CHAPTER XXIII.
COUNT MIRABEAU AND HIS FATHER.
An old man sat in the saloon of a hotel in Paris, awaiting an interview which had been delayed beyond the appointed time, a fact that seemed to give him no little annoyance. He rang the bell upon his table with violence the third time; and when the servant came, in obedience to his summons, asked if any one had called—a question the same man had already answered three times that morning.
The man answered with profound respect, that no one monsieur expected to see had as yet presented himself.
While the man was speaking, a loud, ringing step was heard on the oaken stair-case, and Count Mirabeau strode up to the door, which was obsequiously held open for his reception.
The old noble arose, and a faint color came into his face, while the young man approached and held out his hand.
“Welcome to Paris, my lord count. I had not dared to hope for this pleasure.”
The delicate and slender fingers of the old man clung around the large, white hand of his son with a touch of irrepressible affection. The light blue eyes, a moment before keen and anxious, grew misty; and the thin lips moved with a visible tremor before they framed the words of welcome, that seemed to harden and grow cold as they were uttered. In his pride, the first impulse of nature was suppressed on the moment; and dropping the hand he had not touched in many a year, the old nobleman sat down quietly, and motioned his renegade son to occupy a chair close by.
Mirabeau threw himself heavily on the chair, and dropped his hat carelessly on the floor beside it; at which the old man motioned the servant, who still lingered, and bade him place Count Mirabeau’s hat in a proper place, and then betake himself from the room.
Mirabeau laughed, stretched himself lazily in his chair, and waited for the man to withdraw. When he had gone, the count turned abruptly toward the old man, and said, in a voice full of the deep feeling which made his eloquence so impressive,
“Father, I am grateful to you for coming here. It is long since we have met, and longer, I fear, since you have cared to meet me. But now, I think, you will confess that I have not altogether degraded the name I bear. If men of my own class shrink sometimes from Mirabeau—the people love him.”
“Yes, I have learned this, even in the seclusion of my retirement. But I have also learned that Mirabeau uses this influence against his own class—against his king.”
“Not when his king is true to the people!” answered the count, promptly. “It is only when he refuses to be the monarch of all France that I oppose him.”
“They tell me also that my son has degraded himself into becoming the editor of a factious journal.”
“Degraded himself! Who dares to call a full use of one’s intellect degradation? I cannot make myself heard and known to the people of France by speeches only—the thought in these speeches must take various forms, and be brought home to every man’s understanding. Yes, I am the editor of a journal which speaks of hope, progress, liberty for the people. If such engines of power are a terror to the king and his haughty Austrian wife, so much the worse for him, and the better for us.”
“But, this is treason!” broke in the old man, angrily.
“Father, there is no such word as treason now. We have rebaptized the sentiment, and call it liberty!”
“And is this the doctrine taught by a son of mine! He forgets the noble blood in his veins, and gives himself up to the rebellious spirit which would equalize refinement with ignorance, nobility with degradation. The very ermine of royalty he is ready to drag in the dust.”
“And why not, if it fails to protect the people?”
“But the people are rising up in antagonism against the class to which you belong; this feeling may reach the king.”
“May!” exclaimed the count, with a mocking laugh. “Why, it is already upon him.”
“And you exult over it?”
“I exult over it,” was the prompt, and almost coarse answer. “Why should you be surprised at this? Was it not my own father who first repudiated me—drove me from men of my own class, and sent me downward to rule among the canaille. Was it not my own mother who denounced her son as unworthy of companionship with highborn women?”
“No, no!” interposed the old noble. “Your mother was blind to your faults, gentle with your sins. She, at least, deserves no censure at your hands. Many a tear has she shed over the alienation which was not her fault.”
Mirabeau drew a hand across his eyes, then dashed it down, as if impatient with himself for the feeling that disturbed him.
“My mother is an angel,” he said; “God bless her!”
“Night and morning she blesses you,” answered the old man, in a broken voice.
“But I do not deserve it.”
“No,” said the old man; “the best men on earth rarely deserve the blessings good mothers are ready to lavish on their sons.”
“Spare me—spare me! If I have given her pain, it has fallen back on myself with many a sharp heartache. But for her I should, undoubtedly, have been a worse man.”
A faint smile quivered across the thin lips of the old noble; some sarcastic reply was evidently trembling there. Mirabeau saw it, and his face flushed.
“You smile; you think it impossible that I could descend to a deeper level.”
“Was it not a terrible stride downward when you left our old ancestral home for the Jacobin clubs and gambling saloons of Paris?”
“Granted; but what sent me there?”
“Your own predisposition to low company.”
“Rather the parsimony of my father, who withheld the means by which a man of birth could maintain his position.”
The old noble drew his slight figure up with a dash of angry pride.
“Young man,” he said, “let me tell you now, if you have never learned it before, that my estate is yet cumbered with legal obligations, every dollar of which went to pay your debts. Years of economy have been forced upon us, that the honor of my name might be redeemed.”
Mirabeau, flushed and indignant, made a rude gesture of dissent, at which the old man turned pale; for the manners which his son had slowly adopted from low associations seemed threatening and coarse to a man of his superior refinement.
“Mirabeau! Is this gesture intended as a denial of my assertion, or is that hand clenched as a threat of violence?”
“I scarcely knew,” answered the count, “that my hand was clenched; we learn these things in our rough life here, and adopt the manners of the people with their sentiments. But this is certain, I did not intend to contradict a word you were saying. If I was rude, it was from impatience with myself that I had given you so much trouble, and with fate that cast my lot among gentlemen, without giving me the means of maintaining a position with the best.”
There was something natural and frank in this man, bad as he was, which won even upon the fastidious old noble, who, perhaps, understood his faults better than any man living. He smiled faintly, and held out his hand.
“Ah! my son, have you yet to learn that extravagance is not necessary to the maintenance of a great name?”
“No, father; but one cannot live upon a great name. Sometimes I have found it an incumbrance; the people distrust the aristocracy which traces too far back; and, spite of everything, my lot is cast with the people.”
“Against the court? Do I live to hear a son of mine say that?”
“I have not said that. But the court, and that proud Austrian woman at its head, have repudiated me from the first. It is royal scorn and courtly injustice that has driven me into the arms of the people, who adore me; the more because I am turned out from my own class and belong to them. In this way my nobility is worth something.”
“I have heard of your apostacy, and read your speeches, with shame and bitter sorrow,” said the old man, with touching earnestness. “If any severity of mine has driven you into this ruinous course of thought and action, I have come to redeem the mistake. Throw off these associations, so unworthy of your birth and breeding; return to the higher associations which you have abandoned; stand firmly by our good king and most gracious queen in the troubles and perils that gather around them, and no man in all France can rise higher or win such gratitude from king and people. Do this, my son, and all my poor possessions shall be divided with you from the hour of your renewed allegiance.”