Paris, whose everyday gossip has usually the keenness and eagerness of
the tattle of small villages, preserves at times, upon certain serious
subjects, a silence which might be believed to be generous. Whether it
is from ignorance or from respect, at all events it has little to say.
There are vague suspicions of the truth, surmises are made, but nothing
is affirmed; and this sort of abdication of public malignity is the most
complete homage that can be rendered either to character or talent.
The circle of foreigners in Paris, that contrasted society which
circled and chattered in the salon of the Baroness Dinati, could not, of
necessity, be ignorant that the Princess Zilah, since the wedding which
had attracted to Maisons-Lafitte a large part of the fashionable world,
had not left her house, while Prince Andras had returned to Paris alone.
There were low-spoken rumors of all sorts. It was said that Marsa had
been attacked by an hereditary nervous malady; and in proof of this
were cited the visits made at Maisons-Lafitte by Dr. Fargeas, the famous
physician of Salpetriere, who had been summoned in consultation with Dr.
Villandry. These two men, both celebrated in their profession, had been
called in by Vogotzine, upon the advice of Yanski Varhely, who was more
Parisian and better informed than the General.
Vogotzine was dreadfully uneasy, and his brain seemed ready to burst
with the responsibility thrust upon him. Since the terrible day of the
marriage--Vogotzine shrugged his shoulders in anger and amazement when
he uttered this word marriage--Marsa had not recovered from a sort of
frightened stupor; and the General, terrified at his niece’s condition,
was really afraid of going insane himself.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said, “all this is deplorably sad.”
After the terrible overthrow of all her hopes, Marsa was seized with a
fever, and she lay upon her bed in a frightful delirium, which entirely
took away the little sense poor old Vogotzine had left. Understanding
nothing of the reason of Zilah’s disappearance, the General listened
in childish alarm to Marsa, wildly imploring mercy and pity of some
invisible person. The unhappy old man would have faced a battalion of
honveds or a charge of bashi-bazouks rather than remain there in the
solitary house, with the delirious girl whose sobs and despairing
appeals made the tears stream down the face of this soldier, whose brain
was now weakened by drink, but who had once contemplated with a dry eye,
whole ditches full of corpses, which some priest, dressed in mourning,
blessed in one mass.
Vogotzine hastened to Paris, and questioned Andras; but the Prince
answered him in a way that permitted of no further conversation upon the
subject.
“My personal affairs concern myself alone.”
The General had not energy enough to demand an explanation; and he
bowed, saying that it was certainly not his business to interfere; but
he noticed that Zilah turned very pale when he told him that it would be
a miracle if Marsa recovered from the fever.
“It is pitiful!” he said.
Zilah cast a strange look at him, severe and yet terrified.
Vogotzine said no more; but he went at once to Dr. Fargeas, and asked
him to come as soon as possible to Maisons-Lafitte.
The doctor’s coupe in a few hours stopped before the gate through which
so short a time ago the gay marriage cortege had passed, and Vogotzine
ushered him into the little salon from which Marsa had once driven
Menko.
Then the General sent for Mademoiselle--or, rather, Madame, as he
corrected himself with a shrug of his shoulders. But suddenly he
became very serious as he saw upon the threshold Marsa, whose fever had
temporarily left her, and who could now manage to drag herself along,
pale and wan, leaning upon the arm of her maid.
Dr. Fargeas cast a keen glance at the girl, whose eyes, burning with
inward fire, alone seemed to be living.
“Madame,” said the doctor, quietly, when the General had made a sign to
his niece to listen to the stranger, “General Vogotzine has told me that
you were suffering. I am a physician. Will you do me the honor and the
kindness to answer my questions?”
“Yes,” said the General, “do, my dear Marsa, to please me.”
She stood erect, not a muscle of her face moving; and, without replying,
she looked steadily into the doctor’s eyes. In her turn, she was
studying him. It was like a defiance before a duel.
Then she said suddenly, turning to Vogotzine:
“Why have you brought a physician? I am not ill.”
Her voice was clear, but low and sad, and it was an evident effort for
her to speak.
“No, you are not ill, my dear child; but I don’t know--I don’t
understand--you make me a little uneasy, a very little. You know if I,
your old uncle, worried you even a little, you would not feel just right
about it, would you now?”
With which rather incoherent speech, he tried to force a smile; but
Marsa, taking no notice of him, turned slowly to the doctor, who had not
removed his eyes from her face.
“Well,” she said, dryly, “what do you want? What do you wish to ask me?
What shall I tell you? Who requested you to come here?”
Vogotzine made a sign to the maid to leave the room.
“I told you, I have come at the General’s request,” said Fargeas, with a
wave of his hand toward Vogotzine.
Marsa only replied: “Ah!” But it seemed to the doctor that there was a
world of disappointment and despair expressed in this one ejaculation.
Then she suddenly became rigid, and lapsed into one of those stupors
which had succeeded the days of delirium, and had frightened Vogotzine
so much.
“There! There! Look at her!” exclaimed the old man.
Fargeas, without listening to the General, approached Marsa, and placed
her in a chair near the window. He looked in her eyes, and placed his
hand upon her burning forehead; but Marsa made no movement.
“Are you in pain?” he asked, gently.
The young girl, who a moment before had asked questions and still seemed
interested a little in life, stirred uneasily, and murmured, in an odd,
singing voice:
“I do not know!”
“Did you sleep last night?”
“I do not know!”
“How old are you?” asked Fargeas, to test her mental condition.
“I do not know!”
The physician’s eyes sought those of the General. Vogotzine, his face
crimson, stood by the chair, his little, round eyes blinking with
emotion at each of these mournful, musical responses.
“What is your name?” asked the doctor, slowly.
She raised her dark, sad eyes, and seemed to be seeking what to reply;
then, wearily letting her head fall backward, she answered, as before:
“I do not know!”
Vogotzine, who had become purple, seized the doctor’s arm convulsively.
“She no longer knows even her own name!”
“It will be only temporary, I hope,” said the doctor. “But in her
present state, she needs the closest care and attention.”
“I have never seen her like this before, never since--since the first
day,” exclaimed the General, in alarm and excitement. “She tried to kill
herself then; but afterward she seemed more reasonable, as you saw
just now. When she asked you who sent you, I thought Ah! at last she
is interested in something. But now it is worse than ever. Oh! this is
lively for me, devilish lively!”
Fargeas took between his thumb and finger the delicate skin of the
Tzigana, and pinched her on the neck, below the ear. Marsa did not stir.
“There is no feeling here,” said the doctor; “I could prick it with a
pin without causing any sensation of pain.” Then, again placing his
hand upon Marsa’s forehead, he tried to rouse some memory in the dormant
brain:
“Come, Madame, some one is waiting for you. Your uncle--your uncle
wishes you to play for him upon the piano! Your uncle! The piano!”
“The World holds but One Fair Maiden!” hummed Vogotzine, trying to give,
in his husky voice, the melody of the song the Tzigana was so fond of.
Mechanically, Marsa repeated, as if spelling the word: “The piano!
piano!” and then, in peculiar, melodious accents, she again uttered her
mournful: “I do not know!”
This time old Vogotzine felt as if he were strangling; and the doctor,
full of pity, gazed sadly down at the exquisitely beautiful girl, with
her haggard, dark eyes, and her waxen skin, sitting there like a marble
statue of despair.
“Give her some bouillon,” said Fargeas. “She will probably refuse it in
her present condition; but try. She can be cured,” he added; “but she
must be taken away from her present surroundings. Solitude is necessary,
not this here, but--”
“But?” asked Vogotzine, as the doctor paused.
“But, perhaps, that of an asylum. Poor woman!” turning again to Marsa,
who had not stirred. “How beautiful she is!”
The doctor, greatly touched, despite his professional indifference, left
the villa, the General accompanying him to the gate. It was decided
that he should return the next day with Villandry and arrange for the
transportation of the invalid to Dr. Sims’s establishment at Vaugirard.
In a new place her stupor might disappear, and her mind be roused from
its torpor; but a constant surveillance was necessary. Some pretext must
be found to induce Marsa to enter a carriage; but once at Vaugirard, the
doctor gave the General his word that she should be watched and taken
care of with the utmost devotion.
Vogotzine felt the blood throb in his temples as he listened to the
doctor’s decision. The establishment at Vaugirard! His niece, the
daughter of Prince Tchereteff, and the wife of Prince Zilah, in an
insane asylum!
But he himself had not the right to dispose of Marsa’s liberty; the
consent of the Prince was necessary. It was in vain for Andras to refuse
to have his life disturbed; it was absolutely necessary to find out from
him what should be done with Marsa, who was his wife and Princess Zilah.
The General also felt that he was incapable of understanding anything,
ignorant as he was of the reasons of the rupture, of Zilah’s anger
against the Tzigana, and of the young girl’s terrible stupor; and, as he
drank his cherry cordial or his brandy, wondered if he too were insane,
as he repeated, like his niece:
“I do not know! I do not know!”
He felt obliged, however, to go and tell the Prince of the opinion of
the illustrious physician of Salpetriere.
Then he asked Zilah:
“What is your decision?”
“General,” replied Andras, “whatever you choose to do is right. But,
once for all, remember that I wish henceforth to live alone, entirely
alone, and speak to me neither of the future nor of the past, which is
cruel, nor of the present, which is hopeless. I have determined---”
“What?”
“To live hereafter an absolutely selfish life!”
“That will change you,” returned the General, in amazement.
“And will console me,” added Andras.
BOOK 3.
CHAPTER XXIV. A LITTLE PARISIAN ROMANCE
The very evening of the day when the package of letters had killed
in Andras all happiness and all faith, the Hungarian prince presented
himself in the Rue d’Aumale, to seek Michel Menko.
Menko! That boy whom he had loved almost as a brother, that man for whom
he had hoped a glorious future, Michel, Michel Menko, had betrayed him,
and struck him with the perfidy of a coward. Yes, at the door of the
church, when it was too late, or rather, at a time when the blow would
be surer and the wound more deadly--then Menko had said to him: “My dear
Prince, the woman whom you love, the woman whom you have married, has
been my mistress. Here, read, see how she loved me!”
