(LA FAUSSE MAITRESSE)
I
In September, 1835, one of the richest heiresses of the faubourg
Saint-Germain, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, the only daughter of the Marquis
du Rouvre, married Comte Adam Mitgislas Laginski, a young Polish exile.
We ask permission to write these Polish names as they are pronounced,
to spare our readers the aspect of the fortifications of consonants
by which the Slave language protects its vowels,--probably not to lose
them, considering how few there are.
The Marquis du Rouvre had squandered nearly the whole of a princely
fortune, which he obtained originally through his marriage with a
Demoiselle de Ronquerolles. Therefore, on her mother’s side Clementine
du Rouvre had the Marquis de Ronquerolles for uncle, and Madame de
Serizy for aunt. On her father’s side she had another uncle in the
eccentric person of the Chevalier du Rouvre, a younger son of the house,
an old bachelor who had become very rich by speculating in lands and
houses. The Marquis de Ronquerolles had the misfortune to lose both
his children at the time of the cholera, and the only son of Madame
de Serizy, a young soldier of great promise, perished in Africa in
the affair of the Makta. In these days rich families stand between the
danger of impoverishing their children if they have too many, or of
extinguishing their names if they have too few,--a singular result of
the Code which Napoleon never thought of. By a curious turn of fortune
Clementine became, in spite of her father having squandered his
substance on Florine (one of the most charming actresses in Paris), a
great heiress. The Marquis de Ronquerolles, a clever diplomatist under
the new dynasty, his sister, Madame de Serizy, and the Chevalier du
Rouvre agreed, in order to save their fortunes from the dissipations of
the marquis, to settle them on their niece, to whom, moreover, they each
pledged themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year from the day of her
marriage.
It is quite unnecessary to say that the Polish count, though an exile,
was no expense to the French government. Comte Adam Laginski belonged
to one of the oldest and most illustrious families in Poland, which was
allied to many of the princely houses of Germany,--Sapieha, Radziwill,
Mniszech, Rzewuski, Czartoryski, Leczinski, Lubormirski, and all the
other great Sarmatian SKIS. But heraldic knowledge is not the most
distinguishing feature of the French nation under Louis-Philippe, and
Polish nobility was no great recommendation to the bourgeoisie who were
lording it in those days. Besides, when Adam first made his appearance,
in 1833, on the boulevard des Italiens, at Frascati, and at the
Jockey-Club, he was leading the life of a young man who, having lost his
political prospects, was taking his pleasure in Parisian dissipation. At
first he was thought to be a student.
The Polish nationality had at this period fallen as low in French
estimation, thanks to a shameful governmental reaction, as the
republicans had sought to raise it. The singular struggle of the
Movement against Resistance (two words which will be inexplicable thirty
years hence) made sport of what ought to have been truly respected,--the
name of a conquered nation to whom the French had offered hospitality,
for whom fetes had been given (with songs and dances by subscription),
above all, a nation which in the Napoleonic struggle between France and
Europe had given us six thousand men, and what men!
Do not infer from this that either side is taken here; either that
of the Emperor Nicholas against Poland, or that of Poland against the
Emperor. It would be a foolish thing to slip political discussion into
tales that are intended to amuse or interest. Besides, Russia and Poland
were both right,--one to wish the unity of its empire, the other
to desire its liberty. Let us say in passing that Poland might have
conquered Russia by the influence of her morals instead of fighting her
with weapons; she should have imitated China which, in the end, Chinesed
the Tartars, and will, it is to be hoped, Chinese the English. Poland
ought to have Polonized Russia. Poniatowski tried to do so in the
least favorable portion of the empire; but as a king he was little
understood,--because, possibly, he did not fully understand himself.
