The weight of the name

by Paul Bourget

"And tell him what?" queried the secretary, placing himself before the door toward which Landri had already taken a step.

"Why, the facts, just as they are."

"And with what result? With the result that he'll refuse to believe you, against all the evidence, and say: 'Touch Grandchamp!—they'll not dare!'—Or else he'll use the week in looking for money, enough to pay the Altona gang. It may be that he'll find it, for, after all, the tapestries and furniture and pictures and bronzes are here, and we know they're worth at least four millions, as the other man offers that. Well, then, Monsieur le Marquis finds the money. At what price? He borrows at twenty, thirty, perhaps fifty per cent. And in a year we're just where we are now, with this difference, that our two millions due on those notes will have become two millions three hundred thousand, to say nothing of getting four or five hundred thousand francs more to continue during that year a sort of life that must at any price be changed. You hear, Landri—it must! You have reproached me for neglecting my duty. It is true that I haven't been able to say to your father those horrible words: you must. Consider that all this wreck of his vast fortune is due to the fact that he would never consent to say to himself those two little words: I must. You ask me where that fortune has gone. Why, in living at the rate of five hundred thousand francs a year, when he and Madame la Marquise had four hundred thousand—as you said just now—when they married. With a pencil and paper and two columns, one of income, one of outgo, I will show you the whole thing in a nutshell. The marquis was determined to keep up the same establishment at Grandchamp that his father did with almost twice his income, and his grandfather with three times as much. Madame your aunt and madame your great-aunt carried the rest with them to the Nançays and the Vardes. Monsieur le Marquis is always cursing the Civil Code, and he is quite right. But it is the Civil Code, and it's stronger than we are and than he is. He has kept up the château as if he were your grandfather and great-grandfather. Do you know what that means? In the first place, a hundred thousand francs for the park, gardens and conservatories, plus sixty thousand for the hounds, forty thousand for the shooting, thirty-five thousand for the stables. We have got to two hundred and thirty-five thousand at once. And so with the rest. The table? We have forty people at dinner to-night, and the marquis would consider himself disgraced if his chef were not cited as one of the best in Paris! The servants? You know how many there are, and you know too that Monsieur le Marquis never dreams of parting with an old retainer without giving him a pension. We had a discussion only yesterday about young Mauchaussée. Twelve hundred francs to the father, and a house; twelve hundred francs to the son. There are more than thirty others taken care of in the same way. That makes forty thousand francs. And there are demands all day to which Monsieur le Marquis makes but one reply: 'Give.' And we give—for brotherhoods and sisterhoods, for hospitals and churches, for schools, and for the elections. Without counting the private alms, which don't pass through my hands. A hundred thousand francs put in Monsieur de Lautrec's hand, without a receipt, just when we are so straightened, to settle a gambling debt! I have the proof of it. I spoke to Monsieur le Marquis about it. I had the courage.—'If we don't help one another,' was his reply, 'who will help us?'—That he should do such things the first or second year, in '66 and '67, even down to the war, was natural. But when he saw the income of the property decreasing, the mortgages growing bigger, the unpaid bills piling up, that he did not try to stop is extraordinary. But it's the fact. I understand it so well. Every economy was a degradation of the house of Grandchamp, and degradation of a concrete sort, which he could have seen with his eyes and touched with his hands. Economies, do I say? There were the hedges trimmed every three years,—but in the interval? the avenues not so well kept,—but after the rains?—Fewer flowers in the beds, fewer horses in the stable, stag-hunting with fewer dogs and fewer whippers-in! His heart was nearly broken. He went back the next year. The debt increased. It whirled him off in its eddies. And then, he has always hoped; yesterday, it was a fortunate investment,—Monsieur Jaubourg had put him on the track of a good thing. He gained a hundred and twenty thousand francs. A drop of water in the desert! Day, before yesterday, one of your cousins. Monsieur de Nançay, died and left him a hundred thousand francs. Another drop of water. These unexpected windfalls misled him with a mirage which harmonized only too well with his hereditary instinct. It would be easier for him to break off his habits altogether, than to change—that is the conclusion at which I have arrived. On that account, Landri, I look upon this offer of Altona's as providential, you understand. Monsieur le Marquis must accept it. Grandchamp once emptied of its furnishings, which are sacred reliques to him, he will never want to come here again. No more gardens à la française. At all events we will reduce the cost of keeping them. No more stag-hunting, no more open house. With what is left he will still have enough to live very handsomely. We will let the shooting, the château perhaps. Then we will begin to redeem the mortgages. The house of Claviers-Grandchamp will be shorn of its splendor for a few years. But it will live up to its motto: E tenebris inclarescent. It will not go down forever."

