Then Mr. Hamel rose: “You believe in God, my friend, like me. Ask help from Him. He will give you inspiration. Your son is innocent. He must be acquitted. His real fault is not one that calls for man’s justice. It touches only himself, and unhappily his family.”
As he prepared to go, his face already toward the door, he turned back again, and all of a sudden held put his hands to his professional brother, an unusual gesture showing the tenderness that had lain concealed beneath this stiff energy of his for so many years. It was surprising and sweet, like an expression of freshness and purity on an old woman’s face, or flowers that go on blooming even after the snow has come. The two men embraced each other with emotion.
“You at least won’t abandon us,” said Mr. Roquevillard. “Thank you.”
“I don’t forget,” replied the old man.
And flinging his overcoat round his shoulders, its empty sleeves flapping, he went away hastily down the corridor, his host scarcely able to keep up with him and show him to the door.
Left alone, Mr. Roquevillard seated himself at his work-table, where so many difficulties, material and moral, had been worked out before, his head in his hands, seeking for some way in which to save his son, without whose safety the whole line of Roquevillards would be lost as well. He was less arbitrary, more indulgent, and more apt than Mr. Hamel to understand men and life, shut up as the latter had been with his transcendental prejudices as in a tower; and he recognised in Maurice’s resolution that tenacity and sense of responsibility which from generation to generation had created and maintained the strength of the Roquevillard family. That the boy was using this same force to destroy it was the pity of the thing. To create his individual happiness he had compromised the past and future of his people, though their distinctive traits, nevertheless, showed even in his faults. His father acquitted him of cowardliness and baseness, reflecting that the young man might maintain the family traditions at their right level, and use for their normal ends the faculties that he had so perverted, if he could only take again his proper place in his home and in society. At all costs he must be rescued and completely freed from this love that he would not repudiate.
“At least——” repeated Mr. Roquevillard, who had been struck by this mysterious phrase of Mr. Hamel. What had he meant by this reservation?
He raised his bent head, and, leaning back in his easy-chair, gazed straight in front of him. His eyes rested on the map of La Vigie hanging on the wall, outside the circle of the lamplight, and barely distinguishable in the shadow. It brought his land before him in the guise of ancestor and counsellor. And yet at the same time the cruel syllogisms of Mr. Battard echoed persistently in his mind.
“There has been a theft. Therefore, there is a guilty person. Who is it? If it isn’t the lover it’s the mistress. He won’t have the mistress accused, therefore it will be the lover. How could he reply to this argument in a way to convince the jury’s rustic brains?”
And suddenly, as he traced the blurred outlines of the map, he thought an idea broke forth in it, like a light in the darkness.