[LXVIII]
The good marquis had no difficulty in confessing Lucilio.
He frankly admitted that he had adored the Moor for a long while and that for some time he had fancied that his love was returned. But he summed up the situation with his concise pen.
In the first place he was afraid of attracting persecution which he had thus far escaped in France only by a miracle. Then, when it had seemed to him beyond question that Richelieu, despite all his warfare against the Reformed religion, had adopted as an inflexible policy the maintenance of the Edict of Nantes in favor of liberty of conscience in every form, he had decided to await Mario's marriage to Lauriane or to some other woman who had won his heart. Whatever his dear pupil's frame of mind might be, whatever hope or regret, placid expectation or secret excitement, he did not choose to set before him the selfish and perilous spectacle of a marriage for love.
The marquis approved his friend's generous forethought; but he found an expedient.
"My excellent friend," he said to him, "the Moor is close upon thirty, and you have passed your fortieth year. You are still young enough to attract each other, and your ages are well balanced; but, without offence, you are no longer boy and girl, to leave blank pages in the book of your felicity! Make the most of the happy years that still remain. Marry. I will travel with Mario for a few months, and while we are absent I will tell him that I alone conceived the idea of a marriage of reason between Mercedes and you. I will invent some pretext to explain why you could not wait until our return, and when he sees you again, his mind will be accustomed to the new condition of affairs. Marriage always has a sobering effect, and then I trust to you to conceal the joys of the honeymoon behind the thick clouds of prudence and self-restraint."
So it was that the marquis took Mario to Paris. He showed him the king and his court, but at a distance; for society had changed greatly in the fifteen years that worthy Sylvain had been living on his estates. The friends of his youth were dead, or had withdrawn, as he had, from the hurly-burly of the new society. The few great personages still on the stage with whom he had formerly had some acquaintance, hardly remembered him, and, except for his antiquated attire, would not have recognized him.
Mario's attractive and modest manners were observed however: the Beaux Messieurs were warmly welcomed in some houses of distinction, but no one suggested taking them any higher; and indeed neither of them desired very earnestly to approach the pale sun of Louis XIII.
Mario was terribly disappointed when he saw the fainthearted son of Henri IV. ride by, and the marquis had discovered in that face no encouragement to pursue his design of obtaining the royal confirmation of his title of marquis.
New edicts appeared every day against the usurpation of titles; edicts little respected, for the nobles, old and new, continued to assume names of domains of very doubtful authenticity. Their obscurity protected them. Bois-Doré was forced to recognize that he had no better refuge than that.