“And yet you propose to disgrace your blazon!”
“Better disgrace my blazon than my genius!” answered Luc. “I have been fettered all my life—now I have no more time to waste. I am going to answer at my tribunal, remember, Monseigneur, not at yours—and my judge is not pleased with the things that please Him who judges you.”
“You speak blasphemy!” thundered the Marquis. “This twice-damned atheist has poisoned you! There is but one God—beware of Him!”
Luc did not move nor speak. There was no defiance nor anger in his attitude, but a great stillness and sweetness in his air, terrible to his father, who checked his passion as swiftly as he had given it rein and said in a controlled, low, and baffled voice—
“We must speak of these things quietly, Luc. You cannot mean what you say—no, it is not possible. Your whole life cannot have been a lie.”
“My life,” answered Luc quietly, “has borne witness to the truth as it was revealed to me.”
“Yet, if you do mean what you say, you have deceived me until this moment.”
The young man brought his hands to his bosom.
“I never dared tell you what I really believed, Monseigneur,” he said. “Besides, there was no need. I had resolved on the accepted path of honour; I was going the way you had gone, your father before you; I meant to pay all respect to your God; I meant to take a wife of your rank, your faith, your choice—now Fate has ordered differently.” He paused, then added in a deeply moved voice, “I have nothing left save the truth that is in myself.”
The old man turned and pointed haughtily to the shield carved above the marble chimneypiece, the fasces of blue and silver, the golden chief.