But how could the Parisians avoid disliking an unfortunate people who
were the cause of that shameful falsehood enacted during the famous
review at which all Paris declared its will to succor Poland? The Poles
were held up to them as the allies of the republican party, and they
never once remembered that Poland was a republic of aristocrats. From
that day forth the bourgeoisie treated with base contempt the exiles of
the nation it had worshipped a few days earlier. The wind of a riot
is always enough to veer the Parisians from north to south under any
regime. It is necessary to remember these sudden fluctuations of feeling
in order to understand why it was that in 1835 the word “Pole” conveyed
a derisive meaning to a people who consider themselves the wittiest and
most courteous nation on earth, and their city of Paris the focus of
enlightenment, with the sceptre of arts and literature within its grasp.
There are, alas! two sorts of Polish exiles,--the republican Poles,
sons of Lelewel, and the noble Poles, at the head of whom is Prince Adam
Czartoryski. The two classes are like fire and water; but why complain
of that? Such divisions are always to be found among exiles, no matter
of what nation they may be, or in what countries they take refuge. They
carry their countries and their hatreds with them. Two French priests,
who had emigrated to Brussels during the Revolution, showed the utmost
horror of each other, and when one of them was asked why, he replied
with a glance at his companion in misery: “Why? because he’s a
Jansenist!” Dante would gladly have stabbed a Guelf had he met him in
exile. This explains the virulent attacks of the French against the
venerable Prince Adam Czartoryski, and the dislike shown to the better
class of Polish exiles by the shopkeeping Caesars and the licensed
Alexanders of Paris.
In 1834, therefore, Adam Mitgislas Laginski was something of a butt for
Parisian pleasantry.
“He is rather nice, though he is a Pole,” said Rastignac.
“All these Poles pretend to be great lords,” said Maxime de Trailles,
“but this one does pay his gambling debts, and I begin to think he must
have property.”
Without wishing to offend these banished men, it may be allowable to
remark that the light-hearted, careless inconsistency of the Sarmatian
character does justify in some degree the satire of the Parisians, who,
by the bye, would behave in like circumstances exactly as the Poles do.
The French aristocracy, so nobly succored during the Revolution by the
Polish lords, certainly did not return the kindness in 1832. Let us
have the melancholy courage to admit this, and to say that the faubourg
Saint-Germain is still the debtor of Poland.
Was Comte Adam rich, or was he poor, or was he an adventurer?
This problem was long unsolved. The diplomatic salons, faithful to
instructions, imitated the silence of the Emperor Nicholas, who held
that all Polish exiles were virtually dead and buried. The court of the
Tuileries, and all who took their cue from it, gave striking proof of
the political quality which was then dignified by the name of sagacity.
They turned their backs on a Russian prince with whom they had all been
on intimate terms during the Emigration, merely because it was said that
the Emperor Nicholas gave him the cold shoulder. Between the caution
of the court and the prudence of the diplomates, the Polish exiles of
distinction lived in Paris in the Biblical solitude of “super flumina
Babylonis,” or else they haunted a few salons which were the neutral
ground of all opinions. In a city of pleasure, like Paris, where
amusements abound on all sides, the heedless gayety of a Pole finds
twice as many encouragements as it needs to a life of dissipation.
It must be said, however, that Adam had two points against him,--his
appearance, and his mental equipment. There are two species of Pole, as
there are two species of Englishwoman. When an Englishwoman is not
very handsome she is horribly ugly. Comte Adam belonged in the second
category of human beings. His small face, rather sharp in expression,
looked as if it had been pressed in a vise. His short nose, and fair
hair, and reddish beard and moustache made him look all the more like a
goat because he was small and thin, and his tarnished yellow eyes caught
you with that oblique look which Virgil celebrates. How came he, in
spite of such obvious disadvantages, to possess really exquisite manners
and a distinguished air? The problem is solved partly by the care and
elegance of his dress, and partly by the training given him by his
mother, a Radziwill. His courage amounted to daring, but his mind
was not more than was needed for the ephemeral talk and pleasantry of
Parisian conversation. And yet it would have been difficult to find
among the young men of fashion in Paris a single one who was his
superior. Young men talk a great deal too much in these days of horses,
money, taxes, deputies; French _conversation_ is no longer what it was.
