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"Before he left! my father is gone, then? But--where--how? What, the
devil! why do you weep?"
Unable to speak, the servant handed him the paper. Camors seized it and
tore it open.
"Good God! there is blood! what is this!" He read the first words--
"My son, life is a burden to me. I leave it--" and fell fainting to the
floor.
The poor lad loved his father, notwithstanding the past.
They carried him to his chamber.
CHAPTER III
DEBRIS FROM THE REVOLUTION
De Camors, on leaving college had entered upon life with a heart swelling
with the virtues of youth--confidence, enthusiasm, sympathy. The
horrible neglect of his early education had not corrupted in his veins
those germs of weakness which, as his father declared, his mother's milk
had deposited there; for that father, by shutting him up in a college to
get rid of him for twelve years, had rendered him the greatest service in
his power.
Those classic prisons surely do good. The healthy discipline of the
school; the daily contact of young, fresh hearts; the long familiarity
with the best works, powerful intellects, and great souls of the
ancients--all these perhaps may not inspire a very rigid morality, but
they do inspire a certain sentimental ideal of life and of duty which has
its value.
The vague heroism which Camors first conceived he brought away with him.
He demanded nothing, as you may remember, but the practical formula for
the time and country in which he was destined to live. He found,
doubtless, that the task he set himself was more difficult than he had
imagined; that the truth to which he would devote himself--but which he
must first draw from the bottom of its well--did not stand upon many
compliments. But he failed no preparation to serve her valiantly as a
man might, as soon as she answered his appeal. He had the advantage of
several years of opposing to the excitements of his age and of an opulent
life the austere meditations of the poor student.
During that period of ardent, laborious youth, he faithfully shut himself
up in libraries, attended public lectures, and gave himself a solid
foundation of learning, which sometimes awakened surprise when discovered
under the elegant frivolity of the gay turfman. But while arming himself
for the battle of life, he lost, little by little, what was more
essential than the best weapons-true courage.
In proportion as he followed Truth day by day, she flew before and eluded
him, taking, like an unpleasant vision, the form of the thousand-headed
Chimera.
About the middle of the last century, Paris was so covered with political
and religious ruins, that the most piercing vision could scarcely
distinguish the outlines of the fresh structures of the future.
One could, see that everything was overthrown; but one could not see any
power that was to raise the ruins. Over the confused wrecks and remains
of the Past, the powerful intellectual life of the Present-Progress--the
collision of ideas--the flame of French wit, criticism and the sciences--
threw a brilliant light, which, like the sun of earlier ages, illuminated
the chaos without making it productive. The phenomena of Life and of
Death were commingled in one huge fermentation, in which everything
decomposed and whence nothing seemed to spring up again.
At no period of history, perhaps, has Truth been less simple, more
enveloped in complications; for it seemed that all essential notions of
humanity had been fused in a great furnace, and none had come out whole.
The spectacle is grand; but it troubles profoundly all souls--or at least
those that interest and curiosity do not suffice to fill; which is to
say, nearly all. To disengage from this bubbling chaos one pure
religious moral, one positive social idea, one fixed political creed,
were an enterprise worthy of the most sincere. This should not be beyond
the strength of a man of good intentions; and Louis de Camors might have
accomplished the task had he been aided by better instruction and
guidance.
It is the common misfortune of those just entering life to find in it
less than their ideal. But in this respect Camors was born under a
particularly unfortunate star, for he found in his surroundings--in his
own family even--only the worst side of human nature; and, in some
respects, of those very opinions to which he was tempted to adhere.
The Camors were originally from Brittany, where they had held, in the
eighteenth century, large possessions, particularly some extensive
forests, which still bear their name. The grandfather of Louis, the
Comte Herve de Camors, had, on his return from the emigration, bought
back a small part of the hereditary demesne. There he established
himself in the old-fashioned style, and nourished until his death
incurable prejudices against the French Revolution and against Louis
XVIII.
Count Herve had four children, two boys and two girls, and, feeling it
his duty to protest against the levelling influences of the Civil Code,
he established during his life, by a legal subterfuge, a sort of entail
in favor of his eldest son, Charles-Henri, to the prejudice of Robert-
Sosthene, Eleanore-Jeanne and Louise-Elizabeth, his other heirs.
