It was the eve of the marriage-day of Prince Andras Zilah and
Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo, and Marsa sat alone in her chamber, where the
white robes she was to wear next day were spread out on the bed; alone
for the last time--to-morrow she would be another’s.
The fiery Tzigana, who felt in her heart, implacable as it was to evil
and falsehood, all capabilities of devotion and truth, was condemned
to lie, or to lose the love of Prince Andras, which was her very life.
There was no other alternative. No, no: since she had met this man,
superior to all others, since he loved her and she loved him, she would
take an hour of his life and pay for that hour with her own. She had no
doubt but that an avowal would forever ruin her in Andras’s eyes. No,
again and forever no: it was much better to take the love which fate
offered her in exchange for her life.
And, as she threw herself back in her chair with an expression of
unchangeable determination in her dark, gazelle-like eyes, there
suddenly came into her mind the memory of a day long ago, when, driving
along the road from Maisons-Lafitte to Saint-Germain, she had met some
wandering gipsies, two men and a woman, with copper-colored skins and
black eyes, in which burned, like a live coal, the passionate melancholy
of the race. The woman, a sort of long spear in her hand, was driving
some little shaggy ponies, like those which range about the plains of
Hungary. Bound like parcels upon the backs of these ponies were four or
five little children, clothed in rags, and covered with the dust of the
road. The woman, tall, dark and faded, a sort of turban upon her head,
held out her hand toward Marsa’s carriage with a graceful gesture and a
broad smile--the supplicating smile of those who beg. A muscular young
fellow, his crisp hair covered with a red fez, her brother--the woman
was old, or perhaps she was less so than she seemed, for poverty brings
wrinkles--walked by her side behind the sturdy little ponies. Farther
along, another man waited for them at a corner of the road near a
laundry, the employees of which regarded him with alarm, because, at the
end of a rope, the gipsy held a small gray bear. As she passed by
them, Marsa involuntarily exclaimed, in the language of her mother “Be
szomoru!” (How sad it is!) The man, at her words, raised his head, and
a flash of joy passed over his face, which showed, or Marsa thought so
(who knows? perhaps she was mistaken), a love for his forsaken country.
Well, now, she did not know why, the remembrance of these poor beings
returned to her, and she said to herself that her ancestors, humble and
insignificant as these unfortunates in the dust and dirt of the highway,
would have been astonished and incredulous if any one had told them that
some day a girl born of their blood would wed a Zilah, one of the chiefs
of that Hungary whose obscure and unknown minstrels they were! Ah! what
an impossible dream it seemed, and yet it was realized now.
At all events, a man’s death did not lie between her and Zilah. Michel
Menko, after lying at death’s door, was cured of his wounds. She knew
this from Baroness Dinati, who attributed Michel’s illness to a sword
wound secretly received for some woman. This was the rumor in Paris. The
young Count had, in fact, closed his doors to every one; and no one
but his physician had been admitted. What woman could it be? The little
Baroness could not imagine.
Marsa thought again, with a shudder, of the night when the dogs howled;
but, to tell the truth, she had no remorse. She had simply defended
herself! The inquiry begun by the police had ended in no definite
result. At Maisons-Lafitte, people thought that the Russian house had
been attacked by some thieves who had been in the habit of entering
unoccupied houses and rifling them of their contents. They had even
arrested an old vagabond, and accused him of the attempted robbery at
General Vogotzine’s; but the old man had answered: “I do not even know
the house.” But was not this Menko a hundred times more culpable than a
thief? It was more and worse than money or silver that he had dared
to come for: it was to impose his love upon a woman whose heart he had
well-nigh broken. Against such an attack all weapons were allowable,
even Ortog’s teeth. The dogs of the Tzigana had known how to defend her;
and it was what she had expected from her comrades.
Had Michel Menko died, Marsa would have said, with the fatalism of the
Orient: “It was his own will!” She was grateful, however, to fate, for
having punished the wretch by letting him live. Then she thought no more
of him except to execrate him for having poisoned her happiness, and
condemned her either to a silence as culpable as a lie, or to an avowal
as cruel as a suicide.
