Luc dismissed Carola Koklinska from his thoughts as he would have brushed a dead leaf from his coat, but he could not so easily banish the sensation that something distasteful and sad had occurred; this clung to him like the vague remembrance of an evil dream. His stately lodgings seemed more lonely; the aspect of the city had something hard, even cruel and menacing, in it; he felt farther from the accomplishment of his desires. The usual letter from home awoke an even deeper sense of responsibility and of yearning, the extraordinary mingled feelings of desire for freedom from everything and desire to fulfil his duty to the utmost towards those whom he loved and honoured.

Yet his sweet serenity lifted him above any sense of struggle; he was like one waiting for commands.

If M. Amelot did not answer his letter within a day or two, he meant to wait on him personally and force the issue. It must be possible for a 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 chimneypiece.

“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 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?”

“Yes.”

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.