The Quest of Glory by Marjorie Bowen (epub e reader txt) 📖

to enter

politics.”

 

The powerful eyes of M. de Voltaire narrowed and glittered.

 

“You know what the politics of France are? You know what kind of a world

this Paris is?”

 

Luc drew a deep breath; he thought of Carola, of M. de Richelieu, of the

young suicide of Versailles.

 

“Monsieur,” he replied earnestly, “my life has been passed in a kind of

seclusion, I being always with the army and often abroad, and I have had

little time even for meditation, and in truth I might well be engulfed

in this great world of which I know so little, and where I have already

experienced some falls, were it not that I have certain thoughts, ideals

so fixed that I cannot conceive them altering, and so I must go on.”

 

“Ah!” cried M. de Voltaire softly, “you will succeed; but not in the way

you think perhaps. Politics are poor scope after all.”

 

“Yet you are in them, Monsieur.”

 

“As I was in the Bastille!” flashed M. de Voltaire, “as I have been

everything and said everything and deceived them all—all the little

dolls who dance to whatever tune is played the loudest. I have been many

characters, I have laughed at all France, and now I am—Voltaire! And

all France steps to the pace I set—therefore I know something of kings

and queens and courtiers and beggars.” He paused and smiled, laying his

hand on his heart with a quick, passionate gesture. “I have tried most

weapons,” he continued, “and the pen is the most powerful of all.

Monseigneur, you have thought, you can express yourself—use your pen to

lift yourself above the age—write—write from your soul, never heed what

you know—write what you feel!”

 

Luc caught his breath.

 

“Monsieur—do you mean that I should write and—publish?”

 

Luc flushed. Instinct, training, tradition were too powerful for even M.

de Voltaire’s fiery urgings to move. Though he struggled against the

impression he felt as if he had been insulted; then he laughed, and the

great man before whom he had stood abashed was swept with that laugh on

to a different plane. In the next perfectly courteous words that Luc

spoke, it was the Marquis addressing the attorney’s clerk.

 

“But, Monsieur, I am a gentleman,” he said simply. M. de Voltaire looked

at him for a moment of silence. “Would you rather be such as M. de

Richelieu or such as I?” he asked at last.

 

Luc did not see the point.

 

“M. de Richelieu does nothing that a gentleman may not do,” he answered;

“he does not write books.”

 

“No—and he has all the seven deadly sins to his credit, which, I

suppose, makes a fine patent of nobility,” remarked M. de Voltaire

slowly.

 

Luc flushed; he found that it was necessary to explain.

 

“When one is ‘born’ there are things one cannot do, Monsieur. I could no

more publish my writings than—” he hesitated for an illustration—“than

a stage player could wear a sword.”

 

M. de Voltaire was very pale; his whole figure trembled.

 

“Monsieur le Marquis!” he said in a terrible voice, “you have ambitions,

you have desires, you have your soul to satisfy, you are searching for

glory—I do not doubt that you have in fancy scaled the highest peak of

achievement—and all the while you are bound and gagged and tied to

earth because you are born a gentleman. Are not your eyes open on the

changes about you? Do you not see that we—that I—are sweeping away God

and rank and all the barriers that come between man and man? You are

young, Monsieur le Marquis; you may live to see the day when kings are

cast down and peasants are called to the government of their country.

This is the age of light and freedom; your rank is but a clog to

you—your genius might raise you to be a light over France!”

 

He spoke with such force, passion, such energy of gesture and emphasis

that Luc had the sense that something new was being violently disclosed

to his view. He sank into the chair before the desk and fixed his eyes,

dark with emotion, on the extraordinary animated face of the speaker. He

had nothing to say; his own instincts, that were until then

unquestioned, taken for granted, never put into words, were unchanged,

for they were rooted almost as deeply as life itself.

 

“Go your way,” said M. de Voltaire more quietly—“spend your strength

for another ten years in politics as you have in war—give your talents

to the service of the superstitious young profligate who sleeps on the

throne of thrones.”

 

“Monsieur!” cried Luc, “do you speak of the King?”

 

“Of His Most Christian Majesty,” replied M. de Voltaire, “of Louis de

Bourbon, who is always on his knees to a certain Jesus Christ or a

certain Marquise de Pompadour, the lady who rules France and who is my

very good friend.”

 

“The King is the King,” answered Luc, reddening, “and I serve him.”

 

“If you have rejected their Christian God, why do you not reject their

Christian King?” demanded M. de Voltaire. “Make your court to the lady I

mention; she has great good sense. Use these things, bow down to them,

make your way through them, but do not believe in them.”

 

“I believe in the King,” returned Luc, in a tone of great agitation. “I

must believe in him whom I have seen hundreds die for.”

 

“Hundreds of thousands have died for Christ,” flashed M. de

Voltaire—“do you therefore believe in Him?”

 

“No,” answered Luc; “but I know there is a God, and I love not to talk

of these matters. As for His Majesty—if I did not believe in him could

I serve him?”

 

“Serve France,” interrupted M. de Voltaire. “Put aside all prejudice,

superstition, your rank, your family, come to Paris, go into a

garret—be one of us—start as I started—be free, express your own

soul, write your thoughts, and laugh at the world!”

 

Luc looked at him with steady hazel eyes, then shook his head.

 

“I cannot,” he said, in firm, positive tones and with a faint smile.