On a pale, bitter day in the following spring, Luc de Clapiers made his way with a steady, purposeful slowness to a certain house in the Isle where there was a garden. It was the hotel of some nobleman, neglected and shut up. The garden was neglected too, but there was grass in it, green now, and two trees, just beginning to be flushed with leaves that crossed their boughs before the shuttered windows and closed doors.

In the centre of this garden was a fountain, broken and dried up. The basin was grey with dead moss, and in the centre rose a defaced figure with a pitying face and a bare bosom girdled beneath with drapery, in the folds of which the little birds nested.

Luc, when he reached this spot, leant against the high rusty iron railings, and stared at the grass and the two trees.

He was fatigued and hungry. A week ago his recent means of support had been taken from him. During the winter he had earned his living as a bookseller’s hack, by writing prefaces, by indexing, by correcting proofs, even by copying letters and delivering books. The work threatened him with utter blindness. He began to make many mistakes. At last another man was put in his place, and Luc was at a loss indeed.

He had some time since taken a cheaper room, and he had sold everything he could sell.

Yesterday, to pay the debt he owed for his poor lodging, he had parted with what he would not have sold for bread—what he had hoarded jealously so long—his sword: the sword his father had given him before he went to the war; a beautiful weapon of Toledo steel, with shell and quillons inlaid with gold.

Half the price of it lay in Luc’s pocket, and this money caused him the first sensation of shame he had known in his life. He held on to the railings to steady himself, and looked at the peaceful enclosure of the ruined garden.

His great dread was that he might live long enough to become an object of M. de Voltaire’s charity. He had winced from nothing yet, but he did wince from that.

The second version of his book had been for long refused on account of the ill success of the first. After many endeavours, a bookseller had been at last persuaded to take it; but there remained a good deal to be done before the sheets were ready for the press, and Luc was too ill to write.

“I must finish that,” he kept saying to himself. “I must finish that.”

The fresh bare boughs, through which two little birds were flying, the long blades of grass moving slightly to and fro in the wind, even the noble lines of the empty house and the calm face of the broken statue, soothed Luc.

“Why should I trouble about any of it?” he asked himself. “Once I am dead, I shall so soon forget it all.”

He returned to the squalid little street, the miserable house where he lodged, and climbed to his room, which was dark and scarcely furnished at all. The narrow window looked blankly on the house opposite. There was no view, even over roofs, and the sun only entered for a brief while at early dawn.

Luc, coughing painfully, latched the door, and feebly made his way to the table that stood beside the mattress on which he slept. He put his hand in his pocket, took out the money, and laid it, a little pile of silver pieces, on the table.

“Should I die to-night, I suppose that would be enough to bury me,” he said to himself, with a little smile.

A cry filled the room as water fills a glass into which it is flung suddenly—rang round and round walls and ceiling—

“Luc! Luc! Luc!”

The Marquis turned in slow bewilderment; he dimly saw the figure of a man advancing from the window.

“I have been waiting for you,” said this person, in a terribly moved voice.

“Who are you?” asked Luc. He knew nothing, save that this was not one of his friends.

“Who am I? Do you not know me?”

“No—yet——”

“Can you not see me?”

“I can see very little—hardly at all. I know your voice.”

“I am Joseph de Clapiers.”

Luc made a step backward. His face, that had seemed utterly bloodless, was suddenly stained with a great flush of colour.

“I am sorry you have come,” he said. His thought was that it would have been better, far better, if he could have died before any of his family, or indeed anyone connected with his old life, had seen him in what must to them be degradation unspeakable.

“How did you find me?” he asked. He endeavoured, with the rising yearning of old affection, to make out his brother’s face, but Joseph stood too far from him. To Luc he was featureless.

“Some one I know heard a man called Marmontel speak of you. I traced you through that. They told me here that this was your room, and I waited for you.” He spoke in a controlled, though harsh and strained voice. After that first fierce cry he had gained command of himself.

“I am sorry you came,” repeated Luc, with quiet sweetness. “We had no farewell in Aix, but you would have kept a more pleasant memory of me if you had not come. Will you not sit down?” he added. He himself sank into the rough wood chair by the table; indeed, his limbs were shaking so that he could not stand.

Joseph came near enough for Luc to see his fresh comeliness; near enough for them to touch each other, and for the elder to divine the wrath and horror in the face of the younger. He suddenly saw himself as if a mirror hung before him, and the blood again swept his face.

“Why did you come?” he asked under his breath.

Joseph stared at him cruelly. Luc no longer bore any sign or mark of a gentleman. He wore a clumsy grey coat, worn, and a little frayed at the cuffs; his waistcoat, which was of a dingy yellow colour, was stained with ink; his neckcloth was coarse, though newly washed and folded neatly; his stockings were thick and woollen, his shoes heavy. He wore no wig, and his hair was long again, and tied with a black ribbon, but colourless and grey about the front, as if it had been powdered. Joseph marked the absence of sword, watch, and ring. He did not mark the fine freshness of the rough attire, nor reflect on the effort this decent cleanliness meant to the man who lived alone, half blind, and in such poverty.

“My father!” he murmured. “My father!”

“Did he send you?” asked Luc.

“No.”

“Has he ever spoken of me?”

“No.”

“Nor my mother?”

“No.”

“You—think they are right?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you here?” asked Luc patiently.

“Because,” was the fierce answer, “I cannot endure a de Clapiers to die in a hospital, and be buried at the expense of public charity.”

The elder brother lifted his ruined face and smiled.

“What do you want of me?” he asked.

“You must come to my hotel——”

Luc interrupted.

“You cannot coax back when dying the man you have cast out,” he said gently. “Nor would it soothe your pride if he should expire on your hearth. You think I am disgraced, accursed. You perhaps even hate me.”