Had Michel been before him, Andras would have seized the young man by
the throat, and strangled him on the spot; but, when he reached the Rue
d’Aumale, he did not find Menko.
“The Count left town yesterday,” said the servant, in answer to his
question.
“Yesterday! Where has he gone?”
“The Count must have taken the steamer to-day at Havre for New York.
The Count did not tell us exactly where he was going, however, but to
America, somewhere. We only know, the coachman Pierre, and myself, that
the Count will not return again to Paris. We are still in his service,
however, and are to await his orders.”
Hesitating a little, the servant added:
“Have I not the honor to speak to Prince Zilah?”
“Why?” asked Andras.
The valet replied with a humble but very sincere air:
“Because, if Monseigneur should hear from the Count, and there is any
question of the package which I took to Maisons-Lafitte this morning for
Monseigneur--”
“Well?” said Andras.
“Monseigneur would greatly oblige me if he would not let the Count know
that I did not fulfil his orders last evening.”
“Last evening? What do you mean? Explain yourself!” said the Prince,
sternly.
“When he left yesterday, the Count expressly ordered me to take the
package to Monseigneur that very evening. I beg Monseigneur’s pardon;
but I had an invitation to a wedding, and I did not carry out the
Count’s instructions until this morning. But, as Monseigneur was not at
home, I took the train to Maisons-Lafitte. I hope that I did not arrive
too late. The Count was very particular about it, and I should be very
sorry if my negligence has done any harm.”
Andras listened, gazing intently upon the face of the servant, who was a
little discountenanced by this silent inquisition.
“So Count Menko wished the package to be delivered to me yesterday?”
“I beg Monseigneur not to tell the Count that he was not obeyed.”
“Yesterday?” repeated Andras.
“Yes, yesterday, Monseigneur. The Count departed, thinking it would
be done; and, indeed, he had a right to think so. I am very careful,
Monseigneur, very careful; and if Monseigneur should some day have need
of a--”
The Prince stopped the valet with a gesture. It was repugnant to Andras
to have this man mixed up in a secret of his life; and such a secret!
But the domestic was evidently ignorant what a commission Menko had
confided to him: in his eyes, the package, containing such letters, was
like any other package. Andras was persuaded of this by the attitude of
the man, humiliated at having failed in his duty.
A word more exchanged with the valet, and Andras would have felt
humiliated himself. But he had gained from the conversation the idea
that Menko had not wished to insult him in his happiness, but to reveal
all to him before the ceremony had yet been celebrated. It was as
atrocious, but not so cowardly. Menko had wished to attack Marsa, rather
than Andras; this was visible in the express commands given to his
valet. And upon what a trifle had it depended, whether the name of Zilah
should be borne by this woman! Upon what? Upon a servant’s feast! Life
is full of strange chances. The hands of that low-born valet had held
for hours his happiness and his honor--his honor, Andras Zilah’s--the
honor of all his race!
The Prince returned to his hotel, which he had left that morning
thinking that he would soon bring there the woman he then adored, but
whom he now despised and hated. Oh! he would know where Menko had gone;
him he could punish; as for Marsa, she was now dead to him.
But where, in the whirlpool of the New World, would this Michel Menko
disappear? and how could he find him?
The days passed; and Zilah had acquired almost the certainty that Menko
had not embarked at Havre. Perhaps he had not quitted Europe. He might,
some day or another, in spite of what the valet had said, reappear in
Paris; and then--
Meanwhile, the Prince led the life of a man wounded to the heart;
seeking solitude, and shutting himself in his hotel, in the Rue Balzac,
like a wolf in his den; receiving no one but Varhely, and sometimes
treating even old Yanski coldly; then, suddenly emerging from his
retirement, and trying to take up his life again; appearing at the
meetings of the Hungarian aid society, of which he was president;
showing himself at the races, at the theatre, or even at Baroness
Dinati’s; longing to break the dull monotony of his now ruined life;
and, with a sort of bravado, looking society and opinion full in the
face, as if to surprise a smile or a sneer at his expense, and punish
it.
He had, however, no right to complain of the sentiment which was felt
for him, for every one respected and admired him. At first, it is true,
society, and in particular that society of Parisian foreigners in
which Prince Andras mingled, had tried to find out why he had broken
so suddenly with the woman he had certainly married for love. Public
curiosity, aroused and excited, had sought to divine the secret of the
romance. “If it does not get into the newspapers,” they said, “it will
be fortunate.” And society was even astonished that the journals had not
already discovered the key to this Parisian mystery.
But society, after all as fickle as it is curious (one of its little
vices chasing away the other), turned suddenly to another subject;
forgot the rupture of Marsa and Andras, and saw in Zilah only a superior
being, whose lofty soul forced respect from the frivolous set accustomed
to laugh at everything.
A lofty soul, yes, but a soul in torment. Varhely alone, among them all,
knew anything of the suffering which Andras endured. He was no longer
the same man. His handsome face, with its kindly eyes and grave smile,
was now constantly overshadowed. He spoke less, and thought more. On the
subject of his sadness and his grief, Andras never uttered a word to any
one, not even to his old friend; and Yanski, silent from the day when he
had been an unconscious messenger of ill, had not once made any allusion
to the past.
Although he knew nothing, Varhely had, nevertheless, guessed everything,
and at once. The blow was too direct and too cruelly simple for the old
Hungarian not to have immediately exclaimed, with rage:
“Those were love-letters, and I gave them to him! Idiot that I was! I
held those letters in my hand; I might have destroyed them, or crammed
them one by one down Menko’s throat! But who could have suspected such
an infamy? Menko! A man of honor! Ah, yes; what does honor amount to
when there is a woman in question? Imbecile! And it is irreparable now,
irreparable!”
Varhely also was anxious to know where Menko had gone. They did not
know at the Austro-Hungarian embassy. It was a complete disappearance,
perhaps a suicide. If the old Hungarian had met the young man, he would
at least have gotten rid of part of his bile. But the angry thought that
he, Varhely, had been associated in a vile revenge which had touched
Andras, was, for the old soldier, a constant cause for ill-humor with
himself, and a thing which, in a measure, poisoned his life.
Varhely had long been a misanthrope himself; but he tried to struggle
against his own temperament when he saw Andras wrapping himself up in
bitterness and gloomy thoughts.
Little by little, Zilah allowed himself to sink into that state where
not only everything becomes indifferent to us, but where we long for
another suffering, further pain, that we may utter more bitter cries,
more irritated complaints against fate. It seems then that everything is
dark about us, and our endless night is traversed by morbid visions,
and peopled with phantoms. The sick man--for the one who suffers such
torture is sick--would willingly seek a new sorrow, like those wounded
men who, seized with frenzy, open their wounds themselves, and irritate
them with the point of a knife. Then, misanthropy and disgust of life
assume a phase in which pain is not without a certain charm. There is
a species of voluptuousness in this appetite for suffering, and the
sufferer becomes, as it were, enamored of his own agony.
With Zilah, this sad state was due to a sort of insurrection of his
loyalty against the many infamies to be met with in this world, which he
had believed to be only too full of virtues.
He now considered himself an idiot, a fool, for having all his life
adored chimeras, and followed, as children do passing music, the
fanfares of poetic chivalry. Yes, faith, enthusiasm, love, were so many
cheats, so many lies. All beings who, like himself, were worshippers
of the ideal, all dreamers of better things, all lovers of love, were
inevitably doomed to deception, treason, and the stupid ironies of fate.
And, full of anger against himself, his pessimism of to-day sneering at
his confidence of yesterday, he abandoned himself with delight to his
bitterness, and he took keen joy in repeating to himself that the secret
of happiness in this life was to believe in nothing except treachery,
and to defend oneself against men as against wolves.
Very rarely, his real frank, true nature would come to the fore, and he
would say:
“After all, are the cowardice of one man, and the lie of one woman, to
be considered the crime of entire humanity?”
Why should he curse, he would think, other beings than Marsa and Menko?
He had no right to hate any one else; he had no enemy that he knew of,
and he was honored in Paris, his new country.
No enemy? No, not one. And yet, one morning, with his letters, his valet
brought him a journal addressed to “Prince Zilah,” and, on unfolding it,
Andras’s attention was attracted to two paragraphs in the column headed
“Echoes of Paris,” which were marked with a red-lead pencil.
It was a number of ‘L’Actualite’, sent through the post by an unknown
hand, and the red marks were evidently intended to point out to the
Prince something of interest to himself.
Andras received few journals. A sudden desire seized him, as if he had
a presentiment of what it contained, to cast this one into the fire
without reading it. For a moment he held it in his fingers ready to
throw it into the grate. Then a few words read by accident invincibly
prevented him.
He read, at first with poignant sorrow, and then with a dull rage, the
two paragraphs, one of which followed the other in the paper.
“A sad piece of news has come to our ears,” ran the first paragraph, “a
piece of news which has afflicted all the foreign colony of Paris, and
especially the Hungarians. The lovely and charming Princess Z., whose
beauty was recently crowned with a glorious coronet, has been taken,
after a consultation of the princes of science (there are princes in all
grades), to the establishment of Dr. Sims, at Vaugirard, the rival of
the celebrated asylum of Dr. Luys, at Ivry. Together with the numerous
friends of Prince A. Z., we hope that the sudden malady of the Princess
Z. will be of short duration.”
So Marsa was now the patient, almost the prisoner, of Dr. Sims! The
orders of Dr. Fargeas had been executed. She was in an insane asylum,
and Andras, despite himself, felt filled with pity as he thought of it.
But the red mark surrounded both this first “Echo of Paris,” and the one
which followed it; and Zilah, impelled now by eager curiosity, proceeded
with his reading.
But he uttered a cry of rage when he saw, printed at full length, given
over to common curiosity, to the eagerness of the public for
scandal, and to the malignity of blockheads, a direct allusion to his
marriage--worse than that, the very history of his marriage placed in
an outrageous manner next to the paragraph in which his name was almost
openly written. The editor of the society journal passed directly
from the information in regard to the illness of Princess Z. to an
allegorical tale in which Andras saw the secret of his life and the
wounds of his heart laid bare.
