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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zilah, Complete, by Jules Claretie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Prince Zilah, Complete
+
+Author: Jules Claretie
+
+Last Updated: March 2, 2009
+Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3930]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE ZILAH, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE ZILAH
+
+By Jules Claretie
+
+
+With a Preface by Compte d'Haussonville of the French Academy
+
+
+
+
+JULES CLARETIE
+
+Arsene Arnaud Claretie (commonly called Jules), was born on December 3,
+1840, at Limoges, the picturesque and smiling capital of Limousin. He
+has been rightly called the "Roi de la Chronique" and the "Themistocle
+de la Litterature Contemporaine." In fact, he has written, since early
+youth, romances, drama, history, novels, tales, chronicles, dramatic
+criticism, literary criticism, military correspondence, virtually
+everything! He was elected to the French Academy in 1888.
+
+Claretie was educated at the Lycee Bonaparte, and was destined for a
+commercial career. He entered a business-house as bookkeeper, but was at
+the same time contributing already to newspapers and reviews. In 1862
+we find him writing for the Diogene; under the pseudonym, "Olivier
+de Jalin," he sends articles to La France; his nom-deplume in
+L'Illustration is "Perdican"; he also contributes to the Figaro,
+'L'Independence Belge, Opinion Nationale' (1867-1872); he signs articles
+in the 'Rappel; as "Candide"; in short, his fecundity in this field
+of literature is very great. He is today a most popular journalist and
+writes for the 'Presse, Petit Journal, Temps', and others. He has not
+succeeded as a politician. Under the second Empire he was often in
+collision with the Government; in 1857 he was sentenced to pay a fine of
+1,000 francs, which was a splendid investment; more than once lectures
+to be given by him were prohibited (1865-1868); in 1871 he was an
+unsuccessful candidate for L'Assemblee Nationale, both for La Haute
+Vienne and La Seine. Since that time he has not taken any active part in
+politics. Perhaps we should also mention that as a friend of Victor Noir
+he was called as a witness in the process against Peter Bonaparte; and
+that as administrator of the Comedie Francaise he directed, in 1899, an
+open letter to the "President and Members of the Court Martial trying
+Captain Dreyfus" at Rennes, advocating the latter's acquittal. So much
+about Claretie as a politician!
+
+The number of volumes and essays written by Jules Claretie surpasses
+imagination, and it is, therefore, almost impossible to give a complete
+list. As a historian he has selected mostly revolutionary subjects. The
+titles of some of his prominent works in this field are 'Les Derniers
+Montagnards (1867); Histoire de la Revolution de 1870-71 (second
+edition, 1875, 5 vols.); La France Envahie (1871); Le Champ de Bataille
+de Sedan (1871); Paris assiege and Les Prussiens chez eux (1872); Cinq
+Ans apres, L'Alsace et la Lorraine depuis l'Annexion (1876); La Guerre
+Nationale 1870-1871', etc., most of them in the hostile, anti-German
+vein, natural to a "Chauvinist"; 'Ruines et Fantomes (1873). Les Femmes
+de la Revolution (1898)' contains a great number of portraits, studies,
+and criticisms, partly belonging to political, partly to literary,
+history. To the same category belong: Moliere, sa Vie et ses OEuvres
+(1873); Peintres et Sculpteurs Contemporains, and T. B. Carpeaux (1875);
+L'Art et les Artistes Contemporains (1876)', and others. Quite different
+from the above, and in another phase of thought, are: 'Voyages d'un
+Parisien (1865); Journees de Voyage en Espagne et France (1870);
+Journees de Vacances (1887)'; and others.
