The Quest of Glory by Marjorie Bowen (epub e reader txt) 📖
- Author: Marjorie Bowen
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noble with talents and energy to obtain, without bribery or intrigue,
some honest post in politics. If, however, it was not so, then Luc meant
to violently alter his life, to in some way strike directly for what his
soul wanted, what it must have.
On the day following the pitiful little adventure with the Countess
Koklinska he again saw the graceful cavalier enter the house opposite.
This time a cloak and a low-pulled hat masked the features, but Luc was
sure of the remarkably fine and well-set figure; the stranger was, too,
just sufficiently above the ordinary stature to be conspicuous anywhere,
in any dress.
The man who waited on the chambers happened to be in the room, and Luc
remarked to him on the mysterious character of the house opposite.
He was answered that the place was commonly believed to be the residence
of one of the fortune-tellers with which Paris swarmed; one of the
houses where attempts were made to raise the Devil, to pry into the
future; where potions, charms, and maybe poisons were sold; a place of
rendezvous also for intrigues that had some reason for concealment, or,
in themselves, lacked the element of that mystery that alone made them
alluring.
Many great people, even the greatest, the man averred, would go to these
places, and take the utmost pains with their disguises—which, however,
very seldom deceived anyone, as all the world knew that all the world
went. But the mystery was the great charm, and many adventures appeared
palatable when undertaken in a cloak and mask that would have seemed
stale enough enacted in broad daylight.
“Of course,” finished the fellow, “since La Voisine was burnt in the
Place de la Grêve, they have been more careful, these people; but
nevertheless, Monseigneur, they become very bold, for they say the King
himself visits them often enough, and that everybody knows it; and His
Highness the Regent encouraged them to a great extent, though they say
he never raised the Devil.”
Luc smiled; he thought of M. de Richelieu. He wondered if such men had
not raised the Devil, in very tangible form indeed, and set him up as
master over France.
So it was said that the King spent his leisure with these tawdry
prophetesses and cheap tricksters! Since he came to Paris Luc had heard
several ends of gossip about the King that, true or not, served to a
little blur his vivid picture of the young Louis he was so ardent to
serve, whom he had served for ten strenuous years without recognition
or reward.
It was a frivolous age, a restless age, an age of change, of great
possibilities. France was brilliant yet corrupt, energetic yet slothful.
Paris did not dazzle so much to Luc’s near sight as it had done to his
distant gaze. Carola Koklinska became to him as a symbol of the city—so
calm, lofty, high, and bright from a distance, so mean, dishonoured,
falsely glittering near, yet with an immortal heart concealed somewhere
behind the gaudy shams.
Paris was great, was eternal, held the seed of all future thought, was
the theatre of all present action; yet her streets were thronged by the
foppish, the foolish, the ignorant, and the starving. Her government was
in the hands of men like M. de Richelieu, who in their turn were
influenced by women like Carola—greedy soldiers of fortune who kept the
point of view of the gutter from whence they came.
Luc’s heart swelled to a sense of agony—the agony of powerlessness. All
the pageant that passed by him he knew only by glimpses; he was outside,
he could do nothing—nay, worse than that, he was even being swept along
with the others, no better than they, a mere inarticulate creature
played upon by the devices of those he met. Even M. de Richelieu, in his
opulent consciencelessness, was expressing, fulfilling himself, turning
circumstances into what he wished them to be, making his life what he
wanted it; even Carola had forced the hand of Fate to satisfy her sordid
ambition; while he was baffled, thwarted, like a thing chained.
He thought of the young man whom he had met in the pavilion at
Versailles, and whom he had just seen enter the house opposite. He
lulled his slothful soul by juggling with the poor lures of charlatans.
He could actually drive his lagging, empty days faster by such spurs as
these!
Luc had not yet conceived the task, the responsibility the goal that
would satisfy the hunger of his soul.
Ill-health, moderate means, an obscure position in the great
world—these were his disadvantages. And was it possible that the fire
of his desires could not surmount these paltry things?
Where was the secret by which men, poorer, meaner, more hampered than
he, had forced glory out of their lives, had wrung greatness out of
their own souls? He sat with his elbows on the elegant ormolu desk and
his face hidden in his hands, shuddering, for his body bent and shivered
with the power of the passions that drove through it. The damp broke out
on his forehead, his heart struggled in his side, his hands and feet
were cold, his mouth dry, his closed eyes hot in their sockets. He
clenched his hands under his face till he felt the bones of the palms
with his finger-tips. Reality swung into a dazzling darkness that pulsed
before him, out of which he could force nothing tangible but an enigma
with the face of Carola. He raised his head at last and sat back in his
chair. At these moments his bodily weakness asserted itself, and when he
most wished to get beyond and above the flesh he was reminded of it by a
cold weight in all his limbs and the heat of the blood in his temples.
