When at the end of another week the Duke also arrived, he was surprised by this state of affairs. Deeply touched by his brother's letter from Polignac, but believing that he detected in him rather a struggle against himself than a resolution actually formed, his Grace had intentionally delayed his appearance, so as to give time to the isolation and freedom of the country to work upon the two hearts which he believed to have been moved by his words, and which he expected to find in accord. He had not foreseen the absence of coquetry or imagination on the part of Caroline, the real dismay, serious resistance, internal combat, on the part of the Marquis. "How is this now?" the Duke asked of himself, as he saw that even their friendly disposition one for the other seemed to have disappeared. "Is it a sense of morality that has so soon quenched the fire? Has my brother been making an abortive attempt? Is his access of sadness from fear or spite? Is the girl a prude? No. Ambitious? No. The Marquis will not know how to explain himself. Perhaps he has kept all the powers of his mind for his books, when he should have bestowed them in the service of his growing passion."
The Duke, nevertheless, did not hasten to discover the truth. He was the prey of conflicting resolutions. He had succeeded in gaining a thorough knowledge of the state of the Marquis's affairs. The income of the latter was barely thirty thousand francs, twelve thousand of which were given over as a pension to his spendthrift brother. The rest was applied almost entirely to the support and service of the Marchioness, and the Marquis himself lived in his own house without making any more expense there on his private account than if he had been an unobtrusive guest.
The Duke was wounded by this state of affairs, which he had brought about, and of which the Marquis did not appear to think at all. His Grace had endured his own ruin in the most brilliant manner. He had shown himself a veritable grandee, and if he had lost many companions of his pleasures, he had recognized many faithful friends. He had grown in the opinion of the world, and he was forgiven the trouble and scandal he had caused in more than one family, when he was seen to accept with courage and spirit the expiation of his wild and reckless life. He had thus undauntedly assumed the part which was hereafter proper for him; but there was a feeling of penitence which disturbed his mental balance, and about which he agitated himself with less clearness of sight and strength of resolution than he would have done if it had been a matter concerning only himself. Thoroughly sincere and well disposed in his lack of reason, he cast about him for the means of making his brother happy. Sometimes he persuaded himself that love should be introduced into Urbain's life of meditation and competence; at other times he thought it his duty to inspire the Marquis with ambition, dealing sharply with his repugnances and trying once more to suggest to him the idea of a great marriage.
This latter was also the dream of the Marchioness, one that had always been dear to her; and she now gave herself up to it more than ever, believing that her maternal enthusiasm at the generosity of the Marquis would be shared by some accomplished heiress. She confided to the Duke that she was in treaty with her friend, the Duchess de Dunières, about marrying the Marquis to a Xaintrailles, an orphan, very rich, and reputed beautiful, who was weary of her studies at the convent, and who nevertheless was very exacting as to merit and quality. From all indications the thing was possible, but it was necessary that Urbain should favor it, and he did not favor it, saying that he should never marry, if the occasion did not come to find him, and that he was the last man in the world to go and see an unknown woman with the intention of pleasing her.
"Try then, my son," said the Marchioness to the Duke, the day after his arrival, "to cure him of that wild timidity. As for me it is a sheer waste of words."
The Duke undertook the task, and found his brother uncertain, careless, not saying no, but refusing to take any step in the matter, and observing merely that it was necessary to wait for the chance which might lead him to meet the person; that, if she pleased him, he would afterward endeavor to learn whether she had no dislike for him. Nothing could be done just then, since they were in the country; there was no hurry about it; he was not more unhappy than usual, and he had a great deal of work to do.
The Marchioness grew impatient at this compromising with time, and continued to write, taking the Duke for secretary in this affair, which was not in Caroline's department.
The Duke seeing clearly that for six whole months this marriage would not advance one step, returned to the idea of bringing about a temporary diversion of his brother's mind by a country romance. The heroine was at hand, and she was charming. She was suffering perhaps a little from the very apparent coldness of M. de Villemer. The Duke devoted himself to learning the cause of this coldness. He failed utterly; the Marquis was inscrutable. His brother's questions seemed to astonish him.
The fact is that the idea of making love to Mlle de Saint-Geneix had never entered his mind. He would have made it a very grave case of conscience with himself, and he did not compound with his conscience. He had insensibly submitted to the strong and real attraction of Caroline, given himself up to it unreservedly; then his brother, in seeking to excite his jealousy, had caused him to discover a more pronounced inclination in this sympathy without a name. He had suffered terribly for some days. He had demanded of himself if he were free, and he considered himself placed between a mother who desired him to make an ambitious marriage, and a brother to whom he owed the wreck of his fortune. He had foreseen, besides, invincible resistance in the proud scruples of Mlle de Saint-Geneix. He already knew enough of her character to be certain that she would never consent to come between his mother and himself. Equally resolved not to commit the folly of being uselessly importunate, and to be guilty of the baseness of betraying the good faith of a fine soul, he worked and struggled to conquer himself, and appeared to have succeeded miraculously. He played his part so well that the Duke was deceived by it. Such courage and delicacy exceeded perhaps the notion which the latter had formed of a duty of this kind. "I have been mistaken," he thought, "my brother is absorbed in the study of history. It is of his book that I must speak to him."
Thereafter the Duke demanded of himself in what way he could employ his own imagination for the next six months of comparative inaction. Hunting, reading novels, talking with his mother, composing a few ballads,—these were hardly sufficient for so fantastic a spirit, and naturally he began to think of Caroline as the only person who could throw a little poetry and romance about his life. He had decided to pass the half of the year at Séval, and that was a noble resolution for a man who did not like the country except with a great establishment. He intended, by living on the most modest footing with his brother for six months of every year, to refuse six thousand francs of his yearly allowance; and if the Marquis should reject the proffered sacrifice, he purposed to employ that sum in restoring and repairing the manor-house; but he must have a little flirtation to crown all this virtue, and there stopped the virtue of the brave Duke.
