Prince Andras had heard no news of Varhely for a long time. He only knew that the Count was in Vienna.
Yanski had told the truth when he said that he had been summoned away by his friend, Angelo Valla.
They were very much astonished, at the Austrian ministry of foreign affairs, to see Count Yanski Varhely, who, doubtless, had come from Paris to ask some favor of the minister. The Austrian diplomats smiled as they heard the name of the old soldier of ‘48 and ‘49. So, the famous fusion of parties proclaimed in 1875 continued! Every day some sulker of former times rallied to the standard. Here was this Varhely, who, at one time, if he had set foot in Austria-Hungary, would have been speedily cast into the Charles barracks, the jail of political prisoners, now sending in his card to the minister of the Emperor; and doubtless the minister and the old commander of hussars would, some evening, together pledge the new star of Hungary, in a beaker of rosy Crement!
“These are queer days we live in!” thought the Austrian diplomats.
The minister, of whom Yanski Varhely demanded an audience, his Excellency Count Josef Ladany, had formerly commanded a legion of Magyar students, greatly feared by the grenadiers of Paskiewisch, in Hungary. The soldiers of Josef Ladany, after threatening to march upon Vienna, had many times held in check the grenadiers and Cossacks of the field-marshal. Spirited and enthusiastic, his fair hair floating above his youthful forehead like an aureole, Ladany made war like a patriot and a poet, reciting the verses of Petoefi about the camp-fires, and setting out for battle as for a ball. He was magnificent (Varhely remembered him well) at the head of his students, and his floating, yellow moustaches had caused the heart of more than one little Hungarian patriot to beat more quickly.
Varhely would experience real pleasure in meeting once more his old companion in arms. He remembered one afternoon in the vineyards, when his hussars, despite the obstacles of the vines and the irregular ground, had extricated Ladany’s legion from the attack of two regiments of Russian infantry. Joseph Ladany was standing erect upon one of his cannon for which the gunners had no more ammunition, and, with drawn sabre, was rallying his companions, who were beginning to give way before the enemy. Ah, brave Ladany! With what pleasure would Varhely grasp his hand!
The former leader had doubtless aged terribly—he must be a man of fifty-five or fifty-six, to-day; but Varhely was sure that Joseph Ladany, now become minister, had preserved his generous, ardent nature of other days.
As he crossed the antechambers and lofty halls which led to the minister’s office, Varhely still saw, in his mind’s eye, Ladany, sabre in hand, astride of the smoking cannon.
An usher introduced him into a large, severe-looking room, with a lofty chimney-piece, above which hung a picture of the Emperor-King in full military uniform. Varhely at first perceived only some large armchairs, and an enormous desk covered with books; but, in a moment, from behind the mass of volumes, a man emerged, smiling, and with outstretched hand: the old hussar was amazed to find himself in the presence of a species of English diplomat, bald, with long, gray side-whiskers and shaven lip and chin, and scrupulously well dressed.
Yanski’s astonishment was so evident that Josef Ladany said, still smiling:
“Well, don’t you recognize me, my dear Count?” His voice was pleasant, and his manner charming; but there was something cold and politic in his whole appearance which absolutely stupefied Varhely. If he had seen him pass in the street, he would never have recognized, in this elegant personage, the young man, with yellow hair and long moustaches, who sang war songs as he sabred the enemy.
And yet it was indeed Ladany; it was the same clear eye which had once commanded his legion with a single look; but the eye was often veiled now beneath a lowered eyelid, and only now and then did a glance shoot forth which seemed to penetrate a man’s most secret thoughts. The soldier had become the diplomat.
“I had forgotten that thirty years have passed!” thought Varhely, a little saddened.
Count Ladany made his old comrade sit down in one of the armchairs, and questioned him smilingly as to his life, his friendships, Paris, Prince Zilah, and led him gradually and gracefully to confide what he, Varhely, had come to ask of the minister of the Emperor of Austria.
Varhely felt more reassured. Josef Ladany seemed to him to have remained morally the same. The moustache had been cut off, the yellow hair had fallen; but the heart was still young and without doubt Hungarian.
“You can,” he said, abruptly, “render me a service, a great service. I have never before asked anything of anybody; but I have taken this journey expressly to see you, and to ask you, to beg you rather, to—”
“Go on, my dear Count. What you desire will be realized, I hope.”
But his tone had already become colder, or perhaps simply more official.
“Well,” continued Varhely, “what I have come to ask of you is; in memory of the time when we were brothers in arms” (the minister started slightly, and stroked his whiskers a little nervously), “the liberty of a certain man, of a man whom you know.”
“Ah! indeed!” said Count Josef.
He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and, through his half-opened eyelids, examined Varhely, who looked him boldly in the face.
