"They're coming to notify me of the inquiry," he thought; "so much the better!"
He heard his servant go to open the door, and in a moment a loud voice reached his ears and made him jump to his feet. That imperious accent, that tone of command—it was M. de Claviers fighting against the order of seclusion.
"But I am his father!" he said. "I tell you, I'm his father! A father has a right to see his son, it seems to me, and I will see him.—However, here he is."
Landri had, in fact, come out of the salon, completely upset by his father's arrival. He was too familiar with the marquis's indomitable will not to know that he would throw the orderly aside, with his still powerful hands, rather than go away.
"Ah! I see you at last, my dear, my son!" He took the young man in his arms and pressed him to his heart, repeating passionately: "My son! my son! At last I can say to you what I wrote so badly and briefly! The pen and I are not on the best of terms since my eyes began to fail. I feel my age. But not in my heart; and that old heart leaped with joy and pride when I read your letter. Yes, I am happy. Yes, I am proud. I should have come Saturday, but I had to see Métivier about some tiresome business matters,—I'll tell you about it,—and again yesterday, although it was Sunday. This morning I read in a newspaper that there is talk of putting you under arrest in a fortress. 'Not before I have embraced him,' I said to myself, and I did as I did the other day, when I went to see poor Charles,—I jumped into the train. I shall return to-night, and I shall be in Paris in good time for my appointment with Métivier. For that business isn't finished yet. Just fancy—But later, later. Let's talk about you. Are you well? Let me look at you. A little thin and pale."
"That's because I don't go out," the young man replied. "I am in strict confinement."
"I shall not be the cause of your being punished more severely, shall I? If necessary I will go and ask the colonel for a permit. Although, according to what you have told me—"
"It's not at all necessary," replied Landri hastily; and he added: "There's nothing more they can do to me."
In his mouth these words were only too true. The shock that the marquis's sudden appearance had given him had changed instantly into inexpressible grief—the same grief that he had felt with such intensity on their meeting in Jaubourg's death-chamber. M. de Claviers' gestures, his glance, his voice, his breath, moved him to the lowest depths of his being; and the other, seeing his perturbation, but attributing it to disappointment because of his shattered career, said to him:—
"You are sad when I hoped to find you happy to take your leave of the army with that fine gesture, which I partly suggested to you! Do you remember? And you must remember, too, how often I have told you, and again only the other day, in the forest, that you could not stay with these people. One by one they'll drive all men of heart out of the service. What they want, these wretched successors of the Dantons and Carnots, who at least had some patriotism, is a national guard surrounded by spies!—Stand straight, Landri. Have the pride of the blow you have dealt them. We will prepare your defence together. It shall be a manifesto. We'll show these Blues, who think they have exterminated us, that there are still Whites in the land. We will argue once more a cause that has been pending more than a hundred years, from the decision of which we must appeal untiringly,—the cause of Condé's army. We will proclaim that the country is not one more than half of living Frenchmen, as their idiotic theory of majorities would have it; that the law is not one more than half of the representatives of that one more than half. In the word country [patrie] there is the word father [père]—patria, pater—The country is France as our fathers made it, or it is nothing. The law is tradition, as they handed it down to us to maintain, or it is nothing. We will say that, even in 1906, we nobles do not recognize 1789, that we have never recognized the night of the 4th of August, that we are gentlemen, and that a gentleman does not perform tasks of a certain sort. You must let me select your advocate and instruct him. A manifesto, Landri,—I propose to have a manifesto, which will stir up others!—Come, tell me the whole story. The newspapers are full of lies. They claim that you hesitated, that you went up the church steps with the sappers.—How did it happen?"