Eleanore-Jeanne and Louise-Elizabeth accepted with apparent willingness
the act that benefited their brother at their expense--notwithstanding
which they never forgave him. But Robert-Sosthene, who, in his position
as representative of the younger branch, affected Liberal leanings and
was besides loaded with debt, rebelled against the paternal procedure.
He burned his visiting-cards, ornamented with the family crest and his
name "Chevalier Lange d'Ardennes"--and had others printed, simply
"Dardennes, junior (du Morbihan)."
Of these he sent a specimen to his father, and from that hour became a
declared Republican.
There are people who attach themselves to a party by their virtues;
others, again, by their vices. No recognized political party exists
which does not contain some true principle; which does not respond to
some legitimate aspiration of human society. At the same time, there is
not one which can not serve as a pretext, as a refuge, and as a hope, for
the basest passions of our nature.
The most advanced portion of the Liberal party of France is composed of
generous spirits, ardent and absolute, who torture a really elevated
ideal; that of a society of manhood, constituted with a sort of
philosophic perfection; her own mistress each day and each hour;
delegating few of her powers, and yielding none; living, not without
laws, but without rulers; and, in short, developing her activity, her
well-being, her genius, with that fulness of justice, of independence,
and of dignity, which republicanism alone gives to all and to each one.
Every other system appears to them to preserve some of the slaveries and
iniquities of former ages; and it also appears open to the suspicion of
generating diverse interests--and often hostile ones--between the
governors and the governed. They claim for all that political system
which, without doubt, holds humanity in the most esteem; and however one
may despise the practical working of their theory, the grandeur of its
principles can not be despised.
They are in reality a proud race, great-hearted and high-spirited. They
have had in their age their heroes and their martyrs; but they have had,
on the other hand, their hypocrites, their adventurers, and their
radicals--their greatest enemies.
Young Dardennes, to obtain grace for the equivocal origin of his
convictions, placed himself in the front rank of these last.
Until he left college Louis de Camors never knew his uncle, who had
remained on bad terms with his father; but he entertained for him, in
secret; an enthusiastic admiration, attributing to him all the virtues of
that principle of which he seemed the exponent.
The Republic of '48 soon died: his uncle was among the vanquished; and
this, to the young man, had but an additional attraction. Without his
father's knowledge, he went to see him, as if on a pilgrimage to a holy
shrine; and he was well received.
He found his uncle exasperated--not so much against his enemies as
against his own party, to which he attributed all the disasters of the
cause.
"They never can make revolutions with gloves on," he said in a solemn,
dogmatic tone. "The men of 'ninety-three did not wear them. You can not
make an omelette without first breaking the eggs.
"The pioneers of the future should march on, axe in hand!
"The chrysalis of the people is not hatched upon roses!
"Liberty is a goddess who demands great holocausts. Had they made a
Reign of Terror in 'forty-eight, they would now be masters!"
These high-flown maxims astonished Louis de Camors. In his youthful
simplicity he had an infinite respect for the men who had governed his
country in her darkest hour; not more that they had given up power as
poor as when they assumed it, than that they left it with their hands
unstained with blood: To this praise--which will be accorded them in
history, which redresses many contemporary injustices--he added a
reproach which he could not reconcile with the strange regrets of his
uncle. He reproached them with not having more boldly separated the New
Republic, in its management and minor details, from the memories of the
old one. Far from agreeing with his uncle that a revival of the horrors
of 'ninety-three would have assured the triumph of the New Republic, he
believed it had sunk under the bloody shadow of its predecessor. He
believed that, owing to this boasted Terror, France had been for
centuries the only country in which the dangers of liberty outweighed its
benefits.
It is useless to dwell longer on the relations of Louis de Camors with
his uncle Dardennes. It is enough that he was doubtful and discouraged,
and made the error of holding the cause responsible for the violence of
its lesser apostles, and that he adopted the fatal error, too common in
France at that period, of confounding progress with discord, liberty with
license, and revolution with terrorism!