+
+It is, however, as a novelist that the fame of Claretie will endure. He
+has followed the footsteps of George Sand and of Balzac. He belongs
+to the school of "Impressionists," and, although he has a liking for
+exceptional situations, wherefrom humanity does not always issue without
+serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous
+disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and
+has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to
+exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His
+novels and tales contain the essential qualities which attract and
+retain the reader. Some of his works in chronological order, omitting
+two or three novels, written when only twenty or twenty-one years old,
+are: 'Pierrille, Histoire de Village (1863); Mademoiselle Cachemire
+(1867); Un Assassin, also known under the title Robert Burat (1867);
+Madeleine Bertin, replete with moderated sentiment, tender passion, and
+exquisite scenes of social life (1868); Les Muscadins (1874, 2 vols.);
+Le Train No. 17 (1877); La Maison Vide (1878); Le Troisieme dessous
+(1879); La Maitresse (1880); Monsieur le Ministre (1882); Moeurs du Jour
+(1883); Le Prince Zilah (1884), crowned by the Academy four years before
+he was elected; Candidat!(1887); Puyjoli (1890); L'Americaine (1892);
+La Frontiere (1894); Mariage Manque (1894); Divette (1896); L'Accusateur
+(1897), and others.
+
+It is, perhaps, interesting to know that after the flight of the
+Imperial family from the Tuileries, Jules Claretie was appointed to put
+into order the various papers, documents, and letters left behind in
+great chaos, and to publish them, if advisable.
+
+Very numerous and brilliant have also been the incursions of Jules
+Claretie into the theatrical domain, though he is a better novelist than
+playwright. He was appointed director of the Comedie Francaise in
+1885. His best known dramas and comedies are: 'La Famille de Gueux, in
+collaboration with Della Gattina (Ambigu, 1869); Raymond Lindey (Menus
+Plaisirs, 1869, forbidden for some time by French censorship); Les
+Muscadins (Theatre Historique, 1874); Un Pyre (with Adrien Decourcelle,
+Gymnase, 1874); Le Regiment de Champagne (Theatre Historique, 1877);
+Monsieur le Ministre, together with Dumas fils and Busnach (Gymnase,
+1883); and Prince Zilah (Gymnase, 1885).
+
+Some of them, as will be noticed, are adapted to the stage from his
+novels. In Le Regiment de Champagne, at least, he has written a little
+melodramatically. But thanks to the battles, fumes of powder, muskets,
+and cannons upon the stage the descendants of Jean Chauvin accept it
+with frenetic applause. In most of the plays, however, he exhibits a
+rather nervous talent, rich imagination, and uses very scintillating and
+picturesque language, if he is inclined to do so--and he is very often
+inclined. He received the "Prix Vitet" in 1879 from the Academy for Le
+Drapeau. Despite our unlimited admiration for Claretie the journalist,
+Claretie the historian, Claretie the dramatist, and Claretie the
+art-critic, we think his novels conserve a precious and inexhaustible
+mine for the Faguets and Lansons of the twentieth century, who, while
+frequently utilizing him for the exemplification of the art of fiction,
+will salute him as "Le Roi de la Romance."
+
+               COMPTE D'HAUSSONVILLE
+               de L'Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE ZILAH
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE BETROTHAL FETE
+
+"Excuse me, Monsieur, but pray tell me what vessel that is over there."
+
+The question was addressed to a small, dark man, who, leaning upon the
+parapet of the Quai des Tuileries, was rapidly writing in a note-book
+with a large combination pencil, containing a knife, a pen, spare leads,
+and a paper-cutter--all the paraphernalia of a reporter accustomed to
+the expeditions of itinerant journalism.
+
+When he had filled, in his running hand, a leaf of the book, the little
+man tore it hastily off, and extended it to a boy in dark blue livery
+with silver buttons, bearing the initial of the newspaper, L'Actualite;
+and then, still continuing to write, he replied:
+
+"Prince Andras Zilah is giving a fete on board one of the boats
+belonging to the Compagnie de la Seine."
+
+"A fete? Why?"
+
+"To celebrate his approaching marriage, Monsieur."
+
+"Prince Andras! Ah!" said the first speaker, as if he knew the name
+well; "Prince Andras is to be married, is he? And who does Prince Andras
+Zil--"
+
+"Zilah! He is a Hungarian, Monsieur."
