For a nature that was reserved, almost timid, in all personal matters this was an extraordinary resolution, and one that would not have occurred to many men. The Marquis noted it with some amaze, but made no comment. In these few months since Luc’s return from Bohemia his father had learnt to recognize and respect something remarkable and unfathomable in the character of his son.
The sunlight was fading with a sad rapidity. Luc left the garden to return to the house; he entered the dining-room by the open windows. A soft shadow was over everything, making the objects in the chamber almost indistinguishable, but on the table showed the white square of a letter. He picked it up and took it to the light of the pale length of the window; it was heavily sealed with an elaborate and foreign coat of arms and addressed to—
“Monseigneur
Monseigneur le Capitaine le Marquis de Vauvenargues”
He opened it with inevitable curiosity, for the hand was unknown to him; but as he broke the thick wax a strong Oriental perfume told him the writer. It was from the Countess Koklinska. She wrote briefly and with an air of serene friendliness, as might be used by one writing from the Court to the country. She hoped that the Marquis was recovered from his fatigues, and hoped she might see him in Paris. She had heard that he had left the army, and asked abruptly on the last line of her letter, “What is the next step in your career?”
At first Luc flushed as if she had said something insolent to his face, then his blood stirred in answer to the challenge, and he was, if anything, pleased by this reminder from one who, more than either his father, his mother, or Joseph, understood his temper and his ambitions. She had some right to ask; there was the true spirit of heroism in her. She had been as a flame amid the horrors of the retreat from Prague—a flame to light and warm—and had shown him that a woman could tread the heights, as he conceived them. He recalled, with a great tenderness, her poor, starved face bending over the sad death-bed of Georges d’Espagnac, and he was grateful to her for the last line, which showed that she also remembered.
And she hoped to see him in Paris. Paris! The word flashed with untold possibilities; it dazzled with the name of King Louis and M. de Voltaire. Luc was spurred by the desire to mount this moment and ride to Paris, where the world’s thought, the world’s energy, the world’s intellect were stored.
He crushed the letter into his pocket and began pacing up and down the dark, old-fashioned room, where his father and Joseph would be content to eat every meal until they died, but which to him was fast becoming a prison, compared to which the steppes of Bohemia were preferable and seemed, indeed, enviable liberty.
Here he could not mention the name of the arch heretic and infidel, Voltaire; here he must still go to the church and listen to a service that he felt outworn; here the new philosophy, the great dawn of new ideas, new glories were unknown; and the soul of Luc was turning to these things as the sunflower to the sun. He did not move when the candles were brought in and placed on the mantelpiece and sideboard in exactly the position in which they had stood for the last century, but remained by the window looking out on to the evening.
The golden beech was veiled by the dusk; the gaudy autumn flowers were unseen; the shapes of bushes and trees stood dark against a translucent sky; a strong scent of herbs came and faded on the sweet air.