THE WILL TO LIVE
(Les Roquevillard)
A Novel
By
Author of “The Parting of the Ways,” “The Woollen
Dress,” “The Fear of Living,” “The House,” etc.
Translated by Pitts Duffield
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915
By DUFFIELD & COMPANY
CONTENTS
PART I
I. THE VINTAGE
II. THE CONFLICT
III. THE CALVARY OF LEMENC
IV. THE VENGEANCE OF MR. FRASNE
V. A FAMILY IN DANGER
PART II
I. THE MAKER OF RUINS
II. THE ANNIVERSARY
III. THE RUINS
IV. THE RETURN
PART III
I. THE COMPANION IN ARMS
II. THE FAMILY COUNCIL
III. MR. FRASNE’S CLEVER TRANSACTION
IV. THE COUNSEL OF THE SOIL
V. MARGARET’S BETROTHAL
VI. THE DEFENDER
VII. JEANNE SASSENAY
VIII. THE VOICE OF THE DEAD
IX. THE WILL TO LIVE
TO MONSIEUR FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
My dear Master:
As an answer to those who regard tradition as a dead and heavy weight,not worth cultivating, you once defined the matter thus:
“Tradition is not something which is dead: it is, on the contrary,that which lives, that which survives in the present from the past;something that goes beyond the actual moment; and for those who comeafter us, the tradition of any one of us, whatever he is, is only thatwhich lives beyond himself.”
If we know what we came from we can the better understand our destiny;we can be happy and do good only by developing ourselves along the lineof our natural sensibilities, by consenting to take our proper place inthe chain of generations by which the future and the past are linked.Far from constricting our powers of accomplishment, the family and ournative soil give direction to them. I remember to have felt sorry, inreading Le Play, for that family of Mélougas, who defended their oldhome so desperately because they confused its history with the land’s.In Savoy I have come across so many similar adventures. But the soil,and the dead who sow the seed of our sensibilities, are carried with usin our hearts if we have extracted the essential quality of tradition,that is to say, a sense of honour, and that will to live which