A LITTLE PARISIAN ROMANCE
Like most of the Parisian romances of to-day, the little romance in
question is an exotic one. Paris belongs to foreigners. When the
Parisians, whose names appear in the chronicles of fashion, are not
Americans, Russians, Roumanians, Portuguese, English, Chinese, or
Hungarians, they do not count; they are no longer Parisians. The
Parisians of the day are Parisians of the Prater, of the Newski
Perspective or of Fifth Avenue; they are no longer pureblooded
Parisians. Within ten years from now the boulevards will be
situated in Chicago, and one will go to pass his evenings at the
Eden Theatre of Pekin. So, this is the latest Parisian romance:
Once upon a time there was in Paris a great lord, a Moldavian, or a
Wallachian, or a Moldo-Wallachian (in a word, a Parisian--a Parisian
of the Danube, if you like), who fell in love with a young Greek,
or Turk, or Armenian (also of Paris), as dark-browed as the night,
as beautiful as the day. The great lord was of a certain age, that
is, an uncertain age. The beautiful Athenian or Georgian, or
Circassian, was young. The great lord was generally considered to
be imprudent. But what is to be done when one loves? Marry or
don’t marry, says Rabelais or Moliere. Perhaps they both said it.
Well, at all events, the great lord married. It appears, if well-
informed people are to be believed, that the great Wallachian lord
and the beautiful Georgian did not pass two hours after their
marriage beneath the same roof. The very day of their wedding,
quietly, and without scandal, they separated, and the reason of this
rupture has for a long time puzzled Parisian high-life. It was
remarked, however, that the separation of the newly-married pair was
coincident with the disappearance of a very fashionable attache who,
some years ago, was often seen riding in the Bois, and who was then
considered to be the most graceful waltzer of the Viennese, or
Muscovite, or Castilian colony of Paris. We might, if we were
indiscreet, construct a whole drama with these three people for our
dramatis personae; but we wish to prove that reporters (different
in this from women) sometimes know how to keep a secret. For those
ladies who are, perhaps, still interested in the silky moustaches of
the fugitive ex-diplomat, we can add, however, that he was seen at
Brussels a short time ago. He passed through there like a shooting
star. Some one who saw him noticed that he was rather pale, and
that he seemed to be still suffering from the wounds received not
long ago. As for the beautiful Georgian, they say she is in despair
at the departure of her husband, the great Wallachian lord, who, in
spite of his ill-luck, is really a Prince Charming.
Andras Zilah turned rapidly to the signature of this article. The
“Echoes of Paris” were signed Puck. Puck? Who was this Puck? How could
an unknown, an anonymous writer, a retailer of scandals, be possessed of
his secret? For Andras believed that his suffering was a secret; he had
never had an idea that any one could expose it to the curiosity of the
crowd, as this editor of L’Actualite had done. He felt an increased
rage against the invisible Michel Menko, who had disappeared after his
infamy; and it seemed to him that this Puck, this unknown journalist,
was an accomplice or a friend of Michel Menko, and that, behind the
pseudonym of the writer, he perceived the handsome face, twisted
moustache and haughty smile of the young Count.
“After all,” he said to himself, “we shall soon find out. Monsieur Puck
must be less difficult to unearth than Michel Menko.”
He rang for his valet, and was about to go out, when Yanski Varhely was
announced.
The old Hungarian looked troubled, and his brows were contracted in a
frown. He could not repress a movement of anger when he perceived, upon
the Prince’s table, the marked number of L’Actualite.
Varhely, when he had an afternoon to get rid of, usually went to the
Palais-Royal. He had lived for twenty years not far from there, in a
little apartment near Saint-Roch. Drinking in the fresh air, under the
striped awning of the Cafe de la Rotunde, he read the journals, one
after the other, or watched the sparrows fly about and peck up the
grains in the sand. Children ran here and there, playing at ball; and,
above the noise of the promenaders, arose the music of the brass band.
It was chiefly the political news he sought for in the French or foreign
journals. He ran through them all with his nose in the sheets, which he
held straight out by the wooden file, like a flag. With a rapid glance,
he fell straight upon the Hungarian names which interested him--Deak
sometimes, sometimes Andrassy; and from a German paper he passed to an
English, Spanish, or Italian one, making, as he said, a tour of Europe,
acquainted as he was with almost all European languages.
An hour before he appeared at the Prince’s house, he was seated in the
shade of the trees, scanning ‘L’Actualite’, when he suddenly uttered
an oath of anger (an Hungarian ‘teremtete!’) as he came across the two
paragraphs alluding to Prince Andras.
Varhely read the lines over twice, to convince himself that he was
not mistaken, and that it was Prince Zilah who was designated with the
skilfully veiled innuendo of an expert journalist. There was no chance
for doubt; the indistinct nationality of the great lord spoken of thinly
veiled the Magyar characteristics of Andras, and the paragraph which
preceded the “Little Parisian Romance” was very skilfully arranged to
let the public guess the name of the hero of the adventure, while giving
to the anecdote related the piquancy of the anonymous, that velvet mask
of scandal-mongers.
Then Varhely had only one idea.
“Andras must not know of this article. He scarcely ever reads the
journals; but some one may have sent this paper to him.”
And the old misanthrope hurried to the Prince’s hotel, thinking this:
that there always exist people ready to forward paragraphs of this kind.
When he perceived ‘L’Actualite’ upon the Prince’s table, he saw that
his surmise was only too correct, and he was furious with himself for
arriving too late.
“Where are you going?” he asked Andras, who was putting on his gloves.
The Prince took up the marked paper, folded it slowly, and replied:
“I am going out.”
“Have you read that paper?”
“The marked part of it, yes.”
“You know that that sheet is never read, it has no circulation whatever,
it lives from its advertisements. There is no use in taking any notice
of it.”
“If there were question only of myself, I should not take any notice of
it. But they have mixed up in this scandal the name of the woman to whom
I have given my name. I wish to know who did it, and why he did it.”
“Oh! for nothing, for fun! Because this Monsieur--how does he sign
himself?--Puck had nothing else to write about.”
“It is certainly absurd,” remarked Zilah, “to imagine that a man can
live in the ideal. At every step the reality splashes you with mud.”
As he spoke, he moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?” asked Varhely again.
“To the office of this journal.”
“Do not commit such an imprudence. The article, which has made no stir
as yet, will be read and talked of by all Paris if you take any notice
of it, and it will be immediately commented upon by the correspondents
of the Austrian and Hungarian journals.”
“That matters little to me!” said the Prince, resolutely. “Those people
will only do what their trade obliges them to. But, before everything, I
am resolved to do my duty. That is my part in this matter.”
“Then I will accompany you.”
“No,” replied Andras, “I ask you not to do that; but it is probable that
to-morrow I shall request you to serve as my second.”
“A duel?”
“Exactly.”
“With Monsieur--Puck?”
“With whoever insults me. The name is perfectly immaterial. But since
he escapes me and she is irresponsible--and punished--I regard as an
accomplice of their infamy any man who makes allusion to it with either
tongue or pen. And, my dear Varhely, I wish to act alone. Don’t be
angry; I know that in your hands my honor would be as faithfully guarded
as in my own.”
“Without any doubt,” said Varhely, in an odd tone, pulling his rough
moustache, “and I hope to prove it to you some day.”
CHAPTER XXV. THE HOME OF “PUCK”
Prince Zilah did not observe at all the marked significance old Yanski
gave to this last speech. He shook Varhely’s hand, entered a cab, and,
casting a glance at the journal in his hands, he ordered the coachman to
drive to the office of ‘L’Actualite’, Rue Halevy, near the Opera.
The society journal, whose aim was represented by its title, had its
quarters on the third floor in that semi-English section where
bars, excursion agencies, steamboat offices, and manufacturers of
travelling-bags give to the streets a sort of Britannic aspect. The
office of ‘L’Actualite’ had only recently been established there. Prince
Zilch read the number of the room upon a brass sign and went up.
In the outer office there were only two or three clerks at work behind
the grating. None of these had the right to reveal the names hidden
under pseudonyms; they did not even know them. Zilch perceived, through
an open door, the reporters’ room, furnished with a long table covered
with pens, ink, and pads of white paper. This room was empty; the
journal was made up in the evening, and the reporters were absent.
“Is there any one who can answer me?” asked the Prince.
“Probably the secretary can,” replied a clerk. “Have you a card,
Monsieur? or, if you will write your name upon a bit of paper, it will
do.”
Andras did so; the clerk opened a door in the corridor and disappeared.
After a minute or two he reappeared, and said to the Prince:
“If you will follow me, Monsieur Freminwill see you.”
Andras found himself in the presence of a pleasant-looking middle-aged
man, who was writing at a modest desk when the Hungarian entered, and
who bowed politely, motioning him to be seated.
As Zilch sat down upon the sofa, there appeared upon the threshold of a
door, opposite the one by which he had entered, a small, dark,
elegantly dressed young man, whom Andras vaguely remembered to have seen
somewhere, he could not tell where. The newcomer was irreproachable
in his appearance, with his clothes built in the latest fashion, snowy
linen, pale gray gloves, silver-headed cane, and a single eyeglass,
dangling from a silken cord.
He bowed to Zilch, and, going up to the secretary, he said, rapidly:
“Well! since Tourillon is away, I will report the Enghien races. I am
going there now. Enghien isn’t highly diverting, though. The swells and
the pretty women so rarely go there; they don’t affect Enghien any more.
But duty before everything, eh, Fremin?”
“You will have to hurry,” said Fremin, looking at his watch, “or you
will miss your train.”
“Oh! I have a carriage below.”
He clapped his confrere on the shoulder, bowed again to Zilah, and
hurried away, while Fremin, turning to the Prince, said:
“I am at your service, Monsieur,” and waited for him to open the
conversation.
Zilah drew from his pocket the copy of L’Actualite, and said, very
quietly:
“I should like to know, Monsieur, who is meant in this article here.”
And, folding the paper, with the passage which concerned him uppermost,
he handed it to the secretary.
Fremin glanced at the article.
“Yes, I have seen this paragraph,” he said; “but I am entirely ignorant
to whom it alludes. I am not even certain that it is not a fabrication,
invented out of whole cloth.”
