the grandeur of the

family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

its grandeur. Hah!” And he took another gentle little pinch of

snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.

But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered

his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask

looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness,

closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer’s

assumption of indifference.

“Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference

of fear and slavery, my friend,” observed the Marquis, “will keep

the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,” looking up to

it, “shuts out the sky.”

That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture

of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty

like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have

been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to

claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked

ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that

shutting out the sky in a new wayto wit, for ever, from the eyes

of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a

hundred thousand muskets.

“Meanwhile,” said the Marquis, “I will preserve the honour and

rep