The contrast between these two men was striking; the soldier with his hair and moustache whitened in the harness, and the elegant government official with his polished manners; two old-time companions who had heard the whistling of the same balls.
“This is my errand,” said Varhely. “I have the greatest desire that one of our compatriots, now a prisoner in Warsaw, I think—at all events, arrested at Warsaw a short time ago—should be set at liberty. It is of the utmost importance to me,” he added, his lips turning almost as white as his moustache.
“Oh!” said the minister. “I fancy I know whom you mean.”
“Count Menko.”
“Exactly! Menko was arrested by the Russian police on his arrival at the house of a certain Labanoff, or Ladanoff—almost my name in Russian. This Labanoff, who had lately arrived from Paris, is suspected of a plot against the Czar. He is not a nihilist, but simply a malcontent; and, besides that, his brain is not altogether right. In short, Count Menko is connected in some way, I don’t know how, with this Labanoff. He went to Poland to join him, and the Russian police seized him. I think myself that they were quite right in their action.”
“Possibly,” said Varhely; “but I do not care to discuss the right of the Russian police to defend themselves or the Czar. What I have come for is to ask you to use your influence with the Russian Government to obtain Menko’s release.”
“Are you very much interested in Menko?”
“Very much,” replied Yanski, in a tone which struck the minister as rather peculiar.
“Then,” asked Count Ladany with studied slowness, “you would like?—”
“A note from you to the Russian ambassador, demanding Menko’s release. Angelo Valla—you know him—Manin’s former minister—”
“Yes, I know,” said Count Josef, with his enigmatical smile.
“Valla told me of Menko’s arrest. I knew that Menko had left Paris, and I was very anxious to find where he had gone. Valla learned, at the Italian embassy in Paris, of the affair of this Labanoff and of the real or apparent complicity of Michel Menko; and he told me about it. When we were talking over the means of obtaining the release of a man held by Muscovite authority, which is not an easy thing, I know, we thought of you, and I have come to your Excellency as I would have gone to the chief of the Legion of Students to demand his aid in a case of danger!”
Yanski Varhely was no diplomat; and his manner of appealing to the memories of the past was excessively disagreeable to the minister, who, however, allowed no signs of his annoyance to appear.
Count Ladany was perfectly well acquainted with the Warsaw affair. As an Hungarian was mixed up in it, and an Hungarian of the rank and standing of Count Menko, the Austro-Hungarian authorities had immediately been advised of the whole proceeding. There were probably no proofs of actual complicity against Menko; but, as Josef Ladany had said, it seemed evident that he had come to Poland to join Labanoff. An address given to Menko by Labanoff had been found, and both were soon to depart for St. Petersburg. Labanoff had some doubtful acquaintances in the Russian army: several officers of artillery, who had been arrested and sent to the mines, were said to be his friends.
“The matter is a grave one,” said the Count. “We can scarcely, for one particular case, make our relations more strained with a—a friendly nation, relations which so many others—I leave you to divine who, my dear Varhely—strive to render difficult. And yet, I would like to oblige you; I would, I assure you.”
“If Count Menko is not set at liberty, what will happen to him?” asked Yanski.
“Hmm—he might, although a foreigner, be forced to take a journey to Siberia.”
“Siberia! That is a long distance off, and few return from that journey,” said Varhely, his voice becoming almost hoarse. “I would give anything in the world if Menko were free!”
“It would have been so easy for him not to have been seized by the Russian police.”
“Yes; but he is. And, I repeat, I have come to you to demand his release. Damn it! Such a demand is neither a threat nor a cases belli.”
The minister calmed the old hussar with a gesture.
“No,” he replied, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth; “but it is embarrassing, embarrassing! Confound Menko! He always was a feather-brain! The idea of his leaving diplomacy to seek adventures! He must know, however, that his case is—what shall I say?—embarrassing, very embarrassing. I don’t suppose he had any idea of conspiring. He is a malcontent, this Menko, a malcontent! He would have made his mark in our embassies. The devil take him! Ah! my dear Count, it is very embarrassing, very embarrassing!”
The minister uttered these words in a calm, courteous, polished manner, even when he said “The devil take him!” He then went on to say, that he could not make Varhely an absolute promise; he would look over the papers in the affair, telegraph to Warsaw and St. Petersburg, make a rapid study of what he called again the “very embarrassing” case of Michel Menko, and give Varhely an answer within twenty-four hours.
“That will give you a chance to take a look at our city, my dear Count. Vienna has changed very much. Have you seen the opera-house? It is superb. Hans Makart is just exhibiting a new picture. Be sure to see it, and visit his studio, too; it is well worth examining. I have no need to tell you that I am at your service to act as your cicerone, and show you all the sights.”
“Are any of our old friends settled here?” asked Varhely.