“Ah!” said Zilah. “The author of the article would know, I suppose?”
“It is highly probable,” replied Fremin, with a smile.
“Will you tell me, then, the name of the person who wrote this?”
“Isn’t the article signed?”
“It is signed Puck. That is not a name.”
“A pseudonym is a name in literature,” said Fremin. “I am of the
opinion, however, that one has always the right to demand to see a face
which is covered by a mask. But the person who makes this demand should
be personally interested. Does this story, to which you have called my
attention, concern you, Monsieur?”
“Suppose, Monsieur,” answered Zilah, a little disconcerted, for he
perceived that he had to do with a courteous, well-bred man, “suppose
that the man who is mentioned, or rather insulted, here, were my best
friend. I wish to demand an explanation of the person who wrote this
article, and to know, also, if it was really a journalist who composed
those lines.”
“You mean?--”
“I mean that there may be people interested in having such an article
published, and I wish to know who they are.”
“You are perfectly justified, Monsieur; but only one person can tell you
that--the writer of the article.”
“It is for that reason, Monsieur, that I desire to know his name.”
“He does not conceal it,” said Fremin. “The pseudonym is only designed
as a stimulant to curiosity; but Puck is a corporeal being.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Zilah. “Now, will you be kind enough to
give me his name?”
“Paul Jacquemin.”
Zilah knew the name well, having seen it at the end of a report of his
river fete; but he hardly thought Jacquemin could be so well informed.
Since he had lived in France, the Hungarian exile had not been
accustomed to regard Paris as a sort of gossiping village, where
everything is found out, talked over, and commented upon with eager
curiosity, and where every one’s aim is to appear to have the best and
most correct information.
“I must ask you now, Monsieur, where Monsieur Paul Jacquemin lives?”
“Rue Rochechouart, at the corner of the Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Andras, rising, the object of his call
having been accomplished.
“One moment,” said Fremin, “if you intend to go at once to Monsieur
Jacquemin’s house, you will not find him at home just now.”
“Why not?”
“Because you saw him here a few minutes ago, and he is now on his way to
Enghien.”
“Indeed!” said the Prince. “Very well, I will wait.”
He bade farewell to Fremin, who accompanied him to the door; and, when
seated in his carriage, he read again the paragraph of Puck--that Puck,
who, in the course of the same article, referred many times to the
brilliancy of “our colleague Jacquemin,” and complacently cited the
witticisms of “our clever friend Jacquemin.”
Zilah remembered this Jacquemin now. It was he whom he had seen taking
notes upon the parapet of the quay, and afterward at the wedding, where
he had been brought by the Baroness Dinati. It was Jacquemin who was
such a favorite with the little Baroness; who was one of the licensed
distributors of celebrity and quasi-celebrity for all those who live
upon gossip and for gossip-great ladies who love to see their names
in print, and actresses wild over a new role; who was one of the
chroniclers of fashion, received everywhere, flattered, caressed,
petted; whom the Prince had just seen, very elegant with his stick and
eyeglass, and his careless, disdainful air; and who had said, like a
man accustomed to every magnificence, fatigued with luxury, blase with
pleasure, and caring only for what is truly pschutt (to use the latest
slang): “Pretty women so rarely go there!”
Zilah thought that, as the Baroness had a particular predilection for
Jacquemin, it was perhaps she, who, in her gay chatter, had related the
story to the reporter, and who, without knowing it probably, assuredly
without wishing it, had furnished an article for ‘L’Actualite’. In
all honor, Jacquemin was really the spoiled child of the Baroness, the
director of the entertainments at her house. With a little more conceit,
Jacquemin, who was by no means lacking in that quality, however, might
have believed that the pretty little woman was in love with him. The
truth is, the Baroness Dinati was only in love with the reporter’s
articles, those society articles in which he never forgot her, but paid,
with a string of printed compliments, for his champagne and truffles.
“And yet,” thought Zilah, “no, upon reflection, I am certain that the
Baroness had nothing to do with this outrage. Neither with intention
nor through imprudence would she have given any of these details to this
man.”
Now that the Prince knew his real name, he might have sent to Monsieur
Puck, Varhely, and another of his friends. Jacquemin would then give an
explanation; for of reparation Zilah thought little. And yet, full of
anger, and not having Menko before him, he longed to punish some one;
he wished, that, having been made to suffer so himself, some one should
expiate his pain. He would chastise this butterfly reporter, who had
dared to interfere with his affairs, and wreak his vengeance upon him as
if he were the coward who had fled. And, besides, who knew, after all,
if this Jacquemin were not the confidant of Menko? Varhely would not
have recognized in the Prince the generous Zilah of former times, full
of pity, and ready to forgive an injury.
Andras could not meet Jacquemin that day, unless he waited for him at
the office of ‘L’Actualite’ until the races were over, and he therefore
postponed his intended interview until the next day.
About eleven o’clock in the morning, after a sleepless night, he
sought-the Rue Rochechouart, and the house Fremin had described to him.
It was there: an old weather-beaten house, with a narrow entrance and a
corridor, in the middle of which flowed a dirty, foul-smelling stream of
water; the room of the concierge looked like a black hole at the foot of
the staircase, the balusters and walls of which were wet with moisture
and streaked with dirt; a house of poor working-people, many stories
high, and built in the time when this quarter of Paris was almost a
suburb.
Andras hesitated at first to enter, thinking that he must be mistaken.
He thought of little Jacquemin, dainty and neat as if he had just
stepped out of a bandbox, and his disdainful remarks upon the races of
Enghien, where the swells no longer went. It was not possible that he
lived here in this wretched, shabby place.
The concierge replied to the Prince, however, when he asked for
Jacquemin: “Yes, Monsieur, on the fifth floor, the door to the right;”
and Zilah mounted the dark stairs.
When he reached the fifth floor, he did not yet believe it possible that
the Jacquemin who lived there was the one he had seen the day before,
the one whom Baroness Dinati petted, “our witty colleague Jacquemin.”
He knocked, however, at the door on the right, as he had been directed.
No one came to open it; but he could hear within footsteps and
indistinct cries. He then perceived that there was a bell-rope, and he
pulled it. Immediately he heard some one approaching from within.
He felt a singular sensation of concentrated anger, united to a fear
that the Jacquemin he was in search of was not there.
The door opened, and a woman appeared, young, rather pale, with pretty
blond hair, somewhat disheveled, and dressed in a black skirt, with a
white dressing-sack thrown over her shoulders.
She smiled mechanically as she opened the door, and, as she saw a
strange face, she blushed crimson, and pulled her sack together beneath
her chin, fastening it with a pin.
“Monsieur Jacquemin?” said Andras, taking off his hat.
“Yes, Monsieur, he lives here,” replied the young woman, a little
astonished.
“Monsieur Jacquemin, the journalist?” asked Andras.
“Yes, yes, Monsieur,” she answered with a proud little smile, which
Zilah was not slow to notice. She now opened the door wide, and said,
stepping aside to let the visitor pass:
“Will you take the trouble to come in, Monsieur?” She was not accustomed
to receive calls (Jacquemin always making his appointments at the
office); but, as the stranger might be some one who brought her husband
work, as she called it, she was anxious not to let him go away before
she knew what his errand was.
“Please come in, Monsieur!”
The Prince entered, and, crossing the entry in two steps, found himself
in a small dining-room opening directly out of the kitchen, where three
tiny little children were playing, the youngest, who could not have been
more than eighteen months, crawling about on the floor. Upon the ragged
oilcloth which covered the table, Zilah noticed two pairs of men’s
gloves, one gray, the other yellow, and a heap of soiled white cravats.
Upon a wooden chair, by the open door of the kitchen, was a tub full of
shirts, which the young woman had doubtless been washing when the bell
rang.
The cries Zilah had heard came from the children, who were now silent,
staring at the tall gentleman, who looked at them in surprise.
The young woman was small and very pretty, but with the pallor of
fatigue and overwork; her lips were beautifully chiselled, but almost
colorless; and she was so thin that her figure had the frail appearance
of an unformed girl.
“Will you sit down, Monsieur?” she asked, timidly, advancing a
cane-bottomed chair.
Everything in these poor lodgings was of the most shabby description.
In a cracked mirror with a broken frame were stuck cards of invitation,
theatre checks, and race tickets admitting to the grand stand. Upon a
cheap little table with broken corners was a heap of New Year’s cards,
bonbon boxes, and novels with soiled edges. Upon the floor, near the
children, were some remnants of toys; and the cradle in which the baby
slept at night was pushed into a corner with a child’s chair, the arms
of which were gone.
Zilah was both astonished and pained. He had not expected to encounter
this wretched place, the poorly clad children, and the woman’s timid
smile.
“Is Monsieur Jacquemin at home?” he asked abruptly, desiring to leave at
once if the man whom he sought was not there.
“No, Monsieur; but he will not be long away. Sit down, Monsieur,
please!”
She entreated so gently, with such an uneasy air at the threatened
departure of this man who had doubtless brought some good news for her
husband, that the Prince mechanically obeyed, thinking again that there
was evidently some mistake, and that it was not, it could not be, here
that Jacquemin lived.
“Is it really your husband, Madame, who writes under the signature of
Puck in ‘L’Actualite’?” he asked. The same proud smile appeared again
upon her thin, wan face.
“Yes, Monsieur, yes, it is really he!” she replied. She was so happy
whenever any one spoke to her of her Paul. She was in the habit of
taking copies of L’Actualite to the concierge, the grocer, and the
butcher; and she was so proud to show how well Paul wrote, and what fine
connections he had--her Paul, whom she loved so much, and for whom she
sat up late at night when it was necessary to prepare his linen for some
great dinner or supper he was invited to.
“Oh! it is indeed he, Monsieur,” she said again, while Zilah watched her
and listened in silence. “I don’t like to have him use pseudonyms, as he
calls them. It gives me so much pleasure to see his real name, which is
mine too, printed in full. Only it seems that it is better sometimes.
Puck makes people curious, and they say, Who can it be? He also signed
himself Gavroche in the Rabelais, you know, which did not last very
long. You are perhaps a journalist also, Monsieur?”
“No,” said Zilah.
