‘You will learn no more from me, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ said the youth disdainfully. ‘I shall not seek to prove a rank from which I ask to derive no advantage. They called me t’other day, at the tribunal, a “vagabond”: that is the only title the law of Tuscany gives me.’
The Abbé, with a tact skilled to overcome far greater difficulties, strove to allay the youth’s irritation, and smooth down the asperity which recent illness, as well as temperament, excited, and at last succeeded so far that Gerald seated himself at his side, and listened calmly to the plan which the Marquise had formed for his future life. At some length, and with a degree of address that deprived the subject of anything that could alarm the jealous susceptibility of the boy’s nature, the Abbé related that a custom prevailed in certain great houses (whose alliances with royalty favoured the privilege) of attaching to their household young cadets of noble families, who served in a capacity similar to that of courtier to the person of the king. They were ‘gentlemen of the presence,’ pages or equerries, as their age or pretensions decided; and, in fact, from the followers of such houses as the De Rohan, the Noailles, the Tavannes, and the Bauffre-mont, did royalty itself recruit its personal attendants. Monsieur de Girardon was too shrewd a reader of character not to perceive that any description of the splendours and fascinations of a life of voluptuous ease would be less captivating to such a youth than a picture of a career full of incident and adventure, and so he dwelt almost exclusively on all that such a career could offer of high ambition, the army being chiefly officered by the private influence of the great families of France.
‘You will thus,’ said he, at the close of a clever description; ‘you will thus, at the very threshold of life, enjoy what the luckiest rarely attain till later on—the choice of what road you will take. If the splendour of a court life attract you, you can be a courtier; if the ambitions of statesmanship engross your mind, you are sure of office; if you aspire to military glory, here is your shortest road to it; or if,’ said he, with a graceful melancholy, ‘you can submit yourself to be a mere guest at the banquet of life, and never a host—one whose place at the table is assigned him, not taken by right—such, in a word, as I am—why, then, the Abbé’s frock is an easy dress, and a safe passport besides.’
With a sort of unintentional carelessness, that seemed frankness itself, the Abbé glided into a little narrative of his own early life, and how, with a wide choice of a career before him, he had, half in indolence, half in self-indulgence, adopted the gown.
‘Stern thinkers call men like me mere idlers in the vineyard, drones in the great human hive: but we are not; we have our uses just as every other luxury. We are to society what the bouquet is to the desert; our influence on mankind is not the less real, that its exercise attracts little notice.’
‘And what am I to be, what to do?’ asked Gerald proudly.
‘Imagine the Marquise de Bauffremont to be Royalty, and you are a courtier; you are of her household, in attendance on her great receptions; you accompany her on visits of ceremony—your rank securing you all the deference that is accorded to birth, and admission to the first circles in Paris.’
‘Is not this service menial?’ asked he quickly.
‘It is not thus the world regards it. The Melcours, the Frontignards, the Montrouilles are to be found at this moment in these ranks.’
‘But they are recognised by these very names,’ cried Gerald; ‘but who knows me, or what title do I bear?’