The Will to Live (Les Roquevillard) by Henry Bordeaux

THE Roquevillards moved in from the country after the departure of their son Hubert, who was in garrison at Brest, and took up their winter quarters in Chambéry. They occupied the second story of an old mansion that lay across the end of Boigne Street, alongside the castle. October was drawing to a close, and the sittings of the various courts brought the lawyer back to work.

One day, after luncheon, at which his wife had not been present, owing to her indisposition, Mr. Roquevillard called to his daughter Margaret, while Maurice was absorbed in the newspapers.

"Come with me, Margaret. You can give me some advice," he said.

"What about, father?"

He glanced toward Maurice, who, however, did not hear them.

"On a new arrangement for my study," he said.

This study and work-room, conforming to the angle of the street, which widened out at this point, was a spacious room, with a very high ceiling, lighted by four windows. Two of these windows, in a way, framed a picture of Savoy an history. They gave a view of the castle of the former dukes, a great block of stone buildings, blackened with time, dating from the fourteenth century, of a flat and heavy style of architecture scarcely relieved by some carving in high relief. This old and ruinous habitation was flanked on the right by the head of the Sainte-Chapelle, a delicate Gothic flower, which seemed to uphold, like some solid shaft, the bases of the fortress. At the right it was dominated by the tower of the archives, covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, itself crowned by a turret freshly painted white and looking quite vainglorious, like an aigrette or plume. These edifices of different ages and characters, their construction delayed or hastened according to the financial resources and ambitions of the princely builders, though less orderly, are more eloquent than the unified structures of a single master. A long sequence of history, with its hours of happiness and sorrow, dwells in them. The two towers rose out of a confused mass of trees planted in two superimposed terraces, across which they seemed to intermingle. Beneath the plane trees of the lower level stood the recently erected monuments to Joseph and Xavier de Maistre. Thus, within a little space, dwelt the memories of many centuries. The place was as deserted as a tomb: only the past spoke there.

There is no such thing as getting accustomed to a beautiful view: one day of sunshine suffices to make it new again. When Mr. Roquevillard and his daughter came into this room, if the sun attacked the mournful facade without success, nevertheless it tinted with rose the fine gothic lace-work of the chapel, and above the lighter branches that had begun to lose their leaves, it endowed the vine on the tower of the archives with fresh splendour, and showed even the vainglorious little turret at its best.

"You've everything very comfortable for your work here," said Margaret. "I'm glad, for you work so hard."

"I should have liked your mother to take this room for her drawing-room," said her father, "but she would not have it. But don't you notice anything special, little girl?"

She looked all round the familiar walls, at the book-cases encumbered with works on law and jurisprudence, at the portraits of former judges, her ancestors, more rigid than their justice in the painstaking canvases of the mediocre artists, a view of the Lake of Bourget by Hugard, the best of the Savoyan landscapists, and finally the framed map of La Vigie in the place of honour.

"No, nothing," she declared, after her inspection.

"That's because you're looking too high."

She noticed then that the heavy oak table, large, enough to hold as many briefs as one could possibly desire, had made way for one that was smaller and more elegant, placed so that it had the best of both light and view.

"Oh," she cried, "why do you put yourself back like this?"

"Why, to make room for your brother."

"For Maurice? Is he leaving Mr. Frasne's office?"

"Yes. He's to have a place near the window here. See how autumn is shaking off the plane-tree leaves. I prefer the spring. There's a Judas tree beneath the turret that's a bright red then, and plum trees in blossom."

Margaret hardly heard him, and looked quite downcast.

"It's lovely for Maurice, yes," she said; "but how about you?"