“Ah! I thought you were! But, after all, perhaps you are right. It is a
hard profession, I sometimes think. You have to be out so late. If you
only knew, Monsieur, how poor Paul is forced to work even at night! It
tires him so, and then it costs so much. I beg your pardon for leaving
those gloves like that before you. I was cleaning them. He does not like
cleaned gloves, though; he says it always shows. Well, I am a woman,
and I don’t notice it. And then I take so much care of all that. It is
necessary, and everything costs so dear. You see I--Gustave, don’t slap
your little sister! you naughty boy!”
And going to the children, her sweet, frank eyes becoming sad at a
quarrel between her little ones, she gently took the baby away from the
oldest child, who cried, and went into a corner to pout, regarding his
mother with the same impudent air which Zilah had perceived in the curl
of Jacquemin’s lips when the reporter complained of the dearth of pretty
women.
“It is certainly very astonishing that he does not come home,” continued
the young wife, excusing to Zilah the absence of her Paul. “He often
breakfasts, however, in the city, at Brebant’s. It seems that it is
necessary for him to do so. You see, at the restaurant he talks and
hears news. He couldn’t learn all that he knows here very well, could
he? I don’t know much of things that must be put in a newspaper.”
And she smiled a little sad smile, making even of her humility a
pedestal for the husband so deeply loved and admired.
Zilah was beginning to feel ill at ease. He had come with anger,
expecting to encounter the little fop whom he had seen, and he found
this humble and devoted woman, who spoke of her Paul as if she were
speaking of her religion, and who, knowing nothing of the life of her
husband, only loving him, sacrificed herself to him in this almost
cruel poverty (a strange contrast to the life of luxury Jacquemin led
elsewhere), with the holy trust of her unselfish love.
“Do you never accompany your husband anywhere?” asked Andras.
“I? Oh, never!” she replied, with a sort of fright. “He does not wish
it--and he is right. You see, Monsieur, when he married me, five
years ago, he was not what he is now; he was a railway clerk. I was a
working-girl; yes, I was a seamstress. Then it was all right; we used to
walk together, and we went to the theatre; he did not know any one. It
is different now. You see, if the Baroness Dinati should see me on his
arm, she would not bow to him, perhaps.”
“You are mistaken, Madame,” said the Hungarian, gently. “You are the one
who should be bowed to first.”
She did not understand, but she felt that a compliment was intended, and
she blushed very red, not daring to say any more, and wondering if she
had not chatted too much, as Jacquemin reproached her with doing almost
every day.
“Does Monsieur Jacquemin go often to the theatre?” asked Andras, after a
moment’s pause.
“Yes; he is obliged to do so.”
“And you?”
“Sometimes. Not to the first nights, of course. One has to dress
handsomely for them. But Paul gives me tickets, oh, as many as I want!
When the plays are no longer drawing money, I go with the neighbors. But
I prefer to stay at home and see to my babies; when I am sitting in the
theatre, and they are left in charge of the concierge, I think,
Suppose anything should happen to them! And that idea takes away all my
pleasure. Still, if Paul stayed here--but he can not; he has his writing
to do in the evenings. Poor fellow, he works so hard! Well!” with a
sigh, “I don’t think that he will be back to-day. The children will eat
his beefsteak, that’s all; it won’t do them any harm.”
As she spoke, she took some pieces of meat from an almost empty
cupboard, and placed them on the table, excusing herself for doing so
before Zilah.
And he contemplated, with an emotion which every word of the little
woman increased, this poor, miserable apartment, where the wife lived,
taking care of her children, while the husband, Monsieur Puck or
Monsieur Gavroche, paraded at the fancy fairs or at the theatres;
figured at the races; tasted the Baroness Dinati’s wines, caring only
for Johannisberg with the blue and gold seal of 1862; and gave to Potel
and Chabot, in his articles, lessons in gastronomy.
Then Madame Jacquemin, feeling instinctively that she had the sympathy
of this sad-faced man who spoke to her in such a gentle voice, related
her life to him with the easy confidence which poor people, who never
see the great world, possess. She told him, with a tender smile, the
entirely Parisian idyl of the love of the working-girl for the little
clerk who loved her so much and who married her; and of the excursions
they used to take together to Saint-Germain, going third-class, and
eating their dinner upon the green grass under the trees, and then
enjoying the funny doings of the painted clowns, the illuminations, the
music, and the dancing. Oh! they danced and danced and danced, until
she was so tired that she slept all the way home with her head on his
shoulder, dreaming of the happy day they had had.
“That was the best time of my life, Monsieur. We were no richer than
we are now; but we were more free. He was with me more, too: now, he
certainly makes me very proud with his beautiful articles; but I don’t
see him; I don’t see him any more, and it makes me very sad. Oh! if it
were not for that, although we are not millionaires, I should be very
happy; yes, entirely, entirely happy.”
There was, in the simple, gentle resignation of this poor girl,
sacrificed without knowing it, such devoted love for the man who,
in reality, abandoned her, that Prince Andras felt deeply moved and
touched. He thought of the one leading a life of pleasure, and the other
a life of fatigue; of this household touching on one side poverty, and,
on the other, wealth and fashion; and he divined, from the innocent
words of this young wife, the hardships of this home, half deserted by
the husband, and the nervousness and peevishness of Jacquemin returning
to this poor place after a night at the restaurants or a ball at
Baroness Dinati’s. He heard the cutting voice of the elegant little man
whom his humble wife contemplated with the eyes of a Hindoo adoring
an idol; he was present, in imagination, at those tragically sorrowful
scenes which the wife bore with her tender smile, poor woman, knowing
of the life of her Paul only those duties of luxury which she herself
imagined, remaining a seamstress still to sew the buttons on the
shirts and gloves of her husband, and absolutely ignorant of all the
entertainments where, in an evening, would sometimes be lost, at a game
of cards, the whole monthly salary of Monsieur Puck! And Zilah said to
himself, that this was, perhaps, the first time that this woman had
ever been brought in contact with anything pertaining to her husband’s
fashionable life--and in what shape?--that of a man who had come to
demand satisfaction for an injury, and to say to Jacquemin: “I shall
probably kill you, Monsieur!”
And gradually, before the spectacle of this profound love, of this
humble and holy devotion of the unselfish martyr with timid, wistful
eyes, who leaned over her children, and said to them, sweetly, “Yes,
you are hungry, I know, but you shall have papa’s beefsteak,” while she
herself breakfasted off a little coffee and a crust of bread, Andras
Zilah felt all his anger die away; and an immense pity filled his
breast, as he saw, as in a vision of what the future might have
brought forth, a terrible scene in this poor little household: the pale
fair-haired wife, already wasted and worn with constant labor, leaning
out of the window yonder, or running to the stairs and seeing, covered
with blood, wounded, wounded to death perhaps, her Paul, whom he,
Andras, had come to provoke to a duel.
Ah! poor woman! Never would he cause her such anguish and sorrow.
Between his sword and Jacquemin’s impertinent little person, were now
this sad-eyed creature, and those poor little children, who played
there, forgotten, half deserted, by their father, and who would grow up,
Heaven knows how!
“I see that Monsieur Jacquemin will not return,” he said, rising
hurriedly, “and I will leave you to your breakfast, Madame.”
“Oh! you don’t trouble me at all, Monsieur. I beg your pardon again for
having given my children their breakfast before you.”
“Farewell, Madame,” said Andras, bowing with the deepest respect.
“Then, you are really going, Monsieur? Indeed, I am afraid he won’t come
back. But please tell me what I shall say to him your errand was. If it
is some good news, I should be so glad, so glad, to be the first to tell
it to him. You are, perhaps, although you say not, the editor of some
paper which is about to be started. He spoke to me, the other day, of a
new paper. He would like to be a dramatic critic. That is his dream, he
says. Is it that, Monsieur?”
“No, Madame; and, to tell you the truth, there is no longer any need for
me to see your husband. But I do not regret my visit; on the contrary--I
have met a noble woman, and I offer her my deepest respect.”
Poor, unhappy girl! She was not used to such words; she blushingly
faltered her thanks, and seemed quite grieved at the departure of this
man, from whom she had expected some good luck for her husband.
“The life of Paris has its secrets!” thought Zilah, as he slowly
descended the stairs, which he had mounted in such a different frame of
mind, so short a time before.
When he reached the lower landing, he looked up, and saw the blond head
of the young woman, leaning over above, and the little hands of the
children clutching the damp railing.
Then Prince Andras Zilah took off his hat, and again bowed low.
On his way from the Rue Rochechouart to his hotel he thought of the
thin, pale face of the Parisian grisette, who would slowly pine away,
deceived and disdained by the man whose name she bore. Such a fine name!
Puck or Gavroche!
“And she would die rather than soil that name. This Jacquemin has found
this pearl of great price, and hid it away under the gutters of Paris!
And I--I have encountered--what? A miserable woman who betrayed me! Ah!
men and women are decidedly the victims of chance; puppets destined to
bruise one another!”
On entering his hotel, he found Yanski Varhely there, with an anxious
look upon his rugged old face.
“Well?”
“Well-nothing!”
And Zilah told his friend what he had seen.
“A droll city, this Paris!” he said, in conclusion. “I see that it is
necessary to go up into the garrets to know it well.”
He took a sheet of paper, sat down, and wrote as follows:
MONSIEUR:--You have published an article in regard to Prince Andras
Zilah, which is an outrage. A devoted friend of the Prince had
resolved to make you pay dearly for it; but there is some one who
has disarmed him. That some one is the admirable woman who bears so
honorably the name which you have given her, and lives so bravely
the life you have doomed her to. Madame Jacquemin has redeemed the
infamy of Monsieur Puck. But when, in the future, you have to speak
of the misfortunes of others, think a little of your own existence,
and profit by the moral lesson given you by--AN UNKNOWN.
“Now,” said Zilah, “be so kind, my dear Varhely, as to have this note
sent to Monsieur Puck, at the office of ‘L’Actualite’ and ask your
domestic to purchase some toys, whatever he likes--here is the
money--and take them to Madame Jacquemin, No. 25 Rue Rochechouart. Three
toys, because there are three children. The poor little things will have
gained so much, at all events, from this occurrence.”
