“Forgive me, father” Lucien answered stiffly; “there is no cigar that can scatter my troubles.” Tears came to his eyes at the words.
“It must surely be Divine Providence that prompted me to take a little exercise to shake off a traveler’s morning drowsiness,” said the churchman. “A divine prompting to fulfil my mission here on earth by consoling you.—What great trouble can you have at your age?”
“Your consolations, father, can do nothing for me. You are a Spaniard, I am a Frenchman; you believe in the commandments of the Church, I am an atheist.”
“Santa Virgen del Pilar! you are an atheist!” cried the other, laying a hand on Lucien’s arm with maternal solicitude. “Ah! here is one of the curious things I promised myself to see in Paris. We, in Spain, do not believe in atheists. There is no country but France where one can have such opinions at nineteen years.”
“Oh! I am an atheist in the fullest sense of the word. I have no belief in God, in society, in happiness. Take a good look at me, father; for in a few hours’ time life will be over for me. My last sun has risen,” said Lucien; with a sort of rhetorical effect he waved his hand towards the sky.
“How so; what have you done that you must die? Who has condemned you to die?”
“A tribunal from which there is no appeal—I myself.”
“You, child!” cried the priest. “Have you killed a man? Is the scaffold waiting for you? Let us reason together a little. If you are resolved, as you say, to return to nothingness, everything on earth is indifferent to you, is it not?”
Lucien bowed assent.
“Very well, then; can you not tell me about your troubles? Some little affair of the heart has taken a bad turn, no doubt?”
Lucien shrugged his shoulders very significantly.
“Are you resolved to kill yourself to escape dishonor, or do you despair of life? Very good. You can kill yourself at Poitiers quite as easily as at Angoulême, and at Tours it will be no harder than at Poitiers. The quicksands of the Loire never give up their prey—”
“No, father,” said Lucien; “I have settled it all. Not three weeks ago I chanced upon the most charming raft that can ferry a man sick and tired of this life into the other world—”
“The other world? You are not an atheist.”
“Oh! by another world I mean my next transformation, animal or plant.”
“Have you some incurable disease?”
“Yes, father.”
“Ah! now we come to the point. What is it?”
“Poverty.”
The priest looked at Lucien. “The diamond does not know its own value,” he said, and there was an inexpressible charm, and a touch of something like irony in his smile.
“None but a priest could flatter a poor man about to die,” exclaimed Lucien.
“You are not going to die,” the Spaniard returned authoritatively.
“I have heard many times of men that were robbed on the highroad, but I have never yet heard of one that found a fortune there,” said Lucien.
“You will hear of one now,” said the priest, glancing towards the carriage to measure the time still left for their walk together. “Listen to me,” he continued, with his cigar between his teeth; “if you are poor, that is no reason why you should die. I need a secretary, for mine has just died at Barcelona. I am in the same position as the famous Baron Goërtz, minister of Charles XII. He was traveling toward Sweden (just as I am going to Paris), and in some little town or other he chanced upon the son of a goldsmith, a young man of remarkable good looks, though they could scarcely equal yours. … Baron Goërtz discerned intelligence in the young man (just as I see poetry on your brow); he took him into his traveling carriage, as I shall take you very shortly; and of a boy condemned to spend his days in burnishing spoons and forks and making trinkets in some little town like Angoulême, he made a favorite, as you shall be mine.
“Arrived at Stockholm, he installed his secretary and overwhelmed him with work. The young man spent his nights in writing, and, like all great workers, he contracted a bad habit, a trick—he took to chewing paper. The late M. de Malesherbes use to rap people over the knuckles; and he did this once, by the by, to somebody or other whose suit depended upon him. The handsome young secretary began by chewing blank paper, found it insipid for a while, and acquired a taste for manuscript as having more flavor. People did not smoke as yet in those days. At last, from flavor to flavor, he began to chew parchment and swallow it. Now, at that time a treaty was being negotiated between Russia and Sweden. The States-General insisted that Charles XII should make peace (much as they tried in France to make Napoleon treat for peace in 1814) and the basis of these negotiations was the treaty between the two powers with regard to Finland. Goërtz gave the original into his secretary’s keeping; but when the time came for laying the draft before the States-General, a trifling difficulty arose; the treaty was not to be found. The States-General believed that the Minister, pandering to the King’s wishes, had taken it into his head to get rid of the document. Baron Goërtz was, in fact, accused of this, and the secretary owned that he had eaten the treaty. He was tried and convicted and condemned to death.—But you have not come to that yet, so take a cigar and smoke till we reach the calèche.”
Lucien took a cigar and lit it, Spanish fashion, at the priest’s cigar. “He is right,” he thought; “I can take my life at any time.”
“It often happens that a young man’s fortunes take a turn when despair is darkest,” the Spaniard continued. “That is what I wished to tell you,
