CHAPTER III.
The Lord of Beauvais was walking up and down in his garden conversing on various subjects with his friend; as often as they passed the little open summer house, Eveline called out to them and directed their attention to the building, which she was trying to imitate with cards. The Counsellor of Parliament was violently struggling with his feelings, and his friend was trying in vain to tranquillise him.
"I have never yet seen you so obstinate," said the latter, at length, almost impatiently; "what is it then at last, Edmond is a young man like many others, let him exhaust his ardour, at a later period he will afford you satisfaction, for do we not recognise in him strength, character, and a noble heart, and these must certainly produce something good hereafter."
"It is only towards you that I am so communicative," answered the father, "I control my impatience in the presence of others and especially before my son, but much as I must love him, I cannot participate in your hopes. Were he only hasty and inconsiderate, all might be well for I have been so too, I would even look favourably upon his extravagant, overstrained religious zeal and all connected with it; for early in life my own heart singularly experienced these feelings; if with all this deep-rooted self will, this violent excess in every thing, he would only add an inclination to activity, if he would but instruct himself, if he would occupy himself in any way. I feel too well that he presents but a disfigured resemblance of a part of my own youth, but inwardly he is most unlike me, and in some measure inimically opposed to me; thus unhappily is the neglected education of his childhood avenged. You know well my old friend how much and almost how culpably he was beloved by my deceased wife, how extravagantly she admired every idea, impulse and peculiarity of the child, and that Abbé his tutor also, who only excited his imagination and nourished it with legends and miracles; his youthful mind was thus dazzled and rendered incapable of discerning truth and reality, it accustomed him to indulge freely in all the emotions of his heart and to consider them unerring and most exalted. Imperceptibly a contempt for all, who did not coincide with him, crept into his mind, he looked upon them as cold and perverse, and in his zealous hatred, he believed himself infinitely superior to them. I was too weak, too irresolute to remedy the evil while it was yet time, I flattered myself, that it would not take root so easily, and when at last my suffering wife, whose feelings I ever feared to distress, died in giving birth to my youngest child, it was too late."
"All that may be true," rejoined his friend, "but not so bad however as you consider it, stupidity and madness are alone incurable; a vein of good runs through all really excitable natures, and the life of these irritable and violent men is spent in continual struggles between good and evil, so that the best part may be extracted and shine forth glorified."
"You speak," said the Counsellor, "like a physician and chemist, you deny that the soul can appropriate to itself immutable perversities which afterwards constitute its life."
"So long as a man is young," rejoined the former, "I despair of nothing and still less of your son, for he has never given himself up to dissipation. This only and bad company ruin a man entirely, and the exhaustion is not confined to the body, it also causes vacuity of mind, it closes up every avenue to the heart, so that, finally, neither reason nor understanding, nor any feeling for morality or honour remains. Those are such as are incurable. You reproach yourself for the indulgent education you have given him, it is not in that alone, however, my old friend, that you have neglected it; you complain of your son's want of activity, but you have yourself excluded him from every means of exercising it. When he had grown up, he was destined to follow your profession; he had, however, an antipathy to become a lawyer, and then declared he would rather be shorn and become a monk. I cannot censure him for this, forgive me, if I am too frank. He desired to go to sea, you were inflexibly opposed to it: then he wished to try his fortune in the army, our efforts to win your approbation to this were equally ineffectual. I pity the young man; it is terrible for a hair-brained fellow to be irrecoverably destined to sit behind a table, poring over acts and processes. If you have been too indulgent formerly, you are now a great deal too severe towards him."
"You do me wrong, infatuated man," exclaimed the Counsellor vehemently; "it was not exacting too much to require of him to pursue my profession, in which I have been so useful myself, it is an honourable and benevolent one to mankind and corresponds with the noble freedom of our sentiments; sufficient time remained to stroll about, to read, to make verses and to indulge his passion for the chase. I was then convinced that naval and military service were only chosen by him, that he might escape from my paternal eye. I could not persuade myself that he chose them as his profession with foresight and reasonable will. It grieved me to lose him entirely; only too often ill-advised youths seek these pretexts to sink into a busy idleness: for what is the soldier in peace? At that time we had no war. I agree with you in what you say about the dissipated life of our young men; but, perhaps, you will laugh, when I assert that this passion for hunting is equally insupportable to me. As soon as I perceived this rising within him, I considered him as almost lost, for all young people, that I have ever yet seen, entirely devoted to this occupation, are idlers, who cannot again settle to any business; this seeming occupation with its exertions and sacrifices teaches them to despise time, they dream away their lives until the hour, that calls them up again to follow the hare and the woodcock. And besides the penchant he has to rove about the mountains, he frequently does not return for three or four days together, he then walks about the house without rest or quiet, opens a dozen books, begins a letter, or a stanza, scolds the servants and then rushes out again; and thus passes day after day, and week after week."
The doctor looked at him, smiled, and then, after a pause, said: "Let him alone, he will soon become tame, I have no fears on that account, and why do you make yourself uneasy, my good friend? you are quite rich enough; and even if he earns nothing, if he only learns to take care of his fortune, to enjoy with moderation his income and to do good to others, for it often occurs that useful occupations are perilous undertakings. I understand perfectly all that you represent to me, and am only surprised that you do not understand it yourself. Give him the lady of Castelnau, and both will become reasonable, you will be a grandfather and obtain another toy to amuse you."
"Never!" exclaimed the Counsellor of Parliament with the utmost vehemence, "shall that take place as long as I live; it is she, who bewilders him, who torments him, and yet nourishes all his prejudices. Never speak to me of that again."