"You'll give me those verses, won't you, Geoffroy?" besought Bressieux. "I am sometimes asked for mottoes to be painted on panels in hunting lodges."
"I am the repentant gratin," rejoined the marquis. "Yes, for having presumed to lecture the cleverest of Maries. My grandfather's memory? Yes, I have always been told that I resembled him. There's nothing left of the army of Condé, but for that!—You shall have the verses, Louis. Although as to the mottoes on panels—Humph! when one has a motto one keeps it. When one has none, one has none. But I must excuse myself, mademoiselle, and you, my friends. I am obliged to leave you. The carriages will take you home. I do not propose to inflict on you a long détour that I have to make before I go home. Landri will come with me. We will take the automobile, mademoiselle, and I will practise at the circuit. À tout l'heure, at the château." He had taken his son's arm and was leading him toward the motor, saluting on all sides, and addressing this one and that. "You won't forget, Travers? I rely on you for dinner this evening.—You dine at Grandchamp, Hautchemin. I will send you home.—Férussac, you dine at Grandchamp with Madame de Férussac, that's understood, isn't it? Eight o'clock. If you're late, we'll wait for you."
When they were seated in the motor, after telling the chauffeur the direction to take, he said to Landri: "We shall be more than thirty at table. I don't know just how many; fancy that! I ordered for forty, at a venture. I like that sort of thing! It's almost the open house of old times. What a generous and proud expression: open house! The men of to-day talk about the social question. But our fathers had solved it. What was a grand seigneur? A living syndicate, nothing else. Consider how many people lived on him, how many live on us! To spend freely a handsome fortune, from father to son, on the same estate, is to support a whole district for many generations. When people prate of the luxury of the nobles of the olden time, they always think of them as like Cleopatra, drinking pearls, selfishly. But that luxury was a public service! It was the fountain which monopolizes the water in order to distribute it. The fountain was overturned, and the water is dribbling away, turning to mud, and disappearing—that's the whole story!—Ah! Auguste is going wrong!" And, seizing the megaphone, he shouted: "To the left, to the left, and then the second avenue on the right. There are three oaks in a clump and a Calvary."—And turning once more to his son: "I know the forest, tree by tree, leaf by leaf, I have ridden through it so often and on such good horses. Do you remember Toby, my gray Irish horse, and how he jumped? We are going to Père Mauchaussée's."
"Our old gardener?" inquired Landri. "What has become of him?"
"He is what he always was.
"'Qu'ils sont doux, bouteille, ma mie,
Qu'ils sont doux, tes petits glouglous!'
But it's his son that I want to see. I made him second gardener when his father retired, do you remember? He crushed his foot last week, not on our land, but at his father's, cutting down a tree. The doctor thinks he won't be able to work any more. He is in despair. Fancy, a wife and five children! Chaffin wanted me to help him a little, and nothing more. 'We don't come within the law relating to accidents to workmen,' he said. 'I don't need their laws to tell me what my duty is,' I replied. 'He shall be paid his wages in full, as long as he lives, like his father.'—I am a socialist, you know, in the old way. It was different from the new way in this, that the poor received the money of the rich directly, whereas to-day the politicians keep it all. It's very up-to-date, as our young friend Marie de Charlus says. What do you think of her? She is charming, isn't she?"
"Charming," Landri replied; "but I am surprised that she pleases you, with such ideas as she has."
"As she thinks she has," the marquis corrected him. "That will pass off. It's the impulse of youth. What will not pass off, is the old stock. She has it to the tips of her fingers and toes. Did you look at her? Ah! she's a genuine Charlus, and signed! Do you know what I said to myself when I saw her on horseback to-day?—And how beautifully she rides!—That she would make the sweetest little Comtesse de Claviers-Grandchamp.—And do you know this too? That it depends on you alone? But it does. Tell me if it doesn't begin like a chapter in a novel? A year ago she was twenty years old. She was sought in marriage—by the little Duc de Lautrec, if you please. She refused. Parents astounded. She was so young, they left her in peace. Six months ago, another offer, from Prince de la Tour Enguerrand, the widower. Another refusal. A month ago, Lautrec comes forward again. She refuses again. Then follows an explanation with the mother. Who would have thought that the 'emancipated gratin,' as she calls herself, that girl who puts on so many twentieth-century airs, is still governed by sentiment after the old style—the only style, on my word, that is always good and always young! 'I will marry Monsieur de Claviers,' she said, 'or I will die an old maid.'"
"That is impossible," interposed the young man; "we just speak to each other at a ball two or three times in a winter."