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.