Luc stood again on the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and watching the river and the people passing to and fro.

It was midsummer of the year ’46, and unusually hot. Most of the women wore roses—red, white, and pink. There were many boats on the river, and an air of gay carelessness over Paris; yet the war had not been so brilliantly successful of late. The English mastery of the seas was ruining commerce, and the Saxon troops were marching on Provence. The taxes were heavier than ever, and starved faces and bitter tongues more frequent in the poorer quarters where Luc lived.

If anyone had remarked a slim young noble, richly dressed, looking with earnest eyes at the river from this old bridge of St. Germain some three years ago, and had happened to pass this spot now, they would not have recognized that graceful figure in the prematurely aged man in the shabby clothes who leant heavily against the parapet, whose face was so disfigured and expressionless, who wore no sword, but helped himself with a black cane.

But Luc de Clapiers was happier than he had been when last he mused above the Seine. As his body fell into decay and painful feebleness his spirit seemed to mount more and more triumphantly. Sometimes he felt as if he held all the thought of all the world in the hollow of his hand; as if he soared above and beyond his age with the great immortals who rule over eternity. In his dreams he beheld most beautiful landscapes; when he lay down on his bed vistas opened up of strange and gorgeous countries, exquisite almost beyond bearing, and a path would run from the bare boards of his garret straight to the heart of some woodland that dipped to uncharted seas of delight.

Music came from a boat that passed beneath the bridge; the sound of it across the water was tremblingly sweet to Luc’s ears. He thought there was something sublime and sad in the notes; that there was a message in them that no human voice could convey.

He straightened himself against the parapet, then went on his way. At the corner of the bridge he met a beggar woman dragging a child. She cast an appealing glance at Luc, who paused, fumbled a silver coin from his pocket, and gave it her. The action reminded him that he had only a few gold pieces left in the world. He had planned his resources to last twice as long, but it had been easy to deny himself everything but charity. That it was not in his nature to forgo, nor were the instincts of a life at a moment to be altered. He never chaffered, and therefore paid double what every one else did in the Isle.

Last winter the man who lived in the room opposite his, a clarionet player at the Opera, had been ill, and Luc had paid to prevent the fellow being turned into the street, paid the expenses of his short illness, and finally his humble funeral.

For his book he had received nothing. For the next edition that he was revising, with the advice of M. de Voltaire, he also expected to receive nothing. He had friends,—Voltaire himself, Saint Vincent, and others,—but the noble blood in him prevented him from ever considering their possible assistance. He could only think of writing pamphlets, or doing translations; but he knew little Greek or Latin, and only a scanty Italian.

As he returned home through the sunny streets he recalled his father’s words: “Not a louis from me, if you are starving—as, in your folly and wickedness, you will starve.”

He thought of his parents, of Joseph, and Aix, with great tenderness. He was glad he had resisted the bookseller’s entreaty to put his name to his book, even though by his refusal he had probably lost a good chance of ensuring the success of his labour; for he had spared the proud old aristocrat the shame of seeing his name on the title-page of a work of philosophy; of hearing his name associated with Voltaire, with literature, with poverty, with the ignominy of writing and printing a book.

“He would say,” thought Luc, “how right he was—what an utter failure I am.”

He opened the door of his room, and entered with great weariness. The stairs, steep and dark, fatigued him immensely. The garret, being directly under the roof, was suffocatingly hot. He felt his head ache and his limbs tremble. The food placed for him on the table near the window he turned from, though the little girl who waited on him had arranged glass and plate, salad and meat, black bread, and thin wine in a tall bottle, neatly enough.

On this same table lay a bundle of proofs tried round with a twist of twine.

Luc took them up, balanced them in his hand, and put them down again. He was only able to read them with great difficulty.

“After all,” he mused, with a melancholy smile, “perhaps they are worth nothing—who knows?”

He sat very still, considering what he was to do for money. The people he was dealing with were poor. He could not bear the thought of being in their debt, or of asking them for any kindness that he could not reward. He reflected that it cost something even to die decently, and he might live some time longer. He smiled to think that he was balancing the probable length of his life against the probable length of his purse, and at the reflection that a hundred pistoles would put him out of all anxiety. His sweet humour took the whole thing with a laugh.

Presently he went to the window. A foul, stale smell was rising from the old winding street. Dirty, sharp-faced children played in the brilliant patch of sunshine that fell between two decayed houses and stained the cobbles.

At the doorless entrances dishevelled women stood talking, and gathered round the wine-shop were a few men of a better sort, with their shirts open for the heat, who emptied their glasses silently, then went about their business, silently also. Luc’s feeble sight could make out none of this, nor did he look down, but across the irregular roofs to the ineffable glory of the gold and purple August sky.

He put his hands on the sill; the stinging heat of it was grateful to his chill blood. He closed his eyes, and felt the sunshine like a red sword across his lids. He leant his sick head against the mullions. The clock of a church near by struck four; it reminded him that this was the hour and the day when he was generally visited by Voltaire or one of his friends—Diderot, d’Alembert, Saint Vincent. Luc loved these men, as he could not fail to love those whose warm regard was sweetening his closing years, but he would not live their lives. The Pompadour was their patroness, and they lived on that corruption that they secretly laughed at. Luc could not ever have brought himself to kneel at the footstool of the Marquise; his pure integrity, his absolute independence, and his complete obscurity divided him as sharply as his birth from the group of brilliant men to whom by right of genius he belonged.

All of these men had achieved success; combined, they made a power equal to that of the ancient royalty itself. They were preparing—in the EncyclopÆdia to which they were devoting their enthusiasm, their gifts of logic, of reason, of sarcasm, of eloquence—thunderbolts that would shake God Himself. Yet they one and all agreed to honour the unknown young aristocrat whose austere philosophy condemned half their actions, but whose sweetness and heroism won their admiration and respect.