+
+The reporter appeared to be in a hurry, and, handing another leaf to the
+boy, he said:
+
+"Wait here a moment. I am going on board, and I will send you the rest
+of the list of guests by a sailor. They can prepare the article from
+what you have, and set it up in advance, and I will come myself to the
+office this evening and make the necessary additions."
+
+"Very well, Monsieur Jacquemin."
+
+"And don't lose any of the leaves."
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Jacquemin! I never lose anything!"
+
+"They will have some difficulty, perhaps, in reading the names--they are
+all queer; but I shall correct the proof myself."
+
+"Then, Monsieur," asked the lounger again, eager to obtain all the
+information he could, "those people who are going on board are almost
+all foreigners?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; yes, Monsieur; yes, Monsieur!" responded jacquemin,
+visibly annoyed. "There are many foreigners in the city, very many; and
+I prefer them, myself, to the provincials of Paris."
+
+The other did not seem to understand; but he smiled, thanked the
+reporter, and strolled away from the parapet, telling all the people he
+met: "It is a fete! Prince Andras, a Hungarian, is about to be married.
+Prince Andras Zilah! A fete on board a steamer! What a droll idea!"
+
+Others, equally curious, leaned over the Quai des Tuileries and watched
+the steamer, whose tricolor flag at the stern, and red streamers at the
+mastheads, floated with gay flutterings in the fresh morning breeze. The
+boat was ready to start, its decks were waxed, its benches covered with
+brilliant stuffs, and great masses of azaleas and roses gave it the
+appearance of a garden or conservatory. There was something highly
+attractive to the loungers on the quay in the gayly decorated steamer,
+sending forth long puffs of white smoke along the bank. A band of
+dark-complexioned musicians, clad in red trousers, black waistcoats
+heavily embroidered in sombre colors, and round fur caps, played odd
+airs upon the deck; while bevies of laughing women, almost all pretty in
+their light summer gowns, alighted from coupes and barouches, descended
+the flight of steps leading to the river, and crossed the plank to the
+boat, with little coquettish graces and studied raising of the skirts,
+allowing ravishing glimpses of pretty feet and ankles. The defile of
+merry, witty Parisiennes, with their attendant cavaliers, while
+the orchestra played the passionate notes of the Hungarian czardas,
+resembled some vision of a painter, some embarkation for the dreamed-of
+Cythera, realized by the fancy of an artist, a poet, or a great lord,
+here in nineteenth century Paris, close to the bridge, across which
+streamed, like a living antithesis, the realism of crowded cabs, full
+omnibuses, and hurrying foot-passengers.
+
+Prince Andras Zilah had invited his friends, this July morning, to a
+breakfast in the open air, before the moving panorama of the banks of
+the Seine.
+
+Very well known in Parisian society, which he had sought eagerly with
+an evident desire to be diverted, like a man who wishes to forget, the
+former defender of Hungarian independence, the son of old Prince Zilah
+Sandor, who was the last, in 1849, to hold erect the tattered standard
+of his country, had been prodigal of his invitations, summoning to
+his side his few intimate friends, the sharers of his solitude and
+his privacy, and also the greater part of those chance fugitive
+acquaintances which the life of Paris inevitably gives, and which
+are blown away as lightly as they appeared, in a breath of air or a
+whirlwind.
+
+Count Yanski Varhely, the oldest, strongest, and most devoted friend of
+all those who surrounded the Prince, knew very well why this fanciful
+idea had come to Andras. At forty-four, the Prince was bidding farewell
+to his bachelor life: it was no folly, and Yanski saw with delight
+that the ancient race of the Zilahs, from time immemorial servants of
+patriotism and the right, was not to be extinct with Prince Andras.
+Hungary, whose future seemed brightening; needed the Zilahs in the
+future as she had needed them in the past.
+
+"I have only one objection to make to this marriage," said Varhely; "it
+should have taken place sooner." But a man can not command his heart
+to love at a given hour. When very young, Andras Zilah had cared for
+scarcely anything but his country; and, far from her, in the bitterness
+of exile, he had returned to the passion of his youth, living in Paris
+only upon memories of his Hungary. He had allowed year after year to
+roll by, without thinking of establishing a home of his own by marriage.