CHAPTER XXVI. “AM I AVENGED?”
After this episode, the Prince lived a more solitary existence than
before, and troubled himself no further about the outside world. Why
should he care, that some penny-aliner had slipped those odious lines
into a newspaper? His sorrow was not the publishing of the treachery,
it was the treachery itself; and his hourly suffering caused him to long
for death to end his torture.
“And yet I must live,” he thought, “if to exist with a dagger through
one’s heart is to live.”
Then, to escape from the present, he plunged into the memories of the
war, as into a bath of oblivion, a strange oblivion, where he found all
his patriotic regrets of other days. He read, with spasmodic eagerness,
the books in which Georgei and Klapka, the actors of the drama,
presented their excuses, or poured forth their complaints; and it seemed
to him that his country would make him forget his love.
In the magnificent picture-gallery, where he spent most of his time, his
eyes rested upon the battle-scenes of Matejks, the Polish artist, and
the landscapes of Munkacsy, that painter of his own country, who took
his name from the town of Munkacs, where tradition says that the Magyars
settled when they came from the Orient, ages ago. Then a bitter longing
took possession of him to breathe a different air, to fly from Paris,
and place a wide distance between himself and Marsa; to take a trip
around the world, where new scenes might soften his grief, or, better
still, some accident put an end to his life; and, besides, chance might
bring him in contact with Menko.
But, just as he was ready to depart, a sort of lassitude overpowered
him; he felt the inert sensation of a wounded man who has not the
strength to move, and he remained where he was, sadly and bitterly
wondering at times if he should not appeal to the courts, dissolve his
marriage, and demand back his name from the one who had stolen it.
Appeal to the courts? The idea of doing that was repugnant to him. What!
to hear the proud and stainless name of the Zilahs resound, no longer
above the clash of sabres and the neighing of furious horses, but within
the walls of a courtroom, and in presence of a gaping crowd of sensation
seekers? No! silence was better than that; anything was better than
publicity and scandal. Divorce! He could obtain that, since Marsa, her
mind destroyed, was like one dead. And what would a divorce give him?
His freedom? He had it already. But what nothing could give back, was
his ruined faith, his shattered hopes, his happiness lost forever.
At times he had a wild desire to see Marsa again, and vent once more
upon her his anger and contempt. When he happened to see the name of
Maisons-Lafitte, his body tingled from head to foot, as by an electric
shock. Maisons! The sunlit garden, the shaded alleys, the glowing
parterres of flowers, the old oaks, the white-walled villa, all appeared
before him, brutally distinct, like a lost, or rather poisoned, Eden!
And, besides, she, Marsa, was no longer there; and the thought that the
woman whom he had so passionately loved, with her exquisite, flower-like
face, was shut up among maniacs at Vaugirard, caused him the acutest
agony. The asylum which was Marsa’s prison was so constantly in his mind
that he felt the necessity of flight, in order not to allow his weakness
to get the bettor of him, lest he should attempt to see Marsa again.
“What a coward I am!” he thought.
One evening he announced to Varhely that he was going to the lonely
villa of Sainte-Adresse, where they had so many times together watched
the sea and talked of their country.
“I am going there to be alone, my dear Yanski,” he said, “but to be with
you is to be with myself. I hope that you will accompany me.”
“Most certainly,” replied Varhely.
The Prince took only one domestic, wishing to live as quietly and
primitively as possible; but Varhely, really alarmed at the rapid change
in the Prince, and the terrible pallor of his face, followed him, hoping
at least to distract him and arouse him from his morbidness by talking
over with him the great days of the past, and even, if possible, to
interest him in the humble lives of the fishermen about him.
Zilah and his friend, therefore, passed long hours upon the terrace of
the villa, watching the sun set at their feet, while the grayish-blue
sea was enveloped in a luminous mist, and the fading light was reflected
upon the red walls and white blinds of the houses, and tinged with
glowing purple the distant hills of Ingouville.
This calm, quiet spot gradually produced upon Andras the salutary effect
of a bath after a night of feverish excitement. His reflections became
less bitter, and, strange to relate, it was rough old Yanski Varhely,
who, by his tenderness and thoughtfulness, led his friend to a more
resigned frame of mind.
Very often, after nightfall, would Zilah descend with him to the shore
below. The sea lay at their feet a plain of silver, and the moonbeams
danced over the waves in broken lines of luminous atoms; boats passed
to and fro, their red lights flashing like glowworms; and it seemed to
Andras and Varhely, as they approached the sea, receding over the wet,
gleaming sands, that they were walking upon quicksilver.
As they strolled and talked together here, it seemed to Andras that this
grief was, for the moment, carried away by the fresh, salt breeze; and
these two men, in a different manner buffeted by fate, resembled two
wounded soldiers who mutually aid one another to advance, and not to
fall by the way before the combat is over. Yanski made special efforts
to rouse in Andras the old memories of his fatherland, and to inspire in
him again his love for Hungary.
“Ah! I used to have so many hopes and dreams for her future,” said
Andras; “but idealists have no chance in the world of to-day; so now I
am a man who expects nothing of life except its ending. And yet I would
like to see once again that old stone castle where I grew up, full of
hopes! Hopes? Bah! pretty bubbles, that is all!”
One morning they walked along the cliffs, past the low shanties of the
fishermen, as far as Havre; and, as they were sauntering through the
streets of the city, Varhely grasped the Prince’s arm, and pointed to an
announcement of a series of concerts to be given at Frascati by a band
of Hungarian gipsies.
“There,” he said, “you will certainly emerge from your retreat to hear
those airs once more.”
“Yes,” replied Andras, after a moment’s hesitation.
That evening found him at the casino; but his wound seemed to open
again, and his heart to be grasped as in an iron hand, as he listened to
the plaintive cries and moans of the Tzigani music. Had the strings of
the bows played these czardas upon his own sinews, laid bare, he would
not have trembled more violently. Every note of the well-known airs fell
upon his heart like a corrosive tear, and Marsa, in all her dark, tawny
beauty, rose before him. The Tzigani played now the waltzes which Marsa
used to play; then the slow, sorrowful plaint of the “Song of Plevna;”
and then the air of Janos Nemeth’s, the heart-breaking melody, to
the Prince like the lament of his life: ‘The World holds but One Fair
Maiden’. And at every note he saw again Marsa, the one love of his
existence.
“Let us go!” he said suddenly to Yanski.
But, as they were about to leave the building, they almost ran into a
laughing, merry group, led by the little Baroness Dinati, who uttered a
cry of delight as she perceived Andras.
“What, you, my dear Prince! Oh, how glad I am to see you!”
And she took his arm, all the clan which accompanied her stopping to
greet Prince Zilah.
“We have come from Etretat, and we are going back there immediately.
There was a fair at Havre in the Quartier Saint-Francois, and we have
eaten up all we could lay our hands on, broken all Aunt Sally’s pipes,
and purchased all the china horrors and hideous pincushions we could
find. They are all over there in the break. We are going to raffle them
at Etretat for the poor.”
The Prince tried to excuse himself and move on, but the little Baroness
held him tight.
“Why don’t you come to Etretat? It is charming there. We don’t do
anything but eat and drink and talk scandal--Oh, yes! Yamada sometimes
gives us some music. Come here, Yamada!”
The Japanese approached, in obedience to her call, with his eternal grin
upon his queer little face.
“My dear Prince,” rattled on the Baroness, “you don’t know, perhaps,
that Yamada is the most Parisian of Parisians? Upon my word, these
Japanese are the Parisians of Asia! Just fancy what he has been doing at
Etretat! He has been writing a French operetta!”
“Japanese!” corrected Yamada, with an apologetic bow.
“Oh, Japanese! Parisian Japanese, then! At all events, it is very
funny, and the title is Little Moo-Moo! There is a scene on board a
flower-decked boat! Oh, it is so amusing, so original, so natural! and a
delightful song for Little Moo-Moo!”
Then, as Zilah glanced at Varhely, uneasy, and anxious to get away, the
Baroness puckered up her rosy lips and sang the stanzas of the Japanese
maestro.
Why, sung by Judic or Theo, it would create a furore! All Paris would be
singing.
“Oh, by the way,” she cried, suddenly interrupting herself, “what have
you done to Jacquemin? Yes, my friend Jacquemin?”
“Jacquemin?” repeated Zilah; and he thought of the garret in the Rue
Rochechouart, and the gentle, fairhaired woman, who was probably at this
very moment leaning over the cribs of her little children--the children
of Monsieur Puck, society reporter of ‘L’Actualite’
“Yes! Why, Jacquemin has become a savage; oh, indeed! a regular savage!
I wanted to bring him to Etretat; but no, he wouldn’t come. It seems
that he is married. Jacquemin married! Isn’t it funny? He didn’t seem
like a married man! Poor fellow! Well, when I invited him, he refused;
and the other day, when I wanted to know the reason, he answered me
(that is why I speak to you about it), ‘Ask Prince Zilah’! So, tell me
now, what have you done to poor Jacquemin?”
“Nothing,” said the Prince.
“Oh, yes, you have; you have changed him! He, who used to go everywhere
and be so jolly, now hides himself in his den, and is never seen at all.
Just see how disagreeable it is! If he had come with us, he would have
written an account in ‘L’Actualite’ of Little Moo-Moo, and Yamada’s
operetta would already be celebrated.”
“So,” continued the Baroness, “when I return to Paris, I am going to
hunt him up. A reporter has no right to make a bear of himself!”
“Don’t disturb him, if he cares for his home now,” said Zilah, gravely.
“Nothing can compensate for one’s own fireside, if one loves and is
loved.”
At the first words of the Prince, the Baroness suddenly became serious.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, dropping his arm and holding out her tiny
hand: “please forgive me for having annoyed you. Oh, yes, I see it! I
have annoyed you. But be consoled; we are going at once, and then, you
know, that if there is a creature who loves you, respects you, and is
devoted to you, it is this little idiot of a Baroness! Goodnight!”
“Good-night’.” said Andras, bowing to the Baroness’s friends, Yamada and
the other Parisian exotics.
Glad to escape, Varhely and the Prince returned home along the seashore.
