“The cadets have so many days’ leave,” she said, “Bertrand will be in Paris a great deal.”
“Bah!” grandmama had retorted with a shrug of her shoulders, “Sybille de Mont-Pahon is no fool, else she were not my sister. She will look after Bertrand well enough if only for the sake of Rixende.”
After which feeble effort mother said nothing more, and in her gentle, unobtrusive way set to, to get Bertrand’s things in order. Of course she was bound to admit that it was a mightily good thing for the boy to go to St. Cyr, where he would receive an education suited to his rank, as well as learn those airs and graces which since the restoration of King Louis had once more become the hall-mark that proclaimed a gentleman. It would also be a mightily good thing for him to spend a year or two in the house of his great-aunt, Mme. de Mont-Pahon, a lady of immense wealth, whose niece Rixende would in truth be a suitable wife for Bertrand in the years to come. But he was still so young, so very young even for his age, and to put thoughts of a mercenary marriage, or even of a love-match into the boy’s head seemed to the mother almost a sin.
But grandmama thought otherwise.
“It is never too soon,” she declared, “to make a boy understand something of his future destiny, and of the responsibilities which he will have to shoulder. Sybille de Mont-Pahon desires the marriage as much as I do: she speaks of it again in her last letter to me: Rixende’s father, our younger sister’s child, was one of those abominable traitors to his King who chose to lick the boots of that Corsican upstart who had dared to call himself Emperor of the French. Heaven being just, the renegade has fallen into dire penury and Sybille has cared for his daughter as if she were her own, but the stain upon her name can be wiped out only by an alliance with a family such as ours. Bertrand’s path lies clear before him: win Sybille’s regard and the affection of Rixende, and the Mont-Pahon millions will help to regild the tarnished escutcheon of the Ventadours, and drag us all out of this slough of penury and degradation in which some of our kindred have already gone under.”
Thus the day drew nigh when Bertrand would have to go. Everything was ready for his departure and his box was packed, and Jasmin, the man of all work, had already taken it across to Jaume Deydier’s; for at six o’clock on the morrow Deydier’s barouche would be on the road down below, and it would take Bertrand as far as Pertuis, where he would pick up the diligence to Avignon and thence to Paris.
What wonder that mother wept! Bertrand had never been away from home, and Paris was such a long, such a very long way off! Bertrand who had never slept elsewhere than in his own little bed, in the room next to Micheline’s, would have to sleep in strange inns, or on the cushions of the diligence. The journey would take a week, and he would have so very little money to spend on small comforts and a good meal now and then. It was indeed awful to be so poor, that Micheline’s christening cup had to be sold to provide Bertrand with pocket money on the way. Oh, pray God! pray God that the boy found favour in the eyes of his rich relative, and that Rixende should grow up to love him as he deserved to be loved!
But grandmama did not weep. She was fond of Bertrand in her way, fonder of him than she was, or had been, of any one else in the world, but in an entirely unemotional way. She was ambitious for him, chiefly because in him and through him she foresaw the re-establishment of the family fortunes.
Ever since he had come to the age of understanding, she had talked to him about his name, his family, his ancestors, the traditions and glories of the past which were recorded in the Book of Reason. And on this last afternoon which Bertrand would spend at home for many a long year, she got the book out of the chest, and made him read extracts from it, from the story of Guilhem de Ventadour who went to the Crusades with King Louis, down to Bertrand’s great-great-grandfather who was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of the Grand Monarque.
The reading of these extracts from the Book of Reason took on, on this occasion, the aspect of a solemn rite. Bertrand, who loved his family history, read on with enthusiasm and fervour, his eyes glowing with pride, his young voice rolling out the sentences, when the book told of some marvellous deed of valour perpetrated by one of his forbears, or of the riches and splendours which were theirs in those days, wherever they went. Nor did he tire or wish to leave off until grandmama suddenly and peremptorily bade him close the book. He had come to the page where his grandfather had taken up the family chronicles, and he had nought but tales of disappointments, of extravagance and of ever-growing poverty to record.