Seeking them from me, my nephew,' said the
Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger--they were now standing
by the hearth--you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.
Every fine straight line in the clear
whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he
stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand.
Once again he touched him on the breast, as
though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate
finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,
`My friend, I will die, perpetuating the
system under which I have lived.'
When he had said it, he took a culminating
pinch of Snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
`Better to be a rational creature,' he
added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, `and accept your natural
destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.'
`This property and France
`Are they both yours to renounce? France
`I had no intention, in the words I used,
to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow---
`Which I have the vanity to hope is not
probable.'
`--or twenty years hence---'
`You do me too much honour,' said the
Marquis; `still, I prefer that supposition.'
`--I would abandon it, and live otherwise
and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of
misery and ruin?'
`Hah!' said the Marquis, glancing round the
luxurious room. `To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity,
under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste,
mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and
suffering.'
`Hah!' said the Marquis again, in a
well-satisfied manner.
`If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put
into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is
possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people Who
cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance,
may, in another generation, suffer less; bat it is not for me. There is a curse
on it, and on all this land.'
`And you?' said the uncle. `Forgive my
curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?'
`I must do, to live, what others of my
countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day--work.'
`In England
`Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from
me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear
it in no other.'
The ringing of the
bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly,
through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened
for the retreating step of his valet.
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