Gaspar de Montsoreau, full of thoughts rather than words, did not pursue the conversation further. "I have but shown you scanty courtesy, Monsieur de Villequier," he said, "in not asking you to make your home of my poor house. It is not, indeed, such as I could wish to offer you, having been taken from its bankrupt lord in some slight haste. But still----"
"I thank you most humbly, Marquis," replied Villequier. "But I am bound farther to the city on the hill there. I must lodge with Epernon to-night, for I have messages to him from the King."
Thus saying, after various more such ceremonious speeches as the age required, Villequier took his departure, and mounting his horse, which he had ordered to be kept still saddled in the court-yard, he rode on towards Augoulême, followed by his train. As he did so, he once more thought over the alliance between Gaspar de Montsoreau and Marie de Clairvaut. "If I can bring it about," he thought, "I not only gain this sum he promises, but bind him to me for ever. I am her nearest male relation, and I could not well find such an alliance in France. Montsoreau, Morly, Logères; it is a wonderful combination! But even, were it not for that--were it half as good, where should I get the man in France who would give a hundred thousand golden crowns for the possession of such a cold piece of pretty marble as that."
[CHAP. VI.]
While the conversation just narrated was taking place, and the character and views of the Abbé de Boisguerin were being commented upon in a manner which he could but little have wished, he himself was pursuing his way towards the town of Augoulême, with feelings and purposes varying at every step; though in his case it was not the slightest sting of remorse or regret which occasioned this vacillation of purpose.
Probably there never was a man on earth who wholly and entirely stilled the voice of conscience, and there might be moments when the Abbé's own heart reproached him for things which he had done. But the habit of his thoughts was different. He had been brought up in a school where right and wrong were so frequently confounded for the purpose of maintaining the temporal dominion of the church that, at a very early period of his life, he had arrived at that conclusion, which the sceptical followers of Pyrrho arrive at by a more lengthened process, namely, that on earth there is no absolute and invariable right and wrong.
The Jesuits had taught him, that what was wrong under some circumstances, and marked by the reprobation both of God and man, was right under other circumstances, and even praiseworthy; and forgetting the cautious restrictions under which the wiser and the better members of the order attempted, though vainly, to guard the doctrine, his keen and clear mind at once determined, that if fraud could ever be pious, virtue of any kind could be but a name. If there were no invariable and universal standard: if his thoughts and his actions were to be governed by the opinions, and directed to the purposes of men, the only rule of virtue, he saw, must be the approbation of others like himself; and as every course of action must have an end and object to secure energy in pursuing it, he readily fell into the belief that gratification was the great object, and men's good opinion but to be sought as a means to that end.
It may be easily conceived how far he went on upon such a course of reasoning. It naturally ended in the disbelief of every thing that other men hold sacred: yet he put on all the semblances of religion; for as he believed in no hereafter, to do so, did not seem to him an impious mockery, but merely an unmeaning ceremony required by society. Every thing had become with him a matter of calculation; any thing that was to be obtained, was to be obtained by a certain price; and, as he himself declared, he never regretted giving any price, provided the object was attained, and was of equal value.
It was his passions alone that led him wrong, and made him calculate falsely. They had done so more than once in life, but yet not frequently; not indeed that he sought to subdue them, but that they were not naturally easily roused.
It was no remorse then, or regret, that moved him in the varying state of his thoughts as he rode on. It was doubt as to the means that he was employing; It was doubt as to whether the strong passion, which he felt within his breast, was not blinding his eyes, and misleading his judgment, as to the choice of paths and instruments. He felt that on the present occasion he calculated not so coolly as he was accustomed to do; he felt that the object he had proposed to himself--or rather which passion, and rash passion had suggested--was one so great and so little likely to be obtained, that the means employed must be great and extraordinary also; and that no single false step could be taken without the loss of every hope. His sensations were all strangely complicated, however. He felt and reproached himself for feeling that the passion in his heart had grown up so powerful, so overwhelming, that when he thought of staking life itself upon the issue, not a hesitation crossed his mind, and that he was ready to say, like a love-sick boy, "Let me die, if she be not mine!" But with that passion, he had mingled ambition, both as a means and as an end; prospects had opened before his eyes which had roused in his heart aspirations, which he thought he had put down; and not only to succeed in his love, but to gild that love with pageantry and state and power, had now become his object.