As for his domestic situation, his Paris house was very effectively run by Nanny, even in her old age. And at the family château, where certainly, a woman’s hand was called for, he wasn’t sure he’d really be able to tolerate anyone else’s interference nowadays. He’d long ago decided to keep it the way it was, in somewhat masculine order, until such time as Roland should marry and his wife and children could do as they pleased with the place while he watched, no doubt with horror as well as amusement. He’d supposed that was the natural order.

But as he looked at his son today, the vicomte couldn’t help feeling that he had let him down. Plenty of other boys had grown up without a mother, of course. But Roland’s upbringing had been too masculine. He lacked balance.

I shouldn’t have let Father Xavier influence him so much, either, the vicomte thought.

He’d never objected to the priest, who was so obviously in love with his wife. He’d rather sympathized with him. He had known Father Xavier’s love would remain entirely platonic. The priest was correct, and pure. But perhaps that was why he harbored doubts about him. For during the course of his life, rightly or wrongly, the vicomte had developed a certain suspicion of men who were too pure.

God knows what stuff that priest had put in his son’s head down the years.

Not that the Vicomte de Cygne objected to his son’s being a monarchist, nor a devout Catholic, nor a young aristocrat, proud of his ancestry and with the prejudices of his class. The vicomte shared most of those prejudices himself. In fact, he rather enjoyed these aristocratic snobberies. But he enjoyed them without believing in them too much. Indeed, the very fact that, as an aristocrat, he looked down upon most of humanity—and that he also knew the shortcomings of his fellow aristocrats—made it easy for him not to expect too much from imperfect human nature, nor to judge people too harshly.

But his son believed too much. And a lifetime of observation, including the horrors of the Commune, had led the vicomte to think that when men believed too strongly, it made them cruel.

He was especially concerned by a conversation they had just after Christmas.

It concerned an army officer. His name was Dreyfus and, unusually for an officer, he was Jewish. When a minor spying scandal had emerged, he had been accused of passing secrets to the Germans, court-martialed and sent to prison on Devil’s Island.

Some people had said that the prosecution was badly flawed, and even that Dreyfus was innocent. As one might expect, the military authorities refused to contemplate the idea that there had been any mistake. And there the matter had rested.

The subject had come up quite casually when they were talking about the difference between civilian and military courts, and the vicomte was remarking that no system of justice could ever be perfect.