The stranger bowed.
“I am welcome?” he asked.
“I am honoured beyond expression,” stammered Luc, with simple and genuine self-abasement.
M. de Voltaire looked sharply at the man who had sent him such remarkable letters, and of whom he had had such a remarkable account from M. de Richelieu.
He was surprised to see one so young, so delicately beautiful, so timid in manner, for Luc stood blushing like a child, and his sensitive features expressed vast confusion. The great man seated himself and threw back his head.
“M. de Richelieu gave me your address,” he remarked; “but I did not wait for his company to make the acquaintance of one of whom I have formed such a high opinion.”
“Monsieur,” answered Luc earnestly, “I fear I have been presumptuous in forcing myself on your notice; but for the interest you have taken in me I am passionately grateful.”
M. de Voltaire was secretly, immensely gratified. He had not climbed from an attorney’s clerk to be a friend of kings without meeting very severe rebuffs on the way. Even now, courted as he was, the nobles he consorted with reminded him often enough, in covert ways, that he was not ‘born.’ But here was a Marquis, a soldier, who sincerely bowed down to him. He had been greatly flattered when he received Luc’s first letter; now his vast vanity, quick to take offence, quick to respond to admiration, was even more flattered by the young noble’s ardent homage.
And a finer feeling than vanity moved M. de Voltaire’s great generous heart; he thought that he saw in this frail, boyish-looking, blushing, slightly awkward soldier a kindred soul.
On his part Luc was struggling with an overwhelming sense of humility in being thus suddenly sought out by the man whom, of all others, he most admired and respected.