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Samuel Brohl and Company

by Victor Cherbuliez · English · Gutenberg #2470 · 426,894 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Samuel Brohl and Company

Author: Victor Cherbuliez


        
Release date: March 28, 2006 [eBook #2470]
                Most recently updated: November 3, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2470

Credits: Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMUEL BROHL AND COMPANY ***




Produced by Dagny; John Bickers





SAMUEL BROHL & COMPANY

By Victor Cherbuliez




CHAPTER I

Were the events of this nether sphere governed by the calculus of
probabilities, Count Abel Larinski and Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz would
almost unquestionably have arrived at the end of their respective
careers without ever having met. Count Larinski lived in Vienna,
Austria; Mlle. Moriaz never had been farther from Paris than Cormeilles,
where she went every spring to remain throughout the fine weather.
Neither at Cormeilles nor at Paris had she ever heard of Count Larinski;
and he, on his part, was wholly unaware of the existence of Mlle.
Moriaz. His mind was occupied with a gun of his own invention, which
should have made his fortune, and which had not made it. He had hoped
that this warlike weapon, a true _chef-d’oeuvre_, in his opinion
superior in precision and range to any other known, would be
appreciated, according to its merits, by competent judges, and would
one day be adopted for the equipment of the entire Austro-Hungarian
infantry. By means of unremitting perseverance, he had succeeded in
obtaining the appointment of an official commission to examine it.
The commission decided that the Larinski musket possessed certain
advantages, but that it had three defects: it was too heavy, the breech
became choked too rapidly with oil from the lubricator, and the cost
of manufacture was too high. Count Abel did not lose courage. He
gave himself up to study, devoted nearly two years to perfecting his
invention, and applied all his increased skill to rendering his gun
lighter and less costly. When put under test, the new firearm burst, and
this vexatious incident ruined forever the reputation of the Larinski
gun. Far from becoming enriched, the inventor had sunk his expenses, his
advances of every kind; he had recklessly squandered both revenue and
capital, which, to be sure, was not very considerable.

Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz had a more fortunate destiny than Count
Larinski. She did not plume herself on having invented a new gun, nor
did she depend upon her ingenuity for a livelihood; she had inherited
from her mother a yearly income of about a hundred thousand livres,
which enabled her to enjoy life and make others happy, for she was very
charitable. She loved the world without loving it too much; she knew how
to do without it, having abundant resources within herself, and being of
a very independent disposition. During the winter she went out a great
deal into society, and received freely at home. Her father, member of
the Institute and Professor of Chemistry at the College of France, was
one of those _savants_ who enjoy dining out; he had a taste also for
music and for the theatre. Antoinette accompanied him everywhere; they
scarcely ever remained at home except upon their reception evenings; but
with the return of the swallows it was a pleasure to Mlle. Moriaz to
fly to Cormeilles and there pass seven months, reduced to the society of
Mlle. Moiseney, who, after having been her instructress, had become
her _demoiselle de compagnie_. She lived pretty much in the open air,
walking about in the woods, reading, or painting; and the woods, her
books, and her paint-brushes, to say nothing of her poor people, so
agreeably occupied her time that she never experienced a quarter of an
hour’s _ennui_. She was too content with her lot to have the slightest
inclination to change it; therefore she was in no hurry to marry. She
had completed twenty-four years of her existence, had refused several
desirable offers, and wished nothing better than to retain her
maidenhood. It was the sole article concerning which this heiress had
discussions with those around her. When her father took it into his
head to grow angry and cry, “You must!” she would burst out laughing;
whereupon he would laugh also, and say: “I’m not the master here; in
fact, I am placed in the position of a ploughman arguing with a priest.”

It is very dangerous to tax one’s brains too much when one dines out
frequently. During the winter of 1875, M. Moriaz had undertaken an
excess of work; he was overdriven, and his health suffered. He was
attacked by one of those anemic disorders of which we hear so much
nowadays, and which may be called _la maladie a la mode_. He was obliged
to break in upon his daily routine, employ an assistant, and early in
July his physician ordered him to set out for Engadine, and try the
chalybeate water-cure at Saint Moritz. The trip from Paris to Saint
Moritz cannot be made without passing through Chur. It was at Chur that
Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz, who accompanied her father, met for the first
time Count Abel Larinski. When the decree of Destiny goes forth, the
spider and the fly must inevitably meet.

Abel Larinski had arrived at Chur from Vienna, having taken the route
through Milan and across the Splugen Pass. Although he was very short of
funds, upon reaching the capital of the canton of Grisons he had put up
at the Hotel Steinbock, the best and most expensive in the place. It was
his opinion that he owed this mark of respect to Count Larinski; such
duties he held to be very sacred, and he fulfilled them religiously. He
was in a very melancholy mood, and set out for a promenade in order to
divert his mind. In crossing the Plessur Bridge, he fixed his troubled
eyes on the muddy waters of the stream, and he felt almost tempted
to take the fatal leap; but in such a project there is considerable
distance between the dream and its fulfilment, and Count Larinski
experienced at this juncture that the most melancholy man in the world
may find it difficult to conquer his passion for living.

He had no reason to feel very cheerful. He had quitted Vienna in
order to betake himself to the Saxon Casino, where _roulette_ and
_trente-et-quarante_ are played. His ill-luck would have it that he
stopped on the way at Milan, and fell in with a circle of ill repute,
where this most imprudent of men played and lost. There remained to him
just enough cash to carry him to Saxon; but what can be accomplished in
a casino when one has empty pockets? Before crossing the Splugen he had
written to a petty Jew banker of his acquaintance for money. He counted
but little on the compliance of this Hebrew, and this was why he paused
five minutes to contemplate the Plessur, after which he retraced his
steps. Twenty minutes later he was crossing a public square, ornamented
with a pretty Gothic fountain, and seeing before him a cathedral, he
hastened to enter it.

The cathedral of Chur possesses, among other curiosities, a painting by
Albert Durer, a St. Lawrence on the gridiron, attributed to Holbein, a
piece of the true cross, and some relics of St. Lucius and his sister
Ernesta. Count Abel only accorded a wandering attention to either St.
Lucius or St. Lawrence. Scarcely had he made his way into the nave of
the building, when he beheld something that appeared to him far more
interesting than paintings or relics. An English poet has said that at
times there is revealed to us a glimpse of paradise in a woman’s face,
and it was such a rare blessing that was at this moment vouchsafed unto
Count Larinski. He was not a romantic man, and yet he remained for
some moments motionless, rooted to the spot in admiration. Was it a
premonition of his destiny? The fact is that, in beholding for the first
time Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz, for it was none other than she who thus
riveted his attention, he experienced an inexplicable surprise, a
thrilling of the heart, such as he never before had experienced. In his
first impression of this charming girl he made one slight mistake. He
divined at once that the man by whom she was accompanied, who had gray
hair, a broad, open brow, vivacious eyes, shaded by beautiful, heavy
eye-brows, belonged to some learned fraternity; but he imagined that
this individual with a white cravat, who had evidently preserved his
freshness of heart, although past sixty years of age, was the fortunate
suitor of the beautiful girl by his side.

There are some women whom it is impossible not to gaze upon. Wherever
Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz appeared she was the object of universal
observation: first, because she was charming; and, then, because she
had a way of her own of dressing and of arranging her hair, a peculiar
movement of the head, a grace of carriage, which inevitably must attract
notice. There were those who made so bold as to assert that she assumed
certain little peculiarities solely for the purpose of attracting
the chance observer. Do not believe a word of it. She was altogether
indifferent to public opinion and consulted her own taste alone, which
was certainly impregnated with a touch of audacity; but she did not seek
to appear audacious--she merely acted according to her natural bent.
Observing her from a distance, people were apt to fancy her affected,
and somewhat inclined to be fantastic; but on approaching her,
their minds were speedily disabused of this fancy. The purity of her
countenance, her air of refinement and thorough modesty, speedily
dispelled any suspicious thoughts, and those who had for a moment
harboured them would say mentally, “Pardon me, mademoiselle, I mistook.”
 Such, at least, was the mental comment of Count Abel, as she passed
close by him on leaving the church. Her father was telling her something
that made her smile; this smile was that of a young girl just budding
into womanhood, who has nothing yet to conceal from her guardian angel.
Count Larinski left the church after her, and followed her with his eyes
as she crossed the square. On returning to the hotel he had a curiosity
to satisfy. He questioned one of the _garcons_, who pointed out to him
in the hotel register for travellers the following entry: “M. Moriaz,
member of the Institute of France, and his daughter, from Paris, _en
route_ for Saint Moritz.” “And where then?” he asked himself; then
dismissed the subject from his mind.

When he had dined, he repaired to the post-office to inquire for a
letter he was expecting from Vienna. He found it, and returned to
shut himself up in his chamber, where he tore open the envelope with a
feverish hand. This letter, written in a more peculiar than felicitous
French, was the reply of the Jew banker. It read as follows:

“M. LE COMTE:

“Although you both write and understand German very well, you do not
like to read it, and therefore I write to you in French. It grieves
me deeply not to have it in my power to satisfy your honoured demand.
Business is very dull. It is impossible for me to advance you another
florin, or even to renew your note, which falls due shortly. I am the
father of a family; it pains me to be compelled to remind you of this.

“I wish to tell you quite freely what I think. I did believe in your
gun, but I believe in it no longer, no one believes in it any more. When
strong, it was too heavy; when you made it lighter, it was no longer
strong. What came next? You know it burst. Beware how you further
perfect it, or it will explode whenever it becomes aware that any one
is looking at it. This accursed gun has eaten up the little you had, and
some of my savings besides, although I have confidence that you will, at
least, pay me the interest due on that. It grieves me to tell you so, M.
de Comte, but all inventors are more or less crack-brained, and end in
the hospital. For the love of God, leave guns as they are, and invent
nothing more, or you will go overboard, and there will be no one to fish
you out.”

Abel Larinski paused at this place. He put his letter down on the table,
and, turning round in his arm-chair, with a savage air, his eye fixed
on a distant corner of the room, he fell to thus soliloquizing in a
sepulchral voice:

“Do you hear, idiot? This old knave is right. Accursed be the day when
the genius of invention thrilled your sublime brain! A grand discovery
you have made, forsooth! What have I gained from it? Grand illusions,
grand discomfitures! What hath it availed me that I passed whole nights
discussing with you breech-loaders, screw-plates, tumbrels, sockets,
bridges, ovoid balls, and spring-locks? What fruits have I gained from
these refreshing conversations? You foresaw everything, my great man,
except that one little thing which great men so often fail to see, that
mysterious something, I know not what, which makes success. When you
spoke to me, in your slow, monotonous tones, when you fixed upon me your
melancholy gaze, I should have been able to read in your eyes that you
were only a fool. The devil take thee and thy gun, thy gun and thee;
hollow head, head full of chimeras, true Pole, true Larinski!”

To whom was Count Abel speaking? To a phantom? To his double? He alone
knew. When he had uttered the last words, he resumed the perusal of his
letter, which ended thus:

“Will you permit me to give you a piece of advice, M. le Comte, a good
little piece of advice? I have known you for three years, and have taken
much interest in your welfare. You invent guns, which, when they are
strong, lack lightness. I beg your pardon, but I do not comprehend you,
M. le Comte. The name you bear is excellent; the head you carry on your
shoulders is superb, and it is the general opinion that you resemble
_Faust_; but neither name nor head does you any good. Leave the guns as
they are, and bestow your attention upon women; they, and they alone,
can draw you out of the deep waters where you are now floundering. There
is no time to lose. I beg your pardon, but you must be thirty years
old, and perhaps a little more. This _diable_ of a gun has made you lose
three valuable years.

“It pains me, M. le Comte, to be compelled to remind you that the little
note falls due shortly. I have had the value of the bracelet you left
with me as a pledge estimated; it is not worth a thousand florins, as
you believed; it is a piece of antiquity that has a value to only those
who can indulge in a caprice for fancy articles, and such caprices are
rare nowadays, the time for such is past.

“I am, M. le Comte, with much respect, your humble and obedient servant,

“MOSES GULDENTHAL.”


Abel Larinski turned once more in his chair. He crumpled up between his
fingers the letter of M. Moses Guldenthal, saying to himself as he did
so, that the Guldenthals are often very clear-sighted folks. “Ay, to
be sure,” thought he, “this Hebrew is right, I have lost three valuable
years. I have had fever, and my eyes have been clouded; but, Heaven
be praised! The charm is broken, the illusion fled, I am cured--saved!
Farewell, my chimera, I am no longer thy dupe! Many thanks, my dear
friend: I return to you your gun; do with it as it seemeth best to you.”

His eyes suddenly fell on his own reflection in the mirror above the
chimney-piece, and he regarded it fixedly for a few moments.

“The semblance truly of an inventor,” he resumed, mournfully smiling.
“This pale, emaciated face; these deep-set eyes, with dark circles about
them; these hollow, cadaverous cheeks! The three years have indeed left
their traces. Bah! a little rest in the Alpine pastures, and _Faust_
will become rejuvenated.”

He seized a pen, and wrote the following reply:

“You are truly kind, my dear Guldenthal: you refuse me the miserable
florins, but you give me in their stead a little piece of advice that
is worth a fortune. Unluckily, I am not capable of following it. Noble
souls like ours comprehend each other with half a word, and you are
a poet whenever it suits you. When in the course of the day you have
transacted a neat little piece of business, after having rubbed your
hands until you have almost deprived them of skin, you tune your violin,
which you play like an angel, and you draw from it such delightful
strains that your ledger and your cash-box fall to weeping with emotion.
I, too, am a musician, and my music is the fair sex. But, alas! women
never can be for me other than an adorable inutility, a part of the
dream of my life. Your dreams yield you a handsome percentage, as I have
sorrowfully experienced; my dreams yield me nothing, and therefore it is
that they are dear to me.

“I must prohibit--understand me clearly--your disposing of the trinket I
left with you; we have the weakness, we Poles, of clinging to our family
relics. Set your mind at rest; before the end of the month I shall have
returned to Vienna, and will honour the dear little note. One day you
will go down on your knees to beg of me to loan you a thousand florins,
and I will astonish you with my ingratitude. May the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob, have you in his holy keeping, my dear Guldenthal!”

As he finished his letter, he heard the sound of harps and violins. Some
itinerant musicians were giving a concert in the hotel-garden, which
was lit up as bright as day. Abel opened his window, and leaned on his
elbows, looking out. The first object that presented itself to his eyes
was Mlle. Moriaz, promenading one of the long garden-walks, leaning on
her father’s arm. Many eyes were fixed on her--we have already said it
was difficult not to gaze upon her--but no one contemplated her with
such close attention as Count Larinski. He never once lost sight of her.

“Is she beautiful? Is she even pretty?” he queried within himself. “I
cannot quite make up my mind, but I am very sure that she is charming.
Like my bracelet, this is a fancy article. She is a little thin, and her
shoulders are too vigorously fashioned for her waist, which is slender
and supple as a reed; but, such as she is, she has not her equal. Her
walk, her carriage, resemble nothing I ever have seen before. I can well
imagine that when she appears in the streets of Paris people turn to
look after her, but no one would have the audacity to follow her. How
old is she? Twenty-four or twenty-five years, I should say. Why is she
not married? Who is this withered, pinched-looking fright of a personage
who trots at her side like a poodle-dog? Probably some _demoiselle de
compagnie_. And there comes her _femme de chambre_, a very spruce little
lass, bringing her a shawl, which the _demoiselle de compagnie_ hastens
to put over her shoulders. She allows it to be done with the air of one
who is accustomed to being waited upon. Mlle. Moriaz is an heiress. Why,
then, is she not married?”

Count Larinski pursued his soliloquy as long as Mlle. Moriaz promenaded
in the garden. As soon as she re-entered the hotel, it appeared to him
that the garden had become empty, and that the musicians were playing
out of tune. He closed his window. He gave up his plan of starting
the next day for Saxon. He had decided that he would set out for Saint
Moritz, to pass there at least two or three days. He said to himself,
“It seems absurd; but who can tell?”

Thereupon he proceeded to investigate the state of his finances, and he
weighed and re-weighed his purse, which was very light. Formerly Count
Larinski had possessed a very pretty collection of jewellery. He had
looked upon this as a reserve fund, to which he would have recourse only
in cases of extreme distress. Alas! there remained to him now only two
articles of his once considerable store--the bracelet that was in the
hands of M. Guldenthal, and a diamond ring that he wore on his finger.
He decided that, before quitting Chur, he would borrow money on this
ring, or that he would try to sell it.

He remained some time seated at the foot of his bed, dangling his legs
to and fro, his eyes closed. He had closed them, in order to better
call up a vision of Mlle. Moriaz, and he repeated the words: “It seems
absurd; but who can tell? The fact is, we can know nothing of a surety,
and anything may happen.” Then he recalled one of Goethe’s poems,
entitled “Vanitas! vanitatum vanitas!” and he recited several time in
German these two lines:

“Nun hab’ ich mein’ Sach’ auf nichts gestellt, Und mein gehort die ganze
Welt!”

This literally signifies, “Now that I no longer count on anything, the
whole world is mine.” Abel Larinski recited these lines with a purity of
accent that would have astonished M. Moses Guldenthal.

M. Moriaz, after wishing his daughter good-night, and imprinting a kiss
upon her brow, as was his custom, had retired to his chamber. He was
preparing for bed, when there came a knock at his door. Opening this,
he saw before him a fair-haired youth, who rushed eagerly towards
him, seized both his hands, and pressed them with effusion. M. Moriaz
disengaged his hands, and regarded the intruder with a bewildered air.

“How?” cried the latter. “You do not know me? So sure as you are one of
the most illustrious chemists of the day, I am Camille Langis, son of
your best friend, a young man of great expectations, who admires you
truly, who has followed you here, and who is now ready to begin all over
again. There, my dear master, do you recognise me?”

“Ay, to be sure I recognise you, my boy,” replied M. Moriaz, “although,
to tell the truth, you have greatly changed. When you left us you were a
mere youth.”

“And now?”

“And now you have the air of a young man; but, I beg of you, where have
you come from? I thought you were in the heart of Transylvania.”

“It is possible to return from there, as you see. Three days ago I
arrived in Paris and flew to Maisons-Lafitte. Mme. De Lorcy, who bears
the double insignia of honour of being my aunt and the godmother of
Antoinette--I beg your pardon, I mean Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz--informed
me that you were in ill-health, and that your physician had sent you
to Switzerland, to Saint Moritz, to recruit. I hastened after you; this
morning I missed you by one hour at Zurich; but I have you now, and you
will listen to me.”

“I warn you, my dear child, that I am at this moment a most detestable
auditor. We have done to-day one _hotel de ville_, one episcopal palace,
one cathedral, and some relics of St. Lucius. To speak plainly, I am
overpowered with sleep. Is there any great haste for what you have to
say to me?”

“Is there any great haste? Why, I arrive breathless from Hungary to
demand your daughter in marriage.”

M. Moriaz threw up his arms; then, seating himself on the edge of his
bed, he piteously gasped:

“You could not wait until to-morrow? If a judge is desired to take a
favourable view of a case, he surely should not be disturbed in his
first sleep to consider it.”

“My dear master, I am truly distressed to be compelled to be
disagreeable to you, but it is absolutely necessary that you should
listen to me. Two years ago, for the first time, I asked of you your
daughter’s hand. After having consulted Antoinette--you will permit me
to call her Antoinette, will you not?--after having consulted her, you
told me that I was too young, that she would not listen seriously to my
proposal, and you gave me your permission to try again in two years. I
have employed these two mortal years in constructing a railroad and a
wire bridge in Hungary, and, believe me, I took infinite pains to forget
Antoinette. In vain! She is the romance of my youth, I never can have
another. On July 5, 1873, did you not tell me to return in two years? We
are now at July 5, 1875, and I return. Am I a punctual man?”

“As punctual as insupportable,” rejoined M. Moriaz, casting a melancholy
look at his pillow. “Now, candidly, is it the thing to seek the presence
of the President of the Academy of Sciences between eleven o’clock and
midnight, to pour such silly stuff into his ear? You are wanting in
respect for the Institute. Besides, my dear boy, people change in two
years; you are a proof of it. You have developed from boyhood almost
into manhood, and you have done well to let your imperial grow; it gives
you quite a dashing military air--one would divine at first sight that
you were fresh from Hungary. But, while you have changed for the better,
are you sure that Antoinette has not changed for the worse? Are you sure
that she is still the Antoinette of your romance?”

“I beg your pardon; I saw her just now, without her seeing me. She was
promenading on your arm in the hotel-garden, which was lit up in her
honour. Formerly she was enchanting, she has become adorable. If you
would have the immense goodness to give her to me, I would be capable of
doing anything agreeable to you. I would relieve you of all your little
troublesome jobs; I would clean your retorts; I would put labels on your
bottles and jars; I would sweep out your laboratory. I know German very
well--I would read all the large German books it might please you to
consult; I would read them, pen in hand; I would make extracts--written
extracts--and such extracts! _Grand Dieu!_ they would be like
copperplate. My dear master, will you give her to me?”

