Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/262

258 he says. "Gentlemen, be good enough to remain outside that door. My dear Valerie, you had better retire to your own apartments. My poor child, all this must be so extremely wearisome to you—almost as bad as the third volume of a fashionable novel. Monsieur de Marolles, I am prepared to hear what you may have to say—though"—he here addresses himself generally—"I beg to protest against this affair from first to last—I repeat, from first to last—it is so intolerably melodramatic."

so, Monsieur de Marolles," said the Marquis, as Raymond closed the door on the group in the hall, and the two gentlemen were left entirely alone, "and so you have—by what means I shall certainly not so far inconvenience myself as to endeavour to guess—contrived to become informed of some of the antecedents of your very humble servant?"

"Of some of the antecedents—why not say of all the antecedents, Monsieur de Cevennes?"

"Just as you like, my dear young friend," replies the Marquis. He really seems to get quite affectionate to Raymond, but in a far-off, patronizing, and superb manner something that of a gentlemanly Mephistopheles to a promising Doctor Faustus;—"and having possessed yourself of this information, may I ask what use you intend making of it? In this utilitarian age everything is put to a use, sooner or later. Do you purpose writing my biography? It will not be interesting. Not as you would have to write it to-day. Alas! we are not so fortunate as to live under the Regency, and there are not many interesting biographies nowadays."

"My dear Marquis, I really have no time to listen to what I have no doubt, amongst your own particular friends, is considered most brilliant wit; I have two or three things to say to you that must be said; and the sort of people who are now waiting outside the door are apt to be impatient."

"Ah, you are experienced; you know their manners and customs! And they are impatient," murmured the Marquis, thoughtfully; "and they put you in stone places as if you were coal, and behind bars as if you were zoological; and then they hang you. They call you up at an absurd hour in the morning, and they take you out into a high place, and drop you down through a hole as if you were a penny put into a savings box; and other people get up at an equally absurd hour of the morning, or stay up all night, in order to see it done. And yet there are persons who declare that the age of romance has passed away."