“Yes, yes,” said the minister, softly. “But they are deputies, university professors, or councillors of the administration. All changed! all changed!”
Then Varhely wished to know if certain among them whom he had not forgotten had “changed,” as the minister said.
“Where is Armand Bitto?”
“Dead. He died very poor.”
“And Arpad Ovody, Georgei’s lieutenant, who was so brave at the assault of Buda? I thought that he was killed with that bullet through his cheek.”
“Ovody? He is at the head of the Magyar Bank, and is charged by the ministry with the conversion of the six per cent. Hungarian loan. He is intimately connected with the Rothschild group. He has I don’t know how many thousand florins a year, and a castle in the neighborhood of Presburg. A great collector of pictures, and a very amiable man!”
“And Hieronymis Janos, who wrote such eloquent proclamations and calls to arms? Kossuth was very fond of him.”
“He is busy, with Maurice Jokai, preparing a great book upon the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, a book patronized by the Archduke Rudolph. He will doubtless edit the part relative to the kingdom of Saint Stephen.”
“Ha! ha! He will have a difficult task when he comes to the recital of the battle at Raab against Francis Joseph in person! He commanded at Raab himself, as you must remember well.”
“Yes, he did, I remember,” said the minister. Then, with a smile, he added: “Bah! History is written, not made. Hieronymis Janos’s book will be very good, very good!”
“I don’t doubt it. What about Ferency Szilogyi? Is he also writing books under the direction of the Archduke Rudolph?”
“No! no! Ferency Szilogyi is president of the court of assizes, and a very good magistrate he is.”
“He! an hussar?”
“Oh! the world changes! His uniform sleeps in some chest, preserved in camphor. Szilogyi has only one fault: he is too strongly anti-Semitic.”
“He! a Liberal?”
“He detests the Israelites, and he allows it to be seen a little too much. He embarrasses us sometimes. But there is one extenuating circumstance—he has married a Jewess!”
This was said in a light, careless, humorously sceptical tone.
“On the whole,” concluded the minister, “Armand Bitto, who is no longer in this world, is perhaps the most fortunate of all.”
Then, turning to Yanski with his pleasant smile, and holding out his delicate, well-kept hand, which had once brandished the sabre, he said:
“My dear Varhely, you will dine with me to-morrow, will you not? It is a great pleasure to see you again! Tomorrow I shall most probably give you an answer to your request—a request which I am happy, very happy, to take into consideration. I wish also to present you to the Countess. But no allusions to the past before her! She is a Spaniard, and she would not understand the old ideas very well. Kossuth, Bem, and Georgei would astonish her, astonish her! I trust to your tact, Varhely. And then it is so long ago, so very long ago, all that. Let the dead past bury its dead! Is it understood?”
Yanski Varhely departed, a little stunned by this interview. He had never felt so old, so out of the fashion, before. Prince Zilah and he now seemed to him like two ancestors of the present generation—Don Quixotes, romanticists, imbeciles. The minister was, as Jacquemin would have said, a sly dog, who took the times as he found them, and left spectres in peace. Well, perhaps he was right!
“Ah, well,” thought the old hussar, with an odd smile, “there is the age of moustaches and the age of whiskers, that is all. Ladany has even found a way to become bald: he was born to be a minister!”
It little mattered to him, however, this souvenir of his youth found with new characteristics. If Count Josef Ladany rescued Menko from the police of the Czar, and, by setting him free, delivered him to him, Varhely, all was well. By entering the ministry, Ladany would thus be at least useful for something.
The negotiations with Warsaw, however, detained Yanski Varhely at Vienna longer than he wished. Count Josef evidently went zealously to work to obtain from the Russian Government Menko’s release. He had promised Varhely, the evening he received his old comrade at dinner, that he would put all the machinery at work to obtain the fulfilment of his request. “I only ask you, if I attain the desired result, that you will do something to cool off that hotheaded Menko. A second time he would not escape Siberia.”
Varhely had made no reply; but the very idea that Michel Menko might be free made his head swim. There was, in the Count’s eagerness to obtain Menko’s liberty, something of the excitement of a hunter tracking his prey. He awaited Michel’s departure from the fortress as if he were a rabbit in its burrow.
“If he is set at liberty, I suppose that we shall know where he goes,” he said to the minister.
“It is more than probable that the government of the Czar will trace his journey for him. You shall be informed.”
Count Ladany did not seek to know for what purpose Varhely demanded, with such evident eagerness, this release. It was enough for him that his old brother-in-arms desired it, and that it was possible.
“You see how everything is for the best, Varhely,” he said to him one morning. “Perhaps you blamed me when you learned that I had accepted a post from Austria. Well, you see, if I did not serve the Emperor, I could not serve you!”