“The absurd creature! He imagines that it only depends upon me to give
him my daughter. I could as easily dispose of the moon. Since she has
had teeth, she had made me desire everything she desires.”

“At least you will give me permission to pay my addresses to her
to-morrow?”

“Beware, unlucky youth!” cried M. Moriaz. “You will ruin your case
forever. Since you have been away she has refused two offers, one of
them from a second secretary of legation, Viscount de R---, and at the
present moment she holds in holy horror all suitors. She is accompanying
me to Saint Moritz in order to gather flowers and paint aquarelle
sketches of them. Should you presume to interrupt her in her favourite
occupations, should you present yourself before her like a creditor on
the day of maturity, I swear to you that your note would be protested,
and that you would have nothing better to do than return to Hungary.”

“You are sure of it?”

“As sure as that sulphuric acid will turn litmus red.”

“And you have the heart to sent me back to Paris without having spoken
with her?”

“What I have said is for your good, and you know whether I mean you well
or not.”

“It is agreed, then, that you will take charge of my interests; that you
will plead my cause?”

“It is understood that I will sound the premises, that I will prepare
the way--”

“And that you will send me tidings shortly, and that these tidings will
be good. I shall await them here, at the Hotel Steinbock.”

“As you please; but, for the love of Heaven, let me sleep!”

M. Camille Langis pressed his two arms and said, with much emotion: “I
place myself in your hands; take care how you answer for my life!”

“O youth!” murmured M. Moriaz, actually thrusting Camille from the room.
“One might search in vain for a more beautiful invention.”

Ten hours later, a post-chaise bore in the direction of Engadine Mlle.
Antoinette Moriaz, her father, her _demoiselle de compagnie_, and
her _femme de chambre_. They breakfasted tolerably well in a village
situated in the lower portion of a notch, called Tiefenkasten, which
means, literally, _deep chest_, and certainly a deeper never has been
seen. After breakfast they pursued their way farther, and towards four
o’clock in the afternoon they reached the entrance of the savage defile
of Bergunerstein, which deserves to be compared with that of Via Mala.
The road lies between a wall of rocks and a precipice of nearly two
hundred metres, at the bottom of which rush the swift waters of the
Albula. This wild scenery deeply moved Mlle. Moriaz; she never had seen
anything like it at Cormeilles or anywhere about Paris. She alighted,
and, moving towards the parapet, leaned over it, contemplating at her
ease the depths below, which the foaming torrent beneath filled with its
roars.

Her father speedily joined her.

“Do you not find this music charming?” she asked of him.

“Charming, I grant,” he replied; “but more charming still are those
brave workmen who, at the risk of their necks, have engineered such a
suspended highway as we see here. I think you admire the torrent too
much, and the road not enough.” And after a pause he added, “I wish
that our friend Camille Langis had had fewer dangers to contend with in
constructing his.” Antoinette turned quickly and looked at her father;
then she bestowed her attention once more upon the Albula. “To be sure,”
 resumed M. Moriaz, stroking his whiskers with the head of his cane,
“Camille is just the man to make his way through difficulties. He has
a youthful air that is very deceptive, but he always has been
astonishingly precocious. At twenty years of age he became head of
his class at the Central School; but the best thing about him is that,
although in possession of a fortune, yet he has a passion for work. The
rich man who works accepts voluntary poverty.”

There arose from the precipice a damp, chill breeze; Mlle. Moriaz drew
over her head a red hood that she held in her hand, and scraping off
with her finger some of the facing of the parapet, which glittered with
scales of mica, she asked: “What do you call this?”

“It is gneiss, a sort of sheet-granite; but do not you too admire people
who work when they are not compelled to do anything?”

“Then you must admire yourself a great deal.”

“Oh, I! In my early youth I worked from necessity, and then I formed a
habit which I cannot now get rid of; while Camille Langis--”

“Once more?” she ejaculated, with a gesture of impatience. “What prompts
you to speak to me of Camille?”

“Nothing. I often think of him.”

“Do not let us two play at diplomacy. You have had news of him lately?”

“You just remind me that I have, through a letter from Mme. De Lorcy.”

“Mme de Lorcy, my godmother, would do better to meddle with what
concerns her. That woman is incorrigible.”

“Of what would you have her correct herself?”

“Simply of her mania for making my happiness after her own fashion.
I read in your eyes that Camille has returned to Paris. What is his
object?”

“I know nothing about it. How should I know? I only presume--that is, I
suppose----”

“You do not suppose--you know.”

“Not at all. At the same time, since hypothesis is the road which leads
to science, a road we _savants_ travel every day, I--”

“You know very well,” she again interposed, “that I promised him
nothing.”

“Strictly speaking, I admit; but you requested me to tell him that
you found him too young. He has laboured conscientiously since then to
correct that fault.” Then playfully pinching her cheeks, he added: “You
are a great girl for objections. Soon you will be twenty-five years
old, and you have refused five eligible offers. Have you taken a vow to
remain unmarried?”

“Ah! you have no mercy,” she cried. “What! you cannot even spare me on
the Albula! You know that, of all subjects of conversation, I have most
antipathy for this.”

“Come, come; you are slandering me now, my child. I spoke to you of
Camille as I might have spoken of the King of Prussia; and you rose in
arms at once, taking it wholly to yourself.”

Antoinette was silent for some moments.

“Decidedly, you are very fond of Camille,” she presently said.

“Of all the sons-in-law you could propose to me----”

“But I do not propose any.”

“That is precisely what I find fault with.”

“Very good; since you think so much of him, this Camille, suppose you
command me to marry him?”

“If I were to command, would you obey?”

“Perhaps, just for the curiosity of the thing,” she rejoined, laughing.

“Naughty girl, to mock at her father!” said he. “If these twenty years
I have been in servitude, I can scarcely emancipate myself in a day.
However, since the great king deigns to hold parley with his ministers,
I am Pomponne--let us argue.”

“Ah, well! you know as well as I that I have a real friendship for
Camille, as the playmate of my childhood. I remember him when he was
ever so small, and he remembers me, too, when I was a tiny creature.
We played hide-and-seek together, and he humoured me in my ten thousand
little caprices. Delightful reminiscences these, but unfortunately I
think of them too much when I see him.”

“He has passed two years among the Magyars; two years is a good while.”

“Bah! he could never possibly have any authority over me. I intend that
my husband shall be my government.”

“So that you may have the pleasure of governing your government?”

“Besides, I know Camille too well. I could only fall in love with a
stranger,” said she, heedless of the last sally.

“Was not the Viscount R--- a stranger?”

“At the end of five minutes I knew him by heart. He is precisely like
all other second secretaries of legation in the world. You may be sure
that there is not a single idea in his head that is really his own. Even
his figure does not belong to himself; it is the _chef-d’oeuvre_ of the
united efforts of his tailor and his shirt-maker.”

“According to this, a prime requisite in the man whom you could love is
to be poorly clad.”

“If ever my heart is touched, it will be because I have met a man who
is not like all the other men of my acquaintance. After that I will not
positively forbid him to have decent clothing.”

M. Moriaz made a little gesture of impatience, and then set out to
regain the chaise, which was some distance in advance. When he
had proceeded about twenty steps, he paused, and, turning towards
Antoinette, who was engaged in readjusting her hood and rebuttoning her
twelve-button gloves, he said:

“I have drawn an odd number in the great lottery of this world. In our
day there are no romantic girls; the last remaining one is mine.”

“That is it; I am a romantic girl!” she cried, tossing her pretty, curly
head with an air of defiance; “and if you are wise you will not urge me
to marry, for I never shall make any but an ineligible match.”

“Ah, speak lower!” he exclaimed, casting a hurried glance around him,
and adding: “Thank Heaven! there is no one here but the Albula to hear
you.”

M. Moriaz mistook. Had he raised his eyes a little higher he would have
discovered, above the rock cornice bordering the highway, a foot-path,
and in this foot-path a pedestrian tourist, who had paused beneath a
fir-tree. This tourist had set out from Chur in the diligence. At the
entrance of the defile, leaving his luggage to continue without him to
Saint Moritz, he had alighted, and with his haversack on his back had
set forward on foot for Bergun, where he proposed passing the night,
as did also M. Moriaz. Of the conversation between Antoinette and her
father he had caught only one word. This word, however, sped like an
arrow into his ear, and from his ear into the innermost recesses of his
brain, where it long quivered. It was a treasure, this word; and he did
not cease to meditate upon it, to comment on it, to extract from it all
its essence, until he had reached the first houses of Bergun, like a
mendicant who has picked up in a dusty road a well-filled purse, and who
opens it, closes it, opens it again, counts his prize piece by piece,
and adds up its value twenty times over. Our tourist dined at the _table
d’hote_; he was so preoccupied that he ate the trout caught in the
Albula without suspecting that they possessed a marvellous freshness, an
exquisite flavour and delicacy, and yet it is notorious that the trout
of the Albula are the first trout of the universe.

Mlle. Moiseney, the duties of whose office consisted in serving as
chaperon to Mlle. Moriaz, was not a great genius. This worthy and
excellent personage had, in fact, rather a circumscribed mind, and she
had not the least suspicion of it. Her physiognomy was not pleasing to
M. Moriaz; he had several times besought his daughter to part with her.
In the goodness of her soul Antoinette always refused; she was not one
who could countenance rebuffs to old domestics, old dogs, old horses,
or worn-out governesses. Young Candide arrived at the conclusion, as the
result of his observations, that the first degree of happiness would
be to be Mlle. Gunegonde, and the second to contemplate her throughout
life. Mlle. Moiseney believed that it would be the first degree of
superhuman felicity to be Mlle. Moriaz, the second to pass one’s life
near this queen, who, arbitrary and capricious though she might be, was
most thoughtful of the happiness of her subjects, and to be able to
say: “It was I that hatched the egg whence arose this phoenix; I did
something for this marvel; I taught her English and music.” She had
boundless admiration for her queen, amounting actually to idolatry. The
English profess that their sovereigns can do nothing amiss: “The king
can do no wrong.” Mlle. Moiseney was convinced that Mlle. Moriaz could
neither do wrong nor make mistakes about anything. She saw everything
with her eyes, espoused her likes and her dislikes, her sentiments, her
opinions, her rights, and her wrongs; she lived, as it were, a reflected
existence. Every morning she said to her idol, “How beautiful we are
to-day!” precisely as the bell-ringer who, puffing out his cheeks,
cried: “We are in voice; we have chanted vespers well to-day!” M. Moriaz
excused her for finding his daughter charming, but could not so
readily approve of her upholding Antoinette’s ideas, her decisions,
her prejudices. “This woman is no chaperon,” said he; “she is an
admiration-point!” He would have been very glad to have routed her from
the field, and to give her place to a person of good sound sense and
judgment, one who might gain some influence over Antoinette. It would
have greatly surprised Mlle. Moiseney had he represented to her that she
lacked good sense. This good creature flattered herself that she had an
inexhaustible stock of this commodity; she placed the highest estimate
on her own judgment; she believed herself to be well-nigh infallible.
She discoursed in the tone of an oracle on future contingencies; she
prided herself on being able to divine all things, to foresee all
things, to predict all things--in a word, to be in the secret of the
gods. As her Christian name was Joan, M. Moriaz, who set little store by
his calendar, sometimes called her Pope Joan, which wounded her deeply.

Mlle. Moiseney had two weaknesses; she was a gormand, and she admired
handsome men. Let us understand the case: she knew perfectly well that
they were not created for her; that she had no attractions to offer
them; that they had nothing to give her. She admired them naively and
innocently, as a child might admire a beautiful Epinal engraving; she
would willingly have cut out their likenesses to hang on a nail on
her wall, and contemplate while rereading “Gonzalve de Cordue” and “Le
Dernier des Cavaliers,” her two favourite romances. At Bergun,
during the repast, her brain had been working, and she had made two
reflections. The first was, that the trout of Albula were incomparable,
the second that the stranger seated opposite her had a remarkably
handsome head, and was altogether a fine-looking man. Several times,
with fork halfway to mouth, and nose in the air, she had forgotten
herself in her scrutiny of him.

Antoinette, rather weary, had retired early to her chamber. Mlle.
Moiseney repaired thither to see if she needed anything, and, as she was
about leaving her for the night, candle in hand, she suddenly inquired,
“Do not you think, as I do, that this stranger is a remarkable-looking
person?”

“Of whom do you speak?” rejoined Antoinette.

“Why, of the traveller who sat opposite me.”

“I confess that I scarcely looked at him.”

“Indeed! He has superb eyes, nearly green, with fawn-coloured tinting.”

“Most astonishing! And his hair, is it green also?”

“Chestnut brown, almost hazel.”

“Pray be more exact; is it hazel or not?”

“You need not laugh at me--his whole appearance is striking, his figure
singular, but full of character, full of expression, and as handsome as
singular.”

“What enthusiasm! It seemed to me, so far as I noticed, that he was
inclined to stoop, and that his head was very badly poised.”

“What do you say?” cried Mlle. Moiseney, greatly scandalized. “How came
you to think his head badly poised?”

“There--there! Don’t let us quarrel about it; I am ready to retract.
Good-night, mademoiselle. Apropos, did you know that M. Camille Langis
had returned to Paris?”

“I did not know it, but I am not surprised. I had surmised it; in fact,
I was quite sure that he would be back about this time, perfectly sure.
And, of course, you think he has returned with the intention--”

“I think,” interrupted Antoinette, “that it costs me more to pain M.
Langis than any other man in the world. I think, also, that he possesses
most tiresome fidelity; it is always the way, one never loses one’s dog
when one wants to lose him; and I think, moreover, that a woman makes a
poor bargain when she marries a man for whom she feels friendship; for,
if she gains a husband, she is very sure to lose a friend.”

“How true your words are!” exclaimed Mlle. Moiseney. “But you are always
right. Has M. Langis forgotten that you thought him too young--only
twenty-three?”

“He has so little forgotten it that he has managed, I don’t know how, to
be at present twenty-five. How resist such a mark of affection? I shall
be compelled to marry him.”

“That will never do. People do not marry for charity,” replied Mlle.
Moiseney, deprecatingly.

“Adieu, my dear,” said Antoinette, dismissing her. “Do not dream too
much about your unknown charmer. I assure you he had a decided stoop
in his shoulders. However, that makes small difference; if your heart
speaks, I will see to arranging this affair for you.” And she added,
musingly, “How amusing it must be to marry other people!”

The next morning Mlle. Moiseney made the acquaintance of her unknown
charmer. Before leaving Bergun Mlle. Moriaz wished to make a sketch, and
she had gone out early with her father. Mlle. Moiseney descended to
the hotel _salon_, and, espying a piano, she opened it and played a
_fantasia_ by Schumann; she was a tolerably good musician. When she had
finished, Count Abel Larinski, the man with green eyes, who had entered
the _salon_ without her hearing him, approached to thank her for the
pleasure he had had in listening to her; but he begged to take the
liberty to tell her that she failed to properly observe the movement,
and had taken an _andantino_ for an _andante_. At her solicitation he
took her place at the instrument, and executed the _andantino_ as few
but professional artists could do. Mlle. Moiseney, ever ready with her
enthusiasm, declared that he must be a Liszt or a Chopin, and implored
him to play her something else, to which he consented with good grace.
After this they talked about music and many other things. The man with
the green eyes possessed one quality in common with Socrates, he was
master in the art of interrogating, and Mlle. Moiseney loved to talk.
The subject on which she discoursed most willingly was Mlle. Antoinette
Moriaz; when she was started under this heading she became eloquent.
At the end of half an hour Count Abel was thoroughly _au fait_ on the
character and position of Mlle. Moriaz. He knew that she had a heart
of gold, a mind free from all narrow prejudices, a generous soul, and
a love for all that was chivalrous and heroic; he knew that two days of
every week were devoted by her to visiting the poor, and that she
looked upon these as natural creditors to whom it was her duty to make
restitution. He knew also that Mlle. Moriaz could all the better satisfy
her charitable inclinations, as her mother had left her an income of one
hundred thousand livres. He learned that she danced to perfection, that
she drew like an angel, and that she read Italian and spoke English.
This last seemed of mediocre importance to Count Abel. St. Paul said:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” The count
was of St. Paul’s opinion, and had Mlle. Moriaz known neither how to
speak English, nor to draw, nor yet to dance, it would not in the
least have diminished the esteem with which he honoured her. The main
essential in his eyes was that she was benevolent to the poor, and that
she cherished a little tenderness for heroes.

When he had learned, with an air of indifference, all that he cared to
learn, he respectfully bowed himself away from Mlle. Moiseney, to whom
he had not mentioned his name, and, buckling his haversack, he put it on
his back, paid his bill, and set out on foot to make a hasty ascent of
the culminating point of the Albula Pass, which leads into the Engadine
Valley. One would have difficulty in finding throughout the Alps a
more completely barren, rugged, desolate spot, than this portion of
the Albula Pass. The highway lies among masses of rocks, heaped up in
terrible disorder. Arrived at the culminating point, Count Abel felt the
necessity of taking breath. He clambered up a little hillock, where he
seated himself. At his feet were wide open the yawning jaws of a cavern,
obstructed by great tufts of aconite (wolf’s-bane), with sombre foliage;
one would have said that they kept guard over some crime in which they
had been accomplices. Count Abel contemplated the awful silence that
surrounded him; everywhere enormous boulders, heaped together, or
scattered about in isolated grandeur; some pitched on their sides,
others standing erect, still others suspended, as it were, in mid-air.
It seemed to him that these boulders had formerly served for the games
of bacchanalian Titans, who, after having used them as skittles or
jack-stones, had ended by hurling them at one another’s heads. It is
most probable that He who constructed the Albula Pass, alarmed and
confused by the hideous aspect of his work, did justice to it by
breaking it into fragments with his gigantic hammer.

Count Abel heard a tinkling of bells, and, looking up, he saw
approaching a post-chaise, making its way from Engadine to Bergun. It
was a large, uncovered berlin, and in it sat a woman of about sixty
years of age, accompanied by her attendants and her pug-dog. This woman
had rather a bulky head, a long face, a snub-nose, high cheek-bones, a
keen, bright eye, a large mouth, about which played a smile, at the
same time _spirituel_, imperious, and contemptuous. Abel grew pale, and
became at once convulsed with terror; he could not withdraw his eyes
from this markedly Mongolian physiognomy, which from afar he had
recognised. “Ah, yes,” he said, “it is she!” He drew over his face the
cape of his mantle, and disappeared as completely as it is possible to
disappear when one is perched upon a hillock. It was six years since he
had seen this woman, and he had promised himself never to see her again;
but man is the plaything of circumstances, and his happiness as well
as his pride is at the mercy of a chance encounter. Count Abel was no
longer proud; for some moments he had humbled himself, he had ceased to
exist.

Happily he discovered that he had not been recognised; that the woman
of sixty years of age was not looking his way. She had good taste;
discovering the hideous aspect of the country, which is usually known as
the Vallee du Diable, she had opened a volume, bound in morocco, which
her waiting-woman had placed in her hands. This volume was not a new
novel; it was a German book, entitled “The History of Civilization,
viewed in Accordance with the Doctrines of Evolution, from the most
Remote Period to the Present Day.” She neither had made much progress
in the pages of the book nor in the history of civilization; she had not
got beyond the age of stone or of bronze; she was still among primitive
animal life, among the protozoa, the monads, the infusoria, the
vibratiles--in the age of albumen, or gelatinous civilization, as it was
called by the author, the sagacity of whose views charmed her. She only
interrupted her reading at intervals to lightly stroke the nose of her
pug, who lay snoring in her lap, and she was a thousand leagues from
suspecting that Count Abel Larinski was at hand, watching her.

The berlin passed by him without stopping, and soon it had begun the
descent towards Bergun. Then he felt a great weight roll from his heart,
which beat freely once more. The berlin moved rapidly away; the count
followed it with his prayers, smoothing its course, removing every
stone or other obstacle that might retard its progress. It was just
disappearing round one of the curves of the road, when it crossed
another post-chaise, making the ascent in a walk, and in it Count Abel
perceived something red: it was the hood of Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz. A
moment more and the berlin was gone; it seemed to him that the shadow of
his sorrowful youth, emerged suddenly from the realm of shades, had been
plunged back there forever, and that the fay of hope--she who holds
in her keeping the secrets of the future--was ascending toward him,
red-hooded, flowers in her hands, sunshine in her eyes. The clouds
parted, the deep shadow covering the Vallee du Diable cleared away,
and the dismal solitude began to smile. Count Abel arose, picked up his
staff, and shook himself. As he passed before the cavern, he discovered,
among the tufts of aconite which covered it, a mossy hollow, and
he perceived that this hollow was ornamented with beautiful blue
campanulas, whose little bells gracefully waved in the gentle breeze
which was stirring. He gathered one of these campanulas, carried it
to his lips, and found its taste most agreeable. Half an hour later
he turned from the highway into a foot-path which led through green
pastures and forests of larch-trees.