The natural result of irritation and disenchantment on this ardent spirit
was to swing it rapidly around to the opposite pole of opinion. After
all, Camors argued, his birth, his name, his family ties all pointed out
his true course, which was to combat the cruel and despotic doctrines
which he believed he detected under these democratic theories. Another
thing in the habitual language of his uncle also shocked and repelled
him--the profession of an absolute atheism. He had within him, in
default of a formal creed, a fund of general belief and respect for holy
things--that kind of religious sensibility which was shocked by impious
cynicism. Further he could not comprehend then, or ever afterward, how
principles alone, without faith in some higher sanction, could sustain
themselves by their own strength in the human conscience.
God--or no principles! This was the dilemma from which no German
philosophy could rescue him.
This reaction in his mind drew him closer to those other branches of his
family which he had hitherto neglected. His two aunts, living at Paris,
had been compelled, in consequence of their small fortunes, to make some
sacrifices to enter into the blessed state of matrimony. The elder,
Eleanore-Jeanne, had married, during her father's life, the Comte de la
Roche-Jugan--a man long past fifty, but still well worthy of being loved.
Nevertheless, his wife did not love him. Their views on many essential
points differed widely. M. de la Roche-Jugan was one of those who had
served the Government of the Restoration with an unshaken but hopeless
devotion. In his youth he had been attached to the person and to the
ministry of the Duc de Richelieu; and he had preserved the memory of that
illustrious man--of the elevated moderation of his sentiments--of the
warmth of his patriotism and of his constancy. He saw the pitfalls
ahead, pointed them out to his prince--displeased him by so doing, but
still followed his fortunes. Once more retired to private life with but
small means, he guarded his political principles rather like a religion
than a hope. His hopes, his vivacity, his love of right--all these he
turned toward God.
His piety, as enlightened as profound, ranked him among the choicest
spirits who then endeavored to reconcile the national faith of the past
with the inexorable liberty of thought of the present. Like his
colaborers in this work, he experienced only a mortal sadness under which
he sank. True, his wife contributed no little to hasten his end by the
intemperance of her zeal and the acrimony of her bigotry.
She had little heart and great pride, and made her God subserve her
passions, as Dardennes made liberty subserve his malice.
No sooner had she become a widow than she purified her salons.
Thenceforth figured there only parishioners more orthodox than their
bishops, French priests who denied Bossuet; consequently she believed
that religion was saved in France. Louis de Camors, admitted to this
choice circle by title both of relative and convert, found there the
devotion of Louis XI and the charity of Catherine de Medicis; and he
there lost very soon the little faith that remained to him.
He asked himself sadly whether there was no middle ground between Terror
and Inquisition; whether in this world one must be a fanatic or nothing.
He sought a middle course, possessing the force and cohesion of a party;
but he sought in vain. It seemed to him that the whole world of politics
and religion rushed to extremes; and that what was not extreme was inert
and indifferent--dragging out, day by day, an existence without faith and
without principle.
Thus at least appeared to him those whom the sad changes of his life
showed him as types of modern politics.
His younger aunt, Louise-Elizabeth, who enjoyed to the full all the
pleasures of modern life, had already profited by her father's death to
make a rich misalliance. She married the Baron Tonnelier, whose father,
although the son of a miller, had shown ability and honesty enough to
fill high positions under the First Empire.
The Baron Tonnelier had a large fortune, increasing every day by
successful speculation. In his youth he had been a good horseman,
a Voltairian, and a Liberal.
In time--though he remained a Voltairian--he renounced horsemanship,
and Liberalism. Although he was a simple deputy, he had a twinge of
democracy now and then; but after he was invested with the peerage, he
felt sure from that moment that the human species had no more progress to
make.
The French Revolution was ended; its giddiest height attained. No longer
could any one walk, talk, write, or rise. That perplexed him. Had he
been sincere, he would have avowed that he could not comprehend that
there could be storms, or thunder-clouds in the heavens--that the world
was not perfectly happy and tranquil, while he himself was so. When his
nephew was old enough to comprehend him, Baron Tonnelier was no longer
peer of France; but being one who does himself no hurt--and sometimes
much good by a fall, he filled a high office under the new government.
He endeavored to discharge its duties conscientiously, as he had those of
the preceding reign.