During his sojourn at Vienna, Varhely kept himself informed, day by day, as to what was passing in Paris. He did not write to Prince Zilah, wishing, above everything, to keep his errand concealed from him; but Angelo Valla, who had remained in France, wrote or telegraphed whatever happened to the Prince.
Marsa Laszlo was cured; she had left Dr. Sims’s institution, and returned to the villa of Maisons-Lafitte.
The poor girl came out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment: To live! To live and think!
And yet—yes, she wished to live to once more see Andras, whose look, fixed upon her, had rekindled the extinct intellectual flame of her being. She wished to live, now that her reason had returned to her, to live to wrest from the Prince a word of pardon. It could not be possible that her existence was to end with the malediction of this man. It seemed to her, that, if she should ever see him face to face, she would find words of desperate supplication which would obtain her absolution.
Certainly—she repented it bitterly every hour, now that the punishment of thinking and feeling had been inflicted upon her—she had acted infamously, been almost as criminal as Menko, by her silence and deceit—her deceit! She, who hated a lie! But she longed to make the Prince understand that the motive of her conduct was the love which she had for him. Yes, her love alone! There was no other reason, no other, for her unpardonable treachery. He did not think it now, without any doubt. He must accuse her of some base calculation or vile intrigue. But she was certain that, if she could see him again, she would prove to him that the only cause of her conduct was her unquenchable love for him.
“Let him only believe that, and then let him fly me forever, if he likes! Forever! But I cannot endure to have him despise me, as he must!”
It was this hope which now attached her to life. After her return to Maisons-Lafitte from Vaugirard, she would have killed herself if she had not so desired another interview where she could lay bare her heart. Not daring to appear before Andras, not even thinking of such a thing as seeking him, she resolved to wait some opportunity, some chance, she knew not what. Suddenly, she thought of Yanski Varhely. Through Varhely, she might be able to say to Andras all that she wished her husband—her husband! the very word made her shudder with shame—to know of the reason of her crime. She wrote to the old Hungarian; but, as she received no response, she left Maisons-Lafitte and went to Varhely’s house. They did not know there, where the Count was; but Monsieur Angelo Valla would forward any letters to him.
She then begged the Italian to send to Varhely a sort of long confession, in which she asked his aid to obtain from the Prince the desired interview.
The letter reached Yanski while he was at Vienna. He answered it with a few icy words; but what did that matter to Marsa? It was not Varhely’s rancor she cared for, but Zilah’s contempt. She implored him again, in a letter in which she poured out her whole soul, to return, to be there when she should tell the Prince all her remorse—the remorse which was killing her, and making of her detested beauty a spectre.
There was such sincerity in this letter, wherein a conscience sobbed, that, little by little, in spite of his rough exterior, the soldier, more accessible to emotion than he cared to have it appear, was softened, and growled beneath his moustache—
“So! So! She suffers. Well, that is something.”
He answered Marsa that he would return when he had finished a work he had vowed to accomplish; and, without explaining anything to the Tzigana, he added, at the end of his letter, these words, which, enigmatical as they were, gave a vague, inexplicable hope to Marsa “And pray that I may return soon!”
The day after he had sent this letter to Maisons-Lafitte, Varhely received from Ladany a message to come at once to the ministry.
On his arrival there, Count Josef handed him a despatch. The Russian minister of foreign affairs telegraphed to his colleague at Vienna, that his Majesty the Czar consented to the release of Count Menko, implicated in the Labanoff affair. Labanoff would probably be sent to Siberia the very day that Count Menko would receive a passport and an escort to the frontier. Count Menko had chosen Italy for his retreat, and he would start for Florence the day his Excellency received this despatch.
“Well, my dear minister,” exclaimed Varhely, “thank you a thousand times. And, with my thanks, my farewell. I am also going to Florence.”
“Immediately?”
“Immediately.”
“You will arrive there before Menko.”
“I am in a hurry,” replied Varhely, with a smile.
He went to the telegraph office, after leaving the ministry, and sent a despatch to Angelo Valla, at Paris, in which he asked the Venetian to join him in Florence. Valla had assured him that he could rely on him for any service; and Varhely left Vienna, certain that he should find Manin’s old minister at Florence.
“After all, he has not changed so much,” he said to himself, thinking of Josef Ladany. “Without his aid, Menko would certainly have escaped me. Ladany has taken the times as they are: Zilah and I desire to have them as they should be. Which is right?”
Then, while the train was carrying him to Venice, he thought: Bah! it was much better to be a dupe like himself and Zilah, and to die preserving, like an unsurrendered flag, one’s dream intact.
To die?
Yes! After all, Varhely might, at this moment, be close to death; but, whatever might be the fate which awaited him at the end of his journey, he found the road very long and the engine very slow.
At Venice he took a train which carried him through Lombardy into Tuscany; and at Florence he found Angelo Valla.