By the time he had reached the heart of the valley it was nightfall. He
traversed the hamlet of Cresta, crossed a bridge, found himself at the
entrance of the village of Cellarina, about twenty-five minutes’ walk
form Saint Moritz. After taking counsel with himself, he resolved to
proceed no farther; and so he put up at a neat, pretty inn, which had
just been freshly white-washed.

The air of the Engadine is so keen and bracing that the first nights
passed there are apt to be sleepless ones. Count Larinski scarcely slept
at all in his new quarters. Would he have slept better on the plains?
He became worn out with his thoughts. Of what was he thinking? Of the
cathedral at Chur, of the Vallee du Diable, of the tufts of aconite, the
campanulas, and the meeting of the two post-chaises, one ascending, the
other descending. After that he saw no longer anything but a red hood,
and his eyes were open when the first blush of the morning penetrated
his modest chamber. Eagles sleep little when they are preparing for the
chase.



CHAPTER II

The Baths of Saint Moritz are, according to the verdict of a large
number of people, by no means an enlivening resort, and here tarry
chiefly genuine invalids, who cherish a sincere desire to recover health
and strength. The invigorating atmosphere, the chalybeate waters, which
are unquestionably wholesome, although they do taste like ink, have
wrought more than one actual miracle; nevertheless, it is said to
require no little philosophy to tolerate existence there. “I am charmed
to have had the experience of visiting the Baths,” we once heard an
invalid say, “for I know now that I am capable of enduring anything
and everything.” But this, let us hasten to assure the reader, is an
exaggeration--the mere babbling of an ingrate.

The Upper Engadine Valley, in which Saint Moritz is situated, has, as
well as the Baths, its detractors and its admirers. This narrow valley,
throughout whose whole length flows the Inn, shut in by glacier-capped
mountains, whose slopes are covered with spruce, pine, and larch trees,
lies at an altitude of some five thousand feet above the level of the
sea. It often snows there in the month of August, but spring and early
summer in the locality are delightful; and dotted about are numerous
little romantic green lakes, glittering like emeralds in the sunshine.
Those who slander these by comparing them to wash-bowls and cisterns,
are simply troubled with the spleen, a malady which neither iron,
iodine, nor yet sulphur, can cure.

One thing these discontented folks cannot deny, and that is that it
would be difficult, not to say impossible, to find anywhere in the
mountains more flowery and highly perfumed mossy banks than those of
the Engadine. We do not make this assertion because of the rhododendrons
that abound on the borders of the lakes: we are not fond of this showy,
pretentious shrub, whose flowers look as if they were moulded in wax
for the decoration of some altar; but is it not delightful to walk on a
greensward, almost black with rich satyrion and vanilla? And what
would you think of a wealth of gentians, large and small; great yellow
arnicas; beautiful Martagon lilies; and St.-Bruno lilies; of every
variety of daphne; of androsace, with its rose-coloured clusters; of the
flame-coloured orchis; of saxifrage; of great, velvety campanulas; of
pretty violet asters, wrapped in little, cravat-like tufting, to protect
them from the cold? Besides, near the runnels, following whose borders
the cattle have tracked out graded paths, there grows that species of
immortelle called _Edelweiss_, an object of covetousness to every guest
at the Baths. Higher up, near the glacier approach, may be found the
white heart’s-ease, the anemone, and the glacial ranunculus (spearwort);
higher still, often buried beneath the snow, flourishes that charming
little lilac flower, delicately cut, sensitive, quivering, as it were,
with a cold, known as the soldanella. To scrape away the snow and find
beneath it a flower! Are there often made such delightful discoveries in
life?

Having said thus much, we must admit that the Rue de Saint Moritz does
not resemble the Rue de la Paix of Paris. We must also admit that the
markets of the place are poorly supplied, and that in an atmosphere
well calculated to stimulate the appetite the wherewithal to supply this
cannot always be obtained. We cannot have everything in this world;
but it is by no means our intention to advise any one to take up his
residence for life in the Engadine. There must, however, be some charm
in this valley, since those of its inhabitants who emigrate from it in
their youth are very apt, after they have made some money, to return
to pass their old age in their natal place, where they build some very
pretty houses.

Mlle. Moriaz did not find Saint Moritz disagreeable; the wildness of
the scenery and the rugged pines pleased her. From the terrace of Hotel
Badrutt she loved to gaze upon the green lake, slumbering at her feet,
and it never occurred to her to grumble because it had the form of
a wash-bowl. She loved to see the cows returning at evening from the
pasture. The cowherd in charge marshalled home in the most orderly
manner his little drove, which announced its coming from afar by the
tinkling of the cow-bells. Each one of the creatures stopped of itself
at the entrance to its stall and demanded admittance by its lowing. In
the morning, when they were turned out again, they awaited the arrival
of the entire herd, and fell into rank and file, each in its proper
place. The first time Mlle. Moriaz witnessed this ceremony, she found it
as interesting as a first presentation at the theatre or opera.

There were several rainy days, which she employed in reading, painting,
and making observations on the human animals of both sexes whom she
encountered at the _table d’hote_. She soon gained an increase of
occupation. With her, mind and heart were so constantly on the alert
that it was impossible for her to remain a week in a place without
discovering some work of charity to be performed. A woman to whom she
had taken a fancy, a little shopkeeper of the place, interested her in
her daughter, who was destined to be a governess, and who desired to
learn drawing. Antoinette undertook to give her drawing-lessons, making
her come every day to the hotel, and often keeping her there several
hours. Her pupil was rather dull of comprehension, and caused her to
grow a little cross sometimes; but she always made amends to the girl by
her caresses and sprightly talk.

The weather became fine again. Antoinette availed herself of
the opportunity to take long promenades; she clambered up the
mountain-slopes, over slippery turf, in the hope of carrying home some
rare plant; but her strength was not equal to her valour--she could not
succeed in scaling those heights where flourished the _Edelweiss_.
A week after her arrival she had a surprise, we might even say a
pleasurable emotion, which was not comprised in the programme of
amusements that the proprietor of Hotel Badrutt undertook to procure for
his guests. Returning from an excursion to Lake Silvaplana, she found
in her chamber a basket containing a veritable sheaf of Alpine flowers,
freshly gathered, and among them not only _Edelweiss_ in profusion, but
several very rare plants, and the rarest of all a certain bell-flower
creeper, which smells like the apricot, and which, except in some
districts of the Engadine, is only found now in Siberia. This splendid
bouquet was accompanied by a note, thus conceived:

“A man who had had enough of life, resolved to hang himself. To execute
his dolorous design, he selected a lonely and dismal spot, where there
grew a solitary oak, whose sap was nearly exhausted. As he was engaged
in securing his cord, a bird alighted on the half-dead tree and began to
sing. The man said to himself: ‘Since there is no spot so miserable that
a bird will not deign to sing in it, I will have the courage to live.’
And he lived.

“I arrived in this village disgusted with life, sorrowful and so weary
that I longed to die. I saw you pass by, and I know not what mysterious
virtue entered into me. I will live.

“‘What matters it to me?’ you will say, in reading these lines; and you
will be right. My sole excuse for having written them is, that I will
leave here in a few days; that you never will see me again, never know
who I am!”

The first impression of Antoinette was one of profound astonishment. She
would have taken it for granted that there was some mistake had not her
name been written in full on the envelope. Her second impulse was to
laugh at her adventure. She accorded full justice to Mlle. Moriaz; she
knew very well that she did not resemble the first chance comer;
but that her beauty would work miracles, resurrections; that a
hypochondriac, merely from seeing her pass by, was likely to regain his
taste for existence, scarcely appeared admissible to her. So great was
her curiosity, that she took the pains to make inquiries; the flowers
and the letter had been left by a little peasant, who was not of
the place, and who could not be found. Antoinette examined the
hotel-register; she did not see there the handwriting of the letter. She
studied the faces which surrounded her; there was not in Hotel Badrutt a
single romantic-looking person. Very speedily she renounced her search.
The bouquet pleased her; she kept it as a present fallen from the skies,
and preserved the letter as a curiosity, without long troubling herself
to know who had written it. “Do not let us talk about it any more, it is
doubtless some lunatic,” she replied one day to Mlle. Moiseney, who kept
constantly recurring to the incident whose mystery she burned to fathom.
The good demoiselle had been tempted to stop people in the road to ask,
“Was it you?” Perchance she might have suspected her Bergun unknown to
have a hand in the affair, had she had the least idea that he was at
Saint Moritz, where she never had met him. He came there, nevertheless,
every day, but at his own time; besides, the hotels were full to
overflowing, and it was very easy to lose one’s self in the crowd.

To tell the truth, when Count Abel Larinski came to Saint Moritz he
was far less occupied with Mlle. Moriaz than with a certain illustrious
chemist. The air of the Engadine and the waters that tasted like ink had
worked marvels: in a week M. Moriaz felt like a new man. There had come
to him a most formidable appetite, and he could walk for hours at a time
without becoming weary. He abused his growing strength by constantly
strolling through the mountains without a guide, hammer in hand; and
every day, in spite of the remonstrances of his daughter, he increased
the length of his excursions. The more people know, the more inquisitive
they become; and, when one is inquisitive, one can go to great lengths
without feeling fatigue; one only becomes conscious of this after the
exertion is over. M. Moriaz never for a moment suspected that he was
accompanied, at a respectful distance, on these solitary expeditions, by
a stranger, who, with eyes and ears both on the alert, watched over him
like a providence. The most peculiar part of the affair was that this
providence would gladly have caused him to take a misstep, or thrust him
into some quagmire, in order to have the pleasure of drawing him out,
and bearing him in his arms to the Hotel Badrutt. “If only he could fall
into a hole and break his leg!” Such was the daily wish of Count Abel
Larinski; but _savants_ have great license allowed them. Although M.
Moriaz was both corpulent and inclined to be absent-minded, he plunged
into more than one quagmire without sticking fast, more than one marsh
without having his progress impeded.

One morning he conceived the project of climbing up as high as a certain
fortress of mountains whose battlements overhang a forest of pine and
larch trees. He was not yet sufficiently accustomed to the mountains to
realize how deceptive distances become there. After having drained two
glasses of the chalybeate waters, and breakfasted heartily, he set out,
crossed the Inn, and began the ascent to the forest. The slope grew more
and more abrupt, and ere long he discovered that he had wandered from
the foot-path. He was not one to be easily disheartened; he continued
climbing, laying hold of the brushwood with his hands, planting his
feet among perfidious pine-needles, which form a carpet as smooth as
a mirror, making three steps forward and two backward. Great drops of
perspiration started out on his brow, and he sat down for a moment to
wipe them away, hoping that some wood-cutter might appear and show
him the way back to the path, if there was one. But no human soul came
within sight; and plucking up his courage again he resumed the ascent,
until he had nearly reached a breastwork of rock, in which he vainly
sought an opening. He was about retracing his steps when he remembered
that from the gallery of the hotel he had observed this breastwork
of reddish rock, and it seemed to him that he remembered also that it
formed the buttress of the mountain-stronghold of which he was in quest;
and so he concluded that this would be the last obstacle he would have
to overcome. He thought that it would be actually humiliating to be
so near the goal and yet renounce it. The rock, worn by the frost,
presented sundry crevices and indentures, forming a natural stairway.
Arming himself with all his strength, and making free use of his nails,
he undertook to scale it, and in five minutes had gained a sort of
plateau, which, unluckily for him, he found to be commanded by a smooth
granite wall of a fearful height. The only satisfactory procedure for
him now was to return whence he had come; but in these perilous passages
to ascend is easier than to descend; it being impossible to choose one’s
steps, descent might lead to a rather undesirable adventure. M. Moriaz
did not dare to risk this adventure.

He walked the whole length of the plateau where he found himself in the
hope of discovering some outlet; but the sole outlet he could discover
had already been monopolized by a mountain-torrent whose troubled waters
noisily precipitated themselves through it to the depths below. This
torrent was much too wide to wade, and to think of leaping over it would
have been preposterous. All retreat being cut off, M. Moriaz began to
regret his audacity. Seized by a sudden agony of alarm, he began to ask
himself if he was not condemned to end his days in this eagle’s-nest; he
thought with envy of the felicity of the inhabitants of the plains; he
cast piteous glances at the implacable wall whose frowning visage seemed
to reproach him with his imprudence. It seemed to him that the human
mind never had devised anything more beautiful than a great highway;
and it would have taken little to make him exclaim with Panurge, “Oh,
thrice--ay, quadruply--happy those who plant cabbages!”

Although there seemed small chance of his being heard in this solitude,
he called aloud several times; he had great difficulty in raising his
voice above the noise of the cataract. Suddenly he believed that he
heard below him a distant voice replying to his call. He redoubled his
cries, and it seemed to him that the voice drew nearer, and soon he saw
emerging from the thicket bordering the opposite bank of the torrent a
pale face with chestnut beard, which he remembered having beheld in the
cathedral at Chur, and to have seen again at Bergun.

“You are a prisoner, monsieur,” was the salutation of Count Larinski;
for, of course, the newcomer was none other than he. “One moment’s
patience, and I am with you.” And his face beamed with joy. He had him
at last, this precious game which has caused him so many steps.

He turned away, bounding from rock to rock with the agility of a
chamois. In about twenty minutes he reappeared, bearing on his shoulder
a long plank which he had detached from the inclosure of a piece of
pasture-land. He threw it across the torrent, secured it as well as he
could, crossed this impromptu foot-bridge of his own device, and joined
M. Moriaz, who was quite ready to embrace him.

“Nothing is more perfidious than the mountains,” said the count. “They
are haunted by some mysterious sprite, who fairly delights in playing
tricks with venturesome people; but ‘all’s well that ends well.’ Before
setting out from here you need something to revive you. The rarefied
atmosphere of these high regions makes the stomach frightfully hollow.
More prudent than you, I never undertake these expeditions without
providing myself with some refreshment. But how pale you are!” he added,
looking at him with sympathetic, almost tender, eyes. “Put on, I beg
of you, my overcoat, and I will wrap myself up in my plaid, and then we
will both be warm.”

With these words he took off his overcoat and handed it to M. Moriaz,
who, feeling almost frozen, offered feeble objections to donning the
garment, although he had some difficulty in getting into the sleeves.

During this time Count Abel had thrown down on the rock the wallet he
carried slung to a leathern strap over his shoulders. He drew forth from
it a loaf of light bread, some hard-boiled eggs, a _pate_ of venison,
and a bottle of excellent burgundy. These provisions he spread
out around him, and then presented to M. Moriaz a cup cut from a
cocoanut-shell, and filled it to the brim, saying, “Here is something
that will entirely restore you.” M. Moriaz drained the cup, and soon
felt his weakness disappear. His natural good spirits returned to him,
and he gaily narrated to his Amphitryon his deplorable Odyssey. In
return, Abel recounted to him a similar adventure he had had in the
Carpathian Mountains. It is very easy to take a liking to a man who
helps you out of a scrape, who gives you drink when you are thirsty, and
food when you are hungry; but, even had not M. Moriaz been under great
obligations to Count Larinski, he could not have avoided the discovery
that this amiable stranger was a man of good address and agreeable
conversation.

Nevertheless, so soon as the repast was finished, he said: “We have
forgotten ourselves in our talk. I am the happy father of a charming
daughter who has a vivid imagination. She will believe that I have
met with an untimely end if I do not hasten as speedily as possible to
reassure her.”

Count Abel hereupon gave his hand to M. Moriaz to aid him in preserving
his equilibrium as he crossed the plank, which was not wide. Throughout
the descent he overwhelmed him with attentions, sustaining him with his
arm when the descent became too abrupt. So soon as they had made their
way to a foot-path, they resumed their conversation. Abel was very
clear-sighted, and, like Socrates, as we said before, he was master in
the art of interrogating. He turned the conversation to erratic
glaciers and boulders. M. Moriaz was enchanted with his manner of asking
questions; as Professor of the College of France, he was well pleased to
owe his life to an intelligent man.

As they traversed a pine-forest, they heard a voice hailing them,
and they were shortly joined by a guide whom Mlle. Moriaz, mortally
disquieted at the prolonged absence of her father, had sent in quest of
him. Pale with emotion, trembling in every fibre, she had seated herself
on the bank of a stream. She was completely a prey to terror, and in her
imagination plainly saw her father lying half dead at the bottom of some
precipice or rocky crevasse. On perceiving him she uttered a cry of joy
and ran to meet him.

“Ah! truly, my love,” said he, “I have been more fortunate than wise.
And I shall have to ask my deliverer his name in order to present him to
you.”

Count Abel appeared not to have heard these last words. He stammered
out something about M. Moriaz having exaggerated the worth of the little
service it had been his good fortune to render him, and then with a
cold, formal, dignified air, he bowed to Antoinette and moved hurriedly
away, as a man who cares little to make new acquaintances, and who longs
to get back to his solitude.

He was already at some distance when M. Moriaz, who had been busily
recounting his adventures to his daughter, bethought him that he had
kept his deliverer’s overcoat. He searched in the pockets, and there
found a memorandum-book and some visiting-cards bearing the name of
Count Abel Larinski. Before dinner he made the tour of all the hotels in
Saint Moritz without discovering where M. Larinski lodged. He learned
it in the evening from a peasant who came over from Cellarina for the
overcoat.

The good Mlle. Moiseney was quite taken with Count Abel; first, because
he was handsome, and then because he played the piano bewitchingly.
There could be no doubt that Antoinette would feel grateful to this
good-looking musician who had restored to her her father. Certain
of being no longer thwarted in her enthusiasm, she said to her that
evening, with a smile which was meant to be excessively ironical:

“Well, my dear, do you still think that Count Larinski has a stoop in
his shoulders, and that his head is badly poised?”

“It is a matter of small import, but I do not gainsay it.”

“Ah, if you had only heard him play one of Schumann’s romances!”

“A talent for music is a noble one. Nevertheless, the man’s chief merit,
in my eyes, is that he has a taste for saving life.”

“Oh, I was sure from the first, perfectly sure, that this man had a
large heart and a noble soul. I read physiognomies very correctly, and
I never need to see people twice to know how far they can be relied on.”
 After a pause she added, “I wonder if I dare tell you, my dear, of an
idea that has occurred to me?”

“Tell me, by all means. Your ideas sometimes amuse me.”

“Might it not turn out that the author of a certain note, and sender of
a certain thing, was M. le Comte Abel Larinski?”

“Why he rather than any other?” queried Antoinette. “I believe you do
him wrong: he appears to be a gentleman, and gentlemen do not write
anonymous letters.”

“Oh! that was a very innocent one, and you may be sure that he wrote it
in perfect good faith.”

“You believe, then, mademoiselle, that in good faith a man about to
put a halter about his neck would renounce his project because he had
encountered Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz on a public highway?”

“Why not?” cried Mlle. Moiseney, looking at her with eyes wide open with
admiration. “Besides, you know the Poles are a hot-headed people, whose
hearts are open to all noble enthusiasms. One could pardon in Count
Larinski what could not be overlooked in a Parisian.”

“I will pardon him on condition that he will keep his promise and never
make himself known to me, for this is unquestionably the first duty of a
mysterious unknown. Just now he refused to let my father present him
to me, which is a good mark in his favour. If he alters his mind,
he becomes at once a condemned man. I pity you, my dear Joan,” added
Antoinette, laughingly. “You are dying with longing to hear one of those
romances without words, which M. Larinski plays so divinely; and if M.
Larinski be the man of the letter, his own avowal prohibits him from
appearing before me again. How can you extricate yourself from this
dilemma? The case is embarrassing.”

It was M. Moriaz who undertook the solution of this embarrassing
dilemma. Three days later, some moments before dinner, he was walking in
the hotel-grounds, smoking a cigar. He saw passing along the road Count
Abel, on his way back to Cellarina. A storm was coming up; already great
drops of rain were beginning to fall. M. Moriaz ran after the count and
seized him by the button, saying: “You have saved my life--permit me, at
least, to save you from the rain. Do me the honour to share our dinner;
we will have it served in my apartment.”

Abel strongly resisted this proposition, giving reasons that sounded
like mere pretences. A rumbling of thunder was heard. M. Moriaz took
his man by the arm, and led him in by force. He presented him to
his daughter, saying: “Antoinette, let me present to you M. le Comte
Larinski, a most excellent man, but little inclined to sociability. I
was compelled to use violence in bringing him here.”

The count acknowledged these remarks with a constrained smile. He wore
the manner of a prisoner; but, as he prided himself on his good-breeding
and on his philosophy, he seemed to be endeavouring to make the best
of his prison. During dinner he was grave. He treated Antoinette with
frigid politeness, paid some attention to Mlle. Moiseney, but reserved
his chief assiduities for Mr. Moriaz. He addressed his conversation
more particularly to him, and listened to him with profound respect. A
professor is always sensible to this kind of courtesy.

