The weight of the name

by Paul Bourget

"Ah, my child!" returned the marquis. "Yes, I can call you my child! You talk of balm poured upon wounds, but who, pray, allayed the pain of my wound a little, if not you? Your thoughts, your resolutions, your actions—I have loved everything that came from you, and everything has helped to prove to me that this at least had not been wasted—my efforts during so many years, to inculcate my opinions in you, to make you a man. Ah! I too have learned many things through this suffering. You say that you fought a long while against my ideas. That was because, in prosperity, they were mixed up with too many other things. Yes, I yielded to too many temptations. I was too proud of my name, and too fond of life. You might well have thought that there was more pride than reflection, more emotion than reason in the principles whose real force you discovered when the test came. I did not derive from them, when I was fortunate, all that I should have done. In the rank in which Providence had placed me, I did not see clearly enough the good that one might do. Because of that I deserved to be punished, and, no doubt, my dear ones through me. In a race which has endured for centuries, many secret sins must have been committed, which demand expiation. I interpreted this terrible misfortune in that sense. I accepted it and offered it to God; and, as I told you, I forgave. And now," in a tone of infinite melancholy, "I must offer Him my solitary old age.—How solitary it will be without you! Without you!" he repeated; and, with more and more emotion, "and yet, if we chose!—You spoke the other day of my adopting a son. There have been families on the point of becoming extinct that have prolonged their existence in that way!—I am dreaming.—Suppose I should adopt you? Then you would not leave me. The world, having known nothing of what has happened, would not know of the secret compact between us. People would say: 'Claviers is crazy. It wasn't worth while to make such an outcry, only to give way finally.'—What do I care? I should have you. You would close my eyes."

"No," the young man replied with extraordinary decision, "it is impossible. One adopts a stranger, a kinsman, but not one like me." Lowering his eyes, the child of sin repeated: "Not one like me! At this moment it is your affection that is stirring and that speaks, not your mind. These are not your—I make bold to say, our—convictions. To-day I represent to you some one who is dear to you, and whom you are about to lose. To-morrow, day after to-morrow, if we should be so weak, the thing that I should soon come to represent to you again, would horrify you, and me as well. I cannot consent. That name to which I have no right, and which I bore so long, that stolen name, I will not take again, not even from your hands." And, sorrowfully, he added: "Besides, even if I had a right to it, I could not bear to live in France, now that I have left the service. You say that you did not see clearly enough the good that one in your station might do. The real truth is that, because of that very station, you are condemned to inaction. But when you were of my age, could a Claviers hope to see a government established in France in which he could find employment? Such an expectation to-day would be insane. And I need to be doing something. I long to work, to exert my faculties. Where I am going, in that new country, I shall begin my life anew, I shall found a family, without having to undergo the social ostracism which seemed so cruel to me when I believed myself to be what I was not. That again would prevent me from accepting, even if there were not that falsehood, which you would never be able to endure. I appeal to you yourself, to the head of the family, whom I have always known as so unyielding, so irreconcilable, so hostile to any compromise."

"You are right," said M. de Claviers in a broken voice. "The Spirit is strong and the Heart is weak! Let us say adieu then, Landri. If I miss you too much, and if I live, nothing will prevent my joining you, wherever you may be. And if I do not live!" He shook his aged head with an air of supreme weariness. Then, as firmly as the other had spoken a moment earlier: "Yes, I must learn to consider myself the last of the line, to close the list worthily. You are right," he repeated, "too wofully right! I shall have worn out my life in one long expectation, always unfulfilled: the King come again, the Revolution driven out, our houses restored, the Church triumphant, France regenerated, and resuming her place in Europe, with her traditions and her natural frontiers—what empty dreams! And nothing has happened, nothing, nothing, nothing! I shall have been one of the vanquished. I shall have defended naught but tombs. You told me so, justly enough; and, to end it all, this tragedy in which my last hope is wrecked!—No, I cannot adopt you—that is true. The Claviers-Grandchamps will die with me, and it is better so. They will die as all the great families of France are dying, one after another. We are passing away, like the old monarchy that made us and that we made. But there will be no stain on the shield. I shall know how to make a fitting end.—And now," he added after a pause, in the tone of one who has made up his mind, manfully, and will lament no more, "let us part. At what time does your boat sail?"

"At half-past four," said Landri.

"It is nearly four," exclaimed the marquis. "You must go aboard. Adieu!"

He took the young man in his arms again and pressed him to his heart with extraordinary force, but without a tear. Then, he seemed to hesitate a second. An indescribable light of affection shone in his eyes, and he said, almost in a whisper:—

"I should not like to go away without seeing your wife."

"I will go and call her," said Valentine's husband, likewise almost in a whisper, so profoundly moved was he by that last proof of an affection which he thought that he had lost forever. To measure its depth, was to measure the depth of the abyss of bitter sorrow into which that man had descended, and where he was preparing to make a fitting end, as he had said with sublime simplicity.

When Landri reappeared, holding his young wife's hand, he was actually unable to utter a word of introduction. She was very pale, very tremulous, and with her noble, straightforward glance, as if to say, "Read my heart," she looked at the grand seigneur, who was unknown to her even in his physical aspect, but whose whole soul she knew. He gazed at her for some moments, likewise without speaking. How could he not feel the charm of that delicate, proud creature, whose every feature, every movement, every breath revealed a nature ardent and refined, loving and pure? And how could he not feel, in her presence, a reopening of the secret, incurable wound? How could he not compare her with another? But no. Those eyes could not lie. The graceful, trembling woman, whose blue eyes were raised to his with such fervor and purity, would be to him who had chosen her the faithful companion, the friend of every hour, she who divines and soothes all cares, who supports every noble effort. He could let Landri go away with her, without any apprehension. She would know how to assist him in the heroic rebuilding of a home, amid such a mass of ruins, which he was about to attempt! Such was the thought that the old man expressed aloud, incapable at that solemn moment of uttering conventional phrases, and obliged to refrain from uttering others which would have been too true.

"I was most anxious to salute you, madame, before you sailed. The past is past. I see in you now only the wife of the man whom I love best on earth. I desired to know to what sort of hands he had entrusted his happiness. I know now, and it is a great joy to me, the last of my life. I owe it to you."