On this same table lay a bundle of proofs tried round with a twist of twine.
Luc took them up, balanced them in his hand, and put them down again. He was only able to read them with great difficulty.
“After all,” he mused, with a melancholy smile, “perhaps they are worth nothing—who knows?”
He sat very still, considering what he was to do for money. The people he was dealing with were poor. He could not bear the thought of being in their debt, or of asking them for any kindness that he could not reward. He reflected that it cost something even to die decently, and he might live some time longer. He smiled to think that he was balancing the probable length of his life against the probable length of his purse, and at the reflection that a hundred pistoles would put him out of all anxiety. His sweet humour took the whole thing with a laugh.
Presently he went to the window. A foul, stale smell was rising from the old winding street. Dirty, sharp-faced children played in the brilliant patch of sunshine that fell between two decayed houses and stained the cobbles.
At the doorless entrances dishevelled women stood talking, and gathered round the wine-shop were a few men of a better sort, with their shirts open for the heat, who emptied their glasses silently, then went about their business, silently also. Luc’s feeble sight could make out none of this, nor did he look down, but across the irregular roofs to the ineffable glory of the gold and purple August sky.
He put his hands on the sill; the stinging heat of it was grateful to his chill blood. He closed his eyes, and felt the sunshine like a red sword across his lids. He leant his sick head against the mullions. The clock of a church near by struck four; it reminded him that this was the hour and the day when he was generally visited by Voltaire or one of his friends—Diderot, d’Alembert, Saint Vincent. Luc loved these men, as he could not fail to love those whose warm regard was sweetening his closing years, but he would not live their lives. The Pompadour was their patroness, and they lived on that corruption that they secretly laughed at. Luc could not ever have brought himself to kneel at the footstool of the Marquise; his pure integrity, his absolute independence, and his complete obscurity divided him as sharply as his birth from the group of brilliant men to whom by right of genius he belonged.
All of these men had achieved success; combined, they made a power equal to that of the ancient royalty itself. They were preparing—in the Encyclopædia to which they were devoting their enthusiasm, their gifts of logic, of reason, of sarcasm, of eloquence—thunderbolts that would shake God Himself. Yet they one and all agreed to honour the unknown young aristocrat whose austere philosophy condemned half their actions, but whose sweetness and heroism won their admiration and respect.
M. de Voltaire came to Luc’s chamber this blazing afternoon, and not alone. He brought with him a young man, very splendidly attired, with a fine ardent face and bold eyes, full of an eager, joyous life. M. de Voltaire presented him briefly—
“M. le Marquis—M. Marmontel.”