To his father he owed energy, courage, and, it must also be added, perversity. But he was his superior in education and in intellect. If he shared his father’s prejudices, he had not adopted them without weighing them carefully. What the father might do in a moment of excitement, the son was capable of doing in cold blood.
It was thus that the abbe, with rare sagacity, read the character of his guests.
So it was with great sorrow, but without surprise, that he heard the duke advance, on the questions of the day, the impossible ideas shared by nearly all the emigres.
Knowing the condition of the country, and the state of public opinion, the cure endeavored to convince the obstinate man of his mistake; but upon this subject the duke would not permit contradiction, or even raillery; and he was fast losing his temper, when Bibiaine appeared at the parlor door.
“Monsieur le Duc,” said she, “Monsieur Lacheneur and his daughter are without and desire to speak to you.”
CHAPTER IV.
This name Lacheneur awakened no recollection in the mind of the duke.
First, he had never lived at Sairmeuse.
And even if he had, what courtier of the ancien regime ever troubled himself about the individual names of the peasants, whom he regarded with such profound indifference.