M. de Voltaire came to Luc’s chamber this blazing afternoon, and not alone. He brought with him a young man, very splendidly attired, with a fine ardent face and bold eyes, full of an eager, joyous life. M. de Voltaire presented him briefly—

“M. le Marquis—M. Marmontel.”

Luc caught the young man’s hand, and drew him gently into the sunlight, straining his half-blind eyes to make out the person of his visitor.

For Jean FranÇois Marmontel was the favourite of Paris, petted, caressed, extolled; the incarnation of success; one young, vigorous, and in the seat of glory; one physically what Luc had been before the Bohemia war, and from the worldly point of view in that position Luc had so yearned and longed for, so confidently hoped to attain.

Luc had failed in arms, in politics, in letters. He had lost love, and health, and all hope of material triumph. He had even won hate from those nearest to him in blood. He was dying, slowly, and in a fashion humiliating. He was disfigured, feeble, half blind, bowed with weakness and great pain.

M. de Voltaire thought of this as he watched him looking so earnestly at the young man who was so crowned with gifts, with success, strength, and vigour.

M. Marmontel wore roses like the women who had passed to and fro the Pont St. Germain—sweet-smelling red roses, thrust into the black velvet ribbon that fastened the long lace ends of his cravat. His bright, sparkling brown hair was tied with a blue velvet knot; his white waistcoat was flourished with wreaths of flowers in many colours; his face was slightly flushed under the eyes that were fixed on the man before him, with a look of mingled humility, apprehension, and self-confidence, only to be seen in the faces of the very youthful and very happy.

Luc, with painful, laboured searching, made out these details. His grasp tightened on the straight young fingers.

“I congratulate M. Marmontel from the depths of my heart,” he said. And his voice was so soft, so sweet, so sincere that the man to whom he spoke gave a slight start. He was expecting another voice from this frail, ill creature.

“What does it feel like,” continued Luc, in the same warm tones, “to be young and famous? To have achieved so soon?”

“Monseigneur, you overwhelm me,” answered the young author frankly.

Luc smiled. His scarred face—the delicate traits of which had been so for ever ruined—changed with this smile in such a fashion—inexpressible, but not to be ignored—that M. Marmontel, with a sense of shock, knew he was in the presence of something very rare and beautiful, and his own achievement seemed a crude thing.

“I have done nothing,” he said. “I hope some day—but at present—nothing, Monsieur.”

He lowered his eyes, confused.

The low, sweet, aristocrat’s voice answered—

“You must not undervalue yourself, nor your great rewards. I am grateful you found time to come here.” He gave a little gesture round the miserable room, a gesture that was the man of quality’s dismissal of his surroundings. And indeed M. Marmontel, though used to the most splendid hotels of Paris, had forgotten the garret from the moment Luc had spoken.

M. de Voltaire began to talk: of the great world; of the world of letters; of the world beyond Paris, beyond France; of the future, and the great changes that were coming with a swiftness almost terrible. But for once Luc was not listening to the speech of M. de Voltaire; he was looking tenderly, lovingly, at the favourite of fortune, the man in the flush of his youth and fame, the man who had won glory at the first effort.

He thought of d’Espagnac and de Seytres—of how beautiful and ardent they had been, and how forgotten they were in their foreign graves—and his soul rushed back to his own early youth and his opening dreams. This man had realized his—this man had everything gorgeous in the world before him; he was modest and fine, but his extraordinary sense of triumph was betrayed in his clear laugh. He laughed often at M. de Voltaire’s remarks. No shade of envy or even of regret touched Luc. He did not think of himself at all; only he felt a little wonder at the thought of the two young officers whom he had so loved.

“Surely they too were worthy to be crowned,” he thought wistfully. And his heart swelled as he recalled Hippolyte dying in the hospital, and Georges in the snow.

When the two rose to take their leave, Luc, after his farewells to M. de Voltaire, laid a wasted hand on the younger man’s soft satin sleeve.

“Monsieur,” he said, with his unconquerable air of the great gentleman, “I have not held any roses in my hand since I came to Paris—seeing yours reminded me. Might I ask them of you—to remember you by, when you are gone?”

M. Marmontel unfastened the red blooms without a word, and held them out.

“Thank you,” smiled Luc. “You have honoured me. I give you all my good wishes—that your genius may make you happy as it has made you great.”

The young man did not answer. He seemed abashed.

When they had gone, Luc went to the table and put the flowers beside the proofs of his book.

The sun was near the setting, but the room was still brilliant with ruddy light.

Luc stood quite still, his hands resting on the edge of the table. He closed his eyes and bent his head.

“Is there no charm to bring any of you back?” he asked, in a low voice. “For a moment? You know now. Come back to me, dear. There is nothing in the way now, nothing. You know I am lonely, do you not?”

He swayed a little against the table, and set his teeth.

“Come back; come—back.”

He sank on his knees, and rested his face against the wand-bottomed chair.

“I love you—is it not strong enough? Come—back.”

For a while he shivered in the summer silence of the dying afternoon, and his blood ran passionately in his tired body.

Then he lifted his swimming head, and fumbled for the roses that had been worn by the man who was happy, and loved, and young, and famous,—the man who had everything he had hoped to have, and was everything that he had hoped to be,—and he laid the petals to his lips, and presently wept into their hearts, because he too was young, and some things that were dead could not be forgotten, and some hopes that were unfulfilled and some desires that were unsatisfied could not be for ever silenced.