Fragments of the czardas from the illuminated casino reached their
ears above the swish of the waves. Andras felt irritated and nervous.
Everything recalled to him Marsa, and she seemed to be once more taking
possession of his heart, as a vine puts forth fresh tendrils and clings
again to the oak after it has been torn away.
“She also suffers!” he said aloud, after they had walked some distance
in silence.
“Fortunately!” growled Varhely; and then, as if he wished to efface his
harshness, he added, in a voice which trembled a little: “And for that
reason she is, perhaps, not unworthy of pardon.”
“Pardon!”
This cry escaped from Zilah in accents of pain which struck Varhely like
a knife.
“Pardon before punishing--the other!” exclaimed the Prince, angrily.
The other! Yanski Varhely instinctively clinched his fist, thinking,
with rage, of that package of letters which he had held in his hands,
and which he might have destroyed if he had known.
It was true: how was pardon possible while Menko lived?
No word more was spoken by either until they reached the villa; then
Prince Zilah shook Yanski’s hand and retired to his chamber. Lighting
his lamp, he took out and read and reread, for the hundredth time
perhaps, certain letters--letters not addressed to him--those
letters which Varhely had handed him, and with which Michel Menko had
practically struck him the day of his marriage.
Andras had kept them, reading them over at times with an eager desire
for further suffering, drinking in this species of poison to irritate
his mental pain as he would have injected morphine to soothe a physical
one. These letters caused him a sensation analogous to that which gives
repose to opium-eaters, a cruel shock at first, sharp as the prick of a
knife, then, the pain slowly dying away, a heavy stupor.
The whole story was revived in these letters of Marsa to Menko:--all
the ignorant, credulous love of the young girl for Michel, then her
enthusiasm for love itself, rather than for the object of her love, and
then, again--for Menko had reserved nothing, but sent all together--the
bitter contempt of Marsa, deceived, for the man who had lied to her.
There were, in these notes, a freshness of sentiment and a youthful
credulity which produced the impression of a clear morning in early
spring, all the frankness and faith of a mind ignorant of evil and
destitute of guile; then, in the later ones, the spontaneous outburst of
a heart which believes it has given itself forever, because it thinks it
has encountered incorruptible loyalty and undying devotion.
As he read them over, Andras shook with anger against the two who had
deceived him; and also, and involuntarily, he felt an indefined,
timid pity for the woman who had trusted and been deceived--a pity
he immediately drove away, as if he were afraid of himself, afraid of
forgiving.
“What did Varhely mean by speaking to me of pardon?” he thought. “Am I
yet avenged?”
It was this constant hope that the day would come when justice would
be meted out to Menko’s treachery. The letters proved conclusively that
Menko had been Marsa’s lover; but they proved, at the same time, that
Michel had taken advantage of her innocence and ignorance, and lied
outrageously in representing himself as free, when he was already bound
to another woman.
All night long Andras Zilah sat there, inflicting torture upon himself,
and taking a bitter delight in his own suffering; engraving upon his
memory every word of love written by Marsa to Michel, as if he felt the
need of fresh pain to give new strength to his hatred.
The next morning at breakfast, Varhely astonished him by announcing that
he was going away.
“To Paris?”
“No, to Vienna,” replied Yanski, who looked somewhat paler than usual.
“What an idea! What are you going to do there, Varhely?”
“Angelo Valla arrived yesterday at Havre. He sent for me to come to
his hotel this morning. I have just been there. Valla has given me some
information in regard to a matter of interest to myself, which will
require my presence at Vienna. So I am going there.”
Prince Zilah was intimately acquainted with the Valla of whom Varhely
spoke; he had been one of the witnesses of his marriage. Valla was a
former minister of Manin; and, since the siege of Venice, he had lived
partly in Paris and partly in Florence. He was a man for whom Andras
Zilah had the greatest regard.
“When do you go?” asked the Prince of Varhely.
“In an hour. I wish to take the fast mail from Paris this evening.”
“Is it so very pressing, then?”
“Very pressing,” replied Varhely. “There is another to whose ears the
affair may possibly come, and I wish to get the start of him.”
“Farewell, then,” said Andras, considerably surprised; “come back as
soon as you can.”
He was astonished at the almost violent pressure of the hand which
Varhely gave him, as if he were departing for a very long journey.
“Why didn’t Valla come to see me?” he asked. “He is one of the few I am
always glad to see.”
“He had no time. He had to be away again at once, and he asked me to
excuse him to you.”
The Prince did not make any further attempt to find out what was the
reason of his friend’s sudden flight, for Varhely was already descending
the steps of the villa.
Andras then felt a profound sensation of loneliness, and he thought
again of the woman whom his imagination pictured haggard and wan in the
asylum of Vaugirard.
CHAPTER XXVII. “WHAT MATTERS IT HOW MUCH WE SUFFER?”
Two hours after Varhely had gone, a sort of feverish attraction drew
Prince Andras to the spot where, the night before, he had listened to
the Tzigana airs.
Again, but alone this time, he drank in the accents of the music of his
country, and sought to remember the impression produced upon him when
Marsa had played this air or that one, this sad song or that czardas.
He saw her again as she stood on the deck of the steamer, watching
the children on the barge as they threw her kisses of farewell. More
troubled than ever, nervous and suffering, Zilah returned home late in
the afternoon, opened the desk where he kept Marsa’s letters, and one by
one, impelled by some inexplicable sentiment, he burned them, the flame
of the candle devouring the paper, whose subtle perfume mounted to his
nostrils for the last time like a dying sigh, while the wind carried
off, through the window into the infinite, the black dust of
those fateful letters, those remnants of dead passion and of love
betrayed--and the past was swept away.
The sun was slowly descending in an atmosphere of fire, while toward
Havre a silvery mist over the hills and shore heralded the approach of
chaste Dian’s reign. The reflections of the sunset tinged with red and
orange the fishing boats floating over the calm sea, while a long fiery
streak marked the water on the horizon, growing narrower and narrower,
and changing to orange and then to pale yellow as the disk of the
sun gradually disappeared, and the night came on, enveloping the now
inactive city, and the man who watched the disappearance of the last
fragments of a detested love, of the love of another, of a love
which had torn and bruised his heart. And, strange to say, for some
inexplicable reason, Prince Andras Zilah now regretted the destruction
of those odious letters. It seemed to him, with a singular displacement
of his personality, that it was something of himself, since it was
something of her, that he had destroyed. He had hushed that voice which
said to another, “I love you,” but which caused him the same thrill as
if she had murmured the words for him. They were letters received by his
rival which the wind carried out, an impalpable dust, over the sea; and
he felt--such folly is the human heart capable of--the bitter regret of
a man who has destroyed a little of his past.
The shadows crept over him at the same time that they crept over the
sea.
“What matters it how much we suffer, or how much suffering we cause,” he
murmured, “when, of all our loves, our hearts, ourselves, there remains,
after a short lapse of time--what? That!” And he watched the last atom
of burned paper float away in the deepening twilight.
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE STRICKEN SOUL
His loneliness now weighed heavily upon Andras. His nerves were shaken
by the memories which the czardas of the Tzigani musicians had evoked;
and it seemed to him that the place was deserted now that they had
departed, and Varhely had gone with them. In the eternal symphony of
the sea, the lapping of the waves upon the shingle at the foot of the
terrace, one note was now lacking, the resonant note of the czimbalom
yonder in the gardens of Frascati. The vibration of the czimbalom
was like a call summoning up the image of Marsa, and this image took
invincible possession of the Prince, who, with a sort of sorrowful anger
which he regarded as hatred, tried in vain to drive it away.
What was the use of remaining at Sainte-Adresse, when the memories
he sought to flee came to find him there, and since Marsa’s presence
haunted it as if she had lived there by his side?
He quitted Havre, and returned to Paris; but the very evening of his
return, in the bustle and movement of the Champs-Elysees, the long
avenue dotted with lights, the flaming gas-jets of the cafe concerts,
the bursts of music, he found again, as if the Tzigana were continually
pursuing him, the same phantom; despite the noise of people and
carriages upon the asphalt, the echoes of the “Song of Plevna,” played
quite near him by some Hungarian orchestra, reached him as upon the
seashore at Havre; and he hastened back to his hotel, to shut himself
up, to hear nothing, see nothing, and escape from the fantastic,
haunting pursuit of this inevitable vision.
He could not sleep; fever burned in his blood. He rose, and tried to
read; but before the printed page he saw continually Marsa Laszlo, like
the spectre of his happiness.
“How cowardly human nature is!” he exclaimed, hurling away the book. “Is
it possible that I love her still? Shall I love her forever?”
And he felt intense self-contempt at the temptation which took
possession of him to see once more Maisons-Lafitte, where he had
experienced the most terrible grief of his life. What was the use of
struggling? He had not forgotten, and he never could forget.
If he had been sincere with himself, he would have confessed that he was
impelled by his ever-living, ever-present love toward everything which
would recall Marsa to him, and that a violent, almost superhuman effort
was necessary not to yield to the temptation.
About a week after the Prince’s return to Paris, his valet appeared
one day with the card of General Vogotzine. It was on Andras’s lips to
refuse to see him; but, in reality, the General’s visit caused him a
delight which he would not acknowledge to himself. He was about to hear
of hey. He told the valet to admit Vogotzine, hypocritically saying to
himself that it was impossible, discourteous, not to receive him.
The old Russian entered, timid and embarrassed, and was not much
reassured by Zilah’s polite but cold greeting.
The General, who for some extraordinary reason had not had recourse to
alcohol to give him courage, took the chair offered him by the Prince.
He was a little flushed, not knowing exactly how to begin what he had
to say; and, being sober, he was terribly afraid of appearing, like an
idiot.
“This is what is the matter,” he said, plunging at once in medias res.
“Doctor Fargeas, who sent me, might have come himself; but he thought
that I, being her uncle, should--”
“You have come to consult me about Marsa,” said Andras, unconsciously
glad to pronounce her name.
“Yes,” began the General, becoming suddenly intimidated, “of--of Marsa.
She is very ill-Marsa is. Very ill. Stupor, Fargeas says. She does
not say a word-nothing. A regular automaton! It is terrible to see
her--terrible--terrible.”