After the coffee was served, the crusting of ice in which Count Abel had
incased himself began to thaw. He had been all over the world; he knew
the United States and Turkey, New Orleans and Bucharest, San Francisco
and Constantinople. His travels had been profitable to him: he had
observed men and things, countries and institutions, customs and laws,
the indigenous races and the settlers, all but the transient visitors,
with whom he seemed to have had no time to occupy himself; at least they
formed no part of his conversation. He related several anecdotes, with
some show of sprightliness; his melancholy began to melt away, he even
indulged in little bursts of gaiety, and Antoinette could not avoid
comparing him and his discourse to some of the more rigorous passages of
the Engadine, where, amid the black shades of the pines, among frowning
rocks, there are to be found lilies, gentians, and lakes.

He resumed his gravity to reply to a question of M. Moriaz concerning
Poland. “Unhappy Poland!” cried he. “To-day the Jew is its master.
Active, adroit, inventive, little scrupulous, he makes capital out of
our indolence and our improvidence. He has over us one great advantage,
which is simply that, while we live from day to day, he possesses a
notion of a to-morrow; we despise him, and we could not do without him.
We are always thirsty, and he supplies us with drink; we never have
ready money, and he loans it to us at an enormous rate of interest; we
cannot return it to him, and he reimburses himself by seizing our goods
and chattels, our jewels, our land, and our castles. We take out our
revenge in insolence, and from time to time in petty persecutions, and
we gradually arrive at the conclusion that the sole means of freeing
ourselves from the yoke of the Jew would be to conquer the vices by
which he lives.” Count Abel added that for his part he had no prejudice
against these children of Abraham, and he quoted the words of an
Austrian publicist who said that each country had the kind of Jews it
deserved. “In fact,” he continued, “in England, as in France, and in
every country where they are placed on a footing of equality, they
become one of the most wholesome, most vigorous elements of the nation,
while they are the scourge, the leeches, of the countries that persecute
them.”

“And, truly, justice demands that it should be so,” cried Mlle. Moriaz.

For the first time the count addressed himself directly to her, saying,
with a smile: “How is this, mademoiselle? You are a woman, and you love
justice!”

“This astonishes you, monsieur?” she rejoined. “You do not think justice
one of our virtues?”

“A woman of my acquaintance,” he replied, “always maintained that it
would be rendering a very bad service to this poor world of ours to
suppress all injustice, because with the same stroke would also be
suppressed all charity.”

“That is not my opinion,” said she. “When I give, it seems to me that I
make restitution.”

“She is somewhat of a socialist,” cried M. Moriaz. “I perceive it
every January in making out her accounts, and it is fortunate that she
intrusts this to me, for she never takes the trouble to look at the
memorandum her banker sends her.”

“I am proud for Poland that Mlle. Moriaz has a Polish failing,” said
Abel Larinski, gallantly.

“Is it a failing?” queried Antoinette.

“Arithmetic is the most beautiful of the sciences and the mother of
certainty,” said M. Moriaz. And turning towards the count, he added:
“She is very wrong-headed, this girl of mine; she holds absolutely
revolutionary principles, dangerous to public order and the preservation
of society. Why, she maintains that people who are in need have a right
to the superfluities of others!”

“This appears to me self-evident,” said she.

“And, for example,” further continued M. Moriaz, “she has among her
_proteges_ a certain Mlle. Galard--”

“Galet,” said Mlle. Moiseney, bridling up, for she had been impatiently
awaiting an opportunity to put in a word.

“This Mlle. Leontine Galet, who lives at No. 25 Rue Mouffetard--”

“No. 27,” again interposed Mlle. Moiseney, in a magisterial tone.

“As usual, you are sure of it, perfectly sure. Very good! This Mlle.
Galard or Galet, residing at No. 25 or No. 27 Rue Mouffetard, was
formerly a florist by trade, and now she has not a sou. I do not wish
to fathom the mysteries of her past--it is very apt to be ‘lightly come,
lightly go’ with the money of these people--but certain it is that Mlle.
Galard--”

“Galet,” put in Mlle. Moiseney, sharply.

“Is to-day an infirm old woman, a worthy object of the compassion
of charitable people,” continued M. Moriaz, heedless of this last
interruption. “Mlle. Moriaz allows her a pension, with which I find no
fault; but Mlle. Galet--I mistake, Mlle. Galard--has retained from her
former calling her passion for flowers, and during the winter Mlle.
Moriaz sends her every week a bouquet costing from ten to twelve francs,
which shows, according to my opinion, a lack of common-sense. In the
month of January last, she sent for Parma violets for this _protégé_
of hers. Now, I appeal to M. Larinski--is this reasonable, or is it
absurd?”

“It is admirably absurd and foolishly admirable,” replied the count.

“The flowers I give her are never so beautiful as some that were sent me
the other day,” exclaimed Mlle. Moriaz.

She went then into the next room, and returned, carrying the vase of
water containing the mysterious bouquet. “What do you think of these?”
 she asked the count. “They are already much faded, and yet I think they
are beautiful still.”

He admired the bouquet; but, although Antoinette regarded him fixedly,
she detected neither blush nor confusion on his face. “It was not he,”
 she said to herself.

There was a piano in the room where they had dined. As Count Abel was
taking leave, Mlle. Moiseney begged him to give Mlle. Moriaz proof of
his talent. He slightly knit his brows at this request, and resumed that
sombre, almost savage, air he had worn when he met Antoinette at the
foot of the mountain. He urged in excuse the lateness of the hour, but
he allowed the promise to be wrested from him that he would be more
complaisant the next day.

When he was gone, accompanied by M. Moriaz, who said he would walk a
little distance with him, Antoinette exclaimed: “You see, my dear--it
was not he.”

“Suppose I was wrong,” replied Mlle. Moiseney, in a piqued tone--“you
will at least grant that he is handsome?”

“As handsome as you please. Do you know what I think of when I look at
him? A haunted castle. And I feel curious to make the acquaintance of
the goblins that visit it.”

Notwithstanding his promise, Count Larinski did not reappear before the
lapse of three days; but this time he gave all the music that was asked
of him. His memory was surprising, and his whole soul seemed to be
at the ends of his fingers; and he drew marvellous strains from an
instrument which, in itself, was far from being a marvel. He sang, too;
he had a barytone voice, mellow and resonant. After having hummed in a
low tone some Roumanic melodies, he struck up one of his own national
songs. This he failed to finish; tears started in his eyes, emotion
overpowered his voice. He broke off abruptly, asking pardon for the
weakness that had caused him to make himself ridiculous; but one glance
at Mlle. Moriaz convinced him that she did not find him ridiculous.

A most invaluable resource, indeed, in a mountain-country where the
evenings are long, is a Pole who knows how to talk and to sing. M.
Moriaz liked music; but he liked something else besides. When he could
not go into society and was forbidden to work, he grew sleepy after
dinner; in order to rouse himself he was glad to play a hand of
_bezique_ or _ecarte_. For want of some one better, he played with
Mlle. Moiseney; but this make-shift was little to his taste; he disliked
immensely coming into too close proximity with the pinched visage and
yellow ribbons of Pope Joan. He proposed to Count Larinski to take a
hand with him, and his proposal was accepted with the best grace in the
world. “Decidedly this man is good for everything,” thought M. Moriaz,
and he conceived a great liking for him. The result was, that during an
entire week Count Abel passed every evening at the Hotel Badrutt.

“Your father is a most peculiar man,” said Mlle. Moiseney, indignantly,
to Antoinette. “He is shockingly egotistical. He has confiscated M.
Larinski. The idea of employing such a man as that to play _bezique_! He
will stop coming.”

But the count’s former savageness seemed wholly subdued. He did not stop
coming.

One evening M. Moriaz committed an imprudence. In making an odd trick,
he carelessly asked M. Larinski who had been his piano professor.

“One whose portrait I always carry about me,” was the reply.

And, drawing from his vest-pocket a medallion, he presented it to M.
Moriaz, who, after having looked at it, passed it over to his daughter.
The medallion contained the portrait of a woman with blond hair,
blue eyes, a refined, lovely mouth, a fragile, delicate being with
countenance at the same time sweet and sad, the face of an angel, but an
angel who had lived and suffered.

“What an exquisite face!” cried Mlle. Moriaz.

Truly it was exquisite. Some one has asserted that a Polish woman is
like punch made with holy-water. One may like neither the punch nor the
holy-water, and yet be very fond of Polish women. They form one of the
best chapters in the great book of the Creator.

“It is the portrait of my mother,” said Count Larinski.

“Are you so fortunate as to still possess her?” asked Antoinette.

“She was a tender flower,” he replied; “and tender flowers never live
long.”

“Her portrait shows it plainly; one can see that she suffered much, but
was resigned to live.”

For the first time the count departed from the reserve he had shown
towards Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz. “I have no words to tell you,” he
exclaimed, “how happy I am that my mother pleases you!”

Othello was accused of having employed secret philters to win
Desdemona’s love. Brabantio had only himself to blame; he had taken a
liking to Othello, and often invited him to come to him; he did not
make him play _bezique_, but he questioned him on his past. The Moor
recounted his life, his sufferings, his adventures, and Desdemona
wept. The fathers question, the heroes or adventurers recount, and the
daughters weep. Such are the outlines of a history as old as the world.
Abel Larinski had left the card-table. He had taken his seat in an
arm-chair, facing Mlle. Moiseney. He was questioned; he replied.

His destiny had been neither light nor easy. He was quite young when
his father, Count Witold Larinski, implicated in a conspiracy, had been
compelled to flee from Warsaw. His property was confiscated, but luckily
he had some investments away from home, which prevented him from being
left wholly penniless. He was a man of projects. He emigrated to America
with his wife and his son; he dreamed of making a name and a fortune
by cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. He repaired to New
Granada, there to make his studies and his charts. He made them so
thoroughly that he died of yellow fever before having begun his work,
having come to the end of his money and leaving his widow in the most
cruel destitution. Countess Larinski said to her son: “We have nothing
more to live on; but, then, is it so necessary to live?” She uttered
these words with an angelic smile about her lips. Abel set out for
California. He undertook the most menial services; he swept the streets,
acted as porter; what cared he, so long as his mother did not die of
hunger? All that he earned he sent to her, enduring himself the most
terrible privations, making her think that he denied himself nothing.
In the course of time Fortune favoured him; he had acquired a certain
competency. The countess came to rejoin him in San Francisco; but angels
cannot live in the rude, exciting atmosphere of the gold-seekers; they
suffer, spread their wings, and fly away. Some weeks after having lost
his mother--it was in 1863--Count Abel learned from a journal that fell
into his hands that Poland had risen again. He was twenty-one years of
age. He thought he heard a voice calling him, and another voice from the
skies whispered: “She calls thee. Go; it is thy duty.” And he went. Two
months later he crossed the frontier of Galicia to join the bands of
Langiewicz.

Othello spoke to Desdemona of caverns, deserts, quarries, rocks, and
hills whose heads touch heaven; of cannibals, the anthropophagi, and men
whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Count Abel spoke to Mlle.
Moriaz of the fortunes and vicissitudes of partisan warfare, of vain
exploits, of obscure glories, of bloody encounters that never are
decisive, of defeats from which survive hope, hunger, thirst, cold,
snow stained with blood, and long captivities in forests, tracked by the
enemy; then disasters, discouragements, the vanishing of the last hope,
punishment, the gallows, and finally a mute, feverish resignation,
swallowed up in that vast solitude with which silence surrounds
misfortune. After the dispersion of the band whose destinies he had
followed, he had gone over to Roumania.

This narration, exact and precise, bore the impress of truth. Count Abel
made it in a simple, modest tone, keeping himself as much as possible
in the background, and growing persuasive without apparent effort. There
were moments when his face would flame up with enthusiasm, when his
voice would become husky and broken, when he would seek for a word,
become impatient because he could not find it, find it at last, and this
effort added to the energy of his spasmodic and disjointed eloquence.
In conclusion, he said: “In his youth man believes himself born to roll;
the day comes when he experiences the necessity of being seated. I am
seated; my seat is a little hard, but when I am tempted to murmur, I
think of my mother and refrain.”

“What did you do in Roumania?” inquired M. Moriaz, who liked to have
stories circumstantially detailed.

“Ah! I beg of you to excuse me from recounting to you the worst employed
years of my life. I am my father’s own son. He dreamed of cutting
through an isthmus, I of inventing a gun. I spent four years of my life
in fabricating it, and the first time it was used it burst.”

And thereupon he plunged into a somewhat humorous description of his
invention, his hopes, his golden dreams, his disappointments, and his
chagrin. “The only admirable thing in the whole affair,” he concluded,
“and something that I believe never has happened to any other inventor,
is that I am cured entirely of my chimera; I defy it to take possession
of me again. I propose to put myself under discipline in order to
expiate my extravagance. So soon as my cure is entirely finished I will
set out for Paris, where I will do penance.”

“What kind of penance?” asked M. Moriaz. “Paris is not a hermitage.”

“Nor is it my intention to live there as a hermit,” was the reply,
given with perfect simplicity. “I go to give lessons in music and in the
languages.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed M. Moriaz. “Do you see no other career open to you,
my dear count?”

“I am no longer a count,” he replied, with an heroic smile. “Counts do
not run about giving private lessons.” And a strange light flashed in
his eyes as he spoke. “I shall run about giving private lessons until I
hear anew the voice that spoke to me in California. It will find me
ever ready; my reply will be: ‘I belong to thee; dispose of me at thy
pleasure.’ Ah! this chimera is one that I never will renounce!”

Then suddenly he started as one just awakening from a dream; he drew
his hand over his brow, looked confusedly around him, and said: “_Grand
Dieu!_ here I have been talking to you of myself for two hours! It is
the most stupid way of passing one’s time, and I promise you it shall
not happen again.”

With these words he rose, took up his hat, and left.

M. Moriaz paced the floor for some moments, his hands behind his back;
presently he said: “This _diable_ of a man has strangely moved me. One
thing alone spoils his story for me--that is the gun. A man who once has
drunk will drink again; one who has invented will invent again. No man
in the world ever remained satisfied with his first gun.”

“I beg of you, monsieur,” cried Mlle. Moiseney, “could you not speak to
the Minister of War about adopting the Larinski musket?”

“Are you your country’s enemy?” he asked. “Do you wish its destruction?
Have you sworn that after Alsace we must lose Champagne?”

“I am perfectly sure,” she replied, mounting on her high horse, “that
the Larinski musket is a _chef-d’oeuvre_, and I would pledge my life
that he who invented it is a man of genius.”

“If you would pledge your word of honour to that, mademoiselle,” he
replied, making her a profound bow, “you may well feel assured that the
French Government would not hesitate a moment.”

Mlle. Moriaz took no part in this conversation. Her face slightly
contracted, buried in her thoughts as in a solitude inaccessible to
earthly sounds, her cheek resting in the palm of her left hand, she held
in her right hand a paper-cutter, and she kept pricking the point into
one of the grooves of the table on which her elbow rested, while her
half-closed eyes were fixed on a knot of the mahogany. She saw in this
knot the Isthmus of Panama, San Francisco, the angelic countenance of
the beautiful Polish woman who had given birth to Count Abel Larinski;
she saw there also fields of snow, ambuscades, retreats more glorious
than victories, and, beyond all else, the bursting of a gun and of a
man’s heart.

She arose, and saluted her father without a word. In crossing the
_salon_ she perceived that M. Larinski had forgotten a book he had left
on the piano when he came in. She opened the volume; he had written
his name on the top of the first page, and Antoinette recognised the
handwriting of the note.

Shut up in her own room, while taking down and combing her hair, her
imagination long wandered through California and Poland. She compared
M. Larinski with all the other men she ever had known, and she concluded
that he resembled none of them. And it was he who had written: “I
arrived in this village disgusted with life, sorrowful and so weary
that I longed to die. I saw you pass by, and I know not what mysterious
virtue entered into me. I will live.”

It seemed to her that for long years she had been seeking some one, and
that she had done well to come to the Engadine, because here she had
found the object of her search.



CHAPTER III

Two, three, four days passed without Count Larinski reappearing at
the Hotel Badrutt, where every evening he was expected. This prolonged
absence keenly affected Mlle. Moriaz. She sought an explanation thereof;
the search occupied part of her days, and troubled her sleep. She had
too much character not to conceal her trouble and anxiety. Those about
her had not the least suspicion that she asked herself a hundred times
in the twenty-four hours: “Why does he not come? will he never come
again? is it a fixed resolution? Does he blame us for drawing out, by
our questions, the secret of his life? or does he suspect that I have
discovered him to be the writer of the anonymous letter? Will he leave
Engadine without bidding us good-bye? Perhaps he has already gone,
and we shall never see him again.” This thought caused Mlle. Moriaz a
heart-burn that she had never before experienced. Her day had come; her
heart was no longer free: the bird had allowed itself to be caught.

Mlle. Moiseney said to her one evening: “It seems certain to me that we
never shall see Count Larinski again.”

She replied in an almost indifferent tone, “No doubt he has found people
at Cellarina, or elsewhere, who are more entertaining than we.”

“You mean to say,” said Mlle. Moiseney, “that M. Moriaz and the
_bezique_ has frightened him away. I would not for worlds speak ill of
your father; he has all the good qualities imaginable, except a certain
delicacy of sentiment, which is not to be learned in dealing with acids.
Think of condemning a Count Larinski to play _bezique_! There are some
things that your father does not and never will understand.”

M. Moriaz had entered meanwhile. “Please oblige me by explaining what it
is that I do not understand,” said he to Mlle. Moiseney.

She replied with some embarrassment, “You do not understand, monsieur,
that certain visits were a charming diversion to us, and that now we
miss them.”

“And do you think that I do not miss them? It has been four days since
I have had a game of cards. But how can it be helped? Poles are
fickle--more fools they who trust them.”

“It may be simply that M. Larinski has been ill,” interrupted
Antoinette, with perfect tranquility. “I think, father, that it would be
right for us to make inquiries.”

The following day M. Moriaz went to Cellarina. He brought back word that
M. Larinski had gone on a walking-excursion through the mountains;
that he had started out with the intention of climbing to the summit of
Piz-Morteratsch, and of attempting the still more difficult ascent of
Piz-Roseg. Mlle. Moriaz found it hard to decide whether this news was
good or bad news. All depended on what point of view was taken, and she
changed hers every hour.

Since his mishap, M. Moriaz had become less rash than formerly.
Experience had taught him that there are treacherous rocks that can
be climbed without much difficulty, but from which it is impossible to
descend--rocks exposing one to the danger of ending one’s days in their
midst, if there is no Pole near at hand. Certain truths stamp themselves
indelibly on the mind; so M. Moriaz never ventured again on the
mountains without being attended by a guide, who received orders from
Antoinette not to leave him, and not to let him expose himself. One day
he came in later than usual, and his daughter reproached him, with some
vivacity, for the continual anxiety he caused her. “The glaciers and
precipices will end by giving me the nightmare,” she said to him.

“Pray on whose account, my dear?” he playfully rejoined. “I assure you
the ascent that I have just made was neither more difficult nor more
dangerous than that of Montmartre, nor of the Sannois Hill, and as to
glaciers, I have firmly resolved to keep shy of them. I have passed
the age of prowess. My guide has been making me tremble by relating the
dangers to which he was exposed in 1864 on Morteratsch, where he had
accompanied Professor Tyndall and another English tourist. They were all
swept away by an avalanche. Attached to the same rope, they went down
with the snow. A fall of three hundred metres! They would have been
lost, if, through the presence of mind of one of the guides, they
had not succeeded in stopping themselves two feet from a frightful
precipice, which was about to swallow them up. I am a father, and I
do not despise life. Let him ascend Morteratsch who likes! I wish our
friend Larinski had made the descent safe and sound. If he has met an
avalanche on the way, he will invent no more guns.”

Antoinette was no longer mistress of her nerves: during the entire
evening she was so preoccupied that M. Moriaz could not fail to notice
it; but he had no suspicion of the cause. He was profoundly versed in
qualitative and quantitative analysis, but less skilled in the analysis
of his daughter’s heart. “How pale you are!” he said to her. “Are you
not well? You are cold.--Pray, Mlle. Moiseney, make yourself useful and
prepare her a mulled egg; you know I do not permit her to be sick.”

It was not the mulled egg that restored Mlle. Moriaz’s color. The next
morning as she was giving a drawing lesson to her _protegee_, Count Abel
was announced. She trembled; the blood rose in her cheeks, and she could
not conceal her agitation from the penetrating gaze of the audacious
charmer. It might easily be seen that he had just descended from where
the eagles themselves seldom ascend. His face was weather-beaten by the
ice and snow. He had successfully accomplished the double ascent,
of which he was compelled to give an account. In descending from
Morteratsch he had been overtaken by a storm, and had come very near
never again seeing the valley or Mlle. Moriaz. He owed his life to the
presence of mind and courage of his guide, on whom he could not bestow
sufficient praise.

While he modestly narrated his exploits, Antoinette had dismissed her
pupil. He seemed embarrassed by the _tete-a-tete_ which, nevertheless,
he had sought. He rose, saying: “I regret not being able to see M.
Moriaz; I came to bid him farewell. I leave this evening.”