The night passed and the day came at last, when it was necessary for
Marsa to become the wife of Prince Andras, or to confess to him her
guilt. She wished that she had told him all, now that she had not the
courage to do so. She had accustomed herself to the idea that a woman is
not necessarily condemned to love no more because she has encountered a
coward who has abused her love. She was in an atmosphere of illusion
and chimera; what was passing about her did not even seem to exist. Her
maids dressed her, and placed upon her dark hair the bridal veil: she
half closed her eyes and murmured:
“It is a beautiful dream.”
A dream, and yet a reality, consoling as a ray of light after a
hideous nightmare. Those things which were false, impossible, a lie, a
phantasmagoria born of a fever, were Michel Menko, the past years,
the kisses of long ago, the threats of yesterday, the bayings of the
infuriated dogs at that shadow which did not exist.
General Vogotzine, in a handsome uniform, half suffocated in his high
vest, and with a row of crosses upon his breast--the military cross of
St. George, with its red and black ribbon; the cross of St. Anne, with
its red ribbon; all possible crosses--was the first to knock at his
niece’s door, his sabre trailing upon the floor.
“Who is it?” said Marsa.
“I, Vogotzine.”
And, permission being given him, he entered the room.
The old soldier walked about his niece, pulling his moustache, as if
he were conducting an inspection. He found Marsa charming. Pale as her
white robe, with Tizsa’s opal agraffe at her side, ready to clasp the
bouquet of flowers held by one of her maids, she had never been so
exquisitely beautiful; and Vogotzine, who was rather a poor hand at
turning a compliment, compared her to a marble statue.
“How gallant you are this morning, General,” she said, her heart
bursting with emotion.
She waved away, with a brusque gesture, the orange-flowers which her
maid was about to attach to her corsage.
“No,” she said. “Not that! Roses.”
“But, Mademoiselle--”
“Roses,” repeated Marsa. “And for my hair white rosebuds also.”
At this, the old General risked another speech.
“Do you think orange-blossoms are too vulgar, Marsa? By Jove! They don’t
grow in the ditches, though!”
And he laughed loudly at what he considered wit. But a frowning
glance from the Tzigana cut short his hilarity; and, with a mechanical
movement, he drew himself up in a military manner, as if the Czar were
passing by.
“I will leave you to finish dressing, my dear,” he said, after a moment.
He already felt stifled in the uniform, which he was no longer
accustomed to wear, and he went out in the garden to breathe freer.
While waiting there for Zilah, he ordered some cherry cordial,
muttering, as he drank it:
“It is beautiful August weather. They will have a fine day; but I shall
suffocate!”
The avenue was already filled with people. The marriage had been much
discussed, both in the fashionable colony which inhabited the park
and in the village forming the democratic part of the place; even from
Sartrouville and Mesnil, people had come to see the Tzigana pass in her
bridal robes.
“What is all that noise?” demanded Vogotzine of the liveried footman.
“That noise, General? The inhabitants of Maisons who have come to see
the wedding procession.”
“Really? Ah! really? Well, they haven’t bad taste. They will see a
pretty woman and a handsome uniform.” And the General swelled out his
breast as he used to do in the great parades of the time of Nicholas,
and the reviews in the camp of Tsarskoe-Selo.
Outside the garden, behind the chestnut-trees which hid the avenue,
there was a sudden sound of the rolling of wheels, and the gay cracking
of whips.
“Ah!” cried the General, “It is Zilah!”
And, rapidly swallowing a last glass of the cordial, he wiped his
moustache, and advanced to meet Prince Andras, who was descending from
his carriage.
Accompanying the Prince were Yanski Varhely, and an Italian friend of
Zilah’s, Angelo Valla, a former minister of the Republic of Venice,
in the time of Manin. Andras Zilah, proud and happy, appeared to have
hardly passed his thirtieth year; a ray of youth animated his clear
eyes. He leaped lightly out upon the gravel, which cracked joyously
beneath his feet; and, as he advanced through the aromatic garden, to
the villa where Marsa awaited him, he said to himself that no man in the
world was happier than he.
