Strange mystery of memory! While his lips were pressed upon his dear wife's, he remembered M. de Clavier's remarks concerning those exiles who leave their city, "carrying their gods with them." In his imagination he heard the "Émigré's" loud, clear voice saying those words in his room at Saint-Mihiel.—Suddenly—was it an illusion?—he thought that he heard that voice, in very truth, speaking in the corridor.
"Listen!" he said, grasping Valentine's arm. "Some one is coming. Why, it's he!"
"It is he!" she repeated, turning pale; and, as some one knocked at the door, "I will leave you alone. It's better so." And, on the threshold of the adjoining room, she turned, with her hand on her heart, to repress its throbbing: "I told you to hope."
She had hardly left the room when the door opened and, behind the bell-boy, appeared the form of the Marquis de Claviers. Aged even more in the last two months, his face more haggard and more hollow, he was more than ever the Seigneur, the man of lofty lineage, who, wherever he goes, is a Master. He was profoundly moved at that moment, when he was taking a step so directly contrary, it seemed, to his recent attitude; but he found a way to maintain, in his whole person, that species of haughty bonhomie which was characteristic of him. He saw Landri, and simply, without a word, held out his arms. The young man responded to that gesture, which betrayed such deep affection, and they embraced, as if they were still in those days when, as they rode together through the forest of Hez, they believed themselves of the same blood, offshoots of the same trunk, a father and son who might differ in ideas, but who were bound together by a chain as indissoluble as their own persons. A father and son! They had not ceased to be so in heart, and in that moment of passionate impulse, after they had forbidden themselves to show their affection during so many days, they listened to naught save that heart.
"Ah!" said M. de Claviers, "you have not gone! I have come in time!—No. I could not let you go away so. I could not. I wrote you. I prepared a despatch. I sent neither. It was the sight of you that I craved—to hear your voice, to speak to you once more. I resisted up to the last moment. I knew that it would cost me so dear to lose you again! And then, when I saw the hour for the last train for England draw near, after which it would be too late, I held out no longer. I went to your hotel in London, thinking that you might have postponed your departure.—However, here I am and here you are. You have behaved so admirably! That very last act, too—your refusal to keep that money! I shall at least have told you again that I thank you. I shall have told you that I have never ceased to love you."
"I am the one who has to thank you," replied Landri, "for understanding the appeal of my letters. It is true: to go so far away without seeing you again was very hard. I would have endured that grief, like the others, without rebelling. But I think that I did not deserve it. I, too, have always loved you so dearly, revered you so—"
"You deserved no grief at all," the marquis hastily interrupted. Then, dropping into a chair, and in an attitude of utter dejection, "none at all," he repeated, "and you were justified in thinking me terribly cruel."
"Cruel?" cried the young man. "Don't say that. Don't think it."
"I do think it," M. de Claviers replied. "I felt that you were wretchedly unhappy when we parted. You stood there, I saw, loving me with all your heart, awaiting a word from me. I did not say it, because I too loved you too well. If I had spoken to you then, I should not have had the strength to go on to the end of what I had to do. That money must be repaid. I must sell the treasures of Grandchamp. I must place an indestructible barrier between you and myself, in the eyes of the world, so that it might suspect nothing. I was obliged to stifle that paternal feeling which I could not succeed in destroying. But it was I who formed your character! If I had not been the heir of the Claviers-Grandchamps, the depositary of the name, the representative of the race, I should have held my peace for love of you when I received that anonymous letter. If I alone had been involved, I would have swallowed the insult. You would never have known what I knew. Because of them, in the interest of their house, I had to act as I did. But I was able to measure your grief by my own. And I had my dead to encourage me, while you—"
"I had you," interrupted Landri. "I had your example. You say that you formed my character. That is much truer than you have any idea; and I myself did not know myself, did not understand to what degree I thought as you think concerning matters of moment, until I was taught by this sorrow. You remember that, in that conversation after the hunt, the last afternoon of intimacy that we ever had, you spoke of the indestructible connections, the unbreakable tie between ourselves and those from whom we descend. And I argued with you. I maintained the right of the individual to live his own life, to seek his own happiness. The instant that I learned the secret of my birth, I realized how entirely in the right you were in that discussion. Your right to demand satisfaction from me, although I was not personally culpable, appeared to me so clearly established! And so of my duty to give you that satisfaction, entire, complete. I felt that the very quintessence of man is in this solidarity between the present and a past which was his before he himself existed. I realized all that nobility meant. All your ideas, against which I had fought so long, revealed themselves to me in their living truth. I made them my guide in the conduct which you are kind enough to approve. When you said to me, 'For your sake I can forgive,' what a healing balm you poured into my heart, and upon what an aching wound! Even in my misery, I felt a peace of mind which has not abandoned me. That is what has upheld me."