"How shall I do," said he to himself, "now that I have pledged my word to her, as well as to my mother, to have nothing of the kind to do with her! There is but one way, simpler perhaps than all the ordinary and worn-out ways: that is, to pay her little attentions, but with the appearance of entire disinterestedness; respect without gallantry, a friendly regard, perfectly frank, and which will inspire her with real confidence. Since, with all this I am in no way prevented from being as clever and gracious as I can be, and as perfectly amiable and devoted as I should be in showing my pretensions, it is very probable that she will be sensible of them, and that of her own accord she will relieve me little by little of my oath. A woman is always astonished that at the end of two or three months of affectionate intimacy one does not say a word of love to her. And then she will find it tedious here, too, since my brother's eyes speak to her no longer. Well, we will see. It will, indeed, be something quite new and spicy to conquer a heart which is held in alarm, without seeming to do it, and to bring about a capitulation without seeming to have been a besieger. I have seen this sort of artifice practised with coquettes and prudes; but I am curious to see how Mlle de Saint-Geneix, who is neither coquette nor prude, will undertake to bring about this evolution."
Thus occupied by a puerility of self-conceit, the Duke no longer gave way to tedium. He had never liked brutal debauch, and his dissoluteness had always preserved a certain stamp of elegance. He had used and abused so much of life that he was sufficiently used up himself to make self-restraint no very difficult matter. He had said he was not sorry to renew for himself his health and youth, and even at times he flattered himself that he had perhaps found again the youth of the heart, of which his manners and language had been able to keep up the appearance. From the fact that his brain was still busy upon a perverse romance, he concluded that he could still be romantic.
He manœuvred so skilfully that Mlle Saint-Geneix had the modesty to be completely deceived by his feigned honesty. Seeing that he never sought to be alone with her, she no longer avoided him. And while without losing her from his eyes, he brought about in the most natural and apparently the least foreseen ways occasions to meet her in her walks, he took his advantage of these meetings by appearing not at all desirous to prolong them, and by himself withdrawing with an air of discretion and just the shade of regret which reconciled amiable politeness with provoking indifference.
He employed all this art without Caroline's having the least suspicion of it. Her own frankness prevented her from divining a plan, of that nature. In the course of a week she was as much at her ease with him as if she had never mistrusted him, and she wrote to Madame Heudebert:—
"The Duke is greatly changed for the better since the family event which brought him to himself, or indeed he never merited the accusations of Madame de D——. The latter perhaps is the truth, for I cannot believe that a man of such refined manners and sentiments has ever desired to ruin a woman for the sole pleasure of having a victim to boast of. She (Madame de D——) maintained that he has done so with all his conquests, out of sheer libertinism and vanity. Libertinism—I am not too sure that I know what that is, in the life of a man of high rank. I have lived among virtuous people, and all I have seen of debauchery has been among poor laborers, who lose their reason in wine and beat their wives in paroxysms of mortal frenzy. If the vice of great lords consists in compromising the women of society, there must be many women of society who easily allow themselves to be compromised, since so great a number of victims has been attributed to the Duke d'Aléria. For my part, I do not see that he concerns himself with women at all, and I never hear him speak ill of any woman in particular. Quite the contrary, he praises virtue, and declares that he believes in it. He seems never to have had anything in the way of perfidy to reproach himself with, because he establishes a very marked difference between those who consent to be ruined and those who do not consent to it. I do not know if he is imposing upon me, but he would appear to have loved with respect and sincerity. Neither his mother nor his brother seems to doubt that, and I certainly like to believe that this is a sincere but inconstant nature, which it was necessary to be very credulous or very vain to have hoped to fix upon one object. That he has been liberal in excess, a gamester, forgetful of his duty to his family, intoxicated with luxury and with trivial pursuits unworthy of a serious man, I do not doubt, and it is in these things that I see the feebleness of his judgment and his vanity; but they are the faults and misfortunes of education and of a life which began in too much privilege. His class is not usually made aware of duty by necessity, being taught everything that is just the opposite of providence and economy. Did not our own poor father ruin himself too, and who would dare say he was to blame for it? As to foppishness or self-conceit in the Duke, after seeking for it patiently, I have not detected the least trace. His conduct here is as unaffected as that of a country squire. He goes in the plainest and cheapest attire, and wins all hearts by his good-nature and simplicity. He never makes the slightest allusion to his past triumphs, and he never boasts of any of his gifts, which are nevertheless real, for he is charmingly clever; he is always handsome, he sings delightfully, and even composes a little,—not very well but with a certain elegance. He talks marvellously well, though not very profoundly, for he has read or retained only things of a light nature; but he confesses this with candor, and serious topics are far from being displeasing to him, since he questions his brother on every subject and listens to him intelligently and respectfully.
"As regards the latter, he is always the same spotless mirror, the model of all the virtues, and modesty itself. He is very busy upon a great historical work of which his brother says marvellous things, and that does not astonish me. Nature would have been very illogical, if she had denied him the faculty of expressing the world of weighty ideas and true sentiments with which she has endowed his soul. He carries about with him a sort of religious meditation of his work which causes him to be more reserved with me, and more communicative with his mother and brother than he used to be. I rejoice for them, and, as to myself, I am not offended; it is very natural that he should not expect any light upon such grave subjects from me, and that he should be led to question persons who are more mature and who are better instructed in the science of human actions. At Paris he manifested a good deal of interest in me, especially the day when his brother thought himself at liberty to tease me; but because he has not since showed that particular interest, I have not come to the conclusion that it no longer exists, and that it may not on occasion be again appare............