arranged glass and plate, salad and meat, black bread, and thin wine in

a tall bottle, neatly enough.

 

On this same table lay a bundle of proofs tried round with a twist of

twine.

 

Luc took them up, balanced them in his hand, and put them down again. He

was only able to read them with great difficulty.

 

“After all,” he mused, with a melancholy smile, “perhaps they are

worth nothing—who knows?”

 

He sat very still, considering what he was to do for money. The people

he was dealing with were poor. He could not bear the thought of being in

their debt, or of asking them for any kindness that he could not reward.

He reflected that it cost something even to die decently, and he might

live some time longer. He smiled to think that he was balancing the

probable length of his life against the probable length of his purse,

and at the reflection that a hundred pistoles would put him out of all

anxiety. His sweet humour took the whole thing with a laugh.

 

Presently he went to the window. A foul, stale smell was rising from the

old winding street. Dirty, sharp-faced children played in the brilliant

patch of sunshine that fell between two decayed houses and stained the

cobbles.

 

At the doorless entrances dishevelled women stood talking, and gathered

round the wine-shop were a few men of a better sort, with their shirts

open for the heat, who emptied their glasses silently, then went about

their business, silently also. Luc’s feeble sight could make out none of

this, nor did he look down, but across the irregular roofs to the

ineffable glory of the gold and purple August sky.

 

He put his hands on the sill; the stinging heat of it was grateful to

his chill blood. He closed his eyes, and felt the sunshine like a red

sword across his lids. He leant his sick head against the mullions. The

clock of a church near by struck four; it reminded him that this was the

hour and the day when he was generally visited by Voltaire or one of his

friends—Diderot, d’Alembert, Saint Vincent. Luc loved these men, as he

could not fail to love those whose warm regard was sweetening his

closing years, but he would not live their lives. The Pompadour was

their patroness, and they lived on that corruption that they secretly

laughed at. Luc could not ever have brought himself to kneel at the

footstool of the Marquise; his pure integrity, his absolute

independence, and his complete obscurity divided him as sharply as his

birth from the group of brilliant men to whom by right of genius he

belonged.

 

All of these men had achieved success; combined, they made a power equal

to that of the ancient royalty itself. They were preparing—in the

Encyclopaedia to which they were devoting their enthusiasm, their gifts

of logic, of reason, of sarcasm, of eloquence—thunderbolts that would

shake God Himself. Yet they one and all agreed to honour the unknown

young aristocrat whose austere philosophy condemned half their actions,

but whose sweetness and heroism won their admiration and respect.

 

M. de Voltaire came to Luc’s chamber this blazing afternoon, and not

alone. He brought with him a young man, very splendidly attired, with a

fine ardent face and bold eyes, full of an eager, joyous life. M. de

Voltaire presented him briefly—

 

“M. le Marquis—M. Marmontel.”

 

Luc caught the young man’s hand, and drew him gently into the sunlight,

straining his half-blind eyes to make out the person of his visitor.

 

For Jean Français Marmontel was the favourite of Paris, petted,

caressed, extolled; the incarnation of success; one young, vigorous, and

in the seat of glory; one physically what Luc had been before the

Bohemia war, and from the worldly point of view in that position Luc had

so yearned and longed for, so confidently hoped to attain.

 

Luc had failed in arms, in politics, in letters. He had lost love, and

health, and all hope of material triumph. He had even won hate from

those nearest to him in blood. He was dying, slowly, and in a fashion

humiliating. He was disfigured, feeble, half blind, bowed with weakness

and great pain.

 

M. de Voltaire thought of this as he watched him looking so earnestly at

the young man who was so crowned with gifts, with success, strength, and

vigour.

 

M. Marmontel wore roses like the women who had passed to and fro the

Pont St. Germain—sweet-smelling red roses, thrust into the black velvet

ribbon that fastened the long