But even youth had not turned him from his duty toward the future of his race. Would this younger son of his, who must continue his father’s work, know in time what it meant in energy and self-denial to be the head of a family? He was not usually very impressionable, Mr. Roquevillard, and yet to-night he felt around him, as if it were a flock of evil birds, a hopelessness like that of old abandoned Mother Fauchois, a sense of melancholy and fragility as of the dying year. Only just now, in the midst of his domain, he had reviewed the rise of the Roquevillards to power and wealth. It was his own pride. A talk with an old woman, the surprising of a kiss, and behold him, with a presentiment that was certainly absurd and unreasonable, remembering how the seasons pass and family fortunes totter and decay.
II
THE CONFLICT
THE Roquevillards moved in from the country after the departure of their son Hubert, who was in garrison at Brest, and took up their winter quarters in Chambéry. They occupied the second story of an old mansion that lay across the end of Boigne Street, alongside the castle. October was drawing to a close, and the sittings of the various courts brought the lawyer back to work.
One day, after luncheon, at which his wife had not been present, owing to her indisposition, Mr. Roquevillard called to his daughter Margaret, while Maurice was absorbed in the newspapers.
“Come with me, Margaret. You can give me some advice,” he said.
“What about, father?”
He glanced toward Maurice, who, however, did not hear them.
“On a new arrangement for my study,” he said.
This study and work-room, conforming to the angle of the street, which widened out at this point, was a spacious room, with a very high ceiling, lighted by four windows. Two of these windows, in a way, framed a picture of Savoy an history. They gave a view of the castle of the former dukes, a great block of stone buildings, blackened with time, dating from the fourteenth century, of a flat and heavy style of architecture scarcely relieved by some carving in high relief. This old and ruinous habitation was flanked on the right by the head of the Sainte-Chapelle, a delicate Gothic flower, which seemed to uphold, like some solid shaft, the bases of the fortress. At the right it was dominated by the tower of the archives, covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, itself crowned by a turret freshly painted white and looking quite vainglorious, like an aigrette or plume. These edifices of different ages and characters, their construction delayed or hastened according to the financial resources and ambitions of the princely builders, though less orderly, are more eloquent than the unified structures of a single master. A long sequence of history, with its hours of happiness and sorrow, dwells in them. The two towers rose out of a confused mass of trees planted in two superimposed terraces, across which they seemed to intermingle. Beneath the plane trees of the lower level stood the recently erected monuments to Joseph and Xavier de Maistre. Thus, within a little space, dwelt the memories of many centuries. The place was as deserted as a tomb: only the past spoke there.
There is no such thing as getting accustomed to a beautiful view: one day of sunshine suffices to make it new again. When Mr. Roquevillard and his daughter came into this room, if the sun attacked the mournful façade without success, nevertheless it tinted with rose the fine gothic lace-work of the chapel, and above the lighter branches that had begun to lose their leaves, it endowed the vine on the tower of the archives with fresh splendour, and showed even the vainglorious little turret at its best.