M. de Voltaire was very pale; his whole figure trembled.
“Monsieur le Marquis!” he said in a terrible voice, “you have ambitions, you have desires, you have your soul to satisfy, you are searching for glory—I do not doubt that you have in fancy scaled the highest peak of achievement—and all the while you are bound and gagged and tied to earth because you are born a gentleman. Are not your eyes open on the changes about you? Do you not see that we—that I—are sweeping away God and rank and all the barriers that come between man and man? You are young, Monsieur le Marquis; you may live to see the day when kings are cast down and peasants are called to the government of their country. This is the age of light and freedom; your rank is but a clog to you—your genius might raise you to be a light over France!”
He spoke with such force, passion, such energy of gesture and emphasis that Luc had the sense that something new was being violently disclosed to his view. He sank into the chair before the desk and fixed his eyes, dark with emotion, on the extraordinary animated face of the speaker. He had nothing to say; his own instincts, that were until then unquestioned, taken for granted, never put into words, were unchanged, for they were rooted almost as deeply as life itself.
“Go your way,” said M. de Voltaire more quietly—“spend your strength for another ten years in politics as you have in war—give your talents to the service of the superstitious young profligate who sleeps on the throne of thrones.”
“Monsieur!” cried Luc, “do you speak of the King?”
“Of His Most Christian Majesty,” replied M. de Voltaire, “of Louis de Bourbon, who is always on his knees to a certain Jesus Christ or a certain Marquise de Pompadour, the lady who rules France and who is my very good friend.”
“The King is the King,” answered Luc, reddening, “and I serve him.”
“If you have rejected their Christian God, why do you not reject their Christian King?” demanded M. de Voltaire. “Make your court to the lady I mention; she has great good sense. Use these things, bow down to them, make your way through them, but do not believe in them.”
“I believe in the King,” returned Luc, in a tone of great agitation. “I must believe in him whom I have seen hundreds die for.”
“Hundreds of thousands have died for Christ,” flashed M. de Voltaire—“do you therefore believe in Him?”