“But now that there is no Perucca left the clan will cease to exist,” said Lory.
“Not at all,” replied the father. “The inheritor of the estate, whoever it is, will become the head of the clan, and things will be as they were before. They tell me it is a woman named Denise Lange.”
Lory gave a start. He had forgotten Denise Lange, and all that world of Paris fad and fashion.
“And the women are always the worst,” concluded his father.
They sat in silence for some moments. And then the count spoke again in his odd, detached way, as if he were contemplating his environments from afar.
“There was a man in Sartene who had an enemy. He was a shoemaker, and could therefore work at his trade indoors. He never crossed his threshold for sixteen years. One day they told him his enemy was dead, that the funeral was for the same afternoon. It passed his door, and when it had gone by, he stepped out, after sixteen, years, to watch it, and—Paff! He twisted himself round as he writhed on the ground, and there was his enemy, laughing, with the smoke still at the muzzle. The funeral was a trick. No; I shall not believe that Mattei Perucca is dead until the Abbé Susini tells me that he has seen the body. Not that it would make any difference. I should not go outside the door. I am accustomed to this life now.”
He sat with his hands idly crossed on his knee, and looked at nothing in particular. Nothing could arouse him now from his apathy, except perhaps the culture of carnations—certainly not the arrival of the son whom he had never seen. He had that air of waiting without expectancy which is assuredly the dungeon mark, and a moral mourning worn for dead Hope.
Lory contemplated him as a strange old man who interested him despite himself. There was pity, but nothing filial in his feelings. For filial love only grows out of propinquity and a firm respect which must keep pace with the growing demands of a daily increasing comprehension.
“Why did you come?” asked the count, suddenly.
It seemed as if his mind lay hidden under the accumulated débris of the years, as the old château perhaps lay hidden beneath that smooth turf which only grows over ruins.