The Italian already knew, in regard to Michel Menko, all that it was necessary for him to know. Before going to London, Menko, on his return from Pau, after the death of his wife, had retired to a small house he owned in Pistoja; and here he had undoubtedly gone now.
It was a house built on the side of a hill, and surrounded with olive-trees. Varhely and Valla waited at the hotel until one of Balla’s friends, who lived at Pistoja, should inform him of the arrival of the Hungarian count. And Menko did, in fact, come there three days after Varhely reached Florence.
“To-morrow, my dear Valla,” said Yanski, “you will accompany me to see Menko?”
“With pleasure,” responded the Italian.
Menko’s house was some distance from the station, at the very end of the little city.
The bell at the gate opening into the garden, had been removed, as if to show that the master of the house did not wish to be disturbed. Varhely was obliged to pound heavily upon the wooden barrier. The servant who appeared in answer to his summons, was an Hungarian, and he wore the national cap, edged with fur.
“My master does not receive visitors,” he answered when Yanski asked him, in Italian, if Count Menko were at home.
“Go and say to Menko Mihaly,” said Varhely, this time in Hungarian, “that Count Varhely is here as the representative of Prince Zilah!”
The domestic disappeared, but returned almost immediately and opened the gate. Varhely and Valla crossed the garden, entered the house, and found themselves face to face with Menko.
Varhely would scarcely have recognized him.
The former graceful, elegant young man had suddenly aged: his hair was thin and gray upon the temples, and, instead of the carefully trained moustache of the embassy attache, a full beard now covered his emaciated cheeks.
Michel regarded the entrance of Varhely into the little salon where he awaited him, as if he were some spectre, some vengeance which he had expected, and which did not astonish him. He stood erect, cold and still, as Yanski advanced toward him; while Angelo Valla remained in the doorway, mechanically stroking his smoothly shaven chin.
“Monsieur,” said Varhely, “for months I have looked forward impatiently to this moment. Do not doubt that I have sought you.”
“I did not hide myself,” responded Menko.
“Indeed? Then may I ask what was your object in going to Warsaw?”
“To seek-forgetfulness,” said the young man, slowly and sadly.
This simple word—so often spoken by Zilah—which had no more effect upon the stern old Hungarian than a tear upon a coat of mail, produced a singular impression upon Valla. It seemed to him to express unconquerable remorse.
“What you have done can not be forgotten,” said Varhely.
“No more than what I have suffered.”
“You made me the accomplice of the most cowardly and infamous act a man could commit. I have come to you to demand an explanation.”
Michel lowered his eyes at these cutting words, his thin face paling, and his lower lip trembling; but he said nothing. At last, after a pause, he raised his eyes again to the face of the old Hungarian, and, letting the words fall one by one, he replied:
“I am at your disposal for whatever you choose to demand, to exact. I only desire to assure you that I had no intention of involving you in an act which I regarded as a cruel necessity. I wished to avenge myself. But I did not wish my vengeance to arrive too late, when what I had assumed the right to prevent had become irreparable.”
“I do not understand exactly,” said Varhely.
Menko glanced at Valla as if to ask whether he could speak openly before the Italian.
“Monsieur Angelo Valla was one of the witnesses of the marriage of Prince Andras Zilah,” said Yanski.
“I know Monsieur,” said Michel, bowing to Valla.
“Ah!” he exclaimed abruptly, his whole manner changing. “There was a man whom I respected, admired and loved. That man, without knowing it, wrested from me the woman who had been the folly, the dream, and the sorrow of my life. I would have done anything to prevent that woman from bearing the name of that man.”
“You sent to the Prince letters written to you by that woman, and that, too, after the Tzigana had become Princess Zilah.”
“She had let loose her dogs upon me to tear me to pieces. I was insane with rage. I wished to destroy her hopes also. I gave those letters to my valet with absolute orders to deliver them to the Prince the evening before the wedding. At the same hour that I left Paris, the letters should have been in the hands of the man who had the right to see them, and when there was yet time for him to refuse his name to the woman who had written them. My servant did not obey, or did not understand. Upon my honor, this is true. He kept the letters twenty-four hours longer than I had ordered him to do; and it was not she whom I punished, but I struck the man for whom I would have given my life.”
“Granted that there was a fatality of this sort in your conduct,” responded Varhely, coldly, “and that your lackey did not understand your commands: the deed which you committed was none the less that of a coward. You used as a weapon the letters of a woman, and of a woman whom you had deceived by promising her your name when it was no longer yours to give!”
“Are you here to defend Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo?” asked Michel, a trifle haughtily.
“I am here to defend the Princess Zilah, and to avenge Prince Andras. I am here, above all, to demand satisfaction for your atrocious action in having taken me as the instrument of your villainy.”