Brilliancy of mind needs leisure and certain social inequalities to
bring it out. There is, probably, more real conversation in Vienna or
St. Petersburg than in Paris. Equals do not need to employ delicacy or
shrewdness in speech; they blurt out things as they are. Consequently
the dandies of Paris did not discover the great seigneur in the rather
heedless young fellow who, in their talks, would flit from one subject
to another, all the more intent upon amusement because he had just
escaped from a great peril, and, finding himself in a city where his
family was unknown, felt at liberty to lead a loose life without the
risk of disgracing his name.
But one fine day in 1834 Adam suddenly bought a house in the rue de la
Pepiniere. Six months later his style of living was second to none in
Paris. About the time when he thus began to take himself seriously he
had seen Clementine du Rouvre at the Opera and had fallen in love with
her. A year later the marriage took place. The salon of Madame d’Espard
was the first to sound his praises. Mothers of daughters then learned
too late that as far back as the year 900 the family of the Laginski was
among the most illustrious of the North. By an act of prudence which was
very unPolish, the mother of the young count had mortgaged her entire
property on the breaking out of the insurrection for an immense sum
lent by two Jewish bankers in Paris. Comte Adam was now in possession of
eighty thousand francs a year. When this was discovered society ceased
to be surprised at the imprudence which had been laid to the charge
of Madame de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, and the Chevalier du
Rouvre in yielding to the foolish passion of their niece. People jumped,
as usual, from one extreme of judgment to the other.
During the winter of 1836 Comte Adam was the fashion, and Clementine
Laginska one of the queens of Paris. Madame Laginska is now a member
of that charming circle of young women represented by Mesdames de
Lestorade, de Portenduere, Marie de Vandenesse, du Guenic, and de
Maufrigneuse, the flowers of our present Paris, who live at such
immeasurable distance from the parvenus, the vulgarians, and the
speculators of the new regime.
This preamble is necessary to show the sphere in which was done one
of those noble actions, less rare than the calumniators of our time
admit,--actions which, like pearls, the fruit of pain and suffering, are
hidden within rough shells, lost in the gulf, the sea, the tossing waves
of what we call society, the century, Paris, London, St. Petersburg,--or
what you will.
If the axiom that architecture is the expression of manner and morals
was ever proved, it was certainly after the insurrection of 1830, during
the present reign of the house of Orleans. As all the old fortunes
are diminishing in France, the majestic mansions of our ancestors are
constantly being demolished and replaced by species of phalansteries, in
which the peers of July occupy the third floor above some newly
enriched empirics on the lower floors. A mixture of styles is confusedly
employed. As there is no longer a real court or nobility to give the
tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never, on the other
hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways of imitating
the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more talent, in
distributing them. Propose to an architect to build upon the garden
at the back of an old mansion, and he will run you up a little Louvre
overloaded with ornament. He will manage to get in a courtyard, stables,
and if you care for it, a garden. Inside the house he will accommodate a
quantity of little rooms and passages. He is so clever in deceiving the
eye that you think you will have plenty of space; but it is only a nest
of small rooms, after all, in which a ducal family has to turn itself
about in the space that its own bakehouse formerly occupied.
The hotel of the Comtesse Laginska, rue de la Pepiniere, is one of these
creations, and stands between court and garden. On the right, in the
court, are the kitchens and offices; to the left the coachhouse and
stables. The porter’s lodge is between two charming portes-cocheres. The
chief luxury of the house is a delightful greenhouse contrived at the
end of a boudoir on the ground-floor which opens upon an admirable
suite of reception rooms. An English philanthropist had built this
architectural bijou, designed the garden, added the greenhouse, polished
the doors, bricked the courtyard, painted the window-frames green,
and realized, in short, a dream which resembled (proportions excepted)
George the Fourth’s Pavilion at Brighton. The inventive and industrious
Parisian workmen had moulded the doors and window-frames; the ceilings
were imitated from the middle-ages or those of a Venetian palace; marble
veneering abounded on the outer walls. Steinbock and Francois Souchet
had designed the mantel-pieces and the panels above the doors; Schinner
had painted the ceilings in his masterly manner. The beauties of the
staircase, white as a woman’s arm, defied those of the hotel Rothschild.
