The marquis, alone, amid the various emotions which agitated all around him, had remained coldly and impassibly indifferent; for to him the world had ceased to move since the dreadful day on which reason had abandoned him; continually absorbed by one fixed idea, that of his mortal combat, without seconds. The only words he ever uttered, were those pronounced by the Count de Morlaix, when he forgave him his death. He was an old man, weak as an infant, and whom his wife could overawe by a gesture, and who received from her cold and continuous will, every impulsion, which, for twenty years, the vegetating instinct had received, and which, on him, had usurped the place of reason and free will. On this day, however, a great change had taken place in his monotonous mode of life. A valet de chambre had entered his apartment, and had succeeded to the marchioness in the cares of his toilette; he had dressed him in his uniform of steward of the household, had decorated his breast with the several orders that had been conferred upon him; and then the marchioness, placing a pen in his hand, had ordered him to try to sign his name, and he had obeyed, passively and negligently, without imagining that he was studying the part of an executioner.
About three in the afternoon, a postchaise, the sound of whose wheels had very differently impressed the hearts of the three persons who were expecting it, entered the court-yard of the castle. Emanuel had eagerly run down to the vestibule to receive his future brother-in-law, for it was he who had arrived. Lectoure sprang lightly from his carriage. He had halted for some time at the last post-house, to attire himself in a presentable costume, so that he arrived in an elegant court dress of the latest fashion. Emanuel smiled at this evidence of his anxiety, for it was clearly to be perceived, that Lectoure was determined not to lose the advantage of a first favorable impression, by presenting himself in a dusty travelling dress. His intercourse with the fair sex had taught him, that they almost invariably judge from the first glance, and the effect which it produces upon their minds or hearts, let it be favorable or unfavorable, is with difficulty removed. Moreover, it is but rendering justice to the baron to acknowledge that his person was graceful and elegant, and might have been dangerous to any woman whose heart was not already occupied by another.
“Permit me, my dear baron,” said Emanuel, advancing toward him, “in the momentary absence of the ladies, to do the honors of the mansion of my ancestors. See,” continued he, when they had reached the top of the stone steps leading into the hall, and pointing to the turrets and the bastions, “these date from the time of Philip Augustus, as to architecture, and from Henry IV., in point of ornament.”
“Upon my honor,” replied the baron, in the affected tone which the young men of that day had adopted, “it is a most charming fortress, and throws around it, to a distance of at least three leagues, a baronial odour, which would perfume even an army contractor. If ever,” continued he, as they passed through the hall and entered a gallery ornamented on each side with long lines of family portraits, “I should take a fancy to enter into a rebellion against his most Christian Majesty, I shall entreat you to lend me this jewel of a place; and,” added he, casting his eyes on the long rows of ancestors which offered themselves to his view, “the garrison with it.”
“Thirty-three quarters—I will not say in flesh and blood,” replied Emanuel, “for they are long since turned to dust—but in painting, as you see. They begin with a certain Chevalier Hugues d’Auray, who accompanied King Louis VII. to the crusades; that one, it is pretended, is my aunt Deborah, whom you see decked out as Judith; and all this eventually ends in the male line, in the last member of this illustrious family, your very humble and very obedient servant, Emanuel d’Auray.”
“It is perfectly respectable, and nothing can be more authentic.”
“Yes; but as I do not feel that I have, as yet, become sufficiently a patriarch,” rejoined Emanuel, passing before the baron to show him the way to the apartment which had been prepared for him, “to spend my days in such formidable society, I hope, baron, that you have thought of the means by which I can withdraw from it?”
“Undoubtedly, my dear count,” said Lectoure, following him. “I wished even to have been myself the bearer of your commission, as my wedding gift to you. I knew of a vacancy in the queen’s dragoon’s, and called yesterday on M. de Maurepas to solicit it for you, when I heard that it had been granted, at the request of I know not what mysterious admiral, a sort of corsair, pirate, or fantastic being, whom the queen has made the fashion by giving him her hand to kiss, and whom the king has taken a great affection to because he beat the English, I know not where—so that his majesty has conferred upon him the order of military merit, and presented him a sword with a gold hilt, just as he would have done to one of the nobility. In short, the game is lost on that side, but do not be alarmed, we will turn round to another.”
“Very well,” replied Emanuel, “I care not what regiment it may be in; what I desire is, that it should be a rank suitable to my name, and a position which would be becoming to our wealth.”
“Precisely—you shall have them.”