He gave a little sigh, then quickly turned his head, seized with an
uncontrollable conviction that he was not alone. Yet it was with a
considerable start that he saw a slight, strange gentleman standing
inside the door keenly observing him.
Luc stared without rising; his visionary mood had scarcely cleared. He
gazed eagerly at his visitor in silence. He saw a man no longer young,
yet impossible to associate with any idea of age, dressed richly and
fashionably in brown velvet that glittered with gold braid, erect,
graceful, and of an extraordinary appearance of animation and energy;
his face, framed in a grey peruke, was so pale as to be livid; the
features were delicate, strongly cut, remarkable; there was an upward
slant to eyebrows and nostrils, and the mouth was wide, thin, and
smiling, while his brown eyes held a world of passion, power, and force
in their glance which was at once challenging, mocking, and
good-humoured.
He held an agate-handled cane and his hat under his arm. All the
appointments of his person were costly and modish; he wore patches,
jewellery, and fine ruffles.
“I have surprised you, M. le Marquis,” he observed, with a deepening of
his smile and in a voice changeful and melodious.
Luc sprang to his feet; he knew face and figure from a dozen prints,
from a hundred descriptions.
“Voltaire!” he cried.
The stranger bowed.
“I am welcome?” he asked.
“I am honoured beyond expression,” stammered Luc, with simple and
genuine self-abasement.
M. de Voltaire looked sharply at the man who had sent him such
remarkable letters, and of whom he had had such a remarkable account
from M. de Richelieu.
He was surprised to see one so young, so delicately beautiful, so timid
in manner, for Luc stood blushing like a child, and his sensitive
features expressed vast confusion. The great man seated himself and
threw back his head.
“M. de Richelieu gave me your address,” he remarked; “but I did not wait
for his company to make the acquaintance of one of whom I have formed
such a high opinion.”
“Monsieur,” answered Luc earnestly, “I fear I have been presumptuous in
forcing myself on your notice; but for the interest you have taken in me
I am passionately grateful.”
M. de Voltaire was secretly, immensely gratified. He had not climbed
from an attorney’s clerk to be a friend of kings without meeting very
severe rebuffs on the way. Even now, courted as he was, the nobles he
consorted with reminded him often enough, in covert ways, that he was
not ‘born.’ But here was a Marquis, a soldier, who sincerely bowed down
to him. He had been greatly flattered when he received Luc’s first
letter; now his vast vanity, quick to take offence, quick to respond to
admiration, was even more flattered by the young noble’s ardent homage.
And a finer feeling than vanity moved M. de Voltaire’s great generous
heart; he thought that he saw in this frail, boyish-looking, blushing,
slightly awkward soldier a kindred soul.
On his part Luc was struggling with an overwhelming sense of humility in
being thus suddenly sought out by the man whom, of all others, he most
admired and respected.
“Oh, Monsieur!” he exclaimed, “you cannot guess how much I have hoped to
one day meet you.”
“A soldier,” smiled M. de Voltaire, “and yet you found time for
philosophy and the arts!”
Luc, who was standing like a scholar before his master, answered in
nervous haste—
“I know nothing about either, Monsieur, nothing—”
The great man interrupted.
“I gather from your letters that you are in quest of glory—therefore
you know a great deal about both. If you have the penetration to see, M.
le Marquis, that there is nothing in the world like even the dim sparkle
of glory—I, at least, can teach you nothing.”
As he spoke his eyes flashed as if a positive red fire sparkled from
them; so strong was the effect of his presence that Luc felt as if he
were being physically touched and held.
M. de Voltaire rose. He had the grand manner consciously—not
unconsciously like M. de Richelieu—yet defined from the theatrical by
his passionate genius that gave his very flourishes an air of
conviction. He stepped up to the Marquis and held out his hand.
“Monseigneur,” he said, with a large air of grandeur, “I should like to
be your friend.”
Luc clasped the thin right hand that had been so active and powerful in
the cause of truth and freedom, and tears lent a lustre to his eyes.
“Monsieur,” he answered, “I have nothing to offer one like you but my
devotion—I have had very few friends—but if you will be troubled with
me I will pledge my service to you—always.”
M. de Voltaire looked at him thoughtfully.
“You have the spirit,” he said—“yes, you have the spirit that is to
waken France and re-create her. Do you not feel it, see it
everywhere—the dawn of something better than we have ever known?”
He began walking up and down the room, as if his restless heart could
not brook his body to stand still.
“What are you going to do with your life?” he asked abruptly.
It was Carola’s demand, as Luc instantly remembered with a sense of
pain.
“I wish to fulfil myself,” he answered. “I can do that by serving
France. I am in Paris now, waiting my chance.”
M. de Voltaire paused before the high white marble chimney piece.
“In what way are you hoping to serve France?” he asked sharply.
Luc answered with a grave enthusiasm—
“I served in the army ten years, Monsieur, and unfortunately lost my
health during the retreat from Prague. It is now my ambition
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