Chapter 10: The Duke

In the waning afternoon, when the Parisian sun began its slow descent, casting long, melancholic shadows across the city, Charles took a carriage, its wheels a sombre drumbeat on the cobblestones, to pay a formal visit to the imposing residence of His Grace, the Duke de Tréville.

Compared to the somewhat dilapidated, almost threadbare, and undeniably financially straitened household of his grandfather, the Marquis, the Duke de Tréville’s mansion, sprawling in its aristocratic grandeur, truly lived up to that succinct, seven-character encomium so prized by the discerning: high-end, atmospheric, and decidedly top-grade. It was a fortress of old money and unyielding tradition.

Here, meticulously manicured gardens, a symphony of ordered verdure and precisely sculpted parterres, bloomed in disciplined splendour. The hôtel particulier itself, a vast edifice of pale, venerable stone, was a testament to gilded magnificence, its tall windows reflecting the sky with a cool, indifferent hauteur. Within its hallowed halls, the liveried servants, their hair meticulously powdered, their cravats tied with an almost starched perfection – just as in the bygone, more glorious, and perhaps more certain, era of the Ancien Régime – moved about their duties with an air of self-important, almost disdainful and utterly silent efficiency.

Having stated his purpose and his name to the liveried footman who guarded the imposing, carved oak entrance doors with the vigilance of a palace sentinel, Charles waited, with a carefully cultivated patience, in the vast, echoing antechamber to be announced.

Although the residences of the two brothers, the Bonapartist Marquis and the Legitimist Duke, were separated by only a few lieues across the sprawling map of Paris, the number of times Charles had crossed the threshold of this grand ducal establishment in his entire life could still, with ease, be counted on the fingers of one hand. It was a place of alien splendour and of familial estrangement.

After a considerable and no doubt deliberately calculated wait, a senior servant, his expression one of haughty, almost glacial, condescension, emerged from the inner sanctum of the mansion. “His Grace the Duke,” he announced, his voice as devoid of warmth as his master’s reputed heart, “is declining all visitors today.” His tone was dismissive, final.

To be snubbed so blatantly? So unceremoniously? Charles was momentarily taken aback, a flicker of hot annoyance, though quickly suppressed, in his usually cold eyes. He had anticipated resistance, but not such overt discourtesy.

“Then you will be so good as to return and inform His Grace,” Charles said, his voice deceptively calm, yet with an underlying edge of unyielding steel that the servant, for all his practiced hauteur, could not fail to detect. Charles’s gaze, direct and unwavering, fixed intently on the impertinent menial. “Inform him that if he declines to receive me today, then my cousin’s impending wedding, an alliance which is, I believe, of some considerable financial concern to him, will unfortunately and most regrettably have to be… indefinitely postponed. Perhaps even,” he added, his voice dropping to a soft, almost silken menace, “cancelled altogether.” His words were delivered with a deliberate, almost malicious precision, each syllable a carefully aimed dart.

The servant, visibly startled, his carefully constructed arrogance instantly crumbling, replaced by a flustered and fearful uncertainty, offered no further argument. He bowed, a jerky, ungraceful movement, and then turned and hurried back into the silent, opulent depths of the mansion to relay this new and rather alarming message to his ducal master.

After another, though significantly shorter interval, the servant returned, his demeanour now considerably more deferential, the earlier haughtiness entirely vanished, replaced by an almost obsequious civility. “His Grace the Duke is now available to receive you, Monsieur,” he announced, his voice several tones lower, and notably more respectful. “He awaits you in his private study. If you would be so good as to follow me, Monsieur de Tréville.”

“Would it not have been far simpler and indeed more courteous to have been so accommodating from the very outset, my good man?” Charles remarked, a faint, mocking smile playing upon his lips as he lightly and playfully, and with a touch of deliberate insolence, tugged at the servant’s perfectly tied, if now slightly askew, cravat.

The servant, wisely choosing to ignore Charles’s rather pointed and undeniably provocative jest, turned with a stiff bow and silently led the way, his dignity somewhat compromised.

Traversing the neat, meticulously raked gravel paths of a small, formal interior garden, its air heavy with the scent of unseen flowers, Charles entered the imposing, almost intimidating edifice of the ducal residence.