“I think I do,” breathed Joseph heavily.

Luc rose.

“Then leave me. I have so little time left for anything; none at all for hate. I want to die alone. Go your way, Joseph. When I left Aix something broke that is past mending.”

“I think the Devil possesses you,” cried Joseph. “But you are Luc de Clapiers, and you shall not live in beggary among the scum of Paris.”

“I am Luc de Clapiers,” replied the Marquis—“remember it. I am not what I look, but what I was born: a gentleman of quality, who upholds his own honour—as well here as in Aix, as well here as in Bohemia. Be content; I shall not disgrace you.”

Joseph half laughed.

“Disgrace! I think you deny God?”

“And the Devil—and all you believe, perhaps, Joseph,”—his voice had an exalted yet tender note,—“but maybe I shall sleep well just the same in my unconsecrated grave.”

The younger man stepped back, clenched his strong right hand, and struck his breast.

“For the honour of our nobility, for the respect you once bore our mother, in the name of the God you outrage, I conjure you come with me. Let a priest shrive you——”

Luc broke in with a sudden flash of vitality.

“Do you think I am going to be false to all I believe—now? Now, ”—he dropped into his chair again; his strength was slipping from him, but he beat the words out with a great labour of his breath, —“now—when—I have—so nearly won?”

“You! You who have failed in everything you have undertaken!”

Luc put a thin, trembling hand on the book—a small humble volume—and the loose sheets of paper lying on the table.

“I have administered to the truth within me,” he said, and, still keeping his hand on the book, he forced himself to raise his head, that had sunk, through sheer bodily weakness, into his bosom, until he looked his brother in the face.

“You have dishonoured a noble house,” said Joseph hoarsely; “and I shall never forgive you, dead or living.”

“Ah!” answered Luc softly, regretfully. “The pity of such words as those!” His head drooped a little again. “The pity,” he added wistfully, “of all our fierce passions, our curses, our hatreds, our wrongs to one another, when there is so little any of us can do, and so little time to do it in. And we waste our few chances. Do not hate me—Joseph. I shall always love you.”

The younger brother was silent. It might be his heart prompted him to forgive; that old affection stirred. But the wrong against his religion, his pride, his order was too strong; the offences he raged against were unforgivable; the wrath, the disgust, the shame he had nourished in his heart since Luc’s departure from Aix were rather fanned than mollified by the sight of the dying man who had aroused these emotions.

Luc took advantage of his silence to speak again.

“Since you have come, Joseph,” he said, “let us part in friendship. We are the two last of our family, and—after all—that is something.”

“Will you leave this?” demanded the younger man, not kindly, but with a suppressed violence. “Will you come with me?”

“No,” replied Luc. “This is my place now. And it is easier for me to refuse you, Joseph, because I know that pride, not love, asks this.”

“Pride!” echoed Joseph. “You have the damnable pride of the Devil. You prefer your garret—your accursed book”—he snatched the thin volume from under Luc’s frail fingers, and cast it on the ground—“your outcast friends—to your family, your honour, your home.”

The Marquis made a faint gesture of sorrow and protest. “This is not needful,” he murmured. But Joseph’s vigorous voice overbore his feeble tones.

“Very well, then,” he continued; “die in the miserable loft your dishonourable conduct has brought you to, and leave us to endure your disgrace—as we have endured it since you left Aix!”

Luc got to his feet again, and stood holding on to the edge of the table.

“You will be able to blot me from your annals very completely soon,” he said. “When I am dead, no one will speak of me, and you can forget.”

He lifted his hand and let it fall. The little pile of silver pieces was knocked over by the gesture, and the money rolled across the floor to the feet of the younger brother.

“Is this Voltaire’s charity?” he cried.

Luc lifted his head, and smiled.

“No. I sold my sword this morning. So you see I can pay for my own coffin, Joseph.”

He sat down again and hid his face in his two hands, as if he was greatly fatigued, and wished to compose his thoughts. There was a dignity about this movement and pose, as if he had withdrawn himself into final silence. Joseph had no more weapons; his wrath flared impotently. He stared fiercely at his brother, and set his scarlet heel on the book he had flung on the floor; then, in white haughtiness and bitter speechlessness, left the garret.

“I am tired,” said Luc to himself; “tired—tired.”

He dropped his hands, and rose and looked round for the crushed volume Joseph had spurned with his foot. As he stooped to pick it up he heard a soft yet swelling crash of music.

“Soldiers,” he murmured, “going to the—war.”

The music gathered in strength until it culminated in an almost intolerable crescendo of passionate exaltation. It seemed to be very near, almost in the room. Luc found himself on his knees, quivering in the sound of it. The music began to paint pictures in the garret, and Luc’s blindness did not prevent his seeing them: gorgeous banners draped the bare rafters, and a procession with flags, shields, and drums crossed the humble floor, and broke away the mean walls, and let in the great clouds and the strong sunbeams, and showed a vast span of pure light that dazzled into the infinite distance.

A company with sublime tread was passing over this bridge, and they smiled at Luc.

He felt the clouds closing round him and the light enveloping him. One of the martial figures was a woman who looked at him with royal eyes.

Luc rose. He felt himself straight and strong. He held out his arms towards the rolling golden clouds that entered through the broken walls, towards the procession that crossed the arc of light.

“O God of mine, whom I have laboured not to offend, take me back whence I came!” he cried.

As he spoke, he felt himself drawn into the company with the flags and swords, and with immortal light on his face he set his foot on the end of the dazzling arc.

M. de Voltaire, that evening, found him lying across the floor, with his head on his book, his right hand where his sword should have been, and the silver pieces scattered about him sparkling in the cold spring moonlight that fell through the high, open garret window.