Lucien de Barenton

Lucien de Barenton is a court adviser whose final arc turns on the cost of refusing royal authority. After imprisonment and the loss of his title and fortune, he does not recant his defiance of Louis XIV; instead, he accepts a precarious life outside court and commits himself to Marie-Josèphe de la Croix. His dignity survives the demotion, but it does not make the losses painless.

Identity and Fall from Court

By the time Lucien reaches the flagship, he has come straight from prison. He appears in white satin and gold lace, elegant enough to conceal at first glance what he has endured, but his physical state soon breaks through that courtly surface: he walks unsteadily and is sick over the side. The contrast between his polished clothes and his illness makes his return less a triumphant restoration than the arrival of a man still weakened by confinement and deprivation.

Lucien’s social identity has also been stripped away. He tells Marie-Josèphe that he is no longer the count but only Lucien de Barenton, an ordinary man with no title, comfort, or children to offer her. His former standing had brought position and wealth, both of which he later admits he misses. The loss is not merely ceremonial: Louis XIV’s order prevents him from claiming the resources attached to his former title, leaving him unable to return to Brittany on his old footing.

Defiance and the Attempt to Protect Sherzad

On the flagship, Marie-Josèphe sits beside Sherzad’s basin beneath a canvas canopy while Louis XIV occupies a shaded velvet armchair above. The sailors prepare to sail at the King’s command. Lucien reaches the deck by ladder, handing up his sword-cane before climbing aboard, and Marie-Josèphe runs to him. Their reunion is interrupted almost immediately by his illness, but his presence becomes consequential when the sailors tighten Sherzad’s net rather than release her.

Marie-Josèphe struggles against the sailors and is pulled away. Though dizzy, ill, and short of sustenance, Lucien gets to his feet, draws his sword, trips a guard with his cane, and stumbles toward her. When a lieutenant aims a pistol at Marie-Josèphe and orders Lucien to surrender, Lucien stops, puts down his ineffective sword, and raises his hands. A sailor shoves him down; a cutlass grazes his throat as he tries to rise. His intervention does not free Sherzad, but it makes plain what he is willing to risk for the two women. The broken weapon will later remain a tangible reminder of that failed resistance and of the service it nevertheless performed for Sherzad and for him.

Love, Loss, and the Meaning of Defiance

Lucien’s loyalty to Marie-Josèphe is tested not by a demand that she share his status, but by his belief that he can no longer provide what marriage is supposed to provide. He offers to leave court, avoid troubling her, and relinquish any claim on her future. He names his poverty and lost title, as well as his inability to give her children, as reasons she should not bind herself to him. Marie-Josèphe rejects that accounting: she insists that he will be her husband in every meaningful way and says she does not care about his losses. His reluctance shows how deeply his self-understanding remains tied to the material and social obligations he can no longer fulfill; her answer makes their attachment independent of those measures.

Later, in a carriage, the two differ over what their defiance means. Marie-Josèphe wants Louis XIV to admit that he was wrong and that they were right. Lucien instead insists that what matters is that they defied him. He can accept the King’s wrath so long as it does not end in the galleys, which would send them to sea for the rest of their lives. His sardonic reference to that possibility keeps the danger concrete even as he speaks theatrically. He then draws the broken blade from his sword-cane and reflects that it served him, Sherzad, and himself. The object compresses the scene’s outcome: it could not overcome royal force, but it was not useless.

Life Beyond the Court

Lucien does not pretend that leaving court has cost him nothing. He thinks that he cannot regret his decisions, yet acknowledges his pride and his unwillingness to repent of leaving if Louis XIV believes he can find a better adviser. He misses his position and wealth, but maintains that he could not have behaved otherwise without surrendering his dignity. His resolve is therefore neither indifference to loss nor uncomplicated triumph; it is a choice to bear loss rather than purchase advancement by undoing his refusal.

Returning to Brittany proves difficult. Lucien cannot claim the resources of his former title, and pride prevents him from asking his father for help. Marie-Josèphe’s dowry and most of Haleed’s gift of pearls go instead toward fitting out a ship and buying a small stud farm. Jacques takes charge of Zachi, Zelis, and the other horses, while Hercules the cat controls the mice in the stable. These practical arrangements replace the scale and security of Lucien’s former court life with a modest household dependent on carefully spent resources. His ending is not a restoration of rank: it is a life built after the royal order, sustained by Marie-Josèphe’s commitment and by the dignity he refused to trade away.