She summoned courage and replied: “You did well to come; you left a
volume of Shakespeare--here it is.” Then drawing from her notebook a
paper--“I have still another restitution to make to you. I have had the
misfortune to discover that it was you who wrote this letter.”

With these words she handed him the anonymous note. He changed
countenance, and it was now his turn to grow red. “Who can prove to
you,” he demanded, “that I am the author of this offence, or rather
crime?”

“Every bad case may be denied, but do not you deny.”

After a moment’s silence, he replied: “I will not lie, I am not capable
of lying. Yes, I am the guilty one; I confess it with sorrow, because
you are offended by my audacity.”

“I never liked madrigals, either in prose or verse, signed or
anonymous,” she returned, rather dryly.

He exclaimed, “You took this letter for a madrigal?” Then, having reread
it, he deliberately tore it up, throwing the pieces into the fireplace,
and added, smiling: “It certainly lacked common-sense; he who wrote it
is a fool, and I have nothing to say in his defence.”

Crossing her hands on her breast, and uplifting to him her brown eyes,
that were as proud as gentle, she softly murmured, “What more?”

“I came to Chur,” he replied, “I entered a church, I there saw a fair
unknown, and I forgot myself in gazing at her. That evening I saw her
again; she was walking in a garden where there was music, and this music
of harps and violins was grateful to me. I said within myself: ‘What a
thing is the heart of man! The woman who has passed me by without seeing
me does not know me, will never know of my existence; I am ignorant
of even her name, and I wish to remain so, but I am conscious that she
exists, and I am glad, content, almost happy. She will be for me the
fair unknown; she cannot prevent me from remembering her. I will think
sometimes of the fair unknown of Chur.’”

“Very good,” said she, “but this does not explain the letter.”

“We are coming to that,” he continued. “I was seated in a copse, by the
roadside. I had the blues--was profoundly weary; there are times when
life weighs on me like a torturing burden. I thought of disappointed
expectations, of dissipated illusions, of the bitterness of my youth and
of my future. You passed by on the road, and I said to myself, ‘There
is good in life, because of such encounters, in which we catch renewed
glimpses of what was once pleasant for us to see.’”

“And the note?” she asked again, in a dreamy tone.

He went on: “I never was a philosopher; wisdom consists in performing
only useful actions, and I was born with a taste for the useless. That
evening I saw you climb a hill, in order to gather some flowers; the
hill was steep and you could not reach the flowers. I gathered them for
you, and, in sending my bouquet, I could not resist the temptation of
adding a word. ‘Before doing penance,’ I said to myself, ‘let me commit
this one folly; it shall be the last.’ We always flatter ourselves that
each folly will be our last. The unfortunate note had scarcely gone,
when I regretted having sent it; I would have given much to have had it
back; I felt all its impropriety; I have dealt justly by it in tearing
it to pieces. My only excuse was my firm resolution not to meet you, not
to make your acquaintance. Chance ordered otherwise: I was presented to
you, you know by whom, and how; I ended by coming here every evening,
but I rebelled against my own weakness, I condemned myself to absence
for a few days, so as to break a dangerous habit, and, thank God! I have
broken my chain.”

She lightly tapped the floor with the tip of her foot, and demanded with
the air of a queen recalling a subject to his allegiance, “Are you to be
believed?”

He had spoken in a half-serious, half-jesting tone, tinged with the
playful melancholy that was natural to him. He changed countenance, his
face flushed, and he cried out abruptly, “I regained my strength
and will on the summit of Morteratsch, and I only return to bid you
farewell, and to give you the assurance that I never will see you
again.”

“It is a strange case,” she replied; “but I pardon you, on condition
that you do not execute your threat. You are resolved to be wise; the
wise avoid extremes. You will remember that you have friends in Paris.
My father has many connections; if we can be of service to you in any
way--”

He did not permit her to finish, and responded proudly: “I thank you,
with all my heart. I have sworn to be under obligations to none but
myself.”

“Very well,” she replied, “you will visit us for our pleasure. In a
month we shall be at Cormeilles.”

He shook his head in sign of refusal. She looked fixedly at him, and
said, “It must be so.”

This look, these words, sent to Count Abel’s brain such a thrill of joy
and of hope that for a moment he thought he had betrayed himself. He
nearly fell on his knees before Mlle. Moriaz, but, speedily mastering
his emotions, he bowed gravely, casting down his eyes. She herself
immediately resumed her usual voice and manner, and questioned him on
his journey. He told her, in reply, that he proposed to go by the route
of Soleure, and to stay there a day in order to visit in Gurzelengasse
the house where Kosciuszko, the greatest of Poles, had died. He had
thought of this pilgrimage for a long time. He added: “Still another
useless action. Ah! when shall I improve?”

“Don’t improve too much,” she said, smiling. And then he went away.

M. Moriaz returned to the hotel about noon: his guide being engaged
elsewhere, he had taken only a short ramble. After breakfast his
daughter proposed to him that he should go down with her to the banks
of the lake. They made the descent, which is not difficult. This
pretty piece of water, that has been falsely accused of resembling a
shaving-dish, is said to be not less than a mile in length. When the
father and daughter reached the entrance of the woods that pedestrians
pass through in going to Pontresina, they seated themselves on the
grass at the foot of a larch. They remained some time silent. Antoinette
watched the cows grazing, and stroked the smooth, glossy leaves of a
yellow gentian with the end of her parasol. M. Moriaz busied himself
with neither the cows nor the yellow gentian--he thought of M. Camille
Langis, and felt more than a little guilty in that quarter; he had not
written to him, having nothing satisfactory to tell him. He could
see the young man waiting in vain, at the Hotel Steinbock. To pass
a fortnight at Chur is a torture that the most robust constitution
scarcely can endure, and it is an increased torture to watch every
evening and every morning for a letter that never comes. M. Moriaz
resolved to open hostilities, to begin a new assault on the impregnable
place. He was seeking in his mind for a beginning for his first phrase.
He had just found it, when suddenly Antoinette said to him, in a low,
agitated, but distinct voice: “I have a question for you. What would you
think if I should some day marry M. Abel Larinski?”

M. Moriaz started up, and his cane, slipping from his hand, rolled to
the bottom of the declivity. He looked at his daughter, and said to
her: “I beg of you to repeat what you just said to me. I fear I have
misunderstood you.”

She answered in a firmer voice, “I am curious to know what you would
think if I should marry, some day or other, Count Larinski.”

He was startled, thunderstruck. He never had foreseen that such a
catastrophe could occur, nor had the least suspicion that anything had
passed between his daughter and M. Larinski. Of all the ideas that had
suggested themselves to him, this seemed the least admissible, the most
improbable and ridiculous. After a long silence, he said to Antoinette,
“You want to frighten me--this is not serious.”

“Do you dislike M. Larinski?” she asked.

“Certainly not; I by no means dislike him. He has good manners, he
speaks well, and I must acknowledge that he had a very graceful way of
taking me from off my rock, where I should still be had it not been
for him. I am grateful to him for it; but, from that to giving him my
daughter, there is a wide margin. If he wanted me to give him a medal he
should have it.”

“Let us talk seriously,” said she. “What objections have you to make?”

“First, M. Larinski is a stranger, and I mistrust strangers. Then,
I know him but slightly. I naturally demand additional information.
Finally, I own that the state of his affairs--”

“Ah! that is the main point,” she interrupted. “He is poor; that is his
crime, which he has not disguised. How differently we think! I have some
fortune; its only advantage that I can see is that it makes me free to
marry the man I esteem, though he be poor.”

“And perhaps a little because of that very reason,” interrupted M.
Moriaz, in his turn. “Come, I entreat you, let me explain the anxieties
arising from my miserable good sense. M. Larinski has related his
history to us. Frankly, do you not think that it is rather that--what
shall I say--of an adventurer? The word shocks you--I take it back--but
you must admit that this Pole belongs to the--ambulatory family.”

“Or family of heroes,” she replied.

“That is it, of wandering heroes. I wish all manner of good to heroes,
although I never have clearly discovered their use. At all events, I
am not sure that they are the best qualified men in the world to make a
wife happy, and I intend that my daughter shall be happy.”

“You are not convinced as I am that M. Larinski has a superior mind, and
a heart of gold?”

“A heart of gold! I should be glad to believe it. I have no reason to
doubt it; but many very skilful persons are deceived by false jewellery.
Ah! my dear, if you were better versed in chemistry, you would know
how easy it is to manufacture a false trinket. Formerly, after having
cleaned the piece to be gilded, a gold amalgam was applied. Now, the
brass or copper trinket is steeped in a solution of perchloride of
gold and bicarbonate of potash, and in less than a minute the thing
is accomplished. It is called gilding by immersion. There is another
process in which galvanism--But let us admit that M. Larinski’s heart is
real gold. In the purest gold there is usually some alloy, to dispense
with which resort must be had to the cupel. Do you not know what a cupel
is? It is a small capsule or cup of a porous substance, used in the
refining process, and possessing the property of absorbing the fused
oxides and retaining the refined metal. What is the proportion of lead
or of gold ore in M. Larinski’s heart? Neither you nor I know.”

She was no longer listening; her chin in her hand, her glances wandered
over the glade. He touched her arm gently to rouse her, and said: “It is
all over? You love him?”

“Why will you make me say so?” she replied, blushing.

“And he has declared himself? He has dared----”

“He has dared nothing. Ah! how little you know him! If you were to offer
me to him, his pride would say no, and I would have to go down on my
knees to get the better of his refusal.”

“We will say, at once, that he is unique, that he is a marvel, that
there is not a second Pole like him; the mould has been broken. And yet
are you sure that he loves you?”

She replied by a motion of the head.

“I should confess,” he resumed, “that the passion that is called the
grand passion is for me a sealed letter, the mystery of mysteries. I
am completely ignorant of it. Yet that did not prevent my marrying,
and making a choice that brought me great happiness. Your method is
different, and I must believe that you have yielded to an irresistible
force. It seems to me, however, that resistance can always be made. You
have will, character--”

She interrupted him, murmuring, “It is either he or no one.”

“Oh! if it comes to that,” he continued, “you are of age, and mistress
of your actions; there is nothing for me but to submit. Still, it will
be painful to you, I like to believe, to marry in opposition to my
wishes.”

“Do you doubt it? I am willing not to marry.”

“Bad solution! It is worse than the other. Let us come to terms. The
positive has its place only in science. It is absolutely true that borax
is a salt composed of boracic acid and soda. Beyond such facts all is
uncertain. Does this happy man surmise the sentiments he has inspired?”

“I tell you that you do not know him? Do you take him for a coxcomb?
When he came this morning to announce his departure, his serious
intention was to bid us an eternal farewell, and never to see me again.”

“A most excellent idea that,” sighed M. Moriaz. “Unfortunately, you
represented to him that it took but two hours to go from Paris to
Cormeilles.”

“I had trouble to persuade him of it.”

“Well, since the matter stands thus, nothing is yet lost. You know, my
dear, that my physician advised me to beware of abrupt transitions, and
not to change too suddenly from the keen air of Engadine to the heavy
atmosphere of the plains. On leaving Saint Moritz, we will descend
five hundred metres lower, and remain three weeks at Churwalden;
consequently, we will not be in Paris for a month. You will employ this
month in somewhat calming your imagination. It is very easy for it to
become excited in these mountain-holes, without taking into account the
wearisomeness of hotel-life. From the very day after our arrival you
took a dislike to the paper in our little _salon_, and its squares, I
confess, are very ugly. In every square, a thrush stretching out
its neck to peck a currant. Two hundred thrushes and two hundred
currants--it was enough to weary you to death. Suddenly there appears a
Pole--”

“The thrushes had nothing to do with it,” she replied, smiling. “A month
hence I shall say as I do to-day. ‘It is either he or no one.’ And you
shall choose.”

“Do not repeat that formula, I beg. Fixed resolves are the prison-house
of the will. Promise me to reflect; reflection is an excellent thing.
One thing more--grant me in advance what I am going to ask you.”

“It is granted.”

“You have a godmother--”

“Ah! now we are coming to the point,” she added.

“You cannot deny that Mme. De Lorcy is a woman of the world, a woman
of good sense, a woman of experience, who is deeply interested in your
welfare--”

“And who has decided from time immemorial, that I can only be happy on
condition that I marry her nephew, M. Camille Langis.”

“Well, I admit that she is partial. That is no reason why we should not
send her our Pole. She will inspect him, she will tell us her opinion;
it will be a new element in the argument.”

“Ah! I know her opinion without asking it. This woman of experience
and good sense is incapable of recognising merit in a man who is
sufficiently impertinent to make Mlle. Moriaz love him, without having
at least fifty thousand livres a year to offer her.”

“What does that matter? We will let her speak--we need not question her,
an oracle; but she knows false jewellery. If she discover--”

“I would require proofs,” she interrupted, quickly.

“And if she furnish them?”

She was silent an instant, then she said: “Let it be so; do as you
please.”

With these words they ended the conversation; then arose, and retook
the road to Saint Moritz. M. Moriaz scarcely had reached there, when
he entered a carriage to drive to Cellarina, provided with a portfolio
given him by Antoinette. He found M. Larinski busy strapping his trunks,
and waiting for the mail-coach that made the journey between Samaden and
Chur by the Col du Julier.

M. Moriaz expressed his regret at having missed his visit, and asked if
he would consent to charge himself with a commission for his daughter,
who desired to send to her godmother, Mme. De Lorcy, a sketch of Saint
Moritz.

“Cheerfully,” coldly replied Count Abel, and he promised, so soon as he
reached Paris, to send the portfolio to Maisons Lafitte.

“Do better than that,” rejoined M. Moriaz, “and carry your good-nature
so far as to take it yourself to its address. Mme. de Lorcy is an
amiable woman, who will be charmed to make your acquaintance, and hear
from you of us.”

The count bowed with a submissive air. There was so little ardour in
this submission that M. Moriaz queried if his daughter had not been
dreaming, if M. Larinski was as much in love with her as she fancied.
He had not read the anonymous letter; Antoinette had refrained from even
mentioning it to him.

He was returning to Saint Moritz, when he met midway a pedestrian, who,
lost in thought, neither looked at him nor recognised him. M. Moriaz
ordered the coachman to stop, sprang out of the carriage, went up to the
traveller whom he seized by both shoulders, exclaiming:

“What, you! you again! I can go nowhere in Grisons without meeting you.
I ask as I did at Chur, ‘Where do you come from?’”

“Did you think I would stay there forever?” rejoined M. Camille Langis,
reproachfully. “You have not kept your word, you have forgotten me; you
did not write to me. I am tired of waiting, so here I am.”

“And where are you going?”

“To the Hotel Badrutt, to plead my own cause, because my advocate has
failed me.”

“Ah! you have chosen an excellent time,” cried M. Moriaz; “you have
a real genius for arriving in season. Go, hurry, plead, moan, weep,
entreat; you will be well received; you can come and tell me all about
it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Camille; “is it all over? Have you spoken, and
did she silence you?”

“Not at all; she listened to me, without enthusiasm, it is true, but
with attention and deference, when suddenly--Ah! my poor friend, how can
it be helped? This sad world is full of accidents and Poles.”

M. Langis looked at him in amazement, as if to ask for an explanation.
M. Moriaz continued: “Do yourself justice. You are the most honest
fellow upon earth, I grant; you are a charming man, and an engineer of
the highest merit. But, unfortunately, there is no mystery of blood
and tears in your existence; you are perfectly unpretending, frank,
unaffected, and as transparent as crystal; in short, you are not a
stranger. Had you a delicate, blond, and romantic mother, and do you
wear her portrait on your heart? have you unfathomable green eyes? have
you adventures to relate? have you visited California? have you swept
the streets of San Francisco? have you exchanged bullets with the
Cossacks? have you been killed in three combats and in ten skirmishes?
I fear you have not even thought of dying once. Have you tried all
professions, without succeeding in one? have you invented a gun which
burst? and, above all, are you as poor as a church-mouse? What! is it
possible that you possess none of these fine advantages, and yet are
audacious enough to ask me for my daughter’s hand?”

M. Moriaz ended this harangue as the Samaden mail-coach passed. Count
Abel, seated on the outside, bowed and waved his hand to them.

“Look well at that man,” said M. Moriaz to Camille, “for he is the
enemy.”

And then, instead of giving him the remaining information that the youth
desired, he said:

“Go away and forget; it is the best thing that you can do.”

“You do not know me yet,” replied Camille. “I am obstinate, I fire to
the last cartridge. I will follow your steps. Oh! don’t be afraid, I
will lie--deceive Antoinette; let her think that I have relinquished my
claims. I shall pay her only a friendly visit; but my eyes hunger to see
her, and I will see her.”

The morning of the following day the enemy arrived at Chur, whence he
proceeded to Berne. Deponent saith not why he failed to turn aside at
Soleure, as he had expressed his intention of doing in order to pay
tribute there to the memory of the great Kosciuszko. The facts of
the case are, that from Berne he went direct to Lausanne, and that
immediately on reaching there he hastened to the Saxon Casino. When he
seated himself at the gaming-table, he experienced a violent palpitation
of the heart. His ears tingled, his brain was on fire, and the cold
sweat started out on his forehead. He cast fierce glances right and
left; he seemed to see in his partner’s eyes his past, his future, and
Mlle. Moriaz life-size. Fortune made amends for the harshness she had
shown him at Milan. After a night of anguish and many vicissitudes, at
daybreak Count Abel had twenty thousand francs in his pocket. It was
sufficient to pay his debts, which he was anxious to do, and to enable
him to await without too much impatience the moment for executing his
projects.

He left the casino, his face flushed and radiant; he was so joyful that
he became tender and affectionate, and, had M. Guldenthal himself come
in his way, he could have embraced him.



CHAPTER IV

Although he had said nothing about it to Mlle. Moriaz in narrating to
her his voyages and Odysseys, Count Abel was already acquainted
with Paris, having made several long sojourns there. This may seem
improbable. Gone in his early youth to America, he had not recrossed the
ocean until he returned to fight in Poland; since then he had lived in
Roumania and Vienna. Where, then, had he found time to visit France?
Certain it is, however, that he was at home on the boulevard, and that
he knew well the streets that led to the places where Paris amuses
itself; but he had no thoughts now for amusements. Notwithstanding the
fact that his purse was full, he proposed to live a retired and austere
life. He found suitable apartments in one of the lodging-houses of Rue
Mont-Thabor. These apartments, on the fifth floor, were pleasant but
modest; they consisted of two rooms having a view of the chestnut-trees
in the garden of the Tuileries. The portress was a nice woman, whose
good-will Count Abel gained on the very first day. He considered
it useful, in the affairs of this world, to be at peace with both
conscience and portress.

After getting installed in his garret his first care was to write to M.
Moses Guldenthal. He informed him that he was ready to refund interest
and capital, and he commissioned him to pay off some trifling debts that
he had left in Vienna; he also desired him to send him the bracelet,
which he hoped to make use of. He felt a genuine relief in the
thought that he owed no man anything, that his condition was clear and
transparent. When a man is proud he likes to be out of debt, and when he
is clever he foresees all possible contingencies. His second care was to
go to the Passage de l’Opera and buy a bouquet for sixty francs, which
he carried to No. 27 Rue Mouffetard. He had one of those memories that
retain everything and let nothing escape them. This bouquet--the most
beautiful Mlle. Galet ever had received--caused her great astonishment.
She did not know to whom to attribute it, the modest donor having
escaped from the effusions of her gratitude by not making himself known.
She supposed that Mlle. Moriaz had sent it to her, and, as she had taste
for composition, she wrote to her a four page letter of thanks.

Count Abel had not forgotten that he was the bearer of a commission from
Mlle Moriaz. A few days after his arrival, he decided to go to Maisons,
but to take the longest route there; he wanted to see Cormeilles in
passing, and a certain villa in which he was particularly interested.
He went in the Argenteuil cars, got out at Sannois, climbed that pretty
hill that commands the loveliest of views, and stopped at the inn
of Trouillet mills in order to breakfast there. The morning was
charming--it was in the middle of August--and the approach of autumn
was already felt, which enhances the beauty of all things. The sky was
flecked with small gray clouds; a light, silvery mist hung on the
brow of the hills; in two places the Seine appeared glittering in the
sunshine. Abel breakfasted in the open air; while eating he gazed on the
sky and on the great garden-plain extending at his feet, covered with
vegetables, grape-vines, and asparagus, interspersed with fruit-trees.
The wooded hills bordering it formed an admirable frame. In his present
mood Count Larinski was charmed with the landscape, which was at once
grand and smiling. Then he questioned himself as to how much a bed of
asparagus would yield at the gates of Paris, and, having finished his
calculation, he surveyed with the eye of a poet the heather and broom
that surrounded him. He decided that the Sannois Hill is more beautiful
than Koseg; and indeed it is not necessary to be in love with Mlle.
Moriaz to hold that opinion.