Following the silent servant along wide, echoing corridors, their floors carpeted with rich, ancient Persian tapestries whose vibrant colours had been muted by the passage of centuries, Charles, with a sense of detached irony, did not neglect to offer a silent, sardonic nod of acknowledgement to the stern, painted visages of the Tréville ancestors whose portraits, in heavy, gilded frames, lined the panelled walls. Their aristocratic, unsmiling gazes seemed to follow his progress with a mixture of spectral disapproval and haughty, familial curiosity.

The servant paused before a heavy, intricately carved oak door at the end of a long gallery, knocked discreetly, a mere whisper of knuckles against wood, and then, upon receiving some unheard, perhaps imagined, summons from within, opened the door with a silent deference and gestured with a sweep of his hand for Charles to enter.

As Charles stepped across the threshold into the Duke’s private domain, the door was immediately and rather pointedly closed behind him, the sound of its heavy latch clicking into place echoing with a distinct note of finality in the sudden, profound silence of the room.

The Duke’s study was exquisitely, if soberly furnished, yet it did not exude an air of ostentatious, vulgar luxury. Rather, it spoke of inherited wealth, of established power, of a taste refined by generations of privilege. Several tall, glass-fronted bookcases, their shelves groaning under the weight of leather-bound volumes – histories, philosophies, works of statecraft, no doubt – lined the panelled walls. The Duke’s massive, ornate mahogany desk, a formidable bastion of authority, was strategically positioned so that it directly faced the entrance, a placement that afforded its occupant a commanding, almost inquisitorial view of any visitor who dared to enter his sanctum.

And behind that formidable desk, his great-uncle, Philippe, the Duke de Tréville, sat bolt upright, as straight and unyielding as a rod of iron, his gaze fixed, with an unnerving, sombre, and deeply unsettling intensity, upon the young man who now stood with an outward show of calm respect, before him.

Philippe and his younger brother, Victor, the Marquis de Tréville, bore a certain undeniable, if superficial, familial resemblance. Their facial contours, the proud set of their jaws, the high foreheads, were remarkably similar, a clear testament to their shared, noble bloodline. And both elderly men’s hair had long since turned a uniform, distinguished, almost startling, white. However, the auras, the very essences, the intangible yet palpable atmospheres projected by the two elderly noblemen, were as diametrically opposed as fire and ice.

Victor, the Marquis, Charles’s beloved grandfather, possessed a sharp, penetrating, often fiery gaze, his speech frequently impassioned, his every gesture imbued with a soldier’s bold, almost reckless and undeniably charismatic spirit. He was like a blazing, untamed, and often unpredictable fire, capable of both warming generosity and consuming wrath. Philippe, the Duke, in stark chilling contrast, had a sombre, almost hooded gaze, his eyes cold and watchful, his movements measured, deliberate, almost reptilian. His demeanour exuded the cold, calculated, and utterly dispassionate reserve of a seasoned, cynical statesman, a man long accustomed to the ruthless calculus of power. He was like a block of unyielding, polished, and utterly unforgiving ice.

Indeed, the Duke de Tréville had, during the Bourbon Restoration, been highly regarded and greatly trusted by the astute King Louis XVIII. He had been entrusted with numerous important and often highly sensitive positions of state, and had even served a distinguished, if controversial, term as Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, after the Revolution of 1830, when the Orléans branch of the royal family had, in his unwavering Legitimist eyes, treacherously usurped the sacred throne from the legitimate senior line, the Duke, out of a profound and almost visceral disdain for Louis-Philippe and all that his bourgeois monarchy represented, had chosen to retire with a proud theatrical flourish from the active political arena. Thereafter, he had lived a life of carefully cultivated, semi-reclusive grandeur, a proud, unreconciled, and increasingly embittered Legitimist, a living monument to a lost, and in his view, more honourable age.

Given that the elder brother was such a die-hard, uncompromising Royalist, a staunch defender of the divine right of kings, and the younger an equally fervent, if somewhat more romantic, Bonapartist, a believer in the Napoleonic ideal of glory and strong leadership, it was hardly surprising, indeed it was almost inevitable, that the two siblings had long since severed all personal relations, their estrangement complete, bitter, and seemingly irrevocable. They inhabited different worlds, different centuries, almost.