+A little late, but with heart still warm, his spirit young and ardent,
+and his body strengthened rather than worn out by life, Prince Andras
+gave to a woman's keeping his whole being, his soul with his name,
+the one as great as the other. He was about to marry a girl of his own
+choice, whom he loved romantically; and he wished to give a surrounding
+of poetic gayety to this farewell to the past, this greeting to the
+future. The men of his race, in days gone by, had always displayed a
+gorgeous, almost Oriental originality: the generous eccentricities
+of one of Prince Andras's ancestors, the old Magyar Zilah, were often
+cited; he it was who made this answer to his stewards, when, figures in
+hand, they proved to him, that, if he would farm out to some English or
+German company the cultivation of his wheat, corn, and oats, he would
+increase his revenue by about six hundred thousand francs a year:
+
+"But shall I make these six hundred thousand francs from the nourishment
+of our laborers, farmers, sowers, and gleaners? No, certainly not; I
+would no more take that money from the poor fellows than I would take
+the scattered grains from the birds of the air."
+
+It was also this grandfather of Andras, Prince Zilah Ferency, who, when
+he had lost at cards the wages of two hundred masons for an entire year,
+employed these men in constructing chateaux, which he burned down at
+the end of the year to give himself the enjoyment of fireworks upon
+picturesque ruins.
+
+The fortune of the Zilahs was then on a par with the almost fabulous,
+incalculable wealth of the Esterhazys and Batthyanyis. Prince Paul
+Esterhazy alone possessed three hundred and fifty square leagues of
+territory in Hungary. The Zichys, the Karolyis and the Szchenyis,
+poorer, had but two hundred at this time, when only six hundred families
+were proprietors of six thousand acres of Hungarian soil, the nobles
+of Great Britain possessing not more than five thousand in England. The
+Prince of Lichtenstein entertained for a week the Emperor of Austria,
+his staff and his army. Old Ferency Zilah would have done as much if
+he had not always cherished a profound, glowing, militant hatred of
+Austria: never had the family of the magnate submitted to Germany,
+become the master, any more than it had bent the knee in former times to
+the conquering Turk.
+
+From his ancestors Prince Andras inherited, therefore, superb
+liberality, with a fortune greatly diminished by all sorts of losses
+and misfortunes--half of it confiscated by Austria in 1849, and enormous
+sums expended for the national cause, Hungarian emigrants and proscribed
+compatriots. Zilah nevertheless remained very rich, and was an imposing
+figure in Paris, where, some years before, after long journeyings, he
+had taken up his abode.
+
+The little fete given for his friends on board the Parisian steamer
+was a trifling matter to the descendant of the magnificent Magyars; but
+still there was a certain charm about the affair, and it was a pleasure
+for the Prince to see upon the garden-like deck the amusing, frivolous,
+elegant society, which was the one he mingled with, but which he towered
+above from the height of his great intelligence, his conscience, and
+his convictions. It was a mixed and bizarre society, of different
+nationalities; an assemblage of exotic personages, such as are met
+with only in Paris in certain peculiar places where aristocracy touches
+Bohemianism, and nobles mingle with quasi-adventurers; a kaleidoscopic
+society, grafting its vices upon Parisian follies, coming to inhale
+the aroma and absorb the poison of Paris, adding thereto strange
+intoxications, and forming, in the immense agglomeration of the old
+French city, a sort of peculiar syndicate, an odd colony, which belongs
+to Paris, but which, however, has nothing of Paris about it except its
+eccentricities, which drive post-haste through life, fill the little
+journals with its great follies, is found and found again wherever Paris
+overflows--at Dieppe, Trouville, Vichy, Cauteret, upon the sands of
+Etretat, under the orange-trees of Nice, or about the gaming tables of
+Monaco, according to the hour, season, and fashion.
+
+This was the sort of assemblage which, powdered, perfumed, exquisitely
+dressed, invaded, with gay laughter and nervous desire to be amused, the
+boat chartered by the Prince. Above, pencil in hand, the little dark man
+with the keen eyes, black, pointed beard and waxed moustache, continued
+to take down, as the cortege defiled before him, the list of the invited
+guests: and upon the leaves fell, briskly traced, names printed a
+hundred times a day in Parisian chronicles among the reports of the
+races of first representations at the theatres; names with Slav, Latin,
+or Saxon terminations; Italian names, Spanish, Hungarian, American
+names; each of which represented fortune, glory, power, sometimes
+scandal--one of those imported scandals which break out in Paris as the
+trichinae of foreign goods are hatched there.
+
+The reporter wrote on, wrote ever, tearing off and handing to the page
+attached to 'L'Actualite' the last leaves of his list, whereon figured
+Yankee generals of the War of the Rebellion, Italian princesses,
+American girls flirting with everything that wore trousers; ladies who,
+rivals of Prince Zilah in wealth, owned whole counties somewhere in
+England; great Cuban lords, compromised in the latest insurrections
+and condemned to death in Spain; Peruvian statesmen, publicists,
+and military chiefs at once, masters of the tongue, the pen, and the
+revolver; a crowd of originals, even a Japanese, an elegant young man,
+dressed in the latest fashion, with a heavy sombrero which rested upon
+his straight, inky-black hair, and which every minute or two he took off
+and placed under his left arm, to salute the people of his acquaintance
+with low bows in the most approved French manner.
+
+All these odd people, astonishing a little and interesting greatly the
+groups of Parisians gathered above on the sidewalks, crossed the gangway
+leading to the boat, and, spreading about on the deck, gazed at the
+banks and the houses, or listened to the czardas which the Hungarian
+musicians were playing with a sort of savage frenzy beneath the French
+tricolor united to the three colors of their own country.
+
+The Tzigani thus saluted the embarkation of the guests; and the clear,
+bright sunshine enveloped the whole boat with a golden aureole, joyously
+illuminating the scene of feverish gayety and childish laughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE BARONESS'S MATCHMAKING
+
+The Prince Zilah met his guests with easy grace, on the deck in front
+of the foot-bridge. He had a pleasant word for each one as they came
+on board, happy and smiling at the idea of a breakfast on the deck of a
+steamer, a novel amusement which made these insatiable pleasure-seekers
+forget the fashionable restaurants and the conventional receptions of
+every day.
+
+"What a charming thought this was of yours, Prince, so unexpected, so
+Parisian, ah, entirely Parisian!"
+
+In almost the same words did each newcomer address the Prince, who
+smiled, and repeated a phrase from Jacquemin's chronicles: "Foreigners
+are more Parisian than the Parisians themselves."
+
+A smile lent an unexpected charm to the almost severe features of the
+host. His usual expression was rather sad, and a trifle haughty. His
+forehead was broad and high, the forehead of a thinker and a student
+rather than that of a soldier; his eyes were of a deep, clear blue,
+looking directly at everything; his nose was straight and regular, and
+his beard and moustache were blond, slightly gray at the corners of
+the mouth and the chin. His whole appearance, suggesting, as it did,
+reserved strength and controlled passion, pleased all the more because,
+while commanding respect, it attracted sympathy beneath the powerful
+exterior, you felt there was a tender kindliness of heart.
+
+There was no need for the name of Prince Andras Zilah--or, as they say
+in Hungary, Zilah Andras--to have been written in characters of blood in
+the history of his country, for one to divine the hero in him: his erect
+figure, the carriage of his head, braving life as it had defied the
+bullets of the enemy, the strange brilliance of his gaze, the sweet
+inflections of his voice accustomed to command, and the almost caressing
+gestures of his hand used to the sword--all showed the good man under
+the brave, and, beneath the indomitable soldier, the true gentleman.
+
+When they had shaken the hand of their host, the guests advanced to the
+bow of the boat to salute a young girl, an exquisite, pale brunette,
+with great, sad eyes, and a smile of infinite charm, who was
+half-extended in a low armchair beneath masses of brilliant
+parti-colored flowers. A stout man, of the Russian type, with heavy
+reddish moustaches streaked with gray, and an apoplectic neck, stood by
+her side, buttoned up in his frock-coat as in a military uniform.
+
+Every now and then, leaning over and brushing with his moustaches her
+delicate white ear, he would ask:
+
+"Are you happy, Marsa?"
+
+And Marsa would answer with a smile ending in a sigh, as she vaguely
+contemplated the scene before her:
+
+"Yes, uncle, very happy."
+
+Not far from these two was a little woman, still very pretty, although
+of a certain age--the age of embonpoint--a brunette, with very delicate
+features, a little sensual mouth, and pretty rosy ears peeping forth
+from skilfully arranged masses of black hair. With a plump, dimpled
+hand, she held before her myopic eyes a pair of gold-mounted glasses;
+and she was speaking to a man of rather stern aspect, with a Slav
+physiognomy, a large head, crowned with a mass of crinkly hair as white
+as lamb's wool, a long, white moustache, and shoulders as broad as an
+ox; a man already old, but with the robust strength of an oak. He
+was dressed neither well nor ill, lacking distinction, but without
+vulgarity.
+
+"Indeed, my dear Varhely, I am enchanted with this idea of Prince
+Andras. I am enjoying myself excessively already, and I intend to enjoy
+myself still more. Do you know, this scheme of a breakfast on the water
+is simply delightful! Don't you find it so? Oh! do be a little jolly,
+Varhely!"
+
+"Do I seem sad, then, Baroness?"
+
+Yanski Varhely, the friend of Prince Andras, was very happy, however,
+despite his rather sombre air. He glanced alternately at the little
+woman who addressed him, and at Marsa, two very different types of
+beauty: Andras's fiancee, slender and pale as a beautiful lily, and
+the little Baroness Dinati, round and rosy as a ripe peach. And he
+was decidedly pleased with this Marsa Laszlo, against whom he had
+instinctively felt some prejudice when Zilah spoke to him for the
+first time of marrying her. To make of a Tzigana--for Marsa was half
+Tzigana--a Princess Zilah, seemed to Count Varhely a slightly bold
+resolution. The brave old soldier had never understood much of the
+fantastic caprices of passion, and Andras seemed to him in this, as in
+all other things, just a little romantic. But, after all, the Prince
+was his own master, and whatever a Zilah did was well done. So, after
+reflection, Zilah's marriage became a joy to Varhely, as he had just
+been declaring to the fiancee's uncle, General Vogotzine.
+
+Baroness Dinati was therefore wrong to suspect old Yanski Varhely of any
+'arriere-pensee'. How was it possible for him not to be enchanted, when
+he saw Andras absolutely beaming with happiness?
+
+They were now about to depart, to raise the anchor and glide down the
+river along the quays. Already Paul Jacquemin, casting his last leaves
+to the page of L'Actualite, was quickly descending the gangplank. Zilah
+scarcely noticed him, for he uttered a veritable cry of delight as he
+perceived behind the reporter a young man whom he had not expected.
+
+"Menko! My dear Michel!" he exclaimed, stretching out both hands to the
+newcomer, who advanced, excessively pale. "By what happy chance do I see
+you, my dear boy?"
+
+"I heard in London that you were to give this fete. The English
+newspapers had announced your marriage, and I did not wish to wait
+longer--I----."
+
+He hesitated a little as he spoke, as if dissatisfied, troubled, and a
+moment before (Zilah had not noticed it) he had made a movement as if to
+go back to the quay and leave the boat.
+
+Michel Menko, however, had not the air of a timid man. He was tall,
+thin, of graceful figure, a man of the world, a military diplomat. For
+some reason or other, at this moment, he exhibited a certain uneasiness
+in his face, which ordinarily bore a rather brilliant color, but which
+was now almost sallow. He was instinctively seeking some one among the
+Prince's guests, and his glance wandered about the deck with a sort of
+dull anger.