After having had a good breakfast, he again set out, following the crest
of the hill and going through the woods. As he approached Cormeilles, he
saw in the distance, beyond a grove of oaks, the white walls of a pretty
villa. His heart beat faster, and by a sort of divination he said within
himself, “That must be it.” He inquired; he had made no mistake. Five
minutes later he stood before a railing, through which he saw a green
lawn. At the entrance of the porter’s lodge a woman sat knitting.

“Can you tell me where M. Moriaz lives?” asked Count Larinski.

“Here, monsieur,” she replied; “but M. Moriaz is absent; he will not
return for a month. If you come from a distance, monsieur,” she added,
graciously, “perhaps you would like to rest awhile on the terrace. The
view is beautiful.”

This hospitable reception seemed a good omen, for, sensible as he was,
he believed in presentiments and prognostics. He entered without waiting
to be urged. When he had crossed the lawn he stood facing two detached
buildings, separated by a mass of verdure: to the right, an old
summer-house, used from time immemorial for M. Moriaz’s collections,
laboratory, and library; to the left, a new two-story house, part stone,
part brick, built in an elegant but unobtrusive style, without ornament
or pretension, and flanked by a turret covered with ivy and clematis,
which served for a dove-cote. The house was not a palace, but there was
an air about it of well-being, comfort, and happiness. In looking at
it you felt like saying, “The inmates here ought to be happy!” This was
about what Count Abel said to himself; in fact, he could hardly refrain
from exclaiming, “Dieu! how happy I shall be here!” The situation, the
terrace, the garden, everything pleased him infinitely. It seemed to him
that the air here was fresher, more delightful than elsewhere, that it
was exhilarating in the extreme; it seemed to him that the grass on
the lawn was greener than any grass he ever had seen before, that the
flowers in the carefully tended borders exhaled an unusually delicious
perfume. He espied an open window on the ground-floor. He drew near it;
the room into which he gazed, full of _bric-a-brac_ of exquisite choice,
was Mlle. Moriaz’s study. There was in the appearance of this little
sanctuary, hung with white silken drapery, and as elegant as the
divinity whose favourite tarrying-place it was, something of purity,
chastity, and maidenliness. It opened its windows to the fresh breezes
and to the perfume of the flowers; but it seemed as if nothing could
penetrate there that was coarse or suspicious; that the entrance was
forbidden to all doubtful or malignant beings who might have a secret
crime to hide, to all pilgrims through life who had travelled its
highways and had brought hence dust and mud on the soles of their
shoes. Strange to say, Count Abel experienced an attack of timidity and
embarrassment. He felt that he was indiscreet; he averted his eyes and
went away.

This impression was soon dispelled. He regained his assurance, and
walked around the terrace twice, treading the gravel with the step of a
conqueror, making it feel the full weight of his foot. He finally seated
himself on a bench; he had the nonchalant attitude of a man who is at
home. Five or six doves were billing and cooing on the ledge of the
roof; he could readily understand that they were talking of him, and
that they were saying, “Here he is--we have been waiting for him.” A
beautiful Angora cat, white as snow, with delicate nose and silky hair,
came, arching her back and waving her bushy tail, from out a grove,
and advanced towards him. She examined him curiously an instant, rubbed
herself against the bench, and then sat coquettishly at the feet of the
intruder. He caressed her, saying: “You are as white and graceful as
your mistress; you are an intelligent animal; you understand, my dear,
that I come from her. Shall I tell you a secret? She loves Count Abel
Larinski.”

With these words he rose and left, after thanking the portress,
who would have been extremely astonished had she been aware of the
reflections that had just been occupying his mind. He went a short
distance on the highway, then finding, to the right, a road that led to
Cormeilles, he took it, but soon struck into a path that wound through
the woods. He was sorry to leave a spot that spoke vividly to his heart,
and even more so to his imagination. He seated himself on the turf, in
the midst of a grove of oaks; around him stretched a blooming heath.
Through an opening in the grove, he could see Saint-Germain, its
forests, and the Seine glittering in the sunshine, with the two bridges
of Maisons Lafitte spanning it with their arches. Through another
opening he caught a glimpse, to his left, of the proud bastions of
Mont-Valerien, and, in the distance, Paris, the Arc de l’Etoile, the
gilt dome of the Invalides, and the smoke of the factories rising slowly
in the air, then by turns remaining stiff and motionless, or being swept
away by the wind.

The place was retired, solitary, very still. No sound was to be heard
save the singing of a lark, and at intervals the melancholy cry of a
peacock. Abel Larinski was overcome by a mysterious emotion; he felt a
voluptuous languor steal through his veins. He watched the smoke over
Paris, and he saw floating in it an ethereal form whose face was partly
concealed by a red hood. It smiled on him, and he read in this smile a
promise of all the joys of the land of Canaan.

He turned away his eyes, partially closing them, and there appeared
another form to him--in truth, very different from the first. It was
that of a man whom he had known intimately, of a man whom he had deeply
loved. In vain the lark sang aloud, in vain the peacock wailed--Abel
Larinski no longer heard them. He was thinking of a certain Samuel
Brohl; he was reviewing in his mind all the history of this Samuel, a
man who never had had a secret from him. This history was quite as sad a
one as that of Abel Larinski, but much less brilliant, much less heroic.
Samuel Brohl prided himself neither on being a patriot nor a paladin;
his mother had not been a noble woman with the smile of an angel, and
the thought never had occurred to him of fighting for any cause or any
person. He was not a Pole, although born in a Polish province of
the Austrian Empire. His father was a Jew, of German extraction, as
indicated by his name, which signifies a place where one sinks in the
mire, a bog, swamp, or something of that nature; and he kept a tavern
in a wretched little market-town near the eastern frontier of Galicia--a
forlorn tavern, a forlorn tavern-keeper. Although always on the alert to
sell adulterated brandy to his neighbour, and to seize the opportunity
to lend him money on usury, he did not thrive: he was a coward of whose
timidity every one took advantage to make him disgorge his ill-gotten
gains. His creed consisted in three doctrines: he firmly believed that
the arts of lying well, of stealing well, and of receiving a blow in the
face without apparently noticing it, were the most useful arts to human
life; but, of the three, the last was the only one that he practised
successfully. His intentions were good, but his intellect deficient.
This arrant rogue was only a petty knave that any one could dupe.

Abel Larinski transported himself, in thought, to the tavern in which
Samuel Brohl had spent his first youth, and which was as familiar to him
as though he had lived there himself. The smoky hovel rose before him:
he could smell the odour of garlic and tallow; he could see the drunken
guests--some seated round the long table, others lying under it--the
damp and dripping walls, and the rough, dirty ceiling. He remembered a
panel in the wainscoting against which a bottle had been broken, in the
heat of some dispute; it had left a great stain of wine that resembled
a human face. He remembered, too, the tavern-keeper, a little man with a
dirty, red beard, whose demeanour was at once timid and impudent. He saw
him as he went and came, then saw him suddenly turn, lift the end of his
caftan and wipe his cheek on it. What had happened? An insolvent
debtor had spit in his face; he bore it smilingly. This smile was more
repulsive to Count Abel than the great stain that resembled a human
face.

“Children should be permitted to choose their fathers,” he thought. And
yet this poor Samuel Brohl came very near living as happy and contented
in the paternal mire as a fish in water. Habit and practice reconcile
one even to dirt; and there are people who eat and digest it. What made
Samuel Brohl think of reading Shakespeare? Poets are corrupters.

The way it happened was this. Samuel had picked up, somewhere, a volume
which had dropped from a traveller’s pocket. It was a German translation
of _The Merchant of Venice_. He read it, and did not understand it; he
reread it, and ended by understanding it. It produced a wild confusion
of ideas in his mind; he thought that he was becoming insane. Little by
little, the chaos became less tumultuous; order began to reign, light to
dawn. Samuel Brohl felt that he had had a film over his eyes, and that
it was now removed. He saw things that he never had seen before, and
he felt joy mingled with terror. He learned _The Merchant of Venice_
by heart. He shut himself up in the barn, so that he might cry out with
Shylock: “Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you
tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you
wrong us, shall we not revenge?” He repeated, too, with Lorenzo:

     “Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
     Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
     There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
     But in his motion like an angel sings,
     Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
     Such harmony is in immortal souls;
     But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
     Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”

Samuel sometimes rose at night to watch the heavens, and he fancied he
heard the voices of the “young-eyed cherubins.” He dreamed of a world
where Jessicas and Portias were to be met, of a world where Jews were
as proud as Shylock, as vindictive as Shylock, and, as Shylock, ate the
hearts of their enemies for revenge. He also dreamed, poor fool, that
there was in Samuel Brohl’s mind or bosom an immortal soul, and that
in this soul there was music, but that he could not hear it because the
muddy vesture of decay too grossly closed it in. Then he experienced a
feeling of disgust for Galicia, for the tavern, for the tavern-keeper,
and for Samuel Brohl himself. An old schoolmaster, who owned a
harpsichord, taught him to play on it, and, believing he was doing
good, lent him books. One day, Samuel modestly expressed to his father
a desire to go to the gymnasium at Lemberg to learn various things
that seemed good to him to know. It was then that he received from the
paternal hand a great blow, which made him see all the stars of heaven
in broad daylight. Old Jeremiah Brohl had taken a dislike to his son
Samuel Brohl, because he thought he saw something in his eyes that
seemed to say that Samuel despised his father.

“Poor devil!” murmured Count Abel, picking up a pebble and tossing it
into the air. “Fate owes him compensation, it has dealt so roughly with
him thus far. He fell from the frying-pan into the fire; he exchanged
his servitude for a still worse slavery. When he left the land of Egypt,
he fancied he saw the palms of the promised land. Alas! it was not long
before he regretted Egypt and Pharaoh! Why was not this woman Portia?
why was she neither young nor beautiful?” And he added: “Ah! old fairy,
you made him suffer!”

It seemed to Count Larinski that this woman, this ugly fairy who had
made Samuel Brohl suffer so much, stood there, before him, and that she
scanned him from head to foot, as a fairy, whether old or young, might
scan a worm. She had an imperious, contemptuous smile on her lips, the
smile of a czarina; so Catharine II smiled, when she was dissatisfied
with Potemkin, and said to herself, “I made him what he is, and
to-morrow I can ruin him.” “Yes, it was she, it was surely she,” thought
Count Larinski. “I cannot mistake. I saw her five weeks ago, in the
Vallee du Diable; she made me tremble!”

This woman who had taken Samuel Brohl from out of the land of Egypt, and
had showered attentions upon him, was a Russian princess. She owned an
estate of Podolia, and chance would have it that one day, in passing,
she stopped at the tavern where young Samuel was growing up in the
shadow of the tabernacle. He was then sixteen. In spite of his squalid
rags, she was struck by his figure. She was a woman of intelligence, and
had no prejudices. “When he is well washed and cared for,” she thought,
“when he is divested of his native impurities, when he has seen the
world and had communication with honest people, he certainly will be a
noble fellow.” She made him talk, and found him intelligent; she liked
intelligent men. She made him sing, assured herself that he had a voice;
she adored music. She questioned him; he told her all his misery, and
while he talked she said to herself: “No, I do not mistake; he has a
future before him; in two or three years he will be superb. Three years
is not long: the gardener who grafts a young tree is often condemned to
wait longer than that.” When he had ended his narrative, she told him
that she was in want of a secretary, that she had had several, but that
she had soon tired of them, on account of their not having the desired
qualifications; she asked him if he would like to accept the position.
He replied only by pointing his finger to his father, who was smoking
his pipe on the door-step. A moment later she was closeted with Jeremiah
Brohl.

She at once proposed to him to buy his son; he dropped his arms in
astonishment, then felt delighted and charmed. He declared, at first,
that his son was not for sale; and then he insinuated that if ever he
did sell him he would sell him dear; he was, according to his opinion,
merchandise of the best quality, a rich and rare article. He raised his
demands ridiculously; she exclaimed; he affirmed he could not put them
lower, that he had his terms, and that he always sold at a fixed price.
They disputed a long time; she was about to give up; he yielded, and
they ended by making the transaction. She sent for Samuel and said to
him: “My boy, you belong to me--I have bought you for cash. You are
satisfied with the bargain, are you not?”

He was stupefied to learn that he had a commercial value; he never had
suspected it. He wanted very much to know what he was worth; but the
princess was discreet upon the subject, and desired that he should
believe that he had cost her a fabulous sum. After reflection, he made
his conditions; he stipulated that he should belong to himself for three
years, which time he would employ in study and in satisfying a multitude
of curious longings.

She readily consented, as that had been her own intention: it would take
fully three years before the fruit was ripe and ready to be served at
the princely table. She gave him instructions and advice, all bearing
the stamp of a superior mind; she understood the world, the state of
public affairs, and physiology, all that can be learned, and all that
cannot be learned. Thus Samuel Brohl set out, his pocket well
filled, for the University of Prague, which he soon left to settle at
Heidelberg, whence he went to Bonn, then to Berlin, then to Paris. He
was restless, he did not know what he wanted, but wherever he went he
studied semiquavers, naturals, and flats; it was part of the conditions.

The princess was herself a great traveller; two or three times a year
Samuel Brohl received a visit from her. She questioned him, examined
him, felt him, as we feel a peach to be certain it is ripe. Samuel was
very happy; he was free, he enjoyed his life, he did as he pleased.
One single thing spoiled his happiness; when he looked in the glass, he
would sometimes say within himself: “These are the features of a man who
is sold, and the woman who bought him is neither young nor beautiful.”
 Several times he determined to learn a trade, so that he might be in a
position to refund the debt and break the bargain. But he never did. He
was both ambitious and idle. He wanted to fly at once; he had a horror
of beginnings of apprenticeships. His early education had been so
neglected that in order to recover lost time he would have been
compelled to study hard--all the more so because, although he was
quick-witted, and had a marvellous facility for entering into the
thoughts of others, his own stock was poor; he had no ideas of his own,
nor individuality of mind. He possessed a collection of half-talents;
even in music, he was incapable of originating; when he attempted to
compose, his inspirations proved mere reminiscences. He did himself
justice; he felt that, strive as he might, his half-talents never would
aid him to secure the first position, and he disdained the second. In
fact, what he most needed was will, which, after all, makes the man. He
tried to fling himself from his horse, which carried him where he did
not desire to go; but he felt that his feet held firm in the stirrup; he
had not strength to disengage them, and he remained in the saddle. Not
being able to be a great man, he abandoned himself to his fate, which
condemned him to be only a knave. At the expiration of his term of
freedom, he declared himself solvent, and the princess took possession
of her merchandise.

“Yes, poets are corrupters,” thought Count Abel Larinski. “If Samuel
Brohl never had read _The Merchant of Venice_, or _Egmont_, a tragedy in
five acts, or Schiller’s ballads, he would have been resigned to his new
position; he would have seen its good sides, and would have eaten
and drunk his shame in peace, without experiencing any uncomfortable
sensations; but he had read the poets, and he grew disgusted, nauseated.
He was dying with desire to get away, and the princess suspected it. She
kept him always in sight, she held him close, she paid him quarterly,
shilling by shilling, his meagre allowance. She said to herself: ‘So
long as he has nothing, he cannot escape.’ She mistook; he did escape,
and he was so afraid of being retaken that for some time he hid like a
criminal, pursued by the police. He fancied that this woman was always
on his track. It was then, for the first time, that he felt hunger, for
they eat in the land of Egypt. He lived by all sorts of expedients,
and cursed the poets. One day he learned that his father was dead; he
hastened to the old tavern in order to succeed to the inheritance. He
was not aware that for two years old Jeremiah Brohl had been in his
dotage, and that his debtors mocked him while devouring his substance. A
fine inheritance! it was diminished to two or three rickety chairs,
four cracked walls that scarcely could stand upright, and some jewellery
concealed in a hiding-place that Samuel knew of. Old Jeremiah never had
been able to dispose of it for the price he required, and he preferred
to keep it rather than lower his charge. He had principles, which was
well for Samuel, as the jewellery was useful to him. He sold a necklace,
and set out for Bucharest, some one having told him that he certainly
would make his fortune there. He gave music-lessons; this wearisome
profession did not suit him, he could not endure the constraint and the
regular hours. The boys plagued him--he would willingly have wrung their
necks; the girls treated him like a dog--they never thought of his being
handsome, because they suspected him of being a Jew. Why had he gone
to Bucharest--a city where all Germans are Jews, and where Jews are
not considered men? Although he had earned a little money, he grew
melancholy, and he began to think seriously of killing himself.”

Count Abel Larinski leaned forward, plucked a spray of heather, tickled
his lips with it, and began to laugh; then, striking his breast, he
said, in an undertone, “Thank God, Samuel Brohl is not dead, for he is
here!”

He spoke the truth: Samuel Brohl was not dead, and life was of value to
him, since he had met Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz in the cathedral in Chur.
It was Samuel Brohl who had come to Cormeilles, and who was seated, at
this moment, in the midst of a grove of oaks. Perhaps the lark that he
had heard singing a quarter of an hour before had recognised him, for it
had ceased singing. The peacock continued its screaming, and its doleful
cries sounded like a warning. Yes, the man seated among the heather,
employed in narrating his own history to himself, was indeed Samuel
Brohl, and the proof of this was that he had laughed, while Count Abel
Larinski never laughed; moreover, for four years the latter had been out
of the world. The second reason is, perhaps, the better.

He whom, with or without his consent, we shall call henceforth Samuel
Brohl, reproached himself for this access of levity, as he would have
reproached himself for a false note that had escaped him in executing a
Mozart sonata. He resumed his grave, dignified air, in order to salute
with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him.
It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock,
and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an
imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious
reception. He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under
essential obligations to him, and Samuel Brohl was no ingrate.

“Ah! well, my poor friend, I am here,” he said, in that mute language
that phantoms understand. “I have taken your place, and almost your
form; I play your part in the great fair of this world, and, although
your noble body has rested for four years, six feet underground, thanks
to me you still live. I always have had a most sincere admiration for
you. I considered you a phenomenon, a prodigy. You were courageous,
devoted, generosity itself; you esteemed honour above all the gold
deposits in California; you detested all coarse thoughts and doubtful
actions; your mother had nourished you in all sublime follies. You
were a true chevalier, a true Pole, the last Don Quixote in this age of
sceptics, plunderers, and interlopers. Blessed be the chance that made
us acquainted! You lived retired, solitary, unknown, in a miserable
hovel just outside of Bucharest. So goes the world! You were in
hiding--you who had nothing to hide from either God or man--you who
deserved a crown. Alas! the Russian Government had the poor taste not to
appreciate your exploits, and you feared that it would claim and obtain
your extradition. At our first meeting I pleased you, and you took me
into your friendship; I spoke Polish, and you loved music. I became your
intimate friend, your sole companion, your confidant. You must grant
that you owe to me the last happy moments of your short existence. I
soon knew your origin, the history of your youth, of your enterprises,
and of your misfortunes. You initiated me into the secret of the great
invention that you had just made; you explained to me in detail the
mechanism of your famous gun. I was intelligent; I understood, or
thought I understood. This gun, you said, would one day make my
fortune, for, on your own account, you had renounced all hope; you had
heart-disease, and you knew that you were condemned to a speedy end. My
imagination was kindled. Through my entreaty you decided to leave with
me for Vienna. This expedition was fatal to you, but I swear to you I
did not foresee it.”

Samuel crossed his hands on his knee; then he continued: “May my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth, may my blood cease to flow in my veins,
may the marrow dry up in my bones, if ever I forget to be grateful for
what I owe to you, Abel Larinski, or cease to remember the forlorn hovel
in which we passed the first night of our journey! You were attacked by
suffocation. You had only time to call and wake me. I hastened to you.
You gave me, in a dying voice, your last instructions. You delivered
into my hands your last fifty florins, which were as acceptable as an
orange would have been to the shipwrecked passengers of the Medusa. Then
you pointed with your finger to a box, in which were inclosed family
relics, letters, your journal, and papers. You said: ‘Destroy all that;
Poland is dead, let no one remember that I have lived!’ After that you
breathed your last. Well! I confess that I did not fulfil your orders.
I kept your mother’s portrait, the papers, all; and, in announcing your
decease to the police, I made them believe that the man who was dead was
named Samuel Brohl, and that Count Larinski still lived. What would you
have me do? The temptation was too great. Samuel Brohl had disgraceful
antecedents, he was base-born, he had been sold; there was a stain
on his past that never could be wiped away, and, as he had had the
misfortune to read the poets, it had come about that he often despised
himself. It was, indeed, time that he should be thrown into the shade,
and my joy was extreme to know that he was dead, and to feel that I was
alive. As soon as I succeeded in persuading myself that I was indeed
Count Abel Larinski, I was as happy as a child whose parents have
dressed him in new clothes, and who struts about to show them. With
your name I acquired a noble past; in thought, I roamed through it with
delight; I visited its every nook and corner, as a poor devil would make
the circuit of a park that he has just come to inherit. You bequeathed
me your relations, your adventures, your exploits. When you fought
for your country, I was there; when you received a gun-shot-wound near
Dubrod, it was into my flesh that the bullet penetrated. Of what do you
complain? Between friends is not everything in common? I left my own
skin, I entered yours; I was satisfied there, and desired to remain.
To-day I resemble you in everything; I assure you that if we were seen
together it would be difficult to tell us apart. I have assumed your
habits, your manners, your language, the poise of your head, your
playful melancholy, your pride, your opinions, all, even to the colour
of your hair and your handwriting. Abel Larinski, I have become you: I
mistake, I am more Pole, more Larinski, than you were yourself.”