Of course, this self-imposed, semi-secluded life by no means implied that the Duke de Tréville had become a man of no influence, a mere relic of a bygone era. Far from it. During his many years in power, he had cultivated strong, often intricate, alliances with many influential individuals whom he favoured, and these men, after the subsequent political upheavals and shifts in regime, had often risen to even greater prominence, many now occupying key, powerful positions within the current government – the present Prime Minister, the redoubtable Marshal Soult, being a prime, if somewhat ironic, example. The Duke, from the fastness of his Parisian hôtel, frequently, if discreetly, offered his trenchant and cynical opinions on matters of state and foreign policy, and these views, it was widely known in the inner circles of power, were listened to with considerable respect, and often heeded by certain very important and highly placed personages.

In short, Philippe, Duke de Tréville, despite his carefully cultivated air of disdainful retirement from the vulgar fray of politics, remained a significant, potent, and potentially dangerous figure in the complex, ever-shifting affairs of the French nation. He was a man to be reckoned with.

After Charles had entered the study, a heavy, protracted, and distinctly uncomfortable silence descended upon the room, broken only by the ticking of a large ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece. The Duke continued to stare intently, almost unnervingly at his great-nephew, his expression utterly unreadable, his cold eyes like chips of granite. Charles, outwardly composed, though his heart beat a little faster under that relentless scrutiny, met his gaze with a polite, almost bland and equally unreadable smile. It was a silent battle of wills, a prelude to the true engagement.

After what seemed an eternity, a small eternity measured in the slow, deliberate ticking of the clock, the Duke finally spoke, his voice a low, measured, almost sepulchral monotone, utterly devoid of any discernible emotion, any hint of familial warmth.

“How much,” he asked, his words direct, incisive, eschewing all conventional pleasantries, all pretense of polite inquiry, “do you know?”

Straight to the point, then. No beating around the bush, no verbal fencing. Excellent, Charles thought, a flicker of grim appreciation for the old man’s ruthless efficiency. At least we understand each other on that score.

“I believe I know a considerable amount, Your Grace,” Charles replied, his own tone equally measured, carefully matching the Duke’s dispassionate calm, though he allowed a hint of polite deference to colour his words. “However, there are still a few… particulars… a few rather salient details, that remain somewhat unclear to me. For instance,” he paused, his gaze steady, “the precise, and no doubt equitable manner, in which the Léognan family intends to divide the rather substantial sum of one million seven hundred thousand francs with you, Your Grace.”

“It appears,” the Duke remarked, his expression betraying no surprise whatsoever, no flicker of discomposure, “that you do indeed know a great deal, Monsieur. Perhaps more than what is entirely convenient.” He paused, his fingers drumming softly, almost silently, on the polished surface of his desk. “If you wish to hear the precise terms, I shall tell you. There is no need for further dissimulation. One hundred thousand francs are to come directly to me, for my services in facilitating this most advantageous alliance. Another hundred thousand will be distributed amongst those discreet intermediaries who have so ably assisted in the various arrangements. The remainder, the lion’s share, as it were, will be retained by the young Comte de Léognan himself, to do with as he sees fit. A most satisfactory arrangement for all concerned, would you not agree?”

“You are remarkably, one might even say astonishingly, generous, Your Grace,” Charles observed, a hint of genuine, if carefully veiled, surprise in his voice. He had expected the Duke’s share to be considerably larger.

“To marry off a Duke’s granddaughter in a manner befitting her rank and lineage these days, Monsieur de Tréville,” the Duke explained, his voice still utterly devoid of inflection, as if he were discussing the price of corn or the vagaries of the stock market, “the dowry required is, at the very least, half a million francs. Let us, for the sake of this discussion, assume it is precisely that sum. As matters now stand, I can see my granddaughter Charlotte suitably, indeed advantageously, married to a young man of noble birth and impeccable family connections, without expending a single sou of my own dwindling resources. Indeed,” a faint, almost imperceptible, flicker of something akin to satisfaction touched his thin, bloodless lips, “I stand to gain a clear, untaxed profit of one hundred thousand francs from the transaction. The net difference, therefore, between the customary expenditure and this… more creative arrangement, amounts to some six hundred thousand francs in my favour. In the France of today, Monsieur, a business transaction that yields a net profit of six hundred thousand francs in a single, elegant stroke is not, I assure you, to be sniffed at, even by a Duke.” The Duke’s tone remained utterly devoid of any discernible emotion, as if he were discussing the financial affairs of some distant, uninteresting acquaintance. “Though I may be old, Monsieur, my mind remains sharp. I can still calculate such sums with a fair degree of accuracy. Were I to demand a greater share, the Léognan family, being men of business themselves, could, and undoubtedly would, seek out other, more accommodating partners for their… particular needs.”

