style="font-size:15px;"> “And so, Monsieur de Marolles,” said the Marquis, as Raymond closed the door on the group in the hall, and the two gentlemen were left entirely alone, “and so you have—by what means I shall certainly not so far inconvenience myself as to endeavour to guess—contrived to become informed of some of the antecedents of your very humble servant?”
“Of some of the antecedents—why not say of all the antecedents, Monsieur de Cevennes?”
“Just as you like, my dear young friend,” replies the Marquis. He really seems to get quite affectionate to Raymond, but in a far-off, patronizing, and superb manner—something that of a gentlemanly Mephistopheles to a promising Doctor Faustus;—“and having possessed yourself of this information, may I ask what use you intend making of it? In this utilitarian age everything is put to a use, sooner or later. Do you purpose writing my biography? It will not be interesting. Not as you would have to write it to-day. Alas! we are not so fortunate as to live under the Regency, and there are not many interesting biographies nowadays.”
“My dear Marquis, I really have no time to listen to what I have no doubt, amongst your own particular friends, is considered most brilliant wit; I have two or three things to say to you that must be said; and the sort of people who are now waiting outside the door are apt to be impatient.”
“Ah, you are experienced; you know their manners and customs! And they are impatient,” murmured the Marquis, thoughtfully; “and they put you in stone places as if you were coal, and behind bars as if you were zoological; and then they hang you. They call you up at an absurd hour in the morning, and they take you out into a high place, and drop you down through a hole as if you were a penny put into a savings box; and other people get up at an equally absurd hour of the morning, or stay up all night, in order to see it done. And yet there are persons who declare that the age of romance has passed away.”
“Monsieur de Cevennes, that which I have to say to you relates to your marriage.”
“My marriage. Suppose I say that I never was married, my amiable friend?”
“I shall then reply, monsieur, that I not only am informed of all the circumstances of your marriage, but what is more, I am possessed of a proof of that marriage.”
“Supposing there was such a marriage, which I am prepared to deny, there could only be two proofs—the witnesses and the certificate.”
“The witnesses, monsieur, are dead,” said Raymond.
“Then that would reduce the possible proofs to one—the certificate.”
“Nay, monsieur, there might be another evidence of the marriage.”
“And that would be——?”
“The issue of it. You had two sons by that marriage, monsieur. One of those sons died eight years ago.”
“And the other——?” asked the Marquis.
“Still lives. I shall have something to say about him by-and-by.”
“It is a subject in which I take no sort of interest,” said the Marquis, throwing himself back into his chair, and abandoning himself once more to Mark Antony. “I may have been married, or I may not have been married—it is not worth my while to deny that fact to you; because if I confess it to you, I can of course deny it the moment I cross the threshold of that door—I may have sons, or I may not have sons; in either case, I have no wish to hear of them, and anything you may have to say about them is, it appears to me, quite irrelevant to the matter in hand; which merely is your going to prison for forgery, or your not going to prison for forgery. But what I most earnestly recommend, my very dear young friend, is, that you take the cab and handcuffs quietly, and go! That will, at least, put an end to fuss and discussion; and oh, what an inexpressible relief there is in that! I always envy Noah, floundering about in that big boat of his: no new books; no houses of parliament; no poor relations; no Times newspaper; and no taxes—‘universal as you were,’ as Mr. Carlyle says; plenty to eat, and everything come to an end; and that foolish Noah must needs send out the dove, and begin it all over again. Yes, he began it all over again, that preposterous Noah. Whereby, cab, handcuffs, forgery, long conversation, and police persons outside that door; all of which might have been prevented if Noah had kept the dove indoors, and had been unselfish enough to bore a hole in the bottom of his boat.”
“If you will listen to me, Monsieur le Marquis, and keep your philosophical reflections for a more convenient season, there will be some chance of our coming to an understanding. One of these twin sons still lives.”
“Now, really, that is the old ground again. We are not getting on——”
“Still lives, I say. Whatever he is, Monsieur de Cevennes—whatever his chequered life may have been, the guilt and the misery of that life rest alike on your head.”
The Marquis gives the head alluded to an almost imperceptible jerk, as if he threw this moral burden off, and looks relieved by the proceeding. “Don’t be melodramatic,” he remarks, mildly; “this is not the Porte-St.-Martin, and there are no citizens in the gallery to applaud.”
“That guilt and that misery, I say, rest upon your head. When you married the woman whom you abandoned to starvation and despair, you loved her, I suppose?”
“I dare say I did; I have no doubt I told her so, poor little thing!”
“And a few months after your marriage you wearied of her, as you would have done of any other plaything.”
“As I should have done of any other plaything. Poor dear child, she was dreadfully wearisome. Her relations too. Heaven and earth, what relations! They were looked upon in the light of human beings at Slopperton: but they were wise to keep out of Paris, for they’d have been most decidedly put into the Jardin des Plantes; and, really,” said the Marquis, thoughtfully, “behind bars, and aggravated by fallacious offers of buns from small children, they would have been rather amusing.”
“You were quite content that this unhappy girl should share your poverty, Monsieur le Marquis; but in the hour of your good fortune——”
“I left her. Decidedly. Look you, Monsieur de Marolles, when I married that young person, whom you insist on dragging out of her grave—poor girl, she is dead, no doubt, by this time—in this remarkably melodramatic manner, I was a young man, without a penny in the world, and with very slight expectations of ever becoming possessed of one. I am figurative, of course. I believe men of my temperament and complexion are not very subject to that popular epidemic, called love. But as much as it was in my power to love any one, I loved this little factory girl. I used to meet her going backwards and forwards to her work, as I went backwards and forwards to mine; and we became acquainted. She was gentle, innocent, pretty. I was very young, and, I need scarcely say, extremely stupid; and I married her. We had not been married six months before that dreadful Corsican persontook it into his head to abdicate, and I was summoned back to France, to make my appearance at the Tuileries as Marquis de Cevennes. Now, what I have to say is this: if you wish to quarrel with any one, quarrel with the Corsican person; for if he had never signed his abdication at Fontainebleau (which he did, by the bye, in a most melodramatic manner—I am acquainted with some weak-minded people who cannot read the description of that event without shedding tears), I should never have deserted my poor little English wife.”
“The Marquis de Cevennes could not, then, ratify the marriage of the obscure teacher of French and mathematics?” asked Raymond.
“If