At this moment Samuel Brohl had a singular expression of countenance;
his gaze was fixed. He was no longer of this world--he conversed with a
spirit; but he was neither terrified nor awed, as was Hamlet in talking
to the shade of his father. He treated familiarly the shade of the
true Abel Larinski; it was precisely as we treat a partner that has
transacted business with us in the same firm.

“It is very true, my dear Abel,” he continued, “that the principle of
partnership accomplishes wonders; one man alone is a small affair. But,
of all partnerships, the most useful and convenient is the one that
we have made together. The living and the dead can render each other
important services, and they never quarrel. You should be satisfied; you
play a fine role; you are the signature of the house. We will not speak
of your gun; that was a poor speculation, for which I scarcely can
pardon you. It was the fault of your disordered brain that we wandered
off on that bypath, but, thanks be to Heaven! we have at last gained
the highway. Five weeks ago we met a woman, and what a woman! She has
velvety-brown eyes, whence glances well forth like fresh and living
waters. To praise her grace properly, I must borrow the language of the
‘Song of Solomon’: ‘Thy lips, O my spouse! drop as the honey-comb; honey
and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the
smell of Lebanon. This thy stature is like to a palm-tree. Thou art all
fair, my love; there is no spot in thee. A garden inclosed is my sister,
my spouse: a spring shut up--a fountain sealed.’ Some day she will cry
out, with the Shulamite, ‘Let my beloved come into his garden, and
eat his pleasant fruits.’ She belongs to us, my dear Larinski--my dear
partner; she had yielded, and you and I share the honour of the victory.
I presented myself before her, and my presence did not displease her. I
related to her your history, as you would have related it yourself,
with delicacy and simplicity, neither adding nor omitting. Her heart was
touched; her heart was taken captive. You will wed her--she will bear
your name; but you will marry her by proxy, and I shall be your proctor.
I promise to consider myself your mandatory, or, to express it better,
you will own the property and I will have the usufruct. Never fear that
I shall forget what I owe to you, or the modesty proper to my estate.”

At these words, he made a grand gesture, as if to banish the phantom
that he had conjured up, and that fled away trembling with sorrow,
shame, and indignation. The peacock cried anew a mournful shriek.
“Stupid bird!” thought Samuel Brohl, quaking with sudden dread.

He looked at his watch, and reflected that the hour was advancing--that
he was losing time with the spirits. He rose hastily, and wended his way
toward Cormeilles; thence he wished to come upon a sunny path that led
to the banks of the Seine, and Sartrouville, the belfry of which was
plainly visible. When he reached the foot of the declivity, he turned
his head and saw, on the summit of the hill, through the space left
by the crooked branches of two plantains, a white wall, that seemed
to laugh amid the verdure, and a little higher the pointed roof of the
dove-cote, where Mlle. Moriaz’s doves had their nests. He did not need
to look long at this roof to recognise it. He threw a burning kiss
in the air--a kiss that was sent to the doves as well as to the
dove-cote--to the house as well as to the woman--to the woman as well as
the house. For the first time in his life, Samuel Brohl was in love;
but Samuel Brohl’s love differed from Abel Larinski’s. When they adore a
woman, be she as beautiful as a picture, the frame, if it is a rich one,
pleases them as much as the painting; and they propose to possess their
mistress with all her appendages and appurtenances.



CHAPTER V

Mme. de Lorcy was a woman of about fifty years of age, who still
possessed remains of beauty. She had been a widow for long years, and
never had thought of marrying again. Although her wedded life had been
a happy one, she considered that liberty is to be prized above all
else; she employed hers in a most irreproachable manner. She was
self-possessed, even better acquainted with numbers than with dress, and
managed her property herself, which was by no means a trifling thing to
do. Liking to make good use of her time, she thought to do it by busying
herself in the affairs of others. She had a real vocation for the
profession of a consulting lawyer. Usually her advice was sensible and
judicious--nothing better could be done than to follow it; only her
clients complained that she pronounced her sentences with too little
tenderness, without granting any appeal. She was good, charitable, but
lacked unction, and she had no sympathy with the illusions of others. A
German poet, in making his New-Year offerings, wishes that the rich may
be kind-hearted, that the poor may have bread, that the ladies may have
pretty dresses, that the men may have patience, that the foolish may get
a little reason, and that sensible people may grow poetic. Mme. de Lorcy
was kind-hearted, she had pretty dresses and a great deal of reason;
but her reason was wanting in poetry, and poetic people to whom she gave
advice required a good deal of patience to listen to the end. Those who
permitted themselves to despise her counsel, and who were happy after
their own fashion, incurred her lasting displeasure. She obstinately
asserted to them that their seeming happiness was all a deceit; that
they had fastened a stone about their necks; and that, without appearing
to do so, at the bottom of their hearts they bitterly repented. She
added, “It is not my fault; I told you, but you would not believe me.”

Mme. de Lorcy had an almost maternal affection for her nephew, M.
Camille Langis. Confident that he could not be otherwise than successful
in a love-affair, she promised him that he should marry Mlle. Moriaz. To
be sure, he was rather young; but she had decided that the question of
age made no difference, and that in all else there was a perfect fitness
between the parties. M. Langis hesitated a long time about declaring
himself. He said to Mme. de Lorcy: “If she refuse me, I shall no
longer be able to see her; and so long as I can see her, I am only
half-wretched.” It was Mme. de Lorcy who forced him to draw his sword
and open the campaign, in which she was to act as second. This campaign
had not been a successful one. Deeply wounded at the refusal, which she
had in vain attempted to prevent, she was ready to force Mlle. Moriaz
into compliance. They made her believe, to pacify her, that the sentence
was not definite, or at least that a period of grace would be granted to
the condemned. M. Langis set out for Hungary, and he had now returned.
In the mean time, Antoinette had refused two offers. Mme. de Lorcy had
inferred this to be a favourable omen for her projects. Thus she felt
annoyance mingled with anger on receiving the following letter from M.
Moriaz:

“DEAR MADAME:

“You will be charmed to learn that I am extremely well. My cheeks are
full, my complexion florid, my legs as nimble as a chamois, my appetite
like that of an ogre. If ever you become anemic, which God forbid, you
should set out forthwith for Saint Moritz, and I shall soon have good
news from you. Saint Moritz is a place where you find what you want, but
you find, besides, what you do not want. I do not speak of bears; I have
not seen any, and should I meet one, I am strong enough to strangle it.
Besides, bears are taciturn animals, they never relate their histories,
and the only animals I fear are those that have the gift of narrating,
and that one is not allowed to strangle. I will say no more. Have I made
myself intelligible? You are so intelligent.

“Apropos, Antoinette sends you a sketch or a painting, I do not know
which, that will be handed to you by Count Abel Larinski. He is a Pole,
of that there can be no doubt; you will perceive it at once. I wish him
well; he was obliging enough to extricate me from a breakneck position
into which I had foolishly thrust myself. That I have a pair of legs to
walk on, and a hand to write with, I owe to him. I recommend him to your
kind reception, and I beg you to get him to relate his history. He is
one of those who narrate, not every day, it is true, but when you
touch the right spring, he starts, and cannot be stopped. Seriously, M.
Larinski is no ordinary man; you will find pleasure in his acquaintance.
I have discovered that he is in rather embarrassed circumstances. He is
the son of an emigrant, whose property has been confiscated. His father
was a half fool, who made great attempts to cut a channel through
the Isthmus of Panama, and never succeeded in cutting his way through
anything. He was himself beginning to earn money in San Francisco, when,
in 1863, he gave everything up to go and fight against the Russians.
This enthusiastic patriot has since adopted the calling of an inventor,
in which he has been unsuccessful; he is now in search of a livelihood.
Do not think he will ask for anything; he is an hidalgo; he wraps
himself proudly in his poverty, as a Castilian does in his cloak. I am
interested in him; I want to assist him, give him a lift; but, first, I
wish to feel sure that he is worthy of my sympathy. Examine him closely,
sift him well; I trust your eyes rather than my own; I have the greatest
faith in your skill in this kind of valuation.

“Antoinette sends you her most affectionate greetings. She adores Saint
Moritz; you would think that she had found something here which has
wrought a charm over her. For my own part, I am delighted to have
recovered my appetite, my sleep, and all the rest, and yet I regret
having come; can you reconcile that? Let me know as soon as possible
what you think of my Pole; but, pray do not condemn him unheard. No
hasty decision, I entreat; an expert is bound not to be influenced by
his prejudices, but to weigh his judgments as his words. Adieu, dear
madame; pity me in spite of my full cheeks.”

Madame de Lorcy replied in these words, by return mail:

“You are indeed innocent, my dear professor, and your finesse is but too
apparent; I could not help understanding. Is she, indeed so foolish. I
did not think her overwise; but here she astonishes me more than I would
have believed. You can tell her, for me--or rather don’t say anything to
her; I will only speak to you, I am too angry to reason with her. I will
see your Pole, I await him resolutely; but, in truth, I have seen him
already. I am well acquainted with him, I know him by heart; I have no
doubt that he is some impostor. I will examine him without prejudice,
with religious impartiality. You are so good as to remind me that an
expert suspends his judgment. I will hold my police force in reserve,
and I will let you know before long what I think of your adventurer.
Ah! yes, I do pity you, poor man. After all, however, you alone are to
blame; is it my fault that you did not know how to act? God bless you!”

At the time when Samuel Brohl, seated amid the heather, in an oak-grove,
was conversing with phantoms, Mme. de Lorcy, alone in her _salon_, was
occupied with her needlework, and her thoughts, which revolved in a
circle, like a horse in a riding-school. She had for several days been
expecting Count Abel Larinski’s visit; she wondered at his want of
promptness, and suspected that he was afraid of her. This suspicion
pleased her. Several times she fancied she heard a man’s step in the
antechamber, at which she started nervously, and the rose-coloured
strings of her cap fluttered on her shoulders.

Suddenly, while she was counting her stitches, with head bent down, some
one entered without her perceiving it, seized her hand, and, devoutly
kissing it, threw his hat on the table, and then dropped into a chair,
where he remained motionless, with his legs stretched out, and his eyes
riveted on the floor.

“Oh! It is you, Camille,” exclaimed Mme. de Lorcy. “You come apropos.
Well?”

“Well! yes, madame, that is it,” replied M. Langis; “and you see before
you the most unhappy of men. Why is your pond dry? I want to fling
myself into it head foremost.”

Mme. de Lorcy laid down her embroidery, and crossed her arms. “So you
have returned?” said she.

“Would to God I never had gone there! It is a land where poison is sold,
and I have drunk of it.”

“Don’t abuse metaphors. You have seen her? What did you say to her?”

“Nothing, madame--nothing of what is in my heart. I made her believe
that I had reflected, and changed my views; that I was entirely cured
of my foolish passion for her; that I was simply making her a friendly
visit. Yes, madame, I remained half a day with her, and during the half
day I never once betrayed myself. I convinced her that the mask was a
face. Tell me, conscientiously, have you ever read of a more heroic act
in Plutarch’s _Lives of Great Men_?”

“She herself, what did she say to you?”

“She was so enchanted, so delighted with the change, that she was dying
to embrace me.”

“She shall pay for it. And he, did you see him?”

“Just caught a glimpse of him, looked up to him as was befitting the
humility of my position. This fortunate man, this glorious mortal, was
enthroned on the top of the mail-coach.”

“Is he really so fascinating?”

“He has, I assure you, a certain look of deep profundity, and he bears
his exploits inscribed on his brow. What am I, to contend against him!
You must allow that I have the appearance of a school-boy. And yet, if
I were to boast. This road in Transylvania for which I had the contract
was by no means easy to construct. We had to cut through the solid
rock, working in the air, suspended by ropes. This perilous labour so
disheartened our workmen that some of them left us; to encourage the
rest, I was slung up like them, and like them handled the pickaxe. One
day, in the explosion of a charge a piece of stone struck the rope of
one of my men with such violence that it cut it as clean in two as the
edge of a razor would have done. The man fell--I believed him to be
lost; by a miracle, his clothes caught in some brushwood, to which he
succeeded in clinging. It was I who went to his assistance, and I swear
to you that in this rescue I proved the strength of my muscles, and ran
the risk twenty times of breaking my neck. The workmen had mistrusted me
on account of my youth; from that day, I can assure you, they held me in
respect.”

“Did you relate this incident to Antoinette?”

“What would have been the use? With women it does not suffice to be a
great man; you must have the look of one too.” And Camille Langis cried
out, clinching his hands: “Ah! madame, I entreat you, do you know where
I can procure a Polish head, a Polish mustache, a Polish smile? Pray,
where are these articles to be had, and what is their market price? I
will not haggle! O women! what a set you are--plague on you!”

“And are aunts the same?” gravely asked Mme. de Lorcy.

He answered more calmly: “No, madame, you are a woman without an equal,
and I name you every day in my prayers. You are my only resource, my
consolation, my counsel. Do not refuse me your precious instructions!
What ought I to do?”

Mme. de Lorcy gazed up at the ceiling for an instant, and then said:
“Love elsewhere, my dear; abandon this foolish girl to her fate and her
Pole.”

He started and replied: “You demand what is impossible. I am no longer
my own master; she has taken possession of me--she holds me. Love
elsewhere? Can you think of it? I detest her--I curse her--but I adore
her!”

She rejoined: “You should not use hyperbole any more than metaphors.
Both are unsolid food. When you decide not to love, you will love no
more.”

“That supposes that I have several hearts to choose from. I never
had but one, and that no longer belongs to me. So you refuse me your
advice?”

“What advice would you have me give you before having seen M.
Larinski--before having taken the measure of this hero?”

“What! you expect to see him?”

“I am waiting for him to call, and I am sorry he keeps me waiting.”

“Seriously, will you receive this man?”

“I have been asked to examine him.”

“I am lost, if you feel the need of hearing before condemning him. Our
most sacred duty is to be resolutely unjust towards the enemies of our
friends.”

“Nonsense! I shall not be indulgent towards him.”

“Do as you like; I have my plan.”

“What is it?”

“I shall seek some groundless quarrel with this contraband, this
poacher, and I will blow his brains out.”

“A fine scheme, my dear Camille! And afterward, when you have killed
him, you will have gained a great deal. Have you confidence in me? I
have already begun to work for you. The Abbe Miollens, as you know, is
well acquainted in the society of Polish emigrants; I have sent to
him for information. I have also written to Vienna for intelligence
concerning him. Antoinette is foolish in forming such an acquaintance,
it must be admitted; but, in matters of honour, she is as delicate as
an ermine in tending the whiteness of her robe; if there be in M.
Larinski’s past a stain no larger than a ten-sou piece, she will forever
discard him. Let me act; be wise, do not blow out any one’s brains.
_Grand Dieu!_ what would become of us, if the only way to get rid of
people was by killing them?”

As she pronounced these words a servant entered, bearing a card on a
silver salver. She took the card and exclaimed: “When you speak of the
wolf--Here is our man!” She begged M. Langis to retire; he implored
permission to remain, promising to be a model of discretion. She was
insisting on his leaving when Count Abel Larinski appeared.

Samuel Brohl had scarcely taken three steps in Mme. de Lorcy’s _salon_
before he conjectured why M. Moriaz had asked him to go there, and
what was the significance of the commission with which he was charged.
Notwithstanding the _salon_ had a southern exposure, and that it was
then the middle of the month of August, it seemed to him to be cold
there. He thought that he felt a draught of chilly air, an icy wind,
which pierced him through and through, and caused him an unpleasant
shiver. He did not need to look very attentively at Mme. de Lorcy to be
convinced that he was before his judge, and that this judge was not a
friendly one; and, as soon as his gaze met that of M. Camille Langis,
something warned him that this young man was his enemy. Samuel Brohl had
the gift of observation.

He delivered his message, and handed Mme. de Lorcy the little portfolio
that contained Mlle. Moriaz’s painting, expressing his regret that
business had prevented his coming sooner. Mme. de Lorcy thanked him for
his kindness, with rather a cool politeness, and asked him for news of
her goddaughter. He did not expatiate on this topic.

“The valley of Saint Moritz is a dreary country,” she next said.

“Rather say, madame, that it is a dreary country possessing a great
charm for those who love it.”

“It appears that Mlle. Moriaz is almost wearied to death there. I should
think she would die of ennui.”

“Do you think her capable of yielding to ennui in any place?”

“Certainly, do not doubt it; but she has recourse to her imagination
to dispel the tedium. She has a marvellous talent for procuring herself
diversion and for varying her pleasures. Hers is an imagination having
many relays: no sooner is one horse exhausted than there is another to
take its place.”

“That is a precious gift,” he replied, briefly. “I assure you, however,
that you calumniate the Engadine. The trees there are not so well grown
as those in your park; but the Alpine fir and pine have their beauty.”

“You went to this hole for your health, monsieur?”

“Yes, and no, madame. I was not ill, but any physician contended that
I should be still better if I breathed the air of the Alps for three
weeks. It was taking a cure as a preventive.”

“M. Larinski made the ascent of the Morteratsch,” said Camille, who,
seated on a divan with his arms extended on his knees, never had ceased
to look at Samuel Brohl with a hard and hostile glance. “That is an
exploit that can be performed only by well people.”

“It is no exploit,” replied Samuel; “it is a work of patience, easy for
those who are not subject to vertigo.”

“You are too modest,” rejoined the young man. “Had I done as much, I
would sound a trumpet.”

“Have you attempted the ascent?” asked Samuel.

“Not at all. I do not care about having feats of prowess to relate,” he
replied, in an almost challenging tone.

Mme. de Lorcy hastened to interrupt the conversation by saying, “Is this
the first time you have been in Paris, monsieur?”

“Yes, madame,” replied Samuel, who withdrew more and more into his
shell.

“And does Paris please you as much as a pine-grove?”

“Much more, madame.”

“Have you any acquaintances?”

“None; and the truth is, I have no desire to make any.”

“Why?”

“Shall I tell you my reason? I am not fond of breaking ice, and
Poles complain that there is nothing in the world so icy as Parisian
coldness.”

“That explains itself,” cried Camille. “Paris, that is Paris proper, is
a small city of a hundred thousand souls, and this small city is invaded
more and more, by strangers who come here to seek pleasure or fortune.
It is but natural that Paris should protect itself.”

“Parisians pride themselves on their penetration,” replied Samuel.
“It does not require much of it to distinguish an honest man from an
adventurer.”

“Ah! permit me,” returned M. Langis, “that depends a good deal on
practice. The most skillful are deceived.”

Samuel Brohl rose and made a movement to leave. Mme. de Lorcy insisted
on his sitting down again. She saw that she had made a bad beginning in
the fulfilment of her office of examining magistrate, and of gaining the
prisoner’s confidence. Fearing that Camille, in spite of his promise,
would spoil everything by some insult, she found a pretext to send him
away; she begged that he would go and examine a pair of horses that were
a recent acquisition.

As soon as he was gone, she changed her manner; she grew amiable, she
endeavoured to remove the ill impression of her first welcome; she put
Count Abel at his ease, who felt that the air lost its chilliness
about him. Without appearing to do so, she made him undergo an
examination--she asked him many questions; he replied promptly. Visitors
came in; it was an hour before he took leave, after having promised Mme.
de Lorcy to dine with her the next day.

She did not wait until then to write to M. Moriaz. Her letter was thus
conceived:


“August 16, 1875.

“You recommend me to be impartial, my dear friend. Why should I not be?
It is true that I have dreamed of a certain marriage: one of the parties
would not listen to my propositions, and the other had abandoned the
idea. My project has come to nothing. Camille has enjoined me never
to speak of it to him again. You see I am no longer interested in the
question, or, rather, I have in the matter no other interest than that
which I feel for Antoinette, whose happiness is as dear to me as it is
to you. Apropos, do not give her my letters; read to her the passages
that you judge suitable to communicate to her--I leave that to your
discretion.

“First of all, let me unfold to you my humble opinions. I am charged
with having prejudices; it is a shocking calumny. I will make you a
profession of faith, and you shall judge. I am at war with more than one
point of our French morals; I deplore the habit that we have formed of
considering marriage as a business transaction, of esteeming it as a
financial or commercial partnership, and making everything subordinate
to the equality of the personal estates. This principle is revolting
to me, my dear friend. We are accused in foreign countries of being an
immoral people. Heavens! it seems to me that we understand and practise
virtue quite as much as the English or Germans, and, to speak the whole
truth, I am not afraid to advance the opinion that this, of all the
countries of the universe, is the one where there is the most virtue.
It is not at that point that we sin. Our misfortune is, that we are too
rational in our habits of life, too circumspect, too prudent; we lack
boldness in our undertakings; we wish, as it is said, to have one foot
on firm land and the other not far off. We must have security; we do not
like risk; doubtful affairs do not please us; we are too prone to look
ahead, and to look ahead is to fear. That is one reason why we send out
no colonies, and that is the reason we have no more children. Are you
satisfied with me?