Charles raised an eyebrow in a gesture of reluctant, almost grudging, admiration for the old man’s cold, ruthless pragmatism. “Viewed in that rather… stark financial light, Your Grace, it is indeed a most… advantageous, and remarkably efficient arrangement for your house.”

“And what is it that you desire, Monsieur de Tréville?” the Duke inquired, his cold gaze unwavering, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, yet losing none of its steely intensity. “In consideration of the fact that you also, regrettably or not, bear the name of Tréville, and perhaps to avoid any… unnecessary unpleasantness I might be persuaded to offer you, let us say, fifty thousand francs. A clear, untaxed profit of fifty thousand francs for your silence, your continued discretion in this rather delicate family matter. Such opportunities for easy gain, Monsieur, are also not particularly plentiful in the France of today, especially for a young man of your… limited prospects.” The insult, though subtly delivered, was unmistakable.

“And if what I desire, Your Grace,” Charles countered, his voice soft but firm, his own gaze steady and unyielding, a spark of defiance kindling within him, “is the immediate and unconditional return of that unfortunate young lady, Mademoiselle de Léognan, from the convent at Blois?”

The Duke’s impassive, almost mask-like, expression finally showed a flicker of discernible change, a subtle, almost imperceptible tightening around his thin, cruel lips. He reassessed Charles, his gaze sharpening, a new, more dangerous light entering his cold eyes. “So,” he said slowly, each word dropping like a chip of ice into the silence, “it is your audacious intention, then, to take both the one million seven hundred thousand francs and the young lady for yourself, Monsieur? A bold ambition, I must concede. In that case, it is indeed quite impossible to purchase your silence, is it not?”

Charles coughed, a sudden, almost involuntary sound, a flush of unexpected heat rising to his cheeks.

Where, in God’s name, did the old devil conjure such an outrageous, such a… vulgar, idea?!

Though, he had to admit, with a sinking heart, given the cynical, grasping nature of the world they inhabited, and the Duke’s own jaded view of human motivation, it was perhaps not an entirely unreasonable, if deeply insulting, assumption for the old man to make… He felt a familiar weariness, a distaste for these endless, sordid machinations of greed and power. For a fleeting moment, he longed for something simpler, something cleaner, something… true.

“I am motivated solely, and entirely, by a desire for justice, Your Grace,” Charles declared, his voice now stern, his expression one of carefully controlled, righteous indignation. He would not allow the Duke to so easily tarnish his motives, however mixed they might in truth, be.

“Ah, yes, of course,” the Duke nodded slowly, a faint, almost imperceptible and deeply cynical sneer touching his lips. “Justice. A most noble, and in this instance, a most… lucrative concept. A justice valued, if I am not mistaken, at precisely one million seven hundred thousand francs.”

“It is, at the very least, Your Grace, infinitely preferable to condemning a vibrant, innocent young woman to a living death in a convent, to sacrificing her youth and her happiness, for the sake of such a sum!” Charles retorted, his own temper, long suppressed, beginning to rise, a flush of anger warming his face.

“The decision to send her to that… establishment was made by her parents, Monsieur, not by me,” the Duke stated, his voice still a cold, dispassionate monotone. “And they did so, I might add, with a quite remarkable, almost indecent haste, without even waiting for the day following her aunt’s unfortunate demise to pass. The young lady in question, I am reliably informed, is not even yet aware that she is the legal and sole heiress to a considerable fortune. Ignorance, in her case, is perhaps a temporary, if fragile, bliss.”

“But you, Your Grace,” Charles pressed, his voice sharp with accusation, “at the very least, you chose with open eyes to aid and abet their wicked, unnatural deed! You lent your name, your influence, to their despicable scheme!”

