"Or less," retorted Landri. "Why, yes," he insisted, as his father recoiled in amazement, "less life, life, to which all men have a right, but not I. No right to individual happiness,—you just told me so. No right to individual action. How much it cost you to allow me even to enter the army! What else is there for us to do? Defend tombs? You have the strength for that, but I haven't."
He had never said so much concerning his secret thoughts. It had been too painful to him to hear from the marquis's lips the same objections, in almost the same words, as from Valentine's. He had felt too strongly their implacable and brutal truth. The pain had been all the keener. He had no sooner uttered that cry of rebellion, than he had a passionate reflux of emotion toward his father. He took his hand, saying: "Forgive me!" while M. de Claviers returned the pressure, and answered in an affectionate voice, but so firm, so virile,—the voice of a man who, having reached the evening of his days, girds up his loins and declares that he has not gone astray in his faith.
"Forgive you, and for what, my poor boy? For loving, and for feeling an impulse of rebellion of your whole heart before an obstacle in which all boys of your age, and even of your class, would see to-day, as you do, only a prejudice? For being young, and for having this longing to employ your energy to some purpose, which you cheat by playing at soldiering,—for it is only a game and you know it perfectly well? Suppose that to-morrow the people who rule us order you to execute one of their infamous jobs, the burglarizing of a church, what shall you do?"
As he uttered these words, which by their unconscious divination proved how much he thought about his son, the marquis was looking at his idea. He did not notice the young man's sudden start. On the latter's lips was an exclamation which he did not utter. He listened to the words in which his father continued, with an interest all the more intense, because M. de Claviers was not in the habit of discussing his convictions. He asserted them by his mere presence. Doubtless his affection for Landri warned him that that was a fateful moment, such as most frequently occurs unexpectedly, in the relations of a father and son, when a word misunderstood may lead to tragic dissensions; and as if he were determined to justify in advance the sternness of his veto by arguments impossible of refutation even by him who was destined to be their victim, he explained himself, he confessed himself, or, better still, he thought aloud:—
"Do you think that I have not gone through such rebellions? Do you think that I, too, when my father spoke to me as I am speaking to you, did not ask myself if he were not a man of another century, who did not understand his epoch and who wished to involve me in his error? Do you think that I was not attracted by action, by actions of all sorts, by war, diplomacy, the tribune? that I never heard the voice of the tempter whispering: 'One does not serve the government, one serves France?' How many of my friends listened to that voice! I do not judge them. I could not do it, and I do not repent. This is why. Listen. What I am going to say will seem to you a long way from the starting-point of our conversation. But I do not lose sight of it.—No, I could not do it, because by dint of studying her, I realized that this France, offspring of the Revolution, had other workmen than me to employ, in its barracks, its public offices, its assemblies, and that we were very little able to serve her elsewhere. You have told me sometimes that I had the heart of an 'émigré.' It is true. But who saved France from dismemberment in 1815, if not the 'émigrés,' and Louis XVIII, first of all. Had there been no 'émigrés,' had not the King, supported by that handful of loyal subjects, made himself felt during twenty years in the councils of the coalition, the country would have been partitioned. What did they preserve for it, for that country which was so cruelly hostile to them?—A principle. Who will measure the strength of principles, of social truths, maintained by a group of men, by a single man sometimes, if he is called the King? Ah, well! the disease of France, offspring of the Revolution, does not lie in facts, nor in men, but in lack of principles, or in false principles, which is worse. I am not unjust to her, to this France I speak of. She has worked hard during these hundred years. She is working hard. And what endurance, what a sturdy will, what impetuosity! With all these is she bankrupt in all her aspirations—yes or no? Yes or no, does this country hold in Europe an inferior place to that she held in the worst days of the old monarchy? She is no older than England, however, her great rival in the Middle Ages! Has she progressed in social tranquillity? Has she found stability, that test of all political doctrines, as the regular beating of the pulse is the test of health? The fact is that the Revolution tried to base society on the individual, and that nature insists that it be based on the family. When I understood that great law, I understood the nobility. I understood then that our prejudices were profound social truths, elaborated by that result of experience during long ages which is called custom, and transformed into instinct. It is a profound social truth that there is no increase in the strength of a country unless the efforts of successive generations are combined, unless the living consider themselves as enjoying the usufruct only, between their dead and their descendants. But that is the law of primogeniture and entails! Another profound social truth: families must be deeply rooted in order to endure; they must have territorial interests, they must be amalgamated with the soil. But that means patrimonial domains, which are left undivided that they may not be sold!