He spoke with peculiar ease of suppressing this or that journal--such an
orator, such a book; of suppressing everything, in short, except himself.
In his view, France had been in the wrong road since 1789, and he sought
to lead her back from that fatal date.
Nevertheless, he never spoke of returning, in his proper person, to his
grandfather's mill; which, to say the least, was inconsistent. Had
Liberty been mother to this old gentleman, and had he met her in a clump
of woods, he would have strangled her. We regret to add that he had the
habit of terming "old duffers" such ministers as he suspected of liberal
views, and especially such as were in favor of popular education. A more
hurtful counsellor never approached a throne; but luckily, while near it
in office, he was far from it in influence.
He was still a charming man, gallant and fresh--more gallant, however,
than fresh. Consequently his habits were not too good, and he haunted
the greenroom of the opera. He had two daughters, recently married,
before whom he repeated the most piquant witticisms of Voltaire, and the
most improper stories of Tallemant de Reaux; and consequently both
promised to afford the scandalmongers a series of racy anecdotes, as
their mother had before them.
While Louis de Camors was learning rapidly, by the association and
example of the collateral branches of his family, to defy equally all
principles and all convictions, his terrible father finished the task.
Worldling to the last extreme, depraved to his very core; past-master in
the art of Parisian high life; an unbridled egotist, thinking himself
superior to everything because he abased everything to himself; and,
finally, flattering himself for despising all duties, which he had all
his life prided himself on dispensing with--such was his father. But for
all this, he was the pride of his circle, with a pleasing presence and an
indefinable charm of manner.
The father and son saw little of each other. M. de Camors was too proud
to entangle his son in his own debaucheries; but the course of every-day
life sometimes brought them together at meal-time. He would then listen
with cool mockery to the enthusiastic or despondent speeches of the
youth. He never deigned to argue seriously, but responded in a few
bitter words, that fell like drops of sleet on the few sparks still
glowing in the son's heart.
Becoming gradually discouraged, the latter lost all taste for work, and
gave himself up, more and more, to the idle pleasures of his position.
Abandoning himself wholly to these, he threw into them all the seductions
of his person, all the generosity of his character--but at the same time
a sadness always gloomy, sometimes desperate.
The bitter malice he displayed, however, did not prevent his being loved
by women and renowned among men. And the latter imitated him.
He aided materially in founding a charming school of youth without
smiles. His air of ennui and lassitude, which with him at least had the
excuse of a serious foundation, was servilely copied by the youth around
him, who never knew any greater distress than an overloaded stomach, but
whom it pleased, nevertheless, to appear faded in their flower and
contemptuous of human nature.
We have seen Camors in this phase of his existence. But in reality
nothing was more foreign to him than the mask of careless disdain that
the young man assumed. Upon falling into the common ditch, he, perhaps,
had one advantage over his fellows: he did not make his bed with base
resignation; he tried persistently to raise himself from it by a violent
struggle, only to be hurled upon it once more.
Strong souls do not sleep easily: indifference weighs them down.
They demand a mission--a motive for action--and faith.
Louis de Camors was yet to find his.
CHAPTER IV
A NEW ACTRESS IN A NOVEL ROLE
Louis de Camor's father had not I told him all in that last letter.
Instead of leaving him a fortune, he left him only embarrassments, for he
was three fourths ruined. The disorder of his affairs had begun a long
time before, and it was to repair them that he had married; a process
that had not proved successful. A large inheritance on which he had
relied as coming to his wife went elsewhere--to endow a charity hospital.
The Comte de Camors began a suit to recover it before the tribunal of the
Council of State, but compromised it for an annuity of thirty thousand
francs. This stopped at his death. He enjoyed, besides, several fat
sinecures, which his name, his social rank, and his personal address
secured him from some of the great insurance companies. But these
resources did not survive him; he only rented the house he had occupied;
and the young Comte de Camors found himself suddenly reduced to the
provision of his mother's dowry--a bare pittance to a man of his habits
and rank.
