Luc was back at Aix in the peace, the confinement, the even atmosphere of his own home.

He told his father that M. de Richelieu had not been able to do anything for him, and the old Marquis advised him to give up all thoughts of any further career and settle down in Aix.

Luc listened patiently, but no advice could have shown less understanding of his character; even while he listened his heart was throbbing and his blood tingling with the desire of life, of liberty, of action, of glory. The very moment he had stepped across the threshold of his father’s house he had felt the ordered, sluggish days fall round him like a chain; he saw the years stretch ahead in an uneventful avenue, with an undistinguished tomb at the end, and every nerve in his being cried out against it. His fruitless journey, the heavy disappointment caused by coming into actual contact with one of the men ruling France and finding him like M. de Richelieu, the persecution, the degradation, the misery he had witnessed in riding through Languedoc were but so many goads to urge him to a further attempt on fortune.

Paris blazed even brighter in his visions, and he thought long and often on the name of M. de Voltaire.

To please his parents, he still retained the forms of Christianity, and never hinted that he held that doctrine of free-thinking which his father so abhorred. But this reserve was another chain: he desired to be with those with whom he could exchange ideas, from whom he could gain wisdom, experience, and encouragement; not to have to be for ever deferring to those opinions, habits, and traditions that he no longer shared nor admired.

Hence the very affection that surrounded him at Aix, and which he had often longed for when with the army, became first a useless thing to him, and then another burden, another chain to hamper and clog him.

As, gradually and day by day, his father’s love made insidious demands on him, as almost imperceptibly he found his native sweetness giving way on many little points of difference, as he perceived affection laying hands on the most secret sensations of his soul, he began to revolt against this obligation of affection, of duty, of respect; he longed to stand, a free man, with his own life to make according to his own standards, unhindered by this fear of giving pain to those who loved him—the fear which had already made him deny his beliefs, and which now urged him to abandon his choicest hopes. His soul rose up against this exacting, tender love, that burdened him with responsibility; morally and mentally he stood alone, not desiring support, and strong to meet anything, yet through his heart and affections he was made captive to his father’s chair and his mother’s apron.

Autumn passed into winter. Joseph married and left home; this was another reason for Luc to remain. His mother clung to him with piteous fondness; his father deferred to him in matters of business, relied on him, treated him with courteous affection, dismissed all idea of his leaving them—had not M. de Biron and M. de Richelieu both declared politics hopeless?

Luc listened and waited; the chains became heavier every day. The Marquise was preparing another in the shape of ClÉmence de SÉguy, a good girl, beautiful and well-dowered. Luc, looking into her fair countenance, knew that she had never known an aspiration nor a sorrow in all her life; she bloomed in Aix like the late lilies he had seen in the garden the day of his return; pure flowers, modest with their own sweetness, they kept their heads bent towards the earth, and never lifted their petals towards heaven or the sun. Luc never looked at ClÉmence that he did not think of the Countess Carola; red like the trellis roses he pictured her, and, like them, for ever climbing and breathing perfume to the utmost clouds.

Yet these days were not wholly wasted; in the evenings, he would revive his forgotten knowledge of music, and play the clavichord to his mother’s harp; and then his thoughts would fly wide, and drink at immortal wells of unquenchable longing, and see the ineffable hues of skies only to be glimpsed at by mortals.

Sometimes, when he was playing thus in the dark parlour, he would have flashing premonitions of immortality in which this life seemed a mere nothing that he could afford to waste; there was all eternity in which to join Hippolyte and Georges in the quest for glory.

In these moments he felt an unbounded ecstasy, and his playing would take on a richness and colour that transfigured the light music he interpreted; then a veil would be dropped over the vision, and there would come unbidden thoughts of the hopelessness of all high endeavour, the sad end, the open failure of all noble, unselfish lives, the uselessness of all great enthusiasms, all the gallant efforts of the pure minorities of the world, all the eager aspirations of reformers, preachers, prophets, swept away and forgotten in the commonplace corruptions, needs, vices, failings, and blindness of humanity. And these reflections were as a bitter blankness of soul to Luc, and the comfortable room would darken round him like the jaw of hell itself.

But with equal conviction would come the afterthought that these broken lives, these lost causes, these ridiculed endeavours, these failures, these minorities had handed on the light from one century to another, and kept alive truth, courage, and all that is beautiful in the heart of man. Luc felt the intense force of the stirrings in his own bosom to be a response to these prophets, martyrs, lonely standard-bearers who were calling him to be one of them, to come forth from the sheltered happiness of common men and join the shadowy multitude who had climbed and perished and left a glimmering name behind. Life was little, yet tremendous; it was all a man had. Though its doings, its greatest events were so small, yet some could make marvels out of those few short years.

Millions did nothing with their lives, but all were not the same; the oak is large compared to the cherry tree, thought Luc, and some men can lift themselves. After the playing was over, and he was alone in his chamber, he would put some of his thoughts on paper for want of a better confidant—carefully concealing them, for his father considered it degradation for a gentleman to compose a line of verse or prose.