“Napoleon I was in the habit of saying that, in fighting a battle, he
so ordered matters as to have seventy chances out of a hundred in his
favour; he left the rest to Fate. Ah! brave people, life is a battle,
but the French of to-day will not risk anything. They are the most
honest, the least romantic of men, and I regret it. Read Antoinette this
passage of my letter. Our young people think that they have a right to
the paternal fortune; they consider that their father is wanting in his
duty if he does not leave them a settled position, a certain future.
Their second preconceived notion is that they must find a wife who will
bring them as much at least as they have to offer her. I have so much,
you have so much--we are evidently created for each other; let us marry.
All this is deplorable. I like better to hear of the young American who
only expects from his parents the education necessary for a man to make
his way; he has his tools given to him and the method of using them,
but not a sou. You have learned to swim, my friend--swim. After that he
marries, most frequently a woman who has nothing, and who loves to spend
money. May the God Dollar protect him! he will gaily make an opening
for himself in life, and his wife will give him ten children, who will
follow the same course as their father. Where it is customary for hunger
to marry thirst, there are happy marriages, and a hardy race of people.
In all conscience, am I not romantic enough?

“Let me consider another case. Take a man who has fortune: he profits
thereby to consult his heart only, and offer his name and revenues to
the woman he loves and who has no dower. I clap my hands, I think it the
best of examples, and I regret that it is so seldom practised among
us. In France princes never are seen marrying shepherdesses; on
the contrary, one too often sees penniless sons-in-law carrying off
heiresses, and that is precisely the most objectionable case. In a
romance, or at the theatre, the poor young man who marries a million is
a very noble person; in life it is different. Not if the poor young
man had a profession or a trade, if he could procure by his own work
a sufficient income to render him independent of his wife; but if he
submit to be dependent on her, if he expect from her his daily bread, to
roll in her carriage, to ask her for the expenses of his toilet, for his
pocket-money, and perhaps for sundry questionable outlays--frankly, this
young man lacks pride; and what is a man who has no pride? Besides, what
surety is there that in marrying it is, indeed, the woman he is in love
with and not the dower? Who assures me that Count Abel Larinski?--I
name no one, personalities are odious, and I own there are exceptions.
_Dieu_, how rare they are! If I were Antoinette, I would love the poor,
but in their own interest. I would not marry them. The interest of the
whole human race is at stake. Beggars are inventive; let them have
their own way to make, and they will be sure to invent some means of
livelihood; give them the key of a cash-box, and they will cease to
strive, you have destroyed their genius. My dear professor, in fifteen
years I have brought about a great many marriages. Three times I have
married hunger to thirst, and, thank God, I once decided a millionaire
to marry a poor girl who had not a sou, but I never aided a beggar
to marry a rich girl. Now you have my principles and ideas--Are you
listening to me still? You fall asleep sometimes while listening to a
sermon. Good! you open your eyes--I proceed:

“I have seen your man. Well, sincerely, he only half pleases me. I
do not deny that he has a handsome head; a sculptor might use it as a
model. I will add that his eyes are very interesting, by turns grave,
gentle, gay, or melancholy. I have nothing to say against his manners or
his language; his address is excellent, and he is no booby--far from it.
With all this there is something about him that shocks me--I scarcely
know what--a mingling of two natures that I cannot explain. He might be
said to resemble, according to circumstances, a lion or a fox; I believe
that the fox-nature predominates, that the lion is supplementary. I
simply give you my impressions, which I am perfectly willing to be
induced to change. I am inclined to fancy that M. Larinski passed his
first youth amid vulgar surroundings, that later he came into contact
with good society, and being intelligent soon shook off the force of
early influences; but there still remain some traces of these. While he
was in my _salon_ his eyes twice took an inventory of its contents,
and that with a rapidity which would have done credit to a practised
appraiser. It was then, especially, that he had the air of a fox.

“Nor is this all. I read the other day the story of a princess who was
travelling over the world, and asked hospitality, one evening, at the
door of a palace. Was she a real princess or an adventuress? The queen
who received her judged it well to ascertain. For this purpose she
prepared for her, with her own hands, a soft bed, composed of two
mattresses, on which she piled five feather-beds; between the two
mattresses she slipped three peas. The next day the traveller was asked
how she had slept. ‘Very badly,’ she replied. ‘I do not know what was in
my bed, but my whole body is bruised; I am black and blue, and I never
closed my eyes until dawn!’ ‘She is a true princess,’ cried the queen.
Is M. Larinski a true prince? I made him undergo the test of the three
peas. I allowed myself to question him with indiscreet, urgent, improper
curiosity; he did not appear to feel the indiscretion. He replied
promptly and submissively; he endeavoured to satisfy me, and I was not
satisfied. I shall see him again to-morrow--he comes to dine at Maisons.
I only wish to be able to prove to myself that he is a true prince.

“My dear professor, you are the most imprudent of men, and, whatever
happens, you have only yourself to blame. People do not open their
doors so easily to strangers. You tell me that, thanks to M. Larinski’s
kindness, you did not break your leg. Mercy on me! a father would better
break his leg in three places than expose his daughter to the risk of
marrying an adventurer; his leg could be easily set. There is nothing so
frightful in that.

“_Postscriptum_.--I open my letter. I want to prove to you how much I
desire to be just, and how far my impartiality goes. You know that
my neighbour, Abbe Miollens, lived a long time in Poland, and has
correspondents there. I begged him to get me information concerning the
count--of course, without explaining anything to him. He reports that
Count Abel Larinski is a true count. His father, the confiscation of the
property, the emigration to America, the Isthmus of Panama--all is true;
the history is authentic. Countess Larinski was a saint. Concerning the
son, nothing is known; he must have been three or four years old when he
landed in New York. No one ever saw him; no one seems to know anything
about his taking part in the insurrection of 1863. Having spoken the
truth about his parents, it is to be presumed that he told the truth
about himself. Very well, but one can fight for one’s country, and have
a saint for one’s mother, and yet possess none of the qualities that go
towards making a happy household. I take back the word adventurer, but I
still hold to all I have said about him. Why did he take an inventory of
my furniture with his eyes? Why did he sleep so soundly in a bed where
there were three peas? This requires an explanation.

“Kiss Antoinette for me. Give my regards to Mlle. Moiseney, without
telling her that I think her a simpleton; it is a conviction in which I
shall die. Was it, indeed, very difficult to descend from that terrible
rock of yours?”

Three days later, Mme. de Lorcy wrote a second letter:


“August 19th.

“I have received this very moment, my dear monsieur, the reply from
Vienna that I have been expecting, and which I hasten to share with you.
I had applied to our friend Baron B---, first secretary of the embassy
from France to Vienna, in order to try to learn what reputation Count
Larinski had left there. He is esteemed there as a most worthy man; as
an inventor who was more daring than wise; as a devoted patriot; as one
of those Poles whose only thought is of Poland and of their Utopia, and
who would set fire to the four corners of the earth without wincing, for
the sole purpose of procuring embers at which to roast their chestnuts.
I will not return to the subject of the gun; you know all about it. It
seems that there was some good in this explosive gun, and that he who
invented it united a sort of genius with ingenuousness, inexperience,
and ignorance enough to make one weep. Nothing can be said against the
private character of the man. He had a few debts, and his tradespeople
felt considerable anxiety when he left Vienna one morning on foot. He
had no sooner reached Switzerland than he sent back money to settle
everything. Here we have an admirable trait. However, his tastes were
simple, and he led a steady life; it was the gun that brought his
finances into disorder. I will add that M. Larinski visited in Vienna
at several of the most distinguished houses, where he is remembered
most kindly. He was sought everywhere on account of his talents as
a musician, which were far more to be relied on than his talent as a
gunsmith. He plays the piano to perfection, and has a very beautiful
voice. Had he employed these talents, he could have made his way to
the opera, but his dignity held him back. Now you know what has been
communicated to me by Baron B---. On the faith of an honest woman, I
have neither added nor omitted anything.

“I am going to astonish you. Would you believe that I am beginning to
be reconciled to Count Larinski? What shocked me in him is explained and
excused by his long residence in America. He is a mixed breed of Yankee
and Pole. Far from having prejudices against him, I now have them in
his favour. Do you know, I am by no means sure that he cherishes in
his heart any serious sentiment for your daughter? As a man of taste he
admires her. I should like to know who would not admire her! I suspect
Antoinette of allowing her imagination to become excited about nothing.
He talks of her on all occasions in as free and tranquil a fashion as he
would talk of a work of art. I find it impossible to believe that he
is in love. I have in vain watched his green eyes. I never have seen a
suspicious look.

“As I announced to you, he came to Maisons yesterday to dine. I had
invited Abbe Miollens, and Camille had invited himself, promising that
he would act like a philosopher; he only half kept his promise: for
I must inform you that my nephew has conceived, I do not know why,
an insurmountable antipathy to M. Larinski; he is subject to taking
dislikes to people. During dinner, Abbe Miollens, who is a great
linguist and a great traveller, and who has at the ends of his fingers
everything concerning Poland and the Poles, led the conversation to the
insurrection of 1863. M. Larinski, at first, refrained from discussing
this sad subject; little by little the flood-gates were opened: he
related his adventures or campaigns without boasting, praising others
rather than himself; when suddenly his voice grew husky and his eyes
dim, he interrupted himself, and begged we would speak of other things.
Fortunately, at this moment, he did not see Camille, whose lips were a
sinister smile. Young Frenchmen have become such sceptics! I made eyes
at the bad boy, and on leaving the table I sent him to smoke a cigar in
the park.

“I should confess to you that M. Larinski has made a conquest of Abbe
Miollens, who of all men is the most difficult to please, and who
disputes with Providence the privilege of fathoming the depths of the
human heart. You are aware that the abbe is a remarkable violinist: he
sent for his instrument; M. Larinski seated himself at the piano, and
the two gentlemen played a concert by Mozart--divine music performed by
two angels of the first class. The conversation that followed charmed me
more than the concerto. I do not know by what fatality we came to speak
of marriage. I did not miss the opportunity to disclose with a most
innocent air, my little theories, with which you are acquainted. Would
you believe that the count concurred, more than concurred, with my
views? He is more royalist than the king; he does not admit that a good
rule allows of any exception. According to him, a poor man who marries a
rich woman forfeits his honour, debases himself, sells himself; he is a
man in bondage. He developed this theme with sombre eloquence. I assure
you that the lion no longer bore resemblance to the fox.

“After the departure of this fine musician and great orator, Abbe
Miollens, remaining alone with me, told me how much he was charmed with
his conversation and manners; he could not cease to sing his praises. I
think he went a little too far. However, I joined with him in regretting
that a man of his merit should be reduced to live by expedients.
The abbe’s arm reaches a long way; he promised me that he would busy
himself, at the expense of all other business, to find some employment
for M. Larinski. He remembered that there was some talk of establishing
in London an international school for the living languages. One of
the founders of this institute had applied to him to learn if he could
recommend some professor of the Slavonian languages. It would be exactly
the thing, and I should be delighted to procure for your _protégé_ an
occupation that would insure all the happiness that it is possible
to enjoy on the other side of the Channel. After this, will you still
accuse me of being prejudiced against him?

“Adieu, my dear monsieur. Give my tender love to my amiable goddaughter.
I rely on you to read my letters to her with care and discretion. Little
girls should have only a part of the truth.”

Eight days afterward Mme. de Lorcy wrote a third letter, which was thus
expressed:


“August 27th.

“I am more and more content with M. Larinski. I blame myself for
the suspicions with which he inspired me. The Viennese were right to
consider him a worthy man, and Abbe Miollens has not valued him too
highly. You write, on your part, my dear friend, that you are not
dissatisfied with Antoinette. She is gay, tranquil; she walks, paints,
never speaks of Count Abel Larinski, and, when you speak to her of him,
she smiles and does not reply. You claim that she has reflected; that
time and absence have wrought their effect. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’
you say. Take care! I am more mistrustful than you. Are you very sure
that Antoinette may not be a slyboots?

“What is certain is, that I received a charming epistle from her, in
which there is no more mention of M. Larinski than if Poland and the
Pole did not exist. She praises Engadine; she pretends that she would
ask for nothing better than to end her days in a pine-forest. I can read
between the lines that it would be a pine-forest after her own heart,
where there would be reunions, balls, guests to dinner, small parties,
a conservatory of music, and the opera. The last paragraph of her letter
is devoted to the insurrection in Herzegovina, and it is hardly worth
while to say that all her sympathies are with the insurgents. ‘If I were
a man,’ she writes, ‘I would go and fight for them.’ That is very well;
she always took the part of thieves against the police. I remember
long ago--she was ten years old--I told her the story of an unfortunate
traveller besieged in a forest by an army of wolves. He made a barricade
about himself, and around it he lighted great fires. The wolves fell
into the flames, where they roasted, one after the other. Antoinette
began to weep bitterly, and I imagined that she was lamenting the terror
of the unfortunate man. ‘Not at all,’ she cried: ‘the poor beasts!’ She
was made so; we cannot remake her. She will always side with the wolves,
especially with the lean ones who scarcely can make two ends meet.

“I told you that Count Larinski was a worthy man. He came to see me the
day before yesterday. We have become very good friends. I asked him if
Paris still pleased him, and he replied, with the most gracious smile,
‘What I like best in Paris is Maisons Lafitte.’ Thereupon he said
some exceedingly pretty things, which I will not repeat. We walked
_tete-a-tete_ around the park. Heaven be praised that I returned
heart-whole! We talked politics; he bears the reputation of being
hot-headed, but he is not wanting in good sense. I wished to know if he
was in favour of the Turks or of the Bosnians. He replied:

“‘As a Christian, as a Catholic, I am interested in the Christians of
the East, and I am for the Cross against the Crescent.’ He pronounced
these words, Christian, Catholic, and cross, in a tone full of unction.
I surmise that he is a devotee. He added, ‘As a Pole, I am for Turkey.’

“‘I believed,’ said I, ‘that the Poles had sympathy with all the
oppressed.’

“‘Poles,’ he replied, ‘cannot like those who like their oppressors, and
they cannot forget that the Osmanlis are their natural allies, and, on
occasions, their refuge.’

“I gave him Antoinette’s letter to read. I was very glad, at any hazard,
to prove to him that she could write four pages without asking about
him. He read it with extreme attention: but when he came to the famous
passage--‘If I were a man, I would go and fight for them!’--he smiled,
and returned me the letter, saying, in a disdainful and rather a dry
tone:

“‘Write for me to Mlle. Moriaz that I believe I am a man, yet that
I will not fight for the Bosnians, and that the Turks are my greatest
friends.’

“‘She is foolish,’ I said. ‘Fortunately, she changes her folly with
every new moon!’

“‘What would you have?’ he replied; ‘in order not to be insipid, it is
well to be a little foolish. My poor mother used often to say: “My
son, youth should be employed in laying by a great store of extravagant
enthusiasm; otherwise, at the end of life’s journey the heart will be
void, for much is left on the road.”’

“Calm, _seigneur_, your excited fears, no one has designs on your
daughter; we evidently find her charming, but are by no means in love
with her. With much precaution and circumlocution I gently proceeded
to question Count Larinski on the state of his affairs, about which
he never has opened his mouth. He frowned. I did not lose courage. I
offered him this place of professor of the Slavonian languages of which
the abbe had again spoken. I saw in an instant that his sensitive pride
had taken alarm. However, upon reflection, he softened, thanked me,
declined my kind offer, and announced--guess what! How much is my news
worth? what will you give for it? He announced, I tell you, that in two
weeks--you understand me--he will return to Vienna, where he has been
promised a post in the archives of the Minister of War. I did not dare
to ask what was the salary; after all, if he is satisfied, it is not for
us to be harder to please than he. When I affirm that Count Larinski is
a good, worthy man!--In two weeks! you understand me perfectly.

“My dear friend, I am enchanted to know that the water of Saint Moritz
and the air of the Engadine have entirely re-established your health;
but do not be imprudent. Half-cures are fatal. Be careful not to leave
Churwalden too soon, for the descent into the heavy atmosphere of the
plains. Your physician, whom I have just seen, declares that, if you
hasten your return he will not answer for the consequences. Antoinette,
I am sure, will join her entreaties to ours. Do not let us see you
before the end of three weeks! Follow my orders, my dear professor,
and all will go well. Camille is about to leave; he has become
insupportable. He had the audacity to assert to me that I was a good
woman, but very credulous, which in my estimation is not very polite. He
no longer acts as a nephew, and respect is dead.”

Ten days later M. Moriaz received at Churwalden a fourth and last
letter:


“September 6th.

“Decidedly my dear friend, Count Larinski is a delightful man, and I
never will pardon myself for having judged ill of him. The day before
yesterday I did not know the extent of his merit and of his virtues.
His beautiful soul is like a country where one passes from one pleasing
discovery to another, and at each step a new scene is revealed. Between
ourselves, Antoinette is a dreamer: where has she got the idea that this
man is in love with her? These Counts Larinski have artists’ enthusiasm,
tender and sensitive hearts, and poetic imaginations; they love
everything, and they love nothing; they admire a pretty woman as they
admire a beautiful flower, a humming-bird, a picture of Titian’s. Did
I tell you that the other day, as I was showing him through my park, he
almost fainted before my purple beech--which assuredly is a marvel? He
was in ecstasy; I truly believe there were tears in his eyes. I might
have supposed he was in love with my beech; yet he has not asked my
permission to marry it.

“Moreover, if he were up to his eyes in love with your daughter, have
no fear; he will not marry her, and this is the reason--Wait a little, I
must go further back.

“Abbe Miollens came to see me yesterday afternoon; he was distressed
that M. Larinski had not approved of his proposition.

“‘The evil is not so great,’ I said; ‘let him go back to Vienna, where
all his acquaintances are; he will be happier there.’

“‘The evil that I see in it,’ he replied, ‘is that he will be lost to
us forever. Vienna is so far away! Professor in London, only ten hours’
journey from Paris, he could cross the Channel sometimes, and we could
have our music together.’

“You can understand that this reasoning did not touch me in the least;
whatever it cost me I will bear it, and resign myself to lose M.
Larinski forever; but the abbe is obstinate.

“‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that the Austrians pay their archivists badly; the
English manage matters better, and Lord C--- gave me _carte blanche_.’

“‘Oh! but that,’ rejoined I, ‘is a delicate point to touch. As soon
as you approach the bread-and-butter question, our man assumes a rigid,
formal manner, as if an attack had been made on his dignity.’

“‘I truly believe,’ he replied, ‘that there is a fundamental basis of
incomparable nobility of sentiment in his character; he is not proud, he
is pride itself.’

“The abbe is passionately fond of Horace; he assets that it is to this
great poet that he owes that profound knowledge of men for which he
is distinguished. He quoted a Latin verse that he was kind enough
to translate for me, and that signified something equivalent to the
statement that certain horses rear and kick when you touch the sensitive
spot. ‘That is like the Poles,’ he said.

“Meanwhile, M. Larinski entered, and I retained the two gentlemen to
dinner. In the evening they again gave me a concert. Why was Antoinette
not there? I fancied I was at the Conservatoire. Then we conversed, and
the abbe, who never can let go his idea, said, without any reserve, to
the count:

“‘My dear count, have you reflected? If you go to London, we could hope
to see you often; and, besides, the salary--well, as this terrible
word has been spoken, listen to me; I will do all in my power to obtain
conditions for you in every way worthy of your merit, your learning,
your character, your position.’

“He was not permitted to finish the list; the count reared like the
horse in Horace, exclaiming, ‘O Mozart! what a horrid subject of
conversation!’ Then he added, gravely: ‘M. l’Abbe, you are a thousand
times too good, but the place offered to me in Vienna seems to me
better adapted to my kind of ability; I would make, I fear, a detestable
professor, and the salary, were it double, would in my opinion have but
little weight.’

“The abbe still insisted. ‘In our century,’ said he, ‘less than any
other, can one live on air.’

“‘I have lived on it sometimes,’ replied the count, gaily, ‘and I did
not find it bad. My health is proof against accidents. Ah! where money
is concerned, you have no idea how far my indifference goes. It is not
a virtue with me, it is an infirmity; it is because of my nationality,
because I am my father’s son. I feel myself incapable of thinking of the
future, of practising thoroughly French habits of economy. If my
purse is full, I soon empty it; after which I condemn myself to
privations--no, that does not express it--I enjoy them. According to me,
there is no true happiness into which a little suffering does not enter.
Besides, I have a taste for contrasts. At times I believe myself a
millionaire, I have the pretensions of a nabob; I give full scope to my
fancies; the next day, my bed is hard and I live on bread-and-water,
and am perfectly happy. In short, I am a fool once in the year, and a
philosopher the rest of the time.’

“‘The trouble is,’ returned the abbe, ‘that one 

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