“I regret it deeply and sincerely,” replied Menko; “and I am at your orders.”
The tone of this response admitted of no reply, and Yanski and Valla took their departure.
Valla then obtained another second from the Hungarian embassy, and two officers in garrison at Florence consented to serve as Menko’s friends. It was arranged that the duel should take place in a field near Pistoja.
Valla, anxious and uneasy, said to Varhely:
“All this is right and proper, but—”
“But what?”
“But suppose he kills you? The right is the right, I know; but leaden bullets are not necessarily on the side of the right, and—”
“Well,” interrupted Yanski, “in case of the worst, you must charge yourself, my dear Valla, with informing the Prince how his old friend Yanski Varhely defended his honor—and also tell him of the place where Count Menko may be found. I am going to attempt to avenge Zilah. If I do not succeed, ‘Teremtete’!” ripping out the Hungarian oath, “he will avenge me, that is all! Let us go to supper.”
Prince Zilah, wandering solitary in the midst of crowded Paris, was possessed by one thought, one image impossible to drive away, one name which murmured eternally in his ears—Marsa; Marsa, who was constantly before his eyes, sometimes in the silvery shimmer of her bridal robes, and sometimes with the deathly pallor of the promenader in the garden of Vaugirard; Marsa, who had taken possession of his being, filling his whole heart, and, despite his revolt, gradually overpowering all other memories, all other passions! Marsa, his last love, since nothing was before him save the years when the hair whitens, and when life weighs heavily upon weary humanity; and not only his last love, but his only love!
Oh! why had he loved her? Or, having loved her, why had she not confessed to him that that coward of a Menko had deceived her! Who knows? He might have pardoned her, perhaps, and accepted the young girl, the widow of that passion. Widow? No, not while Menko lived. Oh! if he were dead!
And Zilah repeated, with a fierce longing for vengeance: “If he were dead!” That is, if there were not between them, Zilah and Marsa, the abhorred memory of the lover!
Well! if Menko were dead?
When he feverishly asked himself this question, Zilah recalled at the same time Marsa, crouching at his feet, and giving no other excuse than this: “I loved you! I wished to belong to you, to be your wife!”
His wife! Yes, the beautiful Tzigana he had met at Baroness Dinati’s was now his wife! He could punish or pardon. But he had punished, since he had inflicted upon her that living death—insanity. And he asked himself whether he should not pardon Princess Zilah, punished, repentant, almost dying.
He knew that she was now at Maisons, cured of her insanity, but still ill and feeble, and that she lived there like a nun, doing good, dispensing charity, and praying—praying for him, perhaps.
For him or for Menko?
No, for him! She was not vile enough to have lied, when she asked, implored, besought death from Zilah who held her life or death in his hands.
“Yes, I had the right to kill her, but—I have the right to pardon also,” thought Zilah.
Ah, if Menko were dead!
The Prince gradually wrought himself into a highly nervous condition, missing Varhely, uneasy at his prolonged absence, and never succeeding in driving away Marsa’s haunting image. He grew to hate his solitary home and his books.
“I shall not want any breakfast,” he said one morning to his valet; and, going out, he descended the Champs-Elysees on foot.
At the corner of the Place de la Madeleine, he entered a restaurant, and sat down near a window, gazing mechanically at this lively corner of Paris, at the gray facade of the church, the dusty trees, the asphalt, the promenaders, the yellow omnibuses, the activity of Parisian life.
All at once he was startled to hear his name pronounced and to see before him, with his hand outstretched, as if he were asking alms, old General Vogotzine, who said to him, timidly:
“Ah, my dear Prince, how glad I am to see you! I was breakfasting over there, and my accursed paper must have hidden me. Ouf! If you only knew! I am stifling!”
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Andras.
“Matter? Look at me! I must be as red as a beet!”
Poor Vogotzine had entered the restaurant for breakfast, regretting the cool garden of Maisons-Lafitte, which, now that Marsa no longer sat there, he had entirely to himself. After eating his usual copious breakfast, he had imprudently asked the waiter for a Russian paper; and, as he read, and sipped his kummel, which he found a little insipid and almost made him regret the vodka of his native land, his eyes fell upon a letter from Odessa, in which there was a detailed description of the execution of three nihilists, two of them gentlemen. It told how they were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in black letters: “Guilty of high treason.” Then the wretched General shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray pall. He saw, in the hollow square formed by a battalion of Cossack infantry, the executioner, Froloff, in his red shirt and his plush trousers tucked into his boots, and, beside him, a pale, black-robed priest.
“Who the devil is such an idiot as to relate such things in the newspapers?” he growled.
And in terror he imagined he could hear the sheriff read the sentence, see the priest present the cross to the condemned men, and Froloff, before putting on the black caps, degrade the gentlemen by breaking their swords over their heads.
