"Death has done that!" said the Marquis.
"And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain."
"Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger,—they were now standing by the hearth,—"you will forever seek them in vain, be assured."
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which in delicate finesse he ran him through the body, and said, "My friend, I will die perpetuating the system under which I have lived."
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
"Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see."
"This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew, sadly; "I renounce them."
"Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but is it, yet?"
"I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you to-morrow—"
"Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable."