Books: Prince Zilah, v3
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Jules Claretie >> Prince Zilah, v3
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"On the whole," concluded the minister, "Armand Bitto, who is no longer
in this world, is perhaps the most fortunate of all."
Then, turning to Yanski with his pleasant smile, and holding out his
delicate, well-kept hand, which had once brandished the sabre, he said:
"My dear Varhely, you will dine with me to-morrow, will you not? It is a
great pleasure to see you again! Tomorrow I shall most probably give you
an answer to your request--a request which I am happy, very happy, to
take into consideration. I wish also to present you to the Countess.
But no allusions to the past before her! She is a Spaniard, and she
would not understand the old ideas very well. Kossuth, Bem, and Georgei
would astonish her, astonish her! I trust to your tact, Varhely. And
then it is so long ago, so very long ago, all that. Let the dead past
bury its dead! Is it understood?"
Yanski Varhely departed, a little stunned by this interview. He had
never felt so old, so out of the fashion, before. Prince Zilah and he
now seemed to him like two ancestors of the present generation--Don
Quixotes, romanticists, imbeciles. The minister was, as Jacquemin would
have said, a sly dog, who took the times as he found them, and left
spectres in peace. Well, perhaps he was right!
"Ah, well," thought the old hussar, with an odd smile, "there is the age
of moustaches and the age of whiskers, that is all. Ladany has even
found a way to become bald: he was born to be a minister!"
It little mattered to him, however, this souvenir of his youth found with
new characteristics. If Count Josef Ladany rescued Menko from the police
of the Czar, and, by setting him free, delivered him to him, Varhely, all
was well. By entering the ministry, Ladany would thus be at least useful
for something.
CHAPTER XXX
"TO SEEK FORGETFULNESS"
The negotiations with Warsaw, however, detained Yanski Varhely at Vienna
longer than he wished. Count Josef evidently went zealously to work to
obtain from the Russian Government Menko's release. He had promised
Varhely, the evening he received his old comrade at dinner, that he would
put all the machinery at work to obtain the fulfilment of his request.
"I only ask you, if I attain the desired result, that you will do
something to cool off that hotheaded Menko. A second time he would not
escape Siberia."
Varhely had made no reply; but the very idea that Michel Menko might be
free made his head swim. There was, in the Count's eagerness to obtain
Menko's liberty, something of the excitement of a hunter tracking his
prey. He awaited Michel's departure from the fortress as if he were a
rabbit in its burrow.
"If he is set at liberty, I suppose that we shall know where he goes," he
said to the minister.
"It is more than probable that the government of the Czar will trace his
journey for him. You shall be informed."
Count Ladany did not seek to know for what purpose Varhely demanded, with
such evident eagerness, this release. It was enough for him that his old
brother-in-arms desired it, and that it was possible.
"You see how everything is for the best, Varhely," he said to him one
morning. "Perhaps you blamed me when you learned that I had accepted a
post from Austria. Well, you see, if I did not serve the Emperor, I
could not serve you!"
During his sojourn at Vienna, Varhely kept himself informed, day by day,
as to what was passing in Paris. He did not write to Prince Zilah,
wishing, above everything, to keep his errand concealed from him; but
Angelo Valla, who had remained in France, wrote or telegraphed whatever
happened to the Prince.
Marsa Laszlo was cured; she had left Dr. Sims's institution, and returned
to the villa of Maisons-Lafitte.
The poor girl came out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to
take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of
forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her,
and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable
now compared to this punishment: To live! To live and think!
And yet--yes, she wished to live to once more see Andras, whose look,
fixed upon her, had rekindled the extinct intellectual flame of her
being. She wished to live, now that her reason had returned to her,
to live to wrest from the Prince a word of pardon. It could not be
possible that her existence was to end with the malediction of this man.
It seemed to her, that, if she should ever see him face to face, she
would find words of desperate supplication which would obtain her
absolution.
Certainly--she repented it bitterly every hour, now that the punishment
of thinking and feeling had been inflicted upon her--she had acted
infamously, been almost as criminal as Menko, by her silence and deceit--
her deceit! She, who hated a lie! But she longed to make the Prince
understand that the motive of her conduct was the love which she had for
him. Yes, her love alone! There was no other reason, no other, for her
unpardonable treachery. He did not think it now, without any doubt.
He must accuse her of some base calculation or vile intrigue. But she
was certain that, if she could see him again, she would prove to him that
the only cause of her conduct was her unquenchable love for him.
"Let him only believe that, and then let him fly me forever, if he likes!
Forever! But I cannot endure to have him despise me, as he must!"
It was this hope which now attached her to life. After her return to
Maisons-Lafitte from Vaugirard, she would have killed herself if she had
not so desired another interview where she could lay bare her heart.
Not daring to appear before Andras, not even thinking of such a thing as
seeking him, she resolved to wait some opportunity, some chance, she knew
not what. Suddenly, she thought of Yanski Varhely. Through Varhely, she
might be able to say to Andras all that she wished her husband--her
husband! the very word made her shudder with shame--to know of the
reason of her crime. She wrote to the old Hungarian; but, as she
received no response, she left Maisons-Lafitte and went to Varhely's
house. They did not know there, where the Count was; but Monsieur Angelo
Valla would forward any letters to him.
She then begged the Italian to send to Varhely a sort of long confession,
in which she asked his aid to obtain from the Prince the desired
interview.
The letter reached Yanski while he was at Vienna. He answered it with a
few icy words; but what did that matter to Marsa? It was not Varhely's
rancor she cared for, but Zilah's contempt. She implored him again, in a
letter in which she poured out her whole soul, to return, to be there
when she should tell the Prince all her remorse--the remorse which was
killing her, and making of her detested beauty a spectre.
There was such sincerity in this letter, wherein a conscience sobbed,
that, little by little, in spite of his rough exterior, the soldier, more
accessible to emotion than he cared to have it appear, was softened, and
growled beneath his moustache
"So! So! She suffers. Well, that is something."
He answered Marsa that he would return when he had finished a work he had
vowed to accomplish; and, without explaining anything to the Tzigana, he
added, at the end of his letter, these words, which, enigmatical as they
were, gave a vague, inexplicable hope to Marsa "And pray that I may
return soon!"
The day after he had sent this letter to Maisons-Lafitte, Varhely
received from Ladany a message to come at once to the ministry.
On his arrival there, Count Josef handed him a despatch. The Russian
minister of foreign affairs telegraphed to his colleague at Vienna, that
his Majesty the Czar consented to the release of Count Menko, implicated
in the Labanoff affair. Labanoff would probably be sent to Siberia the
very day that Count Menko would receive a passport and an escort to the
frontier. Count Menko had chosen Italy for his retreat, and he would
start for Florence the day his Excellency received this despatch.
"Well, my dear minister," exclaimed Varhely, "thank you a thousand times.
And, with my thanks, my farewell. I am also going to Florence."
"Immediately?"
"Immediately."
"You will arrive there before Menko."
"I am in a hurry," replied Varhely, with a smile.
He went to the telegraph office, after leaving the ministry, and sent a
despatch to Angelo Valla, at Paris, in which he asked the Venetian to
join him in Florence. Valla had assured him that he could rely on him
for any service; and Varhely left Vienna, certain that he should find
Manin's old minister at Florence.
"After all, he has not changed so much," he said to himself, thinking of
Josef Ladany. "Without his aid, Menko would certainly have escaped me.
Ladany has taken the times as they are: Zilah and I desire to have them
as they should be. Which is right?"
Then, while the train was carrying him to Venice, he thought: Bah! it was
much better to be a dupe like himself and Zilah, and to die preserving,
like an unsurrendered flag, one's dream intact.
To die?
Yes! After all, Varhely might, at this moment, be close to death; but,
whatever might be the fate which awaited him at the end of his journey,
he found the road very long and the engine very slow.
At Venice he took a train which carried him through Lombardy into
Tuscany; and at Florence he found Angelo Valla.
The Italian already knew, in regard to Michel Menko, all that it was
necessary for him to know. Before going to London, Menko, on his return
from Pau, after the death of his wife, had retired to a small house he
owned in Pistoja; and here he had undoubtedly gone now.
It was a house built on the side of a hill, and surrounded with olive-
trees. Varhely and Valla waited at the hotel until one of Balla's
friends, who lived at Pistoja, should inform him of the arrival of the
Hungarian count. And Menko did, in fact, come there three days after
Varhely reached Florence.
"To-morrow, my dear Valla," said Yanski, "you will accompany me to see
Menko?"
"With pleasure," responded the Italian.
Menko's house was some distance from the station, at the very end of the
little city.
The bell at the gate opening into the garden, had been removed, as if to
show that the master of the house did not wish to be disturbed. Varhely
was obliged to pound heavily upon the wooden barrier. The servant who
appeared in answer to his summons, was an Hungarian, and he wore the
national cap, edged with fur.
"My master does not receive visitors," he answered when Yanski asked him,
in Italian, if Count Menko were at home.
"Go and say to Menko Mihaly," said Varhely, this time in Hungarian, "that
Count Varhely is here as the representative of Prince Zilah!"
The domestic disappeared, but returned almost immediately and opened the
gate. Varhely and Valla crossed the garden, entered the house, and found
themselves face to face with Menko.
Varhely would scarcely have recognized him.
The former graceful, elegant young man had suddenly aged: his hair was
thin and gray upon the temples, and, instead of the carefully trained
moustache of the embassy attache, a full beard now covered his emaciated
cheeks.
Michel regarded the entrance of Varhely into the little salon where he
awaited him, as if he were some spectre, some vengeance which he had
expected, and which did not astonish him. He stood erect, cold and
still, as Yanski advanced toward him; while Angelo Valla remained in the
doorway, mechanically stroking his smoothly shaven chin.
"Monsieur," said Varhely, "for months I have looked forward impatiently
to this moment. Do not doubt that I have sought you."
"I did not hide myself," responded Menko.
"Indeed? Then may I ask what was your object in going to Warsaw?"
"To seek-forgetfulness," said the young man, slowly and sadly.
This simple word--so often spoken by Zilah--which had no more effect upon
the stern old Hungarian than a tear upon a coat of mail, produced a
singular impression upon Valla. It seemed to him to express
unconquerable remorse.
"What you have done can not be forgotten," said Varhely.
"No more than what I have suffered."
"You made me the accomplice of the most cowardly and infamous act a man
could commit. I have come to you to demand an explanation."
Michel lowered his eyes at these cutting words, his thin face paling, and
his lower lip trembling; but he said nothing. At last, after a pause, he
raised his eyes again to the face of the old Hungarian, and, letting the
words fall one by one, he replied:
"I am at your disposal for whatever you choose to demand, to exact.
I only desire to assure you that I had no intention of involving you in
an act which I regarded as a cruel necessity. I wished to avenge myself.
But I did not wish my vengeance to arrive too late, when what I had
assumed the right to prevent had become irreparable."
"I do not understand exactly," said Varhely.
Menko glanced at Valla as if to ask whether he could speak openly before
the Italian.
"Monsieur Angelo Valla was one of the witnesses of the marriage of Prince
Andras Zilah," said Yanski.
"I know Monsieur," said Michel, bowing to Valla.
"Ah!" he exclaimed abruptly, his whole manner changing. "There was a
man whom I respected, admired and loved. That man, without knowing it,
wrested from me the woman who had been the folly, the dream, and the
sorrow of my life. I would have done anything to prevent that woman from
bearing the name of that man."
"You sent to the Prince letters written to you by that woman, and that,
too, after the Tzigana had become Princess Zilah."
"She had let loose her dogs upon me to tear me to pieces. I was insane
with rage. I wished to destroy her hopes also. I gave those letters to
my valet with absolute orders to deliver them to the Prince the evening
before the wedding. At the same hour that I left Paris, the letters
should have been in the hands of the man who had the right to see them,
and when there was yet time for him to refuse his name to the woman who
had written them. My servant did not obey, or did not understand. Upon
my honor, this is true. He kept the letters twenty-four hours longer
than I had ordered him to do; and it was not she whom I punished, but I
struck the man for whom I would have given my life."
"Granted that there was a fatality of this sort in your conduct,"
responded Varhely, coldly, "and that your lackey did not understand your
commands: the deed which you committed was none the less that of a
coward. You used as a weapon the letters of a woman, and of a woman whom
you had deceived by promising her your name when it was no longer yours
to give!"
"Are you here to defend Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo?" asked Michel, a
trifle haughtily.
"I am here to defend the Princess Zilah, and to avenge Prince Andras. I
am here, above all, to demand satisfaction for your atrocious action in
having taken me as the instrument of your villainy."
"I regret it deeply and sincerely," replied Menko; "and I am at your
orders."
The tone of this response admitted of no reply, and Yanski and Valla took
their departure.
Valla then obtained another second from the Hungarian embassy, and two
officers in garrison at Florence consented to serve as Menko's friends.
It was arranged that the duel should take place in a field near Pistoja.
Valla, anxious and uneasy, said to Varhely:
"All this is right and proper, but--"
"But what?"
"But suppose he kills you? The right is the right, I know; but leaden
bullets are not necessarily on the side of the right, and--"
"Well," interrupted Yanski, "in case of the worst, you must charge
yourself, my dear Valla, with informing the Prince how his old friend
Yanski Varhely defended his honor--and also tell him of the place where
Count Menko may be found. I am going to attempt to avenge Zilah. If I
do not succeed, 'Teremtete'!" ripping out the Hungarian oath, "he will
avenge me, that is all! Let us go to supper."
CHAPTER XXXI
"IF MENKO WERE DEAD!"
Prince Zilah, wandering solitary in the midst of crowded Paris, was
possessed by one thought, one image impossible to drive away, one name
which murmured eternally in his ears--Marsa; Marsa, who was constantly
before his eyes, sometimes in the silvery shimmer of her bridal robes,
and sometimes with the deathly pallor of the promenader in the garden of
Vaugirard; Marsa, who had taken possession of his being, filling his
whole heart, and, despite his revolt, gradually overpowering all other
memories, all other passions! Marsa, his last love, since nothing was
before him save the years when the hair whitens, and when life weighs
heavily upon weary humanity; and not only his last love, but his only
love!
Oh! why had he loved her? Or, having loved her, why had she not
confessed to him that that coward of a Menko had deceived her! Who
knows? He might have pardoned her, perhaps, and accepted the young girl,
the widow of that passion. Widow? No, not while Menko lived. Oh! if he
were dead!
And Zilah repeated, with a fierce longing for vengeance: "If he were
dead!" That is, if there were not between them, Zilah and Marsa, the
abhorred memory of the lover!
Well! if Menko were dead?
When he feverishly asked himself this question, Zilah recalled at the
same time Marsa, crouching at his feet, and giving no other excuse than
this: "I loved you! I wished to belong to you, to be your wife!"
His wife! Yes, the beautiful Tzigana he had met at Baroness Dinati's was
now his wife! He could punish or pardon. But he had punished, since he
had inflicted upon her that living death--insanity. And he asked himself
whether he should not pardon Princess Zilah, punished, repentant, almost
dying.
He knew that she was now at Maisons, cured of her insanity, but still ill
and feeble, and that she lived there like a nun, doing good, dispensing
charity, and praying--praying for him, perhaps.
For him or for Menko?
No, for him! She was not vile enough to have lied, when she asked,
implored, besought death from Zilah who held her life or death in his
hands.
"Yes, I had the right to kill her, but--I have the right to pardon also,"
thought Zilah.
Ah, if Menko were dead!
The Prince gradually wrought himself into a highly nervous condition,
missing Varhely, uneasy at his prolonged absence, and never succeeding in
driving away Marsa's haunting image. He grew to hate his solitary home
and his books.
"I shall not want any breakfast," he said one morning to his valet; and,
going out, he descended the Champs-Elysees on foot.
At the corner of the Place de la Madeleine, he entered a restaurant, and
sat down near a window, gazing mechanically at this lively corner of
Paris, at the gray facade of the church, the dusty trees, the asphalt,
the promenaders, the yellow omnibuses, the activity of Parisian life.
All at once he was startled to hear his name pronounced and to see before
him, with his hand outstretched, as if he were asking alms, old General
Vogotzine, who said to him, timidly:
"Ah, my dear Prince, how glad I am to see you! I was breakfasting over
there, and my accursed paper must have hidden me. Ouf! If you only
knew! I am stifling!"
"Why, what is the matter?" asked Andras.
"Matter? Look at me! I must be as red as a beet!"
Poor Vogotzine had entered the restaurant for breakfast, regretting the
cool garden of Maisons-Lafitte, which, now that Marsa no longer sat
there, he had entirely to himself. After eating his usual copious
breakfast, he had imprudently asked the waiter for a Russian paper; and,
as he read, and sipped his kummel, which he found a little insipid and
almost made him regret the vodka of his native land, his eyes fell upon a
letter from Odessa, in which there was a detailed description of the
execution of three nihilists, two of them gentlemen. It told how they
were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of
them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in
black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General
shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution
seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could
see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each
gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray
pall. He saw, in the hollow square formed by a battalion of Cossack
infantry, the executioner, Froloff, in his red shirt and his plush
trousers tucked into his boots, and, beside him, a pale, black-robed
priest.
"Who the devil is such an idiot as to relate such things in the
newspapers?" he growled.
And in terror he imagined he could hear the sheriff read the sentence,
see the priest present the cross to the condemned men, and Froloff,
before putting on the black caps, degrade the gentlemen by breaking their
swords over their heads.
Then, half suffocated, Vogotzine flung the paper on the floor; and, with
eyes distended with horror, drawing the caraffe of kummel toward him, he
half emptied it, drinking glass after glass to recover his self-control.
It seemed to him that Froloff was there behind him, and that the branches
of the candelabra, stretching over his heated head, were the arms of
gibbets ready to seize him. To reassure himself, and be certain that he
was miles and miles from Russia, he was obliged to make sure of the
presence of the waiters and guests in the gay and gilded restaurant.
"The devil take the newspapers!" he muttered.
"They are cursed stupid! I will never read another! All that stuff is
absurd! Absurd! A fine aid to digestion, truly!"
And, paying his bill, he rose to go, passing his hand over his head as if
his sword had been broken upon it and left a contusion, and glancing
timidly into the mirrors, as if he feared to discover the image of
Froloff there.
It was at this moment that he discovered Prince Zilah, and rushed up to
him with the joyful cry of a child discovering a protector.
The Prince noticed that poor Vogotzine, who sat heavily down by his side,
was not entirely sober. The enormous quantity of kummel he had absorbed,
together with the terror produced by the article he had read, had proved
too much for the good man: his face was fiery, and he constantly
moistened his dry lips.
"I suppose it astonishes you to see me here?" he said, as if he had
forgotten all that had taken place. "I--I am astonished to see myself
here! But I am so bored down there at Maisons, and I rust, rust, as
little--little--ah! Stephanie said to me once at Odessa. So I came to
breathe the air of Paris. A miserable idea! Oh, if you knew! When I
think that that might happen to me!"
"What?" asked Andras, mechanically.
"What?" gasped the General, staring at him with dilated eyes. "Why,
Froloff, of course! Froloff! The sword broken over your head! The
gallows! Ach! I am not a nihilist--heaven forbid!--but I have
displeased the Czar. And to displease the Czar--Brr! Imagine the open
square-Odessa-No, no, don't let us talk of it any more!" glancing
suddenly about him, as if he feared the platoon of Cossacks were there,
in the restaurant, come to drag him away in the name of the Emperor.
"Oh! by the way, Prince," he exclaimed abruptly. "why don't you ever
come to Maisons-Lafitte?"
He must, indeed, have been drunk to address such a question to the
Prince.
Zilah looked him full in the face; but Vogotzine's eyes blinked stupidly,
and his head fell partially forward on his breast. Satisfied that he was
not responsible for what he was saying, Andras rose to leave the
restaurant, and the General with difficulty stumbled to his feet, and
instinctively grasped Andras's arm, the latter making no resistance, the
mention of Maisons-Lafitte interesting him, even from the lips of this
intoxicated old idiot.
"Do you know," stuttered Vogotzine, "I, myself, should be glad--very
glad--if you would come there. I am bored-bored to death! Closed
shutters--not the least noise. The creaking of a door--the slightest bit
of light-makes her ill. The days drag--they drag--yes, they do. No one
speaks. Most of the time I dine alone. Shall I tell you?--no--yes, I
will. Marsa, yes, well! Marsa, she is good, very good--thinks only of
the poor-the poor, you know! But whatever Doctor Fargeas may say about
it, she is mad! You can't deceive me! She is insane!--still insane!"
"Insane?" said Andras, striving to control his emotion.
The General, who was now staggering violently, clung desperately to the
Prince. They had reached the boulevard, and Andras, hailing a cab, made
Vogotzine get in, and instructed the coachman to drive to the Bois.
"I assure you that she is insane," proceeded the General, throwing his
head back on the cushions. "Yes, insane. She does not eat anything; she
never rests. Upon my word, I don't know how she lives. Once--her dogs--
she took walks. Now, I go with them into the park--good beasts--very
gentle. Sometimes, all that she says, is: 'Listen! Isn't that Duna or
Bundas barking?' Ah! if I wasn't afraid of Froloffyes, Froloff--how soon
I should return to Russia! The life of Paris--the life of Paris wearies
me. You see, I come here today, I take up a newspaper, and I see what?
Froloff! Besides, the life of Paris--at Maisons-Lafitte--between four
walls, it is absurd! Now, acknowledge, old man, isn't it absurd? Do you
know what I should like to do? I should like to send a petition to the
Czar. What did I do, after all, I should like to know? It wasn't
anything so horrible. I stayed, against the Emperor's orders, five days
too long at Odessa--that was all--yes, you see, a little French actress
who was there, who sang operettas; oh, how she did sing operettas!
Offenbach, you know;" and the General tried to hum a bar or two of the
'Dites lui', with ludicrous effect. "Charming! To leave her, ah! I
found that very hard. I remained five days: that wasn't much, eh, Zilah?
five days? But the devil! There was a Grand Duke--well--humph! younger
than I, of course--and--and--the Grand Duke was jealous. Oh! there was
at that time a conspiracy at Odessa! I was accused of spending my time
at the theatre, instead of watching the conspirators. They even said I
was in the conspiracy! Oh, Lord! Odessa! The gallows! Froloff! Well,
it was Stephanie Gavaud who was the cause of it. Don't tell that to
Marsa! Ah! that little Stephanie! 'J'ai vu le vieux Bacchus sur sa
roche fertile!' Tautin--no, Tautin couldn't sing like that little
Stephanie! Well," continued Vogotzine, hiccoughing violently, "because
all that happened then, I now lead here the life of an oyster! Yes, the
life of an oyster, of a turtle, of a clam! alone with a woman sad as
Mid-Lent, who doesn't speak, doesn't sing, does nothing but weep, weep,
weep! It is crushing! I say just what I think! Crushing, then,
whatever my niece may be--cr-r-rushing! And--ah--really, my dear fellow,
I should be glad if you would come. Why did you go away? Yes, yes, that
is your affair, and I don't ask any questions. Only--only you would do
well to come--"
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