On account of the riots and the unsettled times, the cost of this folly
was only about eleven hundred thousand francs,--to an Englishman a mere
nothing. All this luxury, called princely by persons who do not know
what real princes are, was built in the garden of the house of a
purveyor made a Croesus by the Revolution, who had escaped to Brussels
and died there after going into bankruptcy. The Englishman died in
Paris, of Paris; for to many persons Paris is a disease,--sometimes
several diseases. His widow, a Methodist, had a horror of the little
nabob establishment, and ordered it to be sold. Comte Adam bought it at
a bargain; and how he came to do so shall presently be made known, for
bargains were not at all in his line as a grand seigneur.
Behind the house lay the verdant velvet of an English lawn shaded at
the lower end by a clump of exotic trees, in the midst of which stood a
Chinese pagoda with soundless belfries and motionless golden eggs. The
greenhouse concealed the garden wall on the northern side, the opposite
wall was covered with climbing plants trained upon poles painted green
and connected with crossway trellises. This lawn, this world of flowers,
the gravelled paths, the simulated forest, the verdant palisades, were
contained within the space of five and twenty square rods, which are
worth to-day four hundred thousand francs,--the value of an actual
forest. Here, in this solitude in the middle of Paris, the birds
sang, thrushes, nightingales, warblers, bulfinches, and sparrows. The
greenhouse was like an immense jardiniere, filling the air with perfume
in winter as in summer. The means by which its atmosphere was made
to order, torrid as in China or temperate as in Italy, were cleverly
concealed. Pipes in which hot water circulated, or steam, were either
hidden under ground or festooned with plants overhead. The boudoir was a
large room. The miracle of the modern Parisian fairy named Architecture
is to get all these many and great things out of a limited bit of
ground.
The boudoir of the young countess was arranged to suit the taste of the
artist to whom Comte Adam entrusted the decoration of the house. It is
too full of pretty nothings to be a place for repose; one scarce knows
where to sit down among carved Chinese work-tables with their myriads
of fantastic figures inlaid in ivory, cups of yellow topaz mounted on
filagree, mosaics which inspire theft, Dutch pictures in the style which
Schinner has adopted, angels such as Steinbock conceived but often could
not execute, statuettes modelled by genius pursued by creditors (the
real explanation of the Arabian myth), superb sketches by our best
artists, lids of chests made into panels alternating with fluted
draperies of Italian silk, portieres hanging from rods of old oak
in tapestried masses on which the figures of some hunting scene are
swarming, pieces of furniture worthy to have belonged to Madame de
Pompadour, Persian rugs, et cetera. For a last graceful touch, all these
elegant things were subdued by the half-light which filtered through
embroidered curtains and added to their charm. On a table between the
windows, among various curiosities, lay a whip, the handle designed
by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, which proved that the countess rode on
horseback.
Such is a lady’s boudoir in 1837,--an exhibition of the contents of many
shops, which amuse the eye, as if ennui were the one thing to be dreaded
by the social world of the liveliest and most stirring capital in
Europe. Why is there nothing of an inner life? nothing which leads to
revery, nothing reposeful? Why indeed? Because no one in our day is sure
of the future; we are living our lives like prodigal annuitants.
One morning Clementine appeared to be thinking of something. She was
lying at full length on one of those marvellous couches from which it
is almost impossible to rise, the upholsterer having invented them for
lovers of the “far niente” and its attendant joys of laziness to sink
into. The doors of the greenhouse were open, letting the odors of
vegetation and the perfume of the tropics pervade the room. The young
wife was looking at her husband who was smoking a narghile, the only
form of pipe she would have suffered in that room. The portieres, held
back by cords, gave a vista through two elegant salons, one white and
gold, comparable only to that of the hotel Forbin-Janson, the other in
the style of the Renaissance. The dining-room, which had no rival in
Paris except that of the Baron de Nucingen, was at the end of a short
gallery decorated in the manner of the middle-ages. This gallery opened
on the side of the courtyard upon a large antechamber, through which
could be seen the beauties of the staircase.
