ose from him. In a similar mood, the spiritual waverer vows to
believe if the saint will appear. However, she submitted. Then there was
joy in the family, and she tasted their caresses.
CHAPTER IX
After his deed of loftiness Alvan walked to his hotel, where the sight
of the room Clotilde had entered that morning caught his breath. He
proceeded to write his first letter to General von Rudiger, repressing
his heart's intimations that he had stepped out of the friendly path,
and was on a strange and tangled one. The sense of power in him was
leonine enough to promise the forcing of a way whithersoever the
path: yet did that ghost of her figure across the room haunt him with
searching eyes. They set him spying over himself at an actor who had not
needed to be acting his part, brilliant though it was. He crammed his
energy into his idea of the part, to carry it forward victoriously.
Before the world, it would without question redound to his credit, and
he heard the world acclaiming him:
'Alvan's wife was honourably won, as became the wife of a Doctor of
Law, from the bosom of her family, when he could have had her in the
old lawless fashion, for a call to a coachman! Alvan, the republican,
is eminently a citizen. Consider his past life by that test of his
character.'
He who had many times defied the world in hot rebellion, had become,
through his desire to cherish a respectable passion, if not exactly
slavish to it, subservient, as we see royal personages, that are happy
to be on bowing terms with the multitude bowing lower. Lower, of course,
the multitude must bow, to inspire an august serenity; but the nod
they have in exchange for it is not an independent one. Ceasing to be
a social rebel, he conceived himself as a recognized dignitary, and he
passed under the bondage of that position.
Clotilde had been in this room; she had furnished proof that she could
be trusted now. She had committed herself, perished as a maiden of
society, and her parents, even the senseless mother, must see it and
decide by it. The General would bring her to reason: General von Rudiger
was a man of the world. An honourable son-in-law could not but be
acceptable to him--now, at least. And such a son-in-law would ultimately
be the pride of his house. 'A flower from thy garden, friend, and my
wearing it shall in good time be cause for some parental gratification.'
The letter despatched, Alvan paced his chamber with the ghost of
Clo
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