This time Gabrielle bravely met the look which rested on her face.
"I know my parents had no love for you," she answered. "How could they? You had never been anything but hostile to them."
"I to them, or they to me? but no matter, it comes to the same. These are things whereof you, Gabrielle, are not yet qualified to judge. You have no notion what it is for a man holding an inferior position, such as mine then was, to enter an eminently aristocratic family and the high social sphere in which that family moved. In those circles I had then, and have had since, but one friend, your grandfather. With every one else I had to win my place by force of conquest; and there are but two ways to this end. Either the aspirant must bow his head and meekly submit to all such humiliations as are showered on a parvenu--he must either show himself deeply sensible of the honour conferred on him, and content himself with being tolerated--and to this my nature was not suited--or he must boldly usurp the master's place, assert an authority over the whole clique, show them there is a power mightier than that of their genealogies, and set his heel on all their prejudices and arrogant pretensions. Then they learn to bow before him. As a rule, it is far easier to govern and keep men under than is generally supposed. You must know how to overawe them. Therein lies the whole secret of success."
Gabrielle shook her head slightly.
"These are hard principles."
"They result from my experience of the world, and I have thirty years' advantage over you in this respect. Do you think I never had my grand ideals, my dreams, and my enthusiasm? Do you think my heart was never fired with all the ardent imaginings of youth? But these things die out as we advance in life. I could not carry my dreams with me into such a career as mine. They hold you to the ground; it was my wish to mount, and I have mounted. Truly, I had to pay a high price for my chance--too high a price, perhaps; but no matter, I have attained my end."
"And has it made you happy?" The question came almost involuntarily from the young girl's lips.
Raven shrugged his shoulders.
"Happy? Life is a struggle, not a state of beatitude. One must throw one's adversary, or be thrown--there is no third issue. You, indeed, look on all this with other eyes as yet. To you, life is still one long summer day, bright as the light shining out yonder. You still believe that far away in the glistening distance, over those blue mountains, there lies a paradise of joy and content. You are mistaken, child. The golden sun shines down on endless sorrow and misery, and over beyond the blue mountains is nothing but the toilsome road from the cradle to the grave, the long route we diversify with so much strife and hatred. Life is only one great battle to be fought every day afresh: men are but puppets to be governed--and despised."
There was an indescribable hardness and harshness is his words, but there was in them also all the decision and energy proper to the man. He was enouncing a dogma which had become to him indisputable. The bitterness of spirit pervading his profession of faith escaped, indeed, in a great measure his girlish hearer, who listened half amazed, half indignant--listened and wondered.