“And for what purpose, may one ask?” Florian was reflecting that Morven stood uncomfortably near to Bellegarde.
The saint regarded Florian with some astonishment. “One may ask, to be sure, my son: but why should one answer?”
“Well, but, monsieur, Morven is a place of horrible fame, a place which is reputed still to be given over to sorcery—”
“I would feel some unavoidable compassion for any sorcerer that I caught near my hermitage: but, none the less, I would do my duty as a Christian saint with especial proficiency—”
“—And, monsieur, you would be terribly lonely upon Morven.”
It appeared to Florian that the saint’s smile was distinctly peculiar. “One need never be lonely,” St. Hoprig stated, “when one is able to work miracles.”
With that he slightly smacked his lips and vanished.
And Florian remained alone with many and firm grounds for depression, and with forebodings which caused him to look somewhat forlornly at the sword Flamberge. For there seemed troubles ahead with which Flamberge could hardly cope.
19. Locked Gates
FLORIAN did not at once set forth for Bellegarde, to make the utmost of the four months of happiness he might yet hope to share with Melior. Instead, he despatched a very loving letter to his wife, lamenting that business matters would prevent his returning before February.
Meanwhile he had gone to the Hôtel de Puysange. Along with Clermont, Simiane, the two Belle-Isles, and all the rest of Orleans’ fraternity of roués, Florian found himself evicted from Versailles. His rooms there had already been assigned to the de Pries, by the new minister, Monsieur de Bourbon, whom Florian esteemed to have acted with unbecoming promptness and ingratitude.
Florian, in any event, went to the Hôtel de Puysange, where he lived rather retiredly for a month. He did not utterly neglect his social duties between supper- and breakfast-time. But during the day he excused himself from participation in any debauchery, and save for three trivial affairs of honor,—in which Florian took part only as a second, and killed only one of his opponents, an uninteresting looking young Angevin gentleman, whose name he did not catch,—with these exceptions, Florian throughout that month lived diurnally like an anchorite.
Nobody could speak certainly of what went on in the day-time within the now inhospitable gate of the Hôtel de Puysange, but the rumors as to Florian’s doings were on that account none the less numerous.
It was public, in any event, that he had retained Albert Aluys, the most accomplished sorcerer then practising in the city. What these two were actually about at this time, behind the locked gates of the Hôtel de Puysange, remains uncertain, for Florian never discussed the matter. Aluys, when questioned,—though the value of his evidence is somewhat tempered by his known proficiency and ardor at lying,—reported that Monsieur the Duke made use of his services only to evoke the most famous and beautiful women of bygone times. That was reasonable enough: but, what the deuce! once these marvelous creatures were materialized and ready for all appropriate employment, monseigneur asked nothing of the loveliest queens and empresses except to talk with him. It was not as if he got any pleasure from it, either: for after ten minutes of the prettiest woman’s talking about how historians had misunderstood her with a fatuity equalled only by that of her husband and his relatives, and about what had been the true facts in her earthly life,—after ten minutes of these friendly confidences, monseigneur would shake his head, and would sometimes groan outright, before he requested that the lady be returned to her last home.
Monseigneur, in point of fact, seemed put out by the circumstance that these ladies manifested so little intelligence. As if, a shrugging Aluys demanded of Heaven’s common-sense, it were not for the benefit of humanity at large that all beautiful women were created a trifle stupid. The ladies whom one most naturally desired to seduce were thus made the most apt to listen to the seducer: for the good God planned the greatest good for the greatest number.
When February had come, and Florian might hope to share with Melior only three more months of happiness, Florian sent a letter to his wife to bewail the necessity of his remaining away from home until March. The rumors as to his doings were now less colorful but equally incredible. Yet nothing certainly was known of his pursuits, beyond the fact that Aluys reported they were evoking the dead persons who had been most famed for holiness and other admirable virtues. And with these also Monsieur de Puysange seemed unaccountably disappointed.
For he seemed, Aluys lamented, really not to have comprehended that when men perform high actions or voice impressive sentiments, this is by ordinary the affair of a few moments in a life of which the remainder is much like the living of all other persons. Monsieur de Puysange appeared to have believed that famous captains won seven battles every week, that authentic poets conversed in hexameters, and that profound sages did not think far less frequently about philosophy than their family affairs. As if too, Aluys cried out, it were not very pleasant to know the littlenesses of the great and the frailties of the most admirable! Aeschylus had confessed to habitual drunkenness, the prophet Moses stuttered, and Charlemagne told how terribly he had suffered with bunions. Monsieur de Puysange ought to be elated by securing these valuable bits of historical information, but, to the contrary, they seemed to depress him. He regretted, one judged, that his colloquies with the renowned dead revealed that human history had been shaped and guided by human beings. A romantic! was Aluys’ verdict: and you cannot cure that. The gentleman will have an unhappy life.
“His wives die quickly,” was hazarded.
“They would,” Aluys returned: “and it makes for the benefit of all parties.”
Upon the first day of March, when Florian could hope at most to share only two more months of happiness with Melior, Florian sent a letter to his wife announcing the postponement until April of his homecoming. And throughout this month too he lived in equal mystery, except that toward the end of March he entertained a party of young persons at a supper followed by the debauch just then most fashionable, a fête d’Adam.
“Let us not be epigrammatic,” Florian had said, at outset. “Love differs from marriage; and men are different from women: and a restatement of either of these facts is cleverness. It is understood that we are all capable of such revamping. So let us, upon this my birthnight, talk logically.”
They discussed, in consequence, the new world and the new era that was upon them. For Europe was just then tidying up the ruin into which the insane ambition of one man, discredited Louis Quatorze, had plunged civilization. All the conventions of society had given way under the strain of war, so that the younger generation was left without any illusions. Those older people, who had so boggled matters, had been thrust aside in favor of more youthful and more vigorous exponents of quite new fallacies, and everyone knew that he was privileged to live at a period in the world’s history hitherto unparalleled. So they had a great deal to talk over at supper, with the errors of human society at last triumphantly exposed, and with the younger generation at last permitted utter freedom in self expression, and with recipes for all the needful social regeneration obtainable everywhere.
“We live,” it was confidently stated, “in a new world, which can never again become the world we used to know.”