“If I had not done so, Monsieur de Tréville, someone else, some other accommodating nobleman with a similarly pressing need for funds, undoubtedly would have,” the Duke replied, his voice still a cold, dispassionate, and utterly unrepentant monotone. The logic was chillingly irrefutable.

“Then at least, Your Grace,” Charles raised his voice, his indignation now palpable, his sense of justice, however reluctantly embraced, thoroughly aroused, “it would not have been a Tréville who soiled his hands, who stained the honour of our ancient name, in such a despicable, dishonourable affair! Would it not?”

“Compared to the acquisition of six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur,” the Duke regarded his great-nephew with an expression of utter, almost pitying, disdain, as if addressing a particularly naive and foolish child, “what does a little… temporary dirt on one’s hands truly signify? One simply washes them clean afterwards, with a little soap and water, or perhaps, in this instance, with a portion of the profits.”

“Can a sullied conscience, Your Grace, a stained honour, truly be cleansed with mere money?!” Charles demanded, aghast at the old man’s casual, almost brutal cynicism.

“But of course, it can, Monsieur. It is done every day, in every walk of life. If you have the time and the inclination, I could recount for you a hundred such instructive tales, each more edifying, more illustrative of the true nature of the world, than the last,” the Duke’s voice was chillingly calm, almost hypnotic in its dispassionate certainty. It was the voice of a man who had seen too much, and believed in too little.

“If we are without money, Your Grace,” Charles said, his voice low but firm, his gaze locked with the Duke’s, unwavering, a spark of his grandfather’s indomitable spirit flaring within him, “at least we may still strive to retain our dignity, our self-respect.”

A look of profound, almost visceral derision and unutterable disgust suddenly, and shockingly contorted the Duke’s usually impassive aristocratic features, as if he were observing the clumsy, pathetic, and entirely contemptible antics of a particularly inept circus clown.

“Dignity?” he spat out the word as if it were a vile, crawling poison upon his tongue, his voice dripping with a cold, withering scorn. “Monsieur de Tréville, do you, in your youthful, untried idealism, even begin to comprehend the true, brutal meaning of that much-abused word, ‘dignity’?”

“I believe I do, Your Grace,” Charles returned his gaze, his own eyes, the clear, unwavering blue of the Trévilles, flashing now with a defiant, unyielding pride. He would not be cowed.

“No, Monsieur, I think you do not,” the Duke stated coldly, his eyes like chips of glacial ice, hard and unforgiving. “Permit me, then, to enlighten you, to offer you a small, salutary lesson as to the true, unromanticized meaning of dignity, as it is learned in the crucible of bitter experience.”

He paused, the silence in the room stretching, taut and heavy. Then, he continued, his voice flat now, devoid of all discernible emotion, as if recounting some distant, impersonal historical anecdote, a tale concerning strangers in a forgotten land. “After the… incident at the Carmelite monastery, where the priests were collectively and most brutally executed by the mob, your great-grandfather, my father, a man of foresight and pragmatism, realized that matters in France had taken a dire, irreversible turn. He immediately began to make clandestine plans for our escape from the encroaching madness. He himself, alas, was too closely watched by the revolutionary committees; he held little hope, he confided in me, for his own ultimate survival. Before our departure, a departure shrouded in secrecy and fear, he made me swear a most solemn oath, an oath upon the crucifix he always wore, to protect my younger brother, your grandfather, Victor, with my very life if necessary, and to ensure that we both, by whatever means, escaped France alive.” The Duke’s voice remained chillingly, unnervingly dispassionate, as if he were reciting lines from some ancient, tragic play. “I was but eighteen years of age that year, Monsieur, a boy playing at being a man; your grandfather, Victor, was a mere fifteen, little more than a child. We travelled first by a hired carriage, our few loyal servants driving the horses to their very limits, day and night. When we reached the outskirts of Reims, our luck deserted us. A revolutionary mob, inflamed by drink and rhetoric, discovered that we were fleeing nobles, ‘aristos’ ripe for the plucking. They opened fire upon our carriage without warning, without mercy, intending to kill us all like dogs. The horses were shot from beneath us, our faithful servants brutally murdered before my eyes. Your grandfather and I, by some miracle of Providence, or perhaps merely by the desperate agility of youth, barely managed to escape with our lives, seeking refuge in a stinking, waterlogged ditch. Then, under the blessed cover of a moonless, starless darkness, we continued our desperate flight eastward, on foot, with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the terror in our hearts…”