Then, half suffocated, Vogotzine flung the paper on the floor; and, with eyes distended with horror, drawing the caraffe of kummel toward him, he half emptied it, drinking glass after glass to recover his self-control. It seemed to him that Froloff was there behind him, and that the branches of the candelabra, stretching over his heated head, were the arms of gibbets ready to seize him. To reassure himself, and be certain that he was miles and miles from Russia, he was obliged to make sure of the presence of the waiters and guests in the gay and gilded restaurant.
“The devil take the newspapers!” he muttered.
“They are cursed stupid! I will never read another! All that stuff is absurd! Absurd! A fine aid to digestion, truly!”
And, paying his bill, he rose to go, passing his hand over his head as if his sword had been broken upon it and left a contusion, and glancing timidly into the mirrors, as if he feared to discover the image of Froloff there.
It was at this moment that he discovered Prince Zilah, and rushed up to him with the joyful cry of a child discovering a protector.
The Prince noticed that poor Vogotzine, who sat heavily down by his side, was not entirely sober. The enormous quantity of kummel he had absorbed, together with the terror produced by the article he had read, had proved too much for the good man: his face was fiery, and he constantly moistened his dry lips.
“I suppose it astonishes you to see me here?” he said, as if he had forgotten all that had taken place. “I—I am astonished to see myself here! But I am so bored down there at Maisons, and I rust, rust, as little—little—ah! Stephanie said to me once at Odessa. So I came to breathe the air of Paris. A miserable idea! Oh, if you knew! When I think that that might happen to me!”
“What?” asked Andras, mechanically.
“What?” gasped the General, staring at him with dilated eyes. “Why, Froloff, of course! Froloff! The sword broken over your head! The gallows! Ach! I am not a nihilist—heaven forbid!—but I have displeased the Czar. And to displease the Czar—Brr! Imagine the open square-Odessa-No, no, don’t let us talk of it any more!” glancing suddenly about him, as if he feared the platoon of Cossacks were there, in the restaurant, come to drag him away in the name of the Emperor. “Oh! by the way, Prince,” he exclaimed abruptly—“why don’t you ever come to Maisons-Lafitte?”
He must, indeed, have been drunk to address such a question to the Prince.
Zilah looked him full in the face; but Vogotzine’s eyes blinked stupidly, and his head fell partially forward on his breast. Satisfied that he was not responsible for what he was saying, Andras rose to leave the restaurant, and the General with difficulty stumbled to his feet, and instinctively grasped Andras’s arm, the latter making no resistance, the mention of Maisons-Lafitte interesting him, even from the lips of this intoxicated old idiot.
“Do you know,” stuttered Vogotzine, “I, myself, should be glad—very glad—if you would come there. I am bored-bored to death! Closed shutters—not the least noise. The creaking of a door—the slightest bit of light-makes her ill. The days drag—they drag—yes, they do. No one speaks. Most of the time I dine alone. Shall I tell you?—no—yes, I will. Marsa, yes, well! Marsa, she is good, very good—thinks only of the poor-the poor, you know! But whatever Doctor Fargeas may say about it, she is mad! You can’t deceive me! She is insane!—still insane!”
“Insane?” said Andras, striving to control his emotion.
The General, who was now staggering violently, clung desperately to the Prince. They had reached the boulevard, and Andras, hailing a cab, made Vogotzine get in, and instructed the coachman to drive to the Bois.
“I assure you that she is insane,” proceeded the General, throwing his head back on the cushions. “Yes, insane. She does not eat anything; she never rests. Upon my word, I don’t know how she lives. Once—her dogs—she took walks. Now, I go with them into the park—good beasts—very gentle. Sometimes, all that she says, is: ‘Listen! Isn’t that Duna or Bundas barking?’ Ah! if I wasn’t afraid of Froloffyes, Froloff—how soon I should return to Russia! The life of Paris—the life of Paris wearies me. You see, I come here today, I take up a newspaper, and I see what? Froloff! Besides, the life of Paris—at Maisons-Lafitte—between four walls, it is absurd! Now, acknowledge, old man, isn’t it absurd? Do you know what I should like to do? I should like to send a petition to the Czar. What did I do, after all, I should like to know? It wasn’t anything so horrible. I stayed, against the Emperor’s orders, five days too long at Odessa—that was all—yes, you see, a little French actress who was there, who sang operettas; oh, how she did sing operettas! Offenbach, you know;” and the General tried to hum a bar or two of the ‘Dites lui’, with ludicrous effect. “Charming! To leave her, ah! I found that very hard. I remained five days: that wasn’t much, eh, Zilah? five days? But the devil! There was a Grand Duke—well—humph! younger than I, of course—and—and—the Grand Duke was jealous. Oh! there was at that time a conspiracy at Odessa! I was accused of spending my time at the theatre, instead of watching the conspirators. They even said I was in the conspiracy! Oh, Lord! Odessa! The gallows! Froloff! Well, it was Stephanie Gavaud who was the cause of it. Don’t tell that to Marsa! Ah! that little Stephanie! ‘J’ai vu le vieux Bacchus sur sa roche fertile!’ Tautin—no, Tautin couldn’t sing like that little Stephanie! Well,” continued Vogotzine, hiccoughing violently, “because all that happened then, I now lead here the life of an oyster! Yes, the life of an oyster, of a turtle, of a clam! alone with a woman sad as Mid-Lent, who doesn’t speak, doesn’t sing, does nothing but weep, weep, weep! It is crushing! I say just what I think! Crushing, then, whatever my niece may be—cr-r-rushing! And—ah—really, my dear fellow, I should be glad if you would come. Why did you go away? Yes, yes, that is your affair, and I don’t ask any questions. Only—only you would do well to come—”
“Why?” interrupted Andras, turning quickly to Vogotzine.