The count and countess had just finished breakfast; the sky was a sheet
of azure without a cloud, April was nearly over. They had been married
two years, and Clementine had just discovered for the first time that
there was something resembling a secret or a mystery in her household.
The Pole, let us say it to his honor, is usually helpless before a
woman; he is so full of tenderness for her that in Poland he becomes her
inferior, though Polish women make admirable wives. Now a Pole is still
more easily vanquished by a Parisian woman. Consequently Comte Adam,
pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent roguery of
selling the suspected secret. It is always wise with a woman to get
some good out of a mystery; she will like you the better for it, as a
swindler respects an honest man the more when he finds he cannot swindle
him. Brave in heart but not in speech, Comte Adam merely stipulated that
he should not be compelled to answer until he had finished his narghile.
“If any difficulty occurred when we were travelling,” said Clementine,
“you always dismissed it by saying, ‘Paz will settle that.’ You never
wrote to any one but Paz. When we returned here everybody kept saying,
‘the captain, the captain.’ If I want the carriage--‘the captain.’ Is
there a bill to pay--‘the captain.’ If my horse is not properly
bitted, they must speak to Captain Paz. In short, it is like a game of
dominoes--Paz is everywhere. I hear of nothing but Paz, but I never see
Paz. Who and what is Paz? Why don’t you bring forth your Paz?”
“Isn’t everything going on right?” asked the count, taking the
“bocchettino” of his narghile from his lips.
“Everything is going on so right that other people with an income of two
hundred thousand francs would ruin themselves by going at our pace, and
we have only one hundred and ten thousand.”
So saying she pulled the bell-cord (an exquisite bit of needlework). A
footman entered, dressed like a minister.
“Tell Captain Paz that I wish to see him.”
“If you think you are going to find out anything that way--” said Comte
Adam, laughing.
It is well to mention that Adam and Clementine, married in December,
1835, had gone soon after the wedding to Italy, Switzerland, and
Germany, where they spent the greater part of two years. Returning to
Paris in November, 1837, the countess entered society for the first time
as a married woman during the winter which had just ended, and she then
became aware of the existence, half-suppressed and wholly dumb but very
useful, of a species of factotum who was personally invisible, named
Paz,--spelt thus, but pronounced “Patz.”
“Monsieur le capitaine Paz begs Madame la comtesse to excuse him,” said
the footman, returning. “He is at the stables; as soon as he has changed
his dress Comte Paz will present himself to Madame.”
“What was he doing at the stables?”
“He was showing them how to groom Madame’s horse,” said the man. “He was
not pleased with the way Constantin did it.”
The countess looked at the footman. He was perfectly serious and did not
add to his words the sort of smile by which servants usually comment
on the actions of a superior who seems to them to derogate from his
position.
“Ah! he was grooming Cora.”
“Madame la comtesse intends to ride out this morning?” said the footman,
leaving the room without further answer.
“Is Paz a Pole?” asked Clementine, turning to her husband, who nodded by
way of affirmation.
Madame Laginska was silent, examining Adam. With her feet extended upon
a cushion and her head poised like that of a bird on the edge of
its nest listening to the noises in a grove, she would have seemed
enchanting even to a blase man. Fair and slender, and wearing her
hair in curls, she was not unlike those semi-romantic pictures in
the Keepsakes, especially when dressed, as she was this morning, in a
breakfast gown of Persian silk, the folds of which could not disguise
the beauty of her figure or the slimness of her waist. The silk with its
brilliant colors being crossed upon the bosom showed the spring of the
neck,--its whiteness contrasting delightfully against the tones of a
guipure lace which lay upon her shoulders. Her eyes and their long
black lashes added at this moment to the expression of curiosity which
puckered her pretty mouth. On the forehead, which was well modelled,
an observer would have noticed a roundness characteristic of the true
Parisian woman,--self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible
to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were
hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering fingers,
slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like almonds, which
caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife’s impatience, and looked at
her with a glance which two years of married life had not yet chilled.