On September 2nd, 1792, during the September Massacres, revolutionaries, fearing a counter-revolutionary plot, stormed the Carmelite monastery in Paris and brutally massacred approximately 160 Catholic priests and bishops who had refused to swear allegiance to the new revolutionary government. This horrific event became one of the defining, and most terrifying, harbingers of the Reign of Terror.

The Duke paused, his gaze distant, unfocused, as if lost in the chilling, labyrinthine corridors of memory, reliving horrors that time had not, and perhaps never could, entirely erase. The silence in the study was profound, broken only by the relentless, indifferent ticking of the ormolu clock.

“We dared not seek shelter in any village or town, for fear of betrayal,” he resumed, his voice still eerily calm, almost detached, yet with an underlying tremor that spoke of unimaginable suffering. “Nor could we risk attempting to hire another carriage, for we were hunted men. We had almost no money with us, only a few gold louis sewn into the lining of my coat. And so, we walked, always eastward, towards the frontier, towards safety, keeping to the desolate countryside, the wild, untamed places, avoiding all human habitation. We slept in open fields, under the cold, indifferent stars, or in the damp shelter of forests. Fortunately, the weather at that particular time was not overly cold, or we should surely have perished from exposure…” He paused again, as if the recollection were almost too painful to voice, then resumed his narrative, his voice still a monotone of controlled, almost unnatural, calm. “We were hungry, Monsieur, desperately, ravenously hungry. Even now, after all these long, intervening years, I can still recall, with a visceral, sickening clarity, the gnawing, cramping, unendurable agony of an empty belly, a hunger that consumes not just the body, but the very soul. Your grandfather, Victor, always of a more delicate constitution than I, developed a raging fever on the road. He was delirious for much of that terrible journey, barely able to walk, his strength failing him. I practically had to drag him, at times to carry him upon my back, as we fled ever eastward, driven by a primal fear of capture. Looking back now,” a flicker of some unidentifiable, almost frightening, emotion crossed the Duke’s usually impassive face, “perhaps I should have forgotten my sacred oath to my father then and there, abandoned him to his fate! We survived, if one can call it that, on wild berries, on bitter roots, on whatever scraps of sustenance we could forage from the uncharitable earth. Sometimes, if fortune favoured us, if the fields were unguarded, we managed to steal a few raw vegetables, a turnip, a handful of beans, from a farmer’s neglected plot. I always ensured that your grandfather, in his weakness, ate first, whatever little we had. I do not know how long we ran, nor how far we travelled in that desperate, nightmarish flight. Days blurred into weeks. Until one day, I felt I could go no further. My own strength was utterly exhausted. My stomach was so empty, so hollow, it felt as if it were filled with nothing but dry, useless straw. And your grandfather’s head, when I touched it, was burning like a furnace, his breath shallow, his eyes glazed and unseeing. I thought then, with a terrible, cold certainty that chilled me to the very marrow of my bones, that we were both going to die there, in that desolate, forgotten, godforsaken place, far from home, far from all human aid…”

Charles felt a tightness in his own throat, a suffocating constriction in his chest, as he listened to his great-uncle’s harrowing tale. He could almost taste the dust, feel the hunger, the despair.

“And then, just as all hope seemed utterly lost, as I prepared myself for the inevitable end,” the Duke said, a strange, almost terrifying smile suddenly, shockingly, illuminating his grim, ascetic features. It was a smile devoid of all warmth, all humanity, a smile that sent a shiver of pure, unadulterated cold down Charles’s spine. “God, in His infinite, and often inscrutable, mercy, chose to favour us, to offer us a sign of His continued, if rather tardy, benevolence. Do you know what I saw then, Monsieur, in that moment of ultimate despair?”

“What… what did you see, Your Grace?” Charles struggled to maintain his composure, to keep his voice steady, but it trembled almost imperceptibly, betraying the turmoil within him.

