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Updated: May 15, 2025
Hardly snatching sustenance from Fate, the peasant fights into greatness; the aristocrat may only win to it by rejecting Fate's luxuries. The peasant never escapes the austere teaching of hard experience, the aristocrat the languor of good fortune. There is the peasant and there am I. Voila! enough of Detricand of Vaufontaine.... The Princess Guida and the child, are they
The crabbed tree, that is the main line, dying in me; the grafted tree is the Vaufontaine, the interloper and the mongrel; and the sapling from the same seed as the crabbed old tree" he reached out as though to clutch Philip's arm, but drew back, sat erect in his chair, and said with ringing decision: "the sapling is Philip d'Avranche, of the Jersey Isle."
A Vaufontaine, friend?" "No, monsieur, a d'Avranche." "What d'Avranche? Not Prince Leopold John?" "No, monsieur, the name is the same as his Highness's." "Philip d'Avranche? Ah, from whence?" "From Paris, monsieur, with his Highness." The visitor, whistling softly to himself, stood thinking a moment. Presently he said: "How old is he?" "About the same age as monsieur."
The Duc de Bercy to be harangued to his duty, scathed, measured, disapproved, and counselled, by a stripling Vaufontaine it was monstrous. It had the bitterness of aloes also, for in his own heart he knew that Detricand spoke truth.
Dow half raised himself on his couch, and the fevered eyes swallowed Detricand. "You you are a prince, monsieur?" he said. Detricand glanced up from the letter he was reading again, a grave and troubled look on his face. "Prince of Vaufontaine they call me, but, as you know, I am only a vagabond turned soldier," he said.
Neither had chance to say more, for the Duke, though not conceiving the cause or meaning of the biting words, felt the contemptuous suggestion in Detricand's voice, and burst out in anger: "Go tell the prince of Vaufontaine that the succession is assured to my house.
If at last there crept over Europe wonderful tales of Detricand's past life in Jersey, of the real Duchesse de Bercy, and of the new Prince of Vaufontaine, Detricand did not, or feigned not to, hear them; and the Comtesse Chantavoine had disappeared from public knowledge.
"The individual grudge will not be lost sight of in the general, I hope?" rejoined Detricand with cool suggestion, his clear, persistent grey eye looking straight into Philip's. "I shall do you that honour," said Philip with mistaken disdain. Detricand bowed low. "You will always find me in the suite of the Prince of Vaufontaine, monsieur, and ready to be so distinguished by you."
"And see, monseigneur, here at La Vie your uncle the Prince of Vaufontaine died, leaving you his name and a burden of hopeless war. Now count them all over de la Rochejaquelein, Bonchamp, d'Elbee, Lescure, Stofflet, Charette, Talmont, Tinteniac, Sombreuil, Vaufontaine they are all gone, your great men. And who of chieftains and armies are left? Detricand of Vaufontaine and a few brave men no more.
Detricand had inwardly smiled during the old man's monologue, broken only by courteous, half-articulate interjections on his own part. He knew too well the old feud between their houses, the ambition that had possessed many a Vaufontaine to inherit the dukedom of Bercy, and the Duke's futile revolt against that possibility.
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