The Honor of the Name Part 128

"Compelled by almost universal opprobrium to retire from office, he left behind him animosities which will be extinguished only with life."

But what this article does not state is this: if Martial was wrong--and that depends entirely upon the point of view from which his conduct is regarded--he was doubly wrong, since he was not possessed of those ardent convictions verging upon fanaticism which make men fools, heroes, and martyrs.

He was not even ambitious.

Those a.s.sociated with him, witnessing his pa.s.sionate struggle and his unceasing activity, thought him actuated by an insatiable thirst for power.

He cared little or nothing for it. He considered its burdens heavy; its compensations small. His pride was too lofty to feel any satisfaction in the applause that delights the vain, and flattery disgusted him.

Often, in his princely drawing-rooms, during some brilliant fete, his acquaintances noticed a shade of gloom steal over his features, and seeing him thus thoughtful and preoccupied, they respectfully refrained from disturbing him.

"His mind is occupied with momentous questions," they thought. "Who can tell what important decisions may result from this revery?"

They were mistaken.

At the very moment when his brilliant success made his rivals pale with envy--when it would seem that he had nothing left to wish for in this world, Martial was saying to himself:

"What an empty life! What weariness and vexation of spirit! To live for others--what a mockery!"

He looked at his wife, radiant in her beauty, worshipped like a queen, and he sighed.

He thought of her who was dead--Marie-Anne--the only woman whom he had ever loved.

She was never absent from his mind. After all these years he saw her yet, cold, rigid, lifeless, in that luxurious room at the Borderie; and time, far from effacing the image of the fair girl who had won his youthful heart, made it still more radiant and endowed his lost idol with almost superhuman grace of person and of character.

If fate had but given him Marie-Anne for his wife! He said this to himself again and again, picturing the exquisite happiness which a life with her would have afforded him.

They would have remained at Sairmeuse. They would have had lovely children playing around them! He would not be condemned to this continual warfare--to this hollow, unsatisfying, restless life.

The truly happy are not those who parade their satisfaction and good fortune before the eyes of the mult.i.tude. The truly happy hide themselves from the curious gaze, and they are right; happiness is almost a crime.

So thought Martial; and he, the great statesman, often said to himself, in a sort of rage:

"To love, and to be loved--that is everything! All else is vanity."

He had really tried to love his wife; he had done his best to rekindle the admiration with which she had inspired him at their first meeting.

He had not succeeded.

Between them there seemed to be a wall of ice which nothing could melt, and which was constantly increasing in height and thickness.

"Why is it?" he wondered, again and again. "It is incomprehensible.

There are days when I could swear that she loved me. Her character, formerly so irritable, is entirely changed; she is gentleness itself."

But he could not conquer his aversion; it was stronger than his own will.

These unavailing regrets, and the disappointments and sorrow that preyed upon him, undoubtedly aggravated the bitterness and severity of Martial's policy.

But he, at least, knew how to fall n.o.bly.

He pa.s.sed, without even a change of countenance, from almost omnipotence to a position so compromising that his very life was endangered.

On seeing his ante-chambers, formerly thronged with flatterers and office-seekers, empty and deserted, he laughed, and his laugh was unaffected.

"The ship is sinking," said he; "the rats have deserted it."

He did not even pale when the noisy crowd came to hoot and curse and hurl stones at his windows; and when Otto, his faithful _valet de chambre_, entreated him to a.s.sume a disguise and make his escape through the gardens, he responded:

"By no means! I am simply odious; I do not wish to become ridiculous!"

They could not even dissuade him from going to a window and looking down upon the rabble in the street below.

A singular idea had just occurred to him.

"If Jean Lacheneur is still alive," he thought, "how much he would enjoy this! And if he is alive, he is undoubtedly there in the foremost rank, urging on the crowd."

And he wished to see.

But Jean Lacheneur was in Russia at that epoch. The excitement subsided; the Hotel de Sairmeuse was not seriously threatened. Still Martial realized that it would be better for him to go away for a while, and allow people to forget him.

He did not ask the d.u.c.h.ess to accompany him.

"The fault has been mine entirely," he said to her, "and to make you suffer for it by condemning you to exile would be unjust. Remain here; I think it will be much better for you to remain here."

She did not offer to go with him. It would have been a pleasure to her, but she dared not leave Paris. She knew that she must remain in order to insure the silence of her persecutors. Both times she had left Paris before, all came near being discovered, and yet she had Aunt Medea, then, to take her place.

Martial went away, accompanied only by his devoted servant, Otto.

In intelligence, this man was decidedly superior to his position; he possessed an independent fortune, and he had a hundred reasons--one, by the way, was a very pretty one--for desiring to remain in Paris; but his master was in trouble, and he did not hesitate.

For four years the Duc de Sairmeuse wandered over Europe, ever accompanied by his _ennui_ and his dejection, and chafing beneath the burden of a life no longer animated by interest or sustained by hope.

He remained awhile in London, then he went to Vienna, afterward to Venice. One day he was seized by an irresistible desire to see Paris again, and he returned.

It was not a very prudent step, perhaps. His bitterest enemies--personal enemies, whom he had mortally offended and persecuted--were in power; but he did not hesitate. Besides, how could they injure him, since he had no favors to ask, no cravings of ambition to satisfy?

The exile which had weighed so heavily upon him, the sorrow, the disappointments and loneliness he had endured had softened his nature and inclined his heart to tenderness; and he returned firmly resolved to overcome his aversion to his wife, and seek a reconciliation.

"Old age is approaching," he thought. "If I have not a beloved wife at my fireside, I may at least have a friend."

His manner toward her, on his return, astonished Mme. Blanche. She almost believed she saw again the Martial of the little blue salon at Courtornieu; but the realization of her cherished dream was now only another torture added to all the others.

Martial was striving to carry his plan into execution, when the following laconic epistle came to him one day through the post:

"Monsieur le Duc--I, if I were in your place, would watch my wife."

It was only an anonymous letter, but Martial's blood mounted to his forehead.