“I saw… field mice, Monsieur. Several of them, scurrying amongst the dry grasses,” the Duke replied, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, his eyes gleaming with a strange, almost feverish light. “And in that moment, I swear to you, Monsieur, upon what little honour I may still possess, in my famished, desperate eyes, those small, insignificant, scurrying creatures were more beautiful, more desirable, than any woman I have ever beheld, before or since. Their faces, Monsieur, were like the faces of angels, their small, beady eyes shining with a divine light. Their rough, dun-coloured fur seemed to me as exquisite, as lustrous, as the finest Lyonnaise satin. And their faint, timid squeaking cries were more melodious, more enchanting to my ears, than any music ever performed at the Opéra de Paris, more beautiful than the song of the seraphim…”

A wave of profound, almost visceral nausea, sudden and overwhelming, rose in Charles’s gorge, and he fought to suppress the urge to retch. The Duke’s words, his tone, the almost sensual relish with which he described this grotesque vision, were deeply, profoundly disturbing.

“What is it, Monsieur? Do you feel… unwell?” the Duke inquired, his voice laced with a biting, contemptuous sarcasm as he swept his pale, shaken great-nephew with a disdainful, almost triumphant, glance. “Is this the full extent of your courage, your fortitude, your much-vaunted Tréville spirit? Without those angelic, heaven-sent field mice, Monsieur, would you be standing before me today, in this comfortable study, so eloquently, so piously, expounding upon the abstract virtues of dignity? Without my subsequent, and entirely necessary, theft of vegetables from unguarded farmers’ fields, an act for which I might have been hanged, would you be here now, in your fine clothes, lecturing me, your elder, on the finer points of honour? Tell me, Monsieur,” his voice hardened, “would you care to hear what happened afterwards? How we finally crossed the frontier, starved, ragged, and half-mad, but alive?”

Charles remained silent, his face pale, his mind reeling from the brutal impact of the Duke’s words, from the stark, horrifying images they had conjured. He felt a profound, unwilling empathy for the young man his great-uncle had once been, and a dawning, terrible understanding of the man he had become.

“After that, Monsieur,” the Duke continued, his voice flat and devoid of all emotion once more, “after that… illuminating… experience, I understood everything with a terrible, irrevocable clarity. Dignity, honour, morality, compassion – they are nothing, Monsieur, less than nothing. They are luxuries for those who have never known true hunger, true fear, true despair. To be alive, to survive, and ultimately, to live well, to regain what was lost, that is all that truly matters in this harsh, unforgiving world.” A cold, mirthless, and utterly cynical smile twisted the Duke’s thin lips. “The ‘Madame Royale,’ a woman who also learned her lessons in the crucible of suffering, spoke a profound truth when she said, ‘The Revolution trampled us, the nobility of France, into the mire, and we, in turn, shall offer that mire back to France as our lasting gift, our bitter legacy.’”

“Madame Royale” refers to Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France, the eldest daughter of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. She was the only member of the immediate royal family to survive the French Revolution. She later married her cousin, Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême. During the Bourbon Restoration, she was known for her implacable hatred of the revolutionaries and all they represented, and for her unwavering, often vengeful, desire for retribution. It was even rumoured, though never proven, that in her bitterness, she had plotted to destroy the Panthéon in Paris, the designated resting place of many of France’s revolutionary heroes and great men.

Charles remained silent for a long, heavy moment, the Duke’s chilling, nihilistic words echoing in the opulent, sunlit stillness of the study, a stark counterpoint to the room’s civilized elegance. He felt a profound sense of sorrow, not just for his great-uncle, but for the countless others whose spirits had been so irrevocably warped, so tragically embittered, by the horrors they had endured.

“Do you still intend to oppose me in this matter, Monsieur?” the Duke inquired at last, his voice once again calm, almost indifferent, as if their preceding, deeply personal exchange had never occurred.

Charles continued his silence for another moment, his mind a maelstrom of conflicting emotions – pity, anger, a dawning, reluctant understanding, and a stubborn, resurgent defiance. Then, at last, he slowly raised his head, his gaze meeting the Duke’s directly, unflinchingly, his own resolve, tempered now by a deeper comprehension of the old man’s pain, yet no less firm.