Already the little countess had made herself mistress of the situation,
for she scarcely paid attention to her husband’s admiration. In fact,
in the look which she occasionally cast at him, there seemed to be the
consciousness of a Frenchwoman’s ascendancy over the puny, volatile, and
red-haired Pole.
“Here comes Paz,” said the count, hearing a step which echoed through
the gallery.
The countess beheld a tall and handsome man, well-made, and bearing
on his face the signs of pain which come of inward strength and secret
endurance of sorrow. He wore one of those tight, frogged overcoats which
were then called “polonaise.” Thick, black hair, rather unkempt, covered
his square head, and Clementine noticed his broad forehead shining like
a block of white marble, for Paz held his visored cap in his hand.
The hand itself was like that of the Infant Hercules. Robust health
flourished on his face, which was divided by a large Roman nose and
reminded Clementine of some handsome Transteverino. A black silk cravat
added to the martial appearance of this six-foot mystery, with eyes of
jet and Italian fervor. The amplitude of his pleated trousers, which
allowed only the tips of his boots to be seen, revealed his faithfulness
to the fashions of his own land. There was something really burlesque
to a romantic woman in the striking contrast no one could fail to remark
between the captain and the count, the little Pole with his pinched face
and the stalwart soldier.
“Good morning, Adam,” he said familiarly. Then he bowed courteously as
he asked Clementine what he could do for her.
“You are Laginski’s friend!” exclaimed the countess.
“For life and death,” answered Paz, to whom the count threw a smile of
affection as he drew a last puff from his perfumed pipe.
“Then why don’t you take your meals with us? why did you not accompany
us to Italy and Switzerland? why do you hide yourself in such a way that
I am unable to thank you for the constant services that you do for us?”
said the countess, with much vivacity of manner but no feeling.
In fact, she thought she perceived in Paz a sort of voluntary servitude.
Such an idea carried with it in her mind a certain contempt for a social
amphibian, a being half-secretary, half-bailiff, and yet neither the one
nor the other, a poor relation, an embarrassing friend.
“Because, countess,” he answered with perfect ease of manner, “there are
no thanks due. I am Adam’s friend, and it gives me pleasure to take care
of his interests.”
“And you remain standing for your pleasure, too,” remarked Comte Adam.
Paz sat down on a chair near the door.
“I remember seeing you about the time I was married, and afterwards
in the courtyard,” said Clementine. “But why do you put yourself in a
position of inferiority,--you, Adam’s friend?”
“I am perfectly indifferent to the opinion of the Parisians,” he
replied. “I live for myself, or, if you like, for you two.”
“But the opinion of the world as to a friend of my husband is not
indifferent to me--”
“Ah, madame, the world will be satisfied if you tell them I am ‘an
original.’”
After a moment’s silence he added, “Are you going out to-day?”
“Will you come with us to the Bois?”
“Certainly.”
So saying, Paz bowed and withdrew.
“What a good soul he is!” said Adam. “He has all the simplicity of a
child.”
“Now tell me all about your relations with him,” said Clementine.
“Paz, my dear,” said Laginski, “belongs to a noble family as old and
illustrious as our own. One of the Pazzi of Florence, at the time of
their disasters, fled to Poland, where he settled with some of his
property and founded the Paz family, to which the title of count was
granted. This family, which distinguished itself greatly in the glorious
days of our royal republic, became rich. The graft from the tree that
was felled in Italy flourished so vigorously in Poland that there are
several branches of the family still there. I need not tell you that
some are rich and some are poor. Our Paz is the scion of a poor branch.
He was an orphan, without other fortune than his sword, when he served
in the regiment of the Grand Duke Constantine at the time of our
revolution. Joining the Polish cause, he fought like a Pole, like a
patriot, like a man who has nothing,--three good reasons for fighting
well. In his last affair, thinking he was followed by his men, he dashed
upon a Russian battery and was taken prisoner. I was there. His brave
act roused me. ‘Let us go and get him!’ I said to my troop, and we
charged the battery like a lot of foragers. I got Paz--I was the seventh
man; we started twenty and came back eight, counting Paz. After Warsaw
was sold we were forced to escape those Russians. By a curious chance,
Paz and I happened to come together again, at the same hour and the same
place, on the other side of the Vistula. I saw the poor captain arrested
by some Prussians, who made themselves the blood-hounds of the Russians.