Vogotzine met him, and, after shaking his hand, asked him why on earth
he had not put on his national Magyar costume, which the Hungarians wore
with such graceful carelessness.
“Look at me, my dear Prince! I am in full battle array!”
Andras was in haste to see Marsa. He smiled politely at the General’s
remark, and asked him where his niece was.
“She is putting on her uniform,” replied Vogotzine, with a loud laugh
which made his sabre rattle.
Most of the invited guests were to go directly to the church of Maisons.
Only the intimate friends came first to the house, Baroness Dinati,
first of all, accompanied by Paul Jacquemin, who took his eternal notes,
complimenting both Andras and the General, the latter especially
eager to detain as many as possible to the lunch after the ceremony.
Vogotzine, doubtless, wished to show himself in all the eclat of his
majestic appetite.
Very pretty, in her Louis Seize gown of pink brocade, and a Rembrandt
hat with a long white feather (Jacquemin, who remained below, had
already written down the description in his note-book), the little
Baroness entered Marsa’s room like a whirlwind, embracing the young
girl, and going into ecstasy over her beauty.
“Ah! how charming you are, my dear child! You are the ideal of a bride!
You ought to be painted as you are! And what good taste to wear
roses, and not orange-flowers, which are so common, and only good for
shopgirls. Turn around! You are simply exquisite.”
Marsa, paler than her garments, looked at herself in the glass, happy
in the knowledge of her beauty, since she was about to be his, and yet
contemplating the tall, white figure as if it were not her own image.
She had often felt this impression of a twofold being, in those
dreams where one seems to be viewing the life of another, or to be the
disinterested spectator of one’s own existence.
It seemed to her that it was not she who was to be married, or that
suddenly the awakening would come.
“The Prince is below,” said the Baroness Dinati.
“Ah!” said Marsa.
She started with a sort of involuntary terror, as this very name of
Prince was at once that of a husband and that of a judge. But when,
superb in the white draperies, which surrounded her like a cloud of
purity, her long train trailing behind her, she descended the stairs,
her little feet peeping in and out like two white doves, and appeared at
the door of the little salon where Andras was waiting, she felt herself
enveloped in an atmosphere of love. The Prince advanced to meet her,
his face luminous with happiness; and, taking the young girl’s hands,
he kissed the long lashes which rested upon her cheek, saying, as he
contemplated the white vision of beauty before him:
“How lovely you are, my Marsa! And how I love you!”
The Prince spoke these words in a tone, and with a look, which touched
the deepest depths of Marsa’s heart.
Then they exchanged those words, full of emotion, which, in their
eternal triteness, are like music in the ears of those who love. Every
one had withdrawn to the garden, to leave them alone in this last,
furtive, happy minute, which is never found again, and which, on the
threshold of the unknown, possesses a joy, sad as a last farewell, yet
full of hope as the rising of the sun.
He told her how ardently he loved her, and how grateful he was to her
for having consented, in her youth and beauty, to become the wife of
a quasi-exile, who still kept, despite his efforts, something of the
melancholy of the past.
And she, with an outburst of gratitude, devotion, and love, in which all
the passion of her nature and her race vibrated, said, in a voice which
trembled with unshed tears:
“Do not say that I give you my life. It is you who make of a girl of
the steppes a proud and honored wife, who asks herself why all this
happiness has come to her.” Then, nestling close to Andras, and resting
her dark head upon his shoulder, she continued: “We have a proverb, you
remember, which says, Life is a tempest. I have repeated it very often
with bitter sadness. But now, that wicked proverb is effaced by the
refrain of our old song, Life is a chalet of pearls.”
And the Tzigana, lost in the dream which was now a tangible reality,
saying nothing, but gazing with her beautiful eyes, now moist, into
the face of Andras, remained encircled in his arms, while he smiled and
whispered, again and again, “I love you!”
All the rest of the world had ceased to exist for these two beings,
absorbed in each other.