“Ah! why? Because!” said the General, trying to give to his heavy face an expression of shrewd, dignified gravity.
“What has happened?” asked the Prince. “Is she suffering again? Ill?”
“Oh, insane, I tell you! absolutely insane! mad as a March hare! Two days ago, you see—”
“Well, what? two days ago?”
“Because, two days ago!—”
“Well, what? What is it? Speak, Vogotzine!”
“The despatch,” stammered the General.
“What despatch?”
“The des—despatch from Florence.”
“She has received a despatch from Florence?”
“A telegram—blue paper—she read it before me; upon my word, I thought it was from you! She said—no; those miserable bits of paper, it is astonishing how they alarm you. There are telegrams which have given me a fit of indigestion, I assure you—and I haven’t the heart of a chicken!”
“Go on! Marsa? This despatch? Whom was it from? What did Marsa say?”
“She turned white as a sheet; she began to tremble—an attack of the nerves—and she said: ‘Well, in two days I shall know, at last, whether I am to live!’ Queer, wasn’t it? I don’t know what she meant! But it is certain—yes, certain, my dear fellow—that she expects, this evening, some one who is coming—or who is not coming, from Florence—that depends.”
“Who is it? Who?” cried Andras. “Michel Menko?”
“I don’t know,” faltered Vogotzine in alarm, wondering whether it were Froloff’s hand that had seized him by the collar of his coat.
“It is Menko, is it not?” demanded Andras; while the terrified General gasped out something unintelligible, his intoxication increasing every yard the carriage advanced in the Bois.
Andras was almost beside himself with pain and suspense. What did it mean? Who had sent that despatch? Why had it caused Marsa such emotion? “In two days I shall know, at last, whether I am to live!” Who could make her utter such a cry? Who, if not Michel Menko, was so intimately connected with her life as to trouble her so, to drive her insane, as Vogotzine said?
“It is Menko, is it not? it is Menko?” repeated Andras again.
And Vogotzine gasped:
“Perhaps! anything is possible!”
But he stopped suddenly, as if he comprehended, despite his inebriety, that he was in danger of going too far and doing some harm.
“Come, Vogotzine, come, you have told me too much not to tell me all!”
“That is true; yes, I have said too much! Ah! The devil! this is not my affair!—Well, yes, Count Menko is in Florence or near Florence—I don’t know where. Marsa told me that—without meaning to. She was excited—very excited—talked to herself. I did not ask her anything—but—she is insane, you see, mad, mad! She first wrote a despatch to Italy—then she tore it up like this, saying: ‘No, what is to happen, will happen!’ There! I don’t know anything but that. I don’t know anything!”
“Ah! she is expecting him!” cried Andras. “When?”
“I don’t know!”
“You told me it was to be this evening. This evening, is it not?”
The old General felt as ill at ease as if he had been before a military commission or in the hands of Froloff.
“Yes, this evening.”
“At Maisons-Lafitte?”
“At Maisons,” responded Vogotzine, mechanically. “And all this wearies me—wearies me. Was it for this I decided to come to Paris? A fine idea! At least, there are no Russian days at Maisons!”
Andras made no reply.
He stopped the carriage, got out, and, saluting the General with a brief “Thank you!” walked rapidly away, leaving Vogotzine in blank amazement, murmuring, as he made an effort to sit up straight:
“Well, well, are you going to leave me here, old man? All alone? This isn’t right!”
And, like a forsaken child, the old General, with comic twitchings of his eyebrows and nostrils, felt a strong desire to weep.
“Where shall I drive you, Monsieur?” asked the coachman.
“Wherever you like, my friend,” responded Vogotzine, modestly, with an appealing look at the man. “You, at least, must not leave me!”