He raised his round, uneasy eyes to Andras, who was striving to appear
calm, but whose lips twitched nervously.
“It is impossible to rouse her,” continued Vogotzine. “The doctors can
do nothing. There is no hope except in an--an--an experiment.”
“An experiment?”
“Yes, exactly, exactly--an experiment. You see he--he wanted to know
if--(you must pardon me for what I am about to propose; it is Doctor
Fargeas’s idea)--You see--if--if--she should see--(I suppose--these
are not my words)--if she should see you again at Doctor Sims’s
establishment--the emotion--the--the--Well, I don’t know exactly what
Doctor Fargeas does hope; but I have repeated to you his words--I am
simply, quite simply, his messenger.”
“The doctor,” said Andras, calmly, “would like--your niece to see me
again?”
“Yes, yes; and speak to you. You see, you are the only one for whom--”
The Prince interrupted the General, who instantly became as mute as if
he were in the presence of the Czar.
“It is well. But what Doctor Fargeas asks of me will cause me intense
suffering.”
Vogotzine did not open his lips.
“See her again? He wishes to revive all my sorrow, then!”
Vogotzine waited, motionless as if on parade.
After a moment or two, Andras saying no more, the General thought that
he might speak.
“I understand. I knew very well what your answer would be. I told the
doctor so; but he replied, ‘It is a question of humanity. The Prince
will not refuse.’”
Fargeas must have known Prince Zilah’s character well when he used the
word humanity. The Prince would not have refused his pity to the lowest
of human beings; and so, never mind what his sufferings might be, if his
presence could do any good, he must obey the doctor.
“When does Doctor Fargeas wish me to go?”
“Whenever you choose. The doctor is just now at Vaugirard, on a visit to
his colleague, and--”
“Do not let us keep him waiting!”
Vogotzine’s eyes brightened.
“Then you consent? You will go?”
He tried to utter some word of thanks, but Andras cut him short, saying:
“I will order the carriage.”
“I have a carriage,” said Vogotzine, joyously. “We can go at once.”
Zilah was silent during the drive; and Vogotzine gazed steadily out of
the window, without saying a word, as the Prince showed no desire to
converse.
They stopped before a high house, evidently built in the last century,
and which was probably formerly a convent. The General descended heavily
from the coupe, rang the bell, and stood aside to let Zilah pass before
him.
The Prince’s emotion was betrayed in a certain stiffness of demeanor,
and in his slow walk, as if every movement cost him an effort. He
stroked his moustache mechanically, and glanced about the garden they
were crossing, as if he expected to see Marsa at once.
Dr. Fargeas appeared very much pleased to see the Prince, and he thanked
him warmly for having come. A thin, light-haired man, with a pensive
look and superb eyes, accompanied Fargeas, and the physician introduced
him to the Prince as Dr. Sims.
Dr. Sims shared the opinion of his colleague. Having taken the invalid
away, and separated her from every thing that could recall the past, the
physicians thought, that, by suddenly confronting her with a person so
dear to her as Prince Zilah, the shock and emotion might rouse her from
her morbid state.
Fargeas explained to the Prince why he had thought it best to transport
the invalid from Maisons-Lafitte to Vaugirard, and he thanked him for
having approved of his determination.
Zilah noticed that Fargeas, in speaking of Marsa, gave her no name or
title. With his usual tact, the doctor had divined the separation; and
he did not call Marsa the Princess, but, in tones full of pity, spoke of
her as the invalid.
“She is in the garden,” said Dr. Sims, when Fargeas had finished
speaking. “Will you see her now?”
“Yes,” said the Prince, in a voice that trembled slightly, despite his
efforts to control it.
“We will take a look at her first; and then, if you will be so kind,
show yourself to her suddenly. It is only an experiment we are making.
If she does not recognize you, her condition is graver than I think. If
she does recognize you, well, I hope that we shall be able to cure her.
Come!”
Dr. Sims motioned the Prince to precede them.
“Shall I accompany you, gentlemen?” asked Vogotzine.
“Certainly, General!”
“You see, I don’t like lunatics; they produce a singular effect upon me;
they don’t interest me at all. But still, after all, she is my niece!”
And he gave a sharp pull to his frock-coat, as he would have tightened
his belt before an assault.
They descended a short flight of steps, and found themselves in a large
garden, with trees a century old, beneath which were several men and
women walking about or sitting in chairs.
A large, new building, one story high, appeared at one end of the
garden; in this were the dormitories of Dr. Sims’s patients.
“Are those people insane?” asked Zilah, pointing to the peaceful groups.
“Yes,” said Dr. Sims; “it requires a stretch of the imagination to
believe it, does it not? You can speak to them as we pass by. All these
here are harmless.”
“Shall we cross the garden?”
“Our invalid is below there, in another garden, behind that house.”
As he passed by, Zilah glanced curiously at these poor beings, who
bowed, or exchanged a few words with the two physicians. It seemed to
him that they had the happy look of people who had reached the desired
goal. Vogotzine, coughing nervously, kept close to the Prince and felt
very ill at ease. Andras, on the contrary, found great difficulty in
realizing that he was really among lunatics.
“See,” said Dr. Sims, pointing out an old gentleman, dressed in the
style of 1840, like an old-fashioned lithograph of a beau of the time
of Gavarni, “that man has been more than thirty-five years in the
institution. He will not change the cut of his garments, and he is very
careful to have his tailor make his clothes in the same style he dressed
when he was young. He is very happy. He thinks that he is the enchanter
Merlin, and he listens to Vivian, who makes appointments with him under
the trees.”
As they passed the old man, his neck imprisoned in a high stock, his
surtout cut long and very tight in the waist, and his trousers very full
about the hips and very close about the ankles, he bowed politely.
“Good-morning, Doctor Sims! Good-morning, Doctor Fargeas!”
Then, as the director of the establishment approached to speak, he
placed a finger upon his lips:
“Hush,” he said. “She is there! Don’t speak, or she will go away.” And
he pointed with a sort of passionate veneration to an elm where Vivian
was shut up, and whence she would shortly emerge.
“Poor devil!” murmured Vogotzine.
This was not what Zilah thought, however. He wondered if this happy
hallucination which had lasted so many years, these eternal love-scenes
with Vivian, love-scenes which never grew stale, despite the years and
the wrinkles, were not the ideal form of happiness for a being condemned
to this earth. This poetical monomaniac lived with his dreams realized,
finding, in an asylum of Vaugirard, all the fascinations and chimeras
of the Breton land of golden blossoms and pink heather, all the
intoxicating, languorous charm of the forest of Broceliande.
“He has within his grasp what Shakespeare was content only to dream of.
Insanity is, perhaps, simply the ideal realized:”
“Ah!” replied Dr. Fargeas, “but the real never loses its grip. Why does
this monomaniac preserve both the garments of his youth, which prevent
him from feeling his age, and the dream of his life, which consoles
him for his lost reason? Because he is rich. He can pay the tailor who
dresses him, the rent of the pavilion he inhabits by himself, and the
special servants who serve him. If he were poor, he would suffer.”
“Then,” said Zilah, “the question of bread comes up everywhere, even in
insanity.”
“And money is perhaps happiness, since it allows of the purchase of
happiness.”
“Oh!” said the Prince, “for me, happiness would be--”
“What?”
“Forgetfulness.”
And he followed with his eyes Vivian’s lover, who now had his ear glued
to the trunk of the tree, and was listening to the voice which spoke
only to him.
“That man yonder,” said Dr. Sims, indicating a man, still young, who
was coming toward them, “is a talented writer whose novels you have
doubtless read, and who has lost all idea of his own personality. Once
a great reader, he now holds all literature in intense disgust; from
having written so much, he has grown to have a perfect horror of words
and letters, and he never opens either a book or a newspaper. He drinks
in the fresh air, cultivates flowers, and watches the trains pass at the
foot of the garden.”
“Is he happy?” asked Andras.
“Very happy.”
“Yes, he has drunk of the waters of Lethe,” rejoined the Prince.
“I will not tell you his name,” whispered Dr. Sims, as the man, a thin,
dark-haired, delicate-featured fellow, approached them; “but, if you
should speak to him and chance to mention his name, he would respond
‘Ah! yes, I knew him. He was a man of talent, much talent.’ There is
nothing left to him of his former life.”
And Zilah thought again that it was a fortunate lot to be attacked by
one of these cerebral maladies where the entire being, with its burden
of sorrows, is plunged into the deep, dark gulf of oblivion.
The novelist stopped before the two physicians.
“The mid-day train was three minutes and a half late,” he said, quietly:
“I mention the fact to you, doctor, that you may have it attended to.
It is a very serious thing; for I am in the habit of setting my watch by
that train.”
“I will see to it,” replied Dr. Sims. “By the way, do you want any
books?”
In the same quiet tone the other responded:
“What for?”
“To read.”
“What is the use of that?”
“Or any newspapers? To know--”
“To know what?” he interrupted, speaking with extreme volubility.
“No, indeed! It is so good to know nothing, nothing, nothing! Do the
newspapers announce that there are no more wars, no more poverty,
illness, murders, envy, hatred or jealousy? No! The newspapers do
not announce that. Then, why should I read the newspapers? Good-day,
gentlemen.”
The Prince shuddered at the bitter logic of this madman, speaking with
the shrill distinctness of the insane. But Vogotzine smiled.
“Why, these idiots have rather good sense, after all,” he remarked.
When they reached the end of the garden, Dr. Sims opened a gate which
separated the male from the female patients, and Andras perceived
several women walking about in the alleys, some of them alone, and some
accompanied by attendants. In the distance, separated from the garden by
a ditch and a high wall, was the railway.
Zilah caught his breath as he entered the enclosure, where doubtless
among the female forms before him was that of the one he had loved. He
turned to Dr. Sims with anxious eyes, and asked:
“Is she here?”
“She is here,” replied the doctor.
The Prince hesitated to advance. He had not seen her since the day he
had felt tempted to kill her as she lay in her white robes at his
feet. He wondered if it were not better to retrace his steps and depart
hastily without seeing her.
“This way,” said Fargeas. “We can see through the bushes without being
seen, can we not, Sims?”
“Yes, doctor.”