+
+Prince Andras saw only one thing in Menko's sudden appearance; the young
+man, to whom he was deeply attached, and who was the only relative
+he had in the world (his maternal grandmother having been a Countess
+Menko), his dear Michel, would be present at his marriage. He had
+thought Menko ill in London; but the latter appeared before him, and the
+day was decidedly a happy one.
+
+"How happy you make me, my dear fellow!" he said to him in a tone of
+affection which was almost paternal.
+
+Each demonstration of friendship by the Prince seemed to increase the
+young Count's embarrassment. Beneath a polished manner, the evidence
+of an imperious temperament appeared in the slightest glance, the least
+gesture, of this handsome fellow of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years.
+Seeing him pass by, one could easily imagine him with his fashionable
+clothes cast aside, and, clad in the uniform of the Hungarian hussars,
+with closely shaven chin, and moustaches brushed fiercely upward,
+manoeuvring his horse on the Prater with supple grace and nerves like
+steel.
+
+Menko's gray eyes, with blue reflections in them, which made one think
+of the reflection of a storm in a placid lake, became sad when calm, but
+were full of a threatening light when animated. The gaze of the young
+man had precisely this aggressive look when he discovered, half hidden
+among the flowers, Marsa seated in the bow of the boat; then, almost
+instantaneously a singular expression of sorrow or anguish succeeded,
+only in its turn to fade away with the rapidity of the light of a
+falling star; and there was perfect calm in Menko's attitude and
+expression when Prince Zilah said to him:
+
+"Come, Michel, let me present you to my fiancee. Varhely is there also."
+
+And, taking Menko's arm, he led him toward Marsa. "See," he said to the
+young girl, "my happiness is complete."
+
+She, as Michel Menko bowed low before her, coldly and almost
+imperceptibly inclined her dark head, while her large eyes, under the
+shadow of their heavy lashes, seemed vainly trying to meet the gray eyes
+of the young man.
+
+Andras beckoned Varhely to come to Marsa, who was white as marble, and
+said softly, with a hand on the shoulder of each of the two friends, who
+represented to him his whole life--Varhely, the past; Michel Menko, his
+recovered youth and the future.
+
+"If it were not for that stupid superstition which forbids one to
+proclaim his happiness, I should tell you how happy I am, very happy.
+Yes, the happiest of men," he added.
+
+Meanwhile, the little Baroness Dinati, the pretty brunette, who had just
+found Varhely a trifle melancholy, had turned to Paul Jacquemin, the
+accredited reporter of her salon.
+
+"That happiness, Jacquemin," she said, with a proud wave of the hand,
+"is my work. Without me, those two charming savages, so well suited to
+each other, Marsa and Andras Zilah, would never have met. On what does
+happiness depend!"
+
+"On an invitation card engraved by Stern," laughed Jacquemin. "But you
+have said too much, Baroness. You must tell me the whole story. Think
+what an article it would make: The Baroness's Matchmaking! The romance!
+Quick, the romance! The romance, or death!"
+
+"You have no idea how near you are to the truth, my dear Jacquemin: it
+is indeed a romance; and, what is more, a romantic romance. A romance
+which has no resemblance to--you have invented the word--those
+brutalistic stories which you are so fond of."
+
+"Which I am very fond of, Baroness, I confess, especially when they are
+just a little--you know!"
+
+"But this romance of Prince Andras is by no means just a little--you
+know! It is--how shall I express it? It is epic, heroic, romantic--what
+you will. I will relate it to you."
+
+"It will sell fifty thousand copies of our paper," gayly exclaimed
+Jacquemin, opening his ears, and taking notes mentally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE STORY OF THE ZILAHS
+
+Andras Zilah, Transylvanian Count and Prince of the Holy Empire, was one
+of those heroes who devote their whole lives to one aim, and, when they
+love, love always.
+
+Born for action, for chivalrous and incessant struggle, he had
+sacrificed his first youth to battling for his country. "The Hungarian
+was created on horseback," says a proverb, and Andras did not belie the
+saying. In '48, at the age of fifteen, he was in the saddle, charging
+the Croatian hussars, the redcloaks, the terrible darkskinned Ottochan
+horsemen, uttering frightful yells, and brandishing their big damascened
+guns. It seemed then to young Andras that he was assisting at one of
+the combats of the Middle Ages, during one of those revolts against the
+Osmanlis, of which he had heard so much when a child.