When we have fished a man out of the Styx we cling to him. This new
danger for poor Paz made me so unhappy that I let myself be taken too,
thinking I could help him. Two men can get away where one will
perish. Thanks to my name and some family connections in Prussia, the
authorities shut their eyes to my escape. I got my dear captain through
as a man of no consequence, a family servant, and we reached Dantzic.
There we got on board a Dutch vessel and went to London. It took us two
months to get there. My mother was ill in England, and expecting me.
Paz and I took care of her till her death, which the Polish troubles
hastened. Then we left London and came to France. Men who go through
such adversities become like brothers. When I reached Paris, at
twenty-two years of age, and found I had an income of over sixty
thousand francs a year, without counting the proceeds of the diamonds
and the pictures sold by my mother, I wanted to secure the future of
my dear Paz before I launched into dissipation. I had often noticed the
sadness in his eyes--sometimes tears were in them. I had had good reason
to understand his soul, which is noble, grand, and generous to the core.
I thought he might not like to be bound by benefits to a friend who
was six years younger than himself, unless he could repay them. I was
careless and frivolous, just as a young fellow is, and I knew I was
certain to ruin myself at play, or get inveigled by some woman, and Paz
and I might then be parted; and though I had every intention of always
looking out for him, I knew I might sometime or other forget to provide
for him. In short, my dear angel, I wanted to spare him the pain and
mortification of having to ask me for money, or of having to hunt me up
if he got into distress. SO, one morning, after breakfast, when we were
sitting with our feet on the andirons smoking pipes, I produced,--with
the utmost precaution, for I saw him look at me uneasily,--a certificate
of the Funds payable to bearer for a certain sum of money a year.”
Clementine jumped up and went and seated herself on Adam’s knee, put
her arms round his neck, and kissed him. “Dear treasure!” she said, “how
handsome he is! Well, what did Paz do?”
“Thaddeus turned pale,” said the count, “but he didn’t say a word.”
“Oh! his name is Thaddeus, is it?”
“Yes; Thaddeus folded the paper and gave it back to me, and then he
said: ‘I thought, Adam, that we were one for life or death, and that we
should never part. Do you want to be rid of me?’ ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘if you
take it that way, Thaddeus, don’t let us say another word about it. If
I ruin myself you shall be ruined too.’ ‘You haven’t fortune enough to
live as a Laginski should,’ he said, ‘and you need a friend who will
take care of your affairs, and be a father and a brother and a trusty
confidant.’ My dear child, as Paz said that he had in his look and
voice, calm as they were, a maternal emotion, and also the gratitude
of an Arab, the fidelity of a dog, the friendship of a savage,--not
displayed, but ever ready. Faith! I seized him, as we Poles do, with
a hand on each shoulder, and I kissed him on the lips. ‘For life and
death, then! all that I have is yours--do what you will with it.’ It was
he who found me this house and bought it for next to nothing. He sold my
Funds high and bought in low, and we have paid for this barrack with
the profits. He knows horses, and he manages to buy and sell at such
advantage that my stable really costs very little; and yet I have the
finest horses and the most elegant equipages in all Paris. Our servants,
brave Polish soldiers chosen by him, would go through fire and water
for us. I seem, as you say, to be ruining myself; and yet Paz keeps the
house with such method and economy that he has even repaired some of my
foolish losses at play,--the thoughtless folly of a young man. My dear,
Thaddeus is as shrewd as two Genoese, as eager for gain as a Polish Jew,
and provident as a good housekeeper. I never could force him to live as
I did when I was a bachelor. Sometimes I had to use a sort of friendly
coercion to make him go to the theatre with me when I was alone, or to
the jovial little dinners I used to give at a tavern. He doesn’t like
social life.”
