The young Comte Victurnien was taught to believe in his own supremacy as soon as an idea could enter his head.All the great nobles of the realm were his peers, his one superior was the King, and the rest of mankind were his inferiors, people with whom he had nothing in common, towards whom he had no duties.They were defeated and conquered enemies, whom he need not take into account for a moment; their opinions could not affect a noble, and they all owed him respect.
Unluckily, with the rigorous logic of youth, which leads children and young people to proceed to extremes whether good or bad, Victurnien pushed these conclusions to their utmost consequences.His own external advantages, moreover, confirmed him in his beliefs.He had been extraordinarily beautiful as a child; he became as accomplished a young man as any father could wish.
He was of average height, but well proportioned, slender, and almost delicate-looking, but muscular.He had the brilliant blue eyes of the d'Esgrignons, the finely-moulded aquiline nose, the perfect oval of the face, the auburn hair, the white skin, and the graceful gait of his family; he had their delicate extremities, their long taper fingers with the inward curve, and that peculiar distinction of shapeliness of the wrist and instep, that supple felicity of line, which is as sure a sign of race in men as in horses.Adroit and alert in all bodily exercises, and an excellent shot, he handled arms like a St.George, he was a paladin on horseback.In short, he gratified the pride which parents take in their children's appearance; a pride founded, for that matter, on a just idea of the enormous influence exercised by physical beauty.Personal beauty has this in common with noble birth; it cannot be acquired afterwards; it is everywhere recognized, and often is more valued than either brains or money;beauty has only to appear and triumph; nobody asks more of beauty than that it should simply exist.
Fate had endowed Victurnien, over and above the privileges of good looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a wonderful aptitude of comprehension, and a good memory.His education, therefore, had been complete.He knew a good deal more than is usually known by young provincial nobles, who develop into highly-distinguished sportsmen, owners of land, and consumers of tobacco; and are apt to treat art, sciences, letters, poetry, or anything offensively above their intellects, cavalierly enough.Such gifts of nature and education surely would one day realize the Marquis d'Esgrignon's ambitions; he already saw his son a Marshal of France if Victurnien's tastes were for the army; an ambassador if diplomacy held any attractions for him;a cabinet minister if that career seemed good in his eyes; every place in the state belonged to Victurnien.And, most gratifying thought of all for a father, the young Count would have made his way in the world by his own merits even if he had not been a d'Esgrignon.
All through his happy childhood and golden youth, Victurnien had never met with opposition to his wishes.He had been the king of the house;no one curbed the little prince's will; and naturally he grew up insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,--defects of character which any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of the noble.
The Chevalier was a man of the good old times when the Gray Musketeers were the terror of the Paris theatres, when they horsewhipped the watch and drubbed servers of writs, and played a host of page's pranks, at which Majesty was wont to smile so long as they were amusing.This charming deceiver and hero of the ruelles had no small share in bringing about the disasters which afterwards befell.The amiable old gentleman, with nobody to understand him, was not a little pleased to find a budding Faublas, who looked the part to admiration, and put him in mind of his own young days.So, making no allowance for the difference of the times, he sowed the maxims of a roue of the Encyclopaedic period broadcast in the boy's mind.He told wicked anecdotes of the reign of His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the manners and customs of the year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's comedies and Beaumarchais' epigrams.And unfortunately, the corruption lurking beneath the utmost polish tricked itself out in Voltairean wit.If the Chevalier went rather too far at times, he always added as a corrective that a man must always behave himself like a gentleman.
Of all this discourse, Victurnien comprehended just so much as flattered his passions.From the first he saw his old father laughing with the Chevalier.The two elderly men considered that the pride of a d'Esgrignon was a sufficient safeguard against anything unbefitting;as for a dishonorable action, no one in the house imagined that a d'Esgrignon could be guilty of it.HONOR, the great principle of Monarchy, was planted firm like a beacon in the hearts of the family;it lighted up the least action, it kindled the least thought of a d'Esgrignon."A d'Esgrignon ought not to permit himself to do such and such a thing; he bears a name which pledges him to make a future worthy of the past"--a noble teaching which should have been sufficient in itself to keep alive the tradition of noblesse--had been, as it were, the burden of Victurnien's cradle song.He heard them from the old Marquis, from Mlle.Armande, from Chesnel, from the intimates of the house.And so it came to pass that good and evil met, and in equal forces, in the boy's soul.