Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution by Rafael Sabatini (dark books to read txt) 📖

slow, bewildered voice. “But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, monsieur.”

From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin.

“You have been deceived in that, I fear.”

“Deceived?”

“Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother must have been guilty.”

The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.

A dead silence followed. Andre-Louis’ wits were numbed. He stood aghast, all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin’s eyes continued fixed upon M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s, as if searching there for a meaning that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood the vile affront. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A convulsive quiver shook him. Then, with an inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and with his open hand struck M. le Marquis full and hard upon his sneering face.

In a flash M. de Chabrillane was on his feet, between the two men.

Too late Andre-Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d’Azyr’s words were but as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his opponent into some such counter-move as this—a counter-move that left him entirely at the other’s mercy.

M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin’s finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing more. Instead, it was M. de Chabrillane who now did the talking, taking up his preconcerted part in this vile game.

“You realize, monsieur, what you have done,” said he, coldly, to Philippe. “And you realize, of course, what must inevitably follow.”

M. de Vilmorin had realized nothing. The poor young man had acted upon impulse, upon the instinct of decency and honour, never counting the consequences. But he realized them now at the sinister invitation of M. de Chabrillane, and if he desired to avoid these consequences, it was out of respect for his priestly vocation, which strictly forbade such adjustments of disputes as M. de Chabrillane was clearly thrusting upon him.

He drew back. “Let one affront wipe out the other,” said he, in a dull voice. “The balance is still in M. le Marquis’s favour. Let that content him.”

“Impossible.” The Chevalier’s lips came together tightly. Thereafter he was suavity itself, but very firm. “A blow has been struck, monsieur. I think I am correct in saying that such a thing has never happened before to M. le Marquis in all his life. If you felt yourself affronted, you had but to ask the satisfaction due from one gentleman to another. Your action would seem to confirm the assumption that you found so offensive. But it does not on that account render you immune from the consequences.”

It was, you see, M. de Chabrillane’s part to heap coals upon this fire, to make quite sure that their victim should not escape them.

“I desire no immunity,” flashed back the young seminarist, stung by this fresh goad. After all, he was nobly born, and the traditions of his class were strong upon him—stronger far than the seminarist schooling in humility. He owed it to himself, to his honour, to be killed rather than avoid the consequences of the thing he had done.

“But he does not wear a sword, messieurs!” cried Andre Louis, aghast.

“That is easily amended. He may have the loan of mine.”

“I mean, messieurs,” Andre-Louis insisted, between fear for his friend and indignation, “that it is not his habit to wear a sword, that he has never worn one, that he is untutored in its uses. He is a seminarist—a postulant for holy orders, already half a priest, and so forbidden from such an engagement as you propose.”

“All that he should have remembered before he struck a blow,” said M. de Chabrillane, politely.

“The blow was deliberately provoked,” raged Andre-Louis. Then he recovered himself, though the other’s haughty stare had no part in that recovery. “O my God, I talk in vain! How is one to argue against a purpose formed! Come away, Philippe. Don’t you see the trap...”

M. de Vilmorin cut him short, and flung him off. “Be quiet, Andre. M. le Marquis is entirely in the right.”

“M. le Marquis is in the right?” Andre-Louis let his arms fall helplessly. This man he loved above all other living men was caught in the snare of the world’s insanity. He was baring his breast to the knife for the sake of a vague, distorted sense of the honour due to himself. It was not that he did not see the trap. It was that his honour compelled him to disdain consideration of it. To Andre-Louis in that moment he seemed a singularly tragic figure. Noble, perhaps, but very pitiful.