“Your Grace,” he said, his voice low but clear, imbued with a sudden, unexpected, and quiet strength, “I acknowledge, without reservation, that without your… extraordinary efforts… your undeniable courage and resilience in those terrible times, my grandfather, your brother, might well have perished long ago, and I myself, consequently, would never have been born into this world. I also acknowledge, with a sincerity that I hope you will not doubt, that you, and so many others of your generation, endured unimaginable, unspeakable hardships during the Revolution. But…” he paused, choosing his words with care, “I do not believe, Your Grace, that those past sufferings, however profound, however undeserved, grant you, or anyone, a license to act without conscience in the present, to inflict further suffering upon others, especially those who are innocent of any wrongdoing. And they are certainly not, in my view, sufficient reason for me to abandon my own principles, however naive or idealistic you may deem them to be, or to betray a promise I have freely given.” The characteristic Tréville blue of his eyes, so like his grandfather’s, that vivid, almost startling hue, now blazed with a proud, quiet, and unyielding light. “I have given my word, Your Grace, to see Mademoiselle de Léognan restored to her rightful place, to her freedom, and to her inheritance. And until the person who entrusted me with that sacred task, my sister, releases me from my vow, no one, not even you, Your Grace, with all your power and all your influence, will prevent me from fulfilling my commitment to the very best of my ability.”

The twenty long, bloody, and transformative years of revolutionary turmoil had, it was true, stripped much of that generation of French nobility of their more romantic, perhaps more superficial, concepts of “honour” and “morality” (though, in truth, such abstract concepts had perhaps never been as universally, or as genuinely, cherished as sentimental histories and nostalgic novels might suggest). Instead, many had learned, through bitter, brutal experience, the harsh, unforgiving, and often savage creed of the sword and of blood. These “reactionary nobles,” embittered and vengeful, were often the most die-hard, the most implacable, the most ruthless counter-revolutionaries, and for their perceived enemies, for those who had dispossessed them and destroyed their world, they entertained no thoughts other than retribution, a relentless desire for blood for blood, suffering for suffering.

If such a vengeful, almost tribal, mentality had been directed solely against their actual enemies, their direct persecutors, it might perhaps have possessed a certain grim, if terrible, understandable logic. But all too often, this cynical, embittered, and deeply wounded worldview had expanded, like a creeping poison, to encompass all of humanity, to infect all their dealings with their fellow men. Selfishness, greed, and even casual cruelty had donned the convenient, self-justifying cloak of “necessity,” of “retribution for past wrongs,” and all manner of vices, all forms of moral compromise, found ready, plausible excuses and justifications in the catalogue of past sufferings endured.

“Suffering, Your Grace,” Charles continued, his voice gaining strength, his conviction deepening as he spoke, “is never, can never be, a justification for inflicting further, gratuitous suffering upon others, nor is it a tool to rationalize wicked deeds, to excuse the inexcusable. If you truly believe that because you endured hardship, however grievous, in the past, you are now somehow entitled to arbitrarily torment, to casually destroy the happiness of innocent individuals in the present, then I, for one, Your Grace, will never, ever, agree with you. That is a path to a darkness from which there is no return.”

Charles delivered his denial, his quiet defiance, with a firm, unequivocal, and almost sorrowful righteousness.

In truth, he was not, perhaps, particularly motivated by a purely selfless, abstract desire to champion the oppressed or to right all the manifold wrongs of the world. He did not, in his more honest moments of self-reflection, consider himself a natural knight errant, a divinely appointed paragon of justice. If it were not for the inescapable, overriding fact that retreating now, abandoning Marie de Léognan to her cruel, unjust fate, would mean failing his beloved sister, Françoise, betraying her innocent, unwavering trust in him, a trust that had become strangely precious to him, he might well have reconsidered his perilous and increasingly complicated course of action. His sister's belief in him, her expectation that he would, and could, move mountains for her, had become a powerful, almost irresistible force in his life.

“So, you are saying, Monsieur,” the Duke inquired, his voice like a sliver of arctic ice, his brief, almost human, interlude of shared memory now entirely vanished, his eyes once again cold, hard, and unforgiving, “that you definitively, and with full understanding of the potential consequences, refuse to accept my… rather generous, and I might add, final… terms of reconciliation?”