CHAPTER VI

THE INCONSISTENCY OF AN OLD CHOUAN

While the madman, Boleslas, hastened to Ardea to ask his cooperation in the most unreasonable of encounters, with a species of savage delight, Florent Chapron was possessed by only one thought:  at any price to prevent his brother-in-law from suspecting his quarrel with Madame Steno’s former lover and the duel which was to be the result.  His passionate friendship for Lincoln was so strong that it prevented the nervousness which usually precedes a first duel, above all when he who appears upon the ground has all his life neglected practising with the sword or pistol.  To a fencer, and to one accustomed to the use of firearms, a duel means a number of details which remove the thought of danger.  The man conceives the possibilities of the struggle, of a deed to be bravely accomplished.  That is sufficient to inspire him with a composure which absolute ignorance can not inspire, unless it is supported by one of those deep attachments often so strong within us.  Such was the case with Florent.

Dorsenne’s instinct, which could so easily read the heart, was not mistaken there; the painter had in his wife’s brother a friend of self-sacrificing devotion.  He could exact anything of the Mameluke, or, rather, of that slave, for it was the blood of the slaves, of his ancestors, which manifested itself in Chapron by so total an absorption of his personality.  The atavism of servitude has these two effects which are apparently contradictory:  it produces fathomless capacities of sacrifice or of perfidy.  Both of these qualities were embodied in the brother and in the sister.  As happens, sometimes, the two characteristics of their race were divided between them; one had inherited all the virtue of self-sacrifice, the other all the puissance of hypocrisy.

But the drama called forth by Madame Steno’s infidelity, and finally by Gorka’s rashness, would only expose to light the moral conditions which Dorsenne had foreseen without comprehending.  He was completely ignorant of the circumstances under which Florent had developed, of those under which Maitland and he had met, of how Maitland had decided to marry Lydia; finally an exceptional and lengthy history which it is necessary to sketch here at least, in order to render clear the singular relations of those three beings.

As we have seen, the allusion coarsely made by Boleslas to negro blood marked the moment when Florent lost all self-control, to the point even of raising his cane to his insolent interlocutor.  That blemish, hidden with the most jealous care, represented to the young man what it had represented to his father, the vital point of self-love, secret and constant humiliation.  It was very faint, the trace of negro blood which flowed in their veins, so faint that it was necessary to be told of it, but it was sufficient to render a stay in America so much the more intolerable