So the winter passed, and Luc remained in Aix doing homage to custom and family pride and family tradition and family affection. It happened that, at Christmas, a friend came from Paris and spent a few days with the de Clapiers; he was neither fashionable, nor of the Court, nor any admirer of M. de Voltaire and the new school of thought, but his speech unconsciously betrayed knowledge of a world that was alive with energy, change, and endeavour. Luc did not speak much with him, and never questioned him on any of those subjects on which he was burning to be enlightened; but when the visitor had left, Luc went to his chamber and wrote two letters, one to the King, one to M. Amelot, Minister for Foreign Affairs, both with the same request—that they would find him some employment for his eager abilities.

It was an extraordinary act of courage on the part of a nature reserved, shy, and socially timid; no one who knew him would have credited him with it; but he made no confidant of any. When the two letters were written, sealed, and lying ready for dispatch, Luc, with a flush like fever in his cheek, took up the pen again and wrote a third——

To M. de Voltaire.

A thousand hopes and questions rose in his bosom, eager for expression; but modesty and pride together forbade that he should put anything intimate before a stranger. He made the subject of his letter his opinion of Corneille and Racine; he asked the judgment of the great arbitrator of letters as to the relative merits of the two geniuses; he expressed the criticism he had conceived on the rival masters, and begged to know if he was right or wrong. He gave the address of an inn he knew in Paris, and prayed that the answer might be sent there, if M. de Voltaire deigned to answer.

He sealed this letter with more agitation than he had felt when writing either to the King or to the Minister, and with all three in his pocket went downstairs to post them.

When he reached the hall, he hesitated a moment, then turned into the sombre withdrawing-room in the front. The candles had just been lit and the curtains drawn, for, though not late, it was a wet, dreary day.

Round the hearth sat his mother, Joseph’s wife, and ClÉmence de SÉguy; Joseph was at the clavichord, his father on the sofa with a little book in his hand.

The tender figures and light dresses of the women were surrounded with soft shadows from the rosy firelight; ClÉmence held up a pink silk hand-screen which cast a full glow of radiant light over her small sweet features and pale curls.

The pretty whisper of talk was hushed as Luc entered and there was a second’s pause, caused, though he did not guess it, by the instant impression of extreme delicacy he made as he stood before the open door, the candlelight full on him, and behind him the background of the dark shadows of the hall.

He was unusually pale, and his eyes were too lustrous, too wide and bright, too deeply shadowed for health. His dark, simple, and rather careless dress, the plain waves of his smooth hair, accentuated the impression he made of something uncommon, exceptional; but this sense of difference was mainly caused by his expression, by a certain smile and flash in his eyes, by an extraordinary sweetness in the lines of the mouth and chin, by a proud look of motion in his carriage which was like swiftness arrested.

His sudden silent appearance made all who gazed at him realize in a flash his exceeding, uncommon beauty; it was as if they regarded a stranger, they even felt afraid of him.

He, all unconscious, came to the table where his mother’s tambour frame lay, and affectionately turned over the lengths of silks.

“How quickly you work!” he smiled.

Joseph, to conceal an unaccountable sense of confusion, commenced playing a little old-fashioned “coranto,” which was the only piece he knew perfectly by heart.

ClÉmence expressed her sense of the inexpressible in another way.

“How silent we all are!” she exclaimed, and rose.

Luc looked up instantly.

“I fear I disturbed you,” he said; she had come a few steps from the hearth, and their eyes met.

“You look strange to-night,” murmured ClÉmence, as if they had been alone.

“I have come to a resolution, that is all,” he answered quietly. “Nothing so very momentous.” He smiled, and looked from the girl to his father.

“Monseigneur, I have decided to go to Paris.”

The old Marquis put down his book.

“I thought you wished to remain in Aix,” he said, in a low voice.

“I cannot,” replied Luc. “Father, I must go.”

There was a note of almost entreaty in his voice, for his mother had risen and Joseph ceased playing, and he foresaw protest and complaint; ClÉmence had hung her head; all the old chains tightening about him.

“I must go,” he repeated.

“You have been away so much,” said the Marquise. “Will you not stay at home now, Luc?”

“Madame,” he answered, “I shall return, but I must go, and soon, to Paris.”

His father rose.

“But, dear Heaven, what chance have you in Paris?”

“I must make my own chances,” smiled Luc.

The old Marquis and Joseph both surveyed him with a certain pride. Luc was indescribably touched to see that mingled look of satisfaction and solicitude on their faces.

He crossed impulsively to the clavichord and the sofa, and held out his hands, one to his father, one to his brother.

“Do not think I am eager to be gone,” he said, with a fine flush. “It is only that I have not earned this home—yet.”

Joseph thought he referred to his fortune spent at the war, leaving him dependent on their father, and blushed furiously.

“Luc——” he began desperately.

Their father interrupted.

“Joseph, he must go. I understand. He will be the head of the family, and, bred a soldier, he finds this a poor life.... You shall go, Luc, but we must see you back soon.... Your place is at Aix.”