His father had often assured him he could leave him nothing, so the son
was accustomed to look forward to this situation. Therefore, when he
realized it, he was neither surprised nor revolted by the improvident
egotism of which he was the victim. His reverence for his father
continued unabated, and he did not read with the less respect or
confidence the singular missive which figures at the beginning of this
story. The moral theories which this letter advanced were not new to
him. They were a part of the very atmosphere around him; he had often
revolved them in his feverish brain; yet, never before had they appeared
to him in the condensed form of a dogma, with the clear precision of a
practical code; nor as now, with the authorization of such a voice and of
such an example.
One incident gave powerful aid in confirming the impression of these last
pages on his mind. Eight days after his father's death, he was reclining
on the lounge in his smoking-room, his face dark as night and as his
thoughts, when a servant entered and handed him a card. He took it
listlessly, and read" Lescande, architect." Two red spots rose to his
pale cheeks--"I do not see any one," he said.
"So I told this gentleman," replied the servant, "but he insists in such
an extraordinary manner--"
"In an extraordinary manner?"
"Yes, sir; as if he had something very serious to communicate."
"Something serious--aha! Then let him in." Camors rose and paced the
chamber, a smile of bitter mockery wreathing his lips. "And must I now
kill him?" he muttered between his teeth.
Lescande entered, and his first act dissipated the apprehension his
conduct had caused. He rushed to the young Count and seized him by both
hands, while Camors remarked that his face was troubled and his lips
trembled. "Sit down and be calm," he said.
"My friend," said the other, after a pause, "I come late to see you, for
which I crave pardon; but--I am myself so miserable! See, I am in
mourning!"
Camors felt a chill run to his very marrow. "In mourning! and why?" he
asked, mechanically.
"Juliette is dead!" sobbed Lescande, and covered his eyes with his great
hands.
"Great God!" cried Camors in a hollow voice. He listened a moment to
Lescande's bitter sobs, then made a movement to take his hand, but dared
not do it. "Great God! is it possible?" he repeated.
"It was so sudden!" sobbed Lescande, brokenly. "It seems like a dream--
a frightful dream! You know the last time you visited us she was not
well. You remember I told you she had wept all day. Poor child! The
morning of my return she was seized with congestion--of the lungs--of the
brain--I don't know!--but she is dead! And so good!--so gentle, so
loving! to the last moment! Oh, my friend! my friend! A few moments
before she died, she called me to her side. 'Oh, I love you so! I love
you so!' she said. 'I never loved any but you--you only! Pardon me!--
oh, pardon me!' Pardon her, poor child! My God, for what? for dying?
--for she never gave me a moment's grief before in this world. Oh, God
of mercy!"
"I beseech you, my friend--"
"Yes, yes, I do wrong. You also have your griefs.
"But we are all selfish, you know. However, it was not of that that I
came to speak. Tell me--I know not whether a report I hear is correct.
Pardon me if I mistake, for you know I never would dream of offending
you; but they say that you have been left in very bad circumstances. If
this is indeed so, my friend--"
"It is not," interrupted Camors, abruptly.
"Well, if it were--I do not intend keeping my little house. Why should
I, now? My little son can wait while I work for him. Then, after
selling my house, I shall have two hundred thousand francs. Half of this
is yours--return it when you can!"
"I thank you, my unselfish friend," replied Camors, much moved, "but I
need nothing. My affairs are disordered, it is true; but I shall still
remain richer than you."
"Yes, but with your tastes--"
"Well?"
"At all events, you know where to find me. I may count upon you--may I
not?"
"You may."
"Adieu, my friend! I can do you no good now; but I shall see you again
--shall I not?"
"Yes--another time."
Lescande departed, and the young Count remained immovable, with his
features convulsed and his eyes fixed on vacancy.
This moment decided his whole future.
Sometimes a man feels a sudden, unaccountable impulse to smother in
himself all human love and sympathy.
In the presence of this unhappy man, so unworthily treated, so broken-
spirited, so confiding, Camors--if there be any truth in old spiritual
laws--should have seen himself guilty of an atrocious act, which should
have condemned him to a remorse almost unbearable.
But if it were true that the human herd was but the product of material
forces in nature, producing, haphazard, strong beings and weak ones--
lambs and lions--he had played only the lion's part in destroying his
companion. He said to himself, with his father's letter beneath his
eyes, that this was the fact; and the reflection calmed him.
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