Part 67 (2/2)
”But I, Therese?” the Marquis insisted ”It was ht? What could you have done? Acknowledge hihter ”There was Plougastel; there was my family And there was you you, yourself, who had ceased to care, in whom the fear of discovery had stifled love Why should I have told you, then? Why? I should not have told you now had there been any other way to to save you both Once before I suffered just such dreadful apprehensions when you and he fought in the Bois I was on ed the truth, as a last resource, to avert that horror But mercifully God spared me the necessity then”
It had not occurred to any of theht seem Had any done so her present wordsas they did much that to each of her listeners had been obscure until this moment
M de La Tour d'Azyr, overco coard face in his hands
Through the s open to the garden ca of a dru around them
But the sound went unheeded To each it must have seereater than any that an to speak, his voice level and unutterably cold
”M de La Tour d'Azyr,” he said, ”I trust that you'll agree that this disclosure, which can hardly be more distasteful and horrible to you than it is toof all that lies between us Or, if it alters anything, it isto that score And yet Oh, but what can it avail to talk!
Here, monsieur, take this safe-conduct which is astel's footman, and with itof you the favour never to allow ain”
”Andre!” His ain that question ”Have you no heart? What has he ever done to you that you should nurse so bitter a hatred of hio in this very room I told you of a man who had brutally killed irl I was to have married M de La Tour d'Azyr is that man”
A moan was her only answer She covered her face with her hands
The Marquis rose slowly to his feet again He ca his son's face
”You are hard,” he said grinize the hardness It derives from the blood you bear”
”Spare me that,” said Andre-Louis
The Marquis inclined his head ”I will not ain But I desire that you should at least understandyour dearest friend I will admit that the means employed were perhaps unworthy But what other ency that every day since then proves to have existed? M de Vilmorin was a revolutionary, a man of new ideas that should overthrow society and rebuild it ed to the order that quite as justifiably desired society to remain as it was Not only was it better so for me and , that it is better so for all the world; that, indeed, no other conceivable society is possible Every human society must of necessity be composed of several strata You may disturb it temporarily into an amorphous whole by a revolution such as this; but only temporarily Soon out of the chaos which is all that you and your kind can ever produce, order must be restored or life will perish; and with the restoration of order coanized society
Those that were yesterday at the top s find themselves dispossessed without any benefit to the whole That change I resisted The spirit of it I fought hatever weapons were available, whenever and wherever I encountered it M de Vilmorin was an incendiary of the worst type, a norant e proposed could ent man, and I defy you to answerwas true or possible You know that it is untrue; you know that it is a pernicious doctrine; and what made it worse on the lips of M de Vilmorin was that he was sincere and eloquent His voice was a danger that must be removed--silenced So much was necessary in self-defence In self-defence I did it I had no grudge against M de Vilentleman of pleasant ways, a hile flinging itself upon its natural prey That has been your error from the first I did what I did with the very heaviest heart--oh, spare me your sneer!--I do not lie, I have never lied And I swear to you here and now, by my every hope of Heaven, that what I say is true I loathed the thing I did Yet for my own sake and the sake of my order I must do it Ask yourself whether M de Vil ht the Utopia of his dreams a moment nearer realization
”After that You detereance would be to frustratein yourself the voice that I had silenced, by yourself carrying forward the fantastic apostleshi+p of equality that was M de Vilmorin's You lacked the vision that would have shown you that God did not create e which of us was right, which wrong You see what is happening here in Paris You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land fallen into confusion Probably you have enough i of what must follow And do you deceive yourself that out of this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don't you understand that society must re-order itself presently out of all this?
”But why say h tothat really matters--that I killed M de Vilmorin as a h it ht I can look back on the deed with equaniret, apart fro beside the body of your friend that day at Gavrillac, you insulted and provoked er you conceived me I must have killed you too I am, as you may know, a er you aroused in ive an affront to myself where I could not overlook a calculated attack upon id listening and wondering
So, too, the others Then M le Marquis resumed, on a note of less assurance ”In the h inadvertence I had no knowledge of the relations between you”
Andre-Louis interrupted him sharply at last with a question: ”Would it have made a difference if you had?”
”No,” he was answered frankly ”I have the faults of est would have weighed with ment--blame me very much for that?”