Engrossed by the heat of his demonstration, Chaffin had made a false step. He had changed his tone as he dwelt upon the figures,—a terrible commentary on the harangue delivered by the marquis to his son in the forest two hours earlier, on the splendor of the name! To be sure, the heartless jubilation of the ascent of the staircase no longer gleamed threateningly in his yellow eyes; but his despicable sentiments toward his imprudent and magnanimous employer made themselves manifest in the pitiless clearness with which he thought and spoke of the disaster. He thought that he knew Landri well, knowing him to be eminently impressionable, and having formerly contributed, by dint of surreptitious criticism, to detach him from his milieu. He had seen how he stood out against the marquis on the subject of Saint-Cyr. Moreover, was it not now a question of the swallowing-up of his future inheritance? He was aware neither of the extent of the young man's unselfishness nor how deeply the genuine poesy of M. de Claviers' character stirred the chords of that tender heart. That poesy the brutal draftsman of the balance-sheet of ruin did not even suspect. His picture of the marquis's life, so foolishly ill-ordered but so generous, his indictment rather, wherein he had emphasized the grand seigneur's craze for appearances, without sufficiently setting forth his idealism and his charity, was strangely at variance with the attitude of a faithful and growling watch-dog which he ordinarily affected. Landri felt the difference, by instinct only. The revelation of the impending catastrophe impressed him much too painfully. It was enough, however, for him to feel an unconquerable longing to identify himself with his father, and he replied:—

"What? You entertain that idea, you, Chaffin? The furniture of Grandchamp sold? The treasures that our grandmother rescued so heroically in '93, dispersed? My father driven from his house by that vile crew? Never! I would rather sacrifice my own fortune!"

"Well!" insinuated Chaffin, "ask him for it."

"Don't tell me that it is swallowed up, like—" exclaimed the young man. He did not finish the sentence, but said emphatically: "I know that's not true!"

"It isn't true, in fact," rejoined the secretary. "Monsieur le Marquis still has a capital much larger than the fifteen hundred thousand francs that you inherited from Madame de Claviers. After he rendered his accounts as guardian, you gave him a general power of attorney which included the right to sell and to mortgage. You did it because he inherited a fourth of your mother's property, say five hundred thousand francs. That property consisted in part of houses. You insisted that it should remain undivided. It is sufficient, therefore, for him to be all straight with you, that he should turn over to you the fifteen hundred thousand francs, the income of which he has always paid you in full; he can do it, but on one condition, and that is a sine qua non: he must sell the personal property at Grandchamp,—the only thing that he can realize on. The lands and buildings are so loaded down with mortgages and so hard to turn into cash,—we need not talk of that. How long should you have to wait, do you suppose? And you would not be a privileged creditor. You have come of yourself to the point to which I was trying to bring you. That is the whole motive of my action, Landri. You can get Monsieur de Claviers out of this cul-de-sac, you and nobody else, and you can do it by demanding your fortune."

"I? of him?"

"Yes, you, and by withdrawing your power of attorney. He will not choose, that you should for a second suspect him of having misused it. He won't have any peace until he has restored it all to you, on the spot. If Altona's four million is offered him at that moment, he'll accept it. Grandchamp stripped of its treasures is horrible to think of, I agree. But one can refurnish a dismantled château. One can not reconstruct a squandered fortune, and with five years more of this life yours is gone, forever. I owed you the truth. I have told it to you. Make up your mind."