—Another profound social truth: there must be diverse environments, in order that there may be morals, and there are no environments unless there are classes, and distinct classes. But that means the three estates! Another profound social truth: every individual is simply the sum of those who have preceded him, a single moment in a long lineage. By marrying him to another individual at the same stage of development of her family, there is the chance of obtaining a superior creature, of solidifying acquired characteristics. But that means race!—All these truths the old France put in practice, and they were incarnate in the great Houses! The great Houses! On the instant that I realized their importance and that they were a working-out of the very laws of the family, the rôle of the noble in the presence of the Revolution was made clear to me: to maintain his House first of all. If we had all acted on that theory, what a reserve force France would have had for the hour of the inevitable crisis! However, there are still enough of us who fulfilled that duty, each as he could, especially in the provinces, and in that sturdy rural aristocracy which you will find in existence to-day, as in '71. But, even if I were alone of my kind, I should be no less assured of my duty. If we are fated never to be wanted again, let us at least make a noble end. Decenter mori. An aristocrat should either remain an aristocrat or die. I have remained one. The misfortunes of the time have not allowed me to add a page to the history of the Claviers-Grandchamps, but I have written that history, and I have maintained our house in its place. I have sounded the splendor of the name, as our ancestors said. What more can I say, Landri? Your father has continued his father, who had continued his. They all ask you by my mouth: 'Will you continue us?'"
"I revere you and love you," replied the young man; and it was true that that profession of faith, pronounced by the old nobleman among the trees of the hereditary domain, assumed an almost painful grandeur. After an interval of a hundred years the Claviers-Grandchamp of Condé's army expressed his thoughts by the mouth of his grandson with that self-consciousness which is one of the characteristics of the thoroughbred. He realized that, before they disappear, the social species like the animal species spend their last vigor in producing most perfect types in which all the excellences of all that have gone before are consummated. Once more Landri had a realizing sense of the superiority of that man who, for lack of a suitable environment, had spent his long life in attitudinizing, and for motives so profound, so blended with the most generous idealism! He was too intelligent not to understand the bearing of the lofty philosophy amassed by M. de Claviers in his solemn harangue. In spite of himself, as was so often the case, his mind acquiesced in ideas which, none the less, he did not choose to accept. In what utter solitude they had confined his father! His heart, too, rebelled against it. "The profound social truths," as the marquis had said, are but cold friends of mature years. A lover of less than thirty will always sacrifice them to a glance from two bright blue eyes, to a reflection of the light upon golden hair. Images of that sort were still floating before Landri's eyes; they gave him strength to argue with his father.
"But in that old France, which you claim to continue, the classes intermingled, and by marriages, too. Colbert's daughter was a duchess, Monsieur de Mesmes' daughter a duchess, Gilles Ruellan's daughter a duchess, and Colbert's father was a draper, Monsieur de Mesmes' father a peasant of Mont-de-Marsan, and Gilles Ruellan had been a carter."
"That is true," rejoined M. de Claviers. "But in those days France was sound. She was like those strong constitutions which can safely indulge in deviations from a regular diet. The great houses were not attacked. The great social truths which their existence alone represents to-day did not need to be defended in every detail. There is not enough 'irreconcilability' in our time, even among us, for me to renounce mine. I admired nothing so much in my youth as the attitude of the Comte de Chambord, when he carried his white banner,—and how many understood it, even among our friends? No, Landri, one does not compromise in the defence of a vanquished principle. One can never defend it too vigorously."
"Then, if I should come some day to ask your consent—" the young man queried, with a tremor.
"To marry Madame Olier? I shall refuse to give it."