“What does he like, then?” asked Clementine.
“Poland; he loves Poland and pines for it. His only spendings are
sums he gives, more in my name than in his own, to some of our poor
brother-exiles.”
“Well, I shall love him, the fine fellow!” said the countess, “he looks
to me as simple-hearted as he is grand.”
“All these pretty things you have about you,” continued Adam, who
praised his friend in the noblest sincerity, “he picked up; he bought
them at auction, or as bargains from the dealers. Oh! he’s keener than
they are themselves. If you see him rubbing his hands in the courtyard,
you may be sure he has traded away one good horse for a better. He lives
for me; his happiness is to see me elegant, in a perfectly appointed
equipage. The duties he takes upon himself are all accomplished without
fuss or emphasis. One evening I lost twenty thousand francs at whist.
‘What will Paz say?’ thought I as I walked home. Paz paid them to me,
not without a sigh; but he never reproached me, even by a look. But
that sigh of his restrained me more than the remonstrances of uncles,
mothers, or wives could have done. ‘Do you regret the money?’ I said
to him. ‘Not for you or me, no,’ he replied; ‘but I was thinking
that twenty poor Poles could have lived a year on that sum.’ You must
understand that the Pazzi are fully the equal of the Laginski, so I
couldn’t regard my dear Paz as an inferior. I never went out or came in
without going first to Paz, as I would to my father. My fortune is his;
and Thaddeus knows that if danger threatened him I would fling myself
into it and drag him out, as I have done before.”
“And that is saying a good deal, my dear friend,” said the countess.
“Devotion is like a flash of lightning. Men devote themselves in battle,
but they no longer have the heart for it in Paris.”
“Well,” replied Adam, “I am always ready, as in battle, to devote
myself to Paz. Our two characters have kept their natural asperities
and defects, but the mutual comprehension of our souls has tightened the
bond already close between us. It is quite possible to save a man’s life
and kill him afterwards if we find him a bad fellow; but Paz and I know
THAT of each other which makes our friendship indissoluble. There’s
a constant exchange of happy thoughts and impressions between us; and
really, perhaps, such a friendship as ours is richer than love.”
A pretty hand closed the count’s mouth so promptly that the action was
somewhat like a blow.
“Yes,” he said, “friendship, my dear angel, knows nothing of bankrupt
sentiments and collapsed joys. Love, after giving more than it has, ends
by giving less than it receives.”
“One side as well as the other,” remarked Clementine laughing.
“Yes,” continued Adam, “whereas friendship only increases. You need not
pucker up your lips at that, for we are, you and I, as much friends as
lovers; we have, at least I hope so, combined the two sentiments in our
happy marriage.”
“I’ll explain to you what it is that has made you and Thaddeus such good
friends,” said Clementine. “The difference in the lives you lead
comes from your tastes and from necessity; from your likings, not your
positions. As far as one can judge from merely seeing a man once, and
also from what you tell me, there are times when the subaltern might
become the superior.”
“Oh, Paz is truly my superior,” said Adam, naively; “I have no advantage
over him except mere luck.”
His wife kissed him for the generosity of those words.
“The extreme care with which he hides the grandeur of his feelings is
one form of his superiority,” continued the count. “I said to him once:
‘You are a sly one; you have in your heart a vast domain within which
you live and think.’ He has a right to the title of count; but in Paris
he won’t be called anything but captain.”
“The fact is that the Florentine of the middle-ages has reappeared in
our century,” said the countess. “Dante and Michael Angelo are in him.”
“That’s the very truth,” cried Adam. “He is a poet in soul.”
“So here I am, married to two Poles,” said the young countess, with a
gesture worthy of some genius of the stage.
“Dear child!” said Adam, pressing her to him, “it would have made me
very unhappy if my friend did not please you. We were both rather afraid
of it, he and I, though he was delighted at my marriage. You will
make him very happy if you tell him that you love him,--yes, as an old
friend.”
“I’ll go and dress, the day is so fine; and we will all three ride
together,” said Clementine, ringing for her maid.