+
+In the old castle, with towers painted red in the ancient fashion, where
+he was born and had grown up, Andras, like all the males of his family
+and his country, had been imbued with memories of the old wars. A few
+miles from his father's domain rose the Castle of the Isle, which, in
+the middle of the sixteenth century, Zringi had defended against the
+Turks, displaying lofty courage and unconquerable audacity, and forcing
+Soliman the Magnificent to leave thirty thousand soldiers beneath the
+walls, the Sultan himself dying before he could subjugate the Hungarian.
+Often had Andras's father, casting his son upon a horse, set out,
+followed by a train of cavaliers, for Mohacz, where the Mussulmans had
+once overwhelmed the soldiers of young King Louis, who died with his
+own family and every Hungarian who was able to carry arms. Prince Zilah
+related to the little fellow, who listened to him with burning tears of
+rage, the story of the days of mourning and the terrible massacres which
+no Hungarian has ever forgotten. Then he told him of the great revolts,
+the patriotic uprisings, the exploits of Botzkai, Bethlen Gabor, or
+Rakoczy, whose proud battle hymn made the blood surge through the veins
+of the little prince.
+
+Once at Buda, the father had taken the son to the spot, where, in 1795,
+fell the heads of noble Hungarians, accused of republicanism; and he
+said to him, as the boy stood with uncovered head:
+
+"This place is called the Field of Blood. Martinowitz was beheaded here
+for his faith. Remember, that a man's life belongs to his duty, and not
+to his happiness."
+
+And when he returned to the great sombre halls of the castle, whence in
+bygone days the Turks had driven out his ancestors, and whence, in their
+turn, throwing off the yoke of the conquerors, his ancestors had driven
+out the Turks, little Prince Andras found again examples before him in
+the giants in semi-oriental costumes, glittering in steel or draped
+in purple, who looked down upon him from their frames; smoke-blackened
+paintings wherein the eagle eyes and long moustaches of black hussars,
+contemporaries of Sobieski, or magnates in furred robes, with aigrettes
+in their caps, and curved sabres garnished with precious stones and
+enamel, attracted and held spellbound the silent child, while through
+the window floated in, sung by some shepherd, or played by wandering
+Tzigani, the refrain of the old patriotic ballad 'Czaty Demeter', the
+origin of which is lost in the mist of ages--
+
+   Remember, oh, yes! remember our ancestors! Brave, proud Magyars,
+   when you left the land of the Scythians, brave ancestors, great
+   forefathers, you did not suspect that your sons would be slaves!
+   Remember, oh, yes! remember our ancestors!
+
+Andras did remember them, and he knew by heart their history. He knew
+the heroism of Prince Zilah Sandor falling in Mohacz in 1566 beside his
+wife Hanska who had followed him, leaving in the cradle her son Janski,
+whose grandson, Zilah Janos, in 1867, at the very place where his
+ancestor had been struck, sabred the Turks, crying: "Sandor and Hanska,
+look down upon me; your blood avenges you!"
+
+There was not one of those men, whose portraits followed the child with
+their black eyes, who was not recorded in the history of his country for
+some startling deed or noble sacrifice. All had fought for Hungary: the
+greater part had died for her. There was a saying that the deathbed of
+the Zilahs was a bloody battleground. When he offered his name and his
+life to Maria Theresa, one of the Zilah princes had said proudly to the
+Empress: "You demand of the Hungarians gold, they bring you steel.
+The gold was to nourish your courtiers, the steel will be to save your
+crown. Forward!" These terrible ancestors were, besides, like all the
+magnates of Hungary, excessively proud of their nobility and their
+patriarchal system of feudalism. They knew how to protect their
+peasants, who were trained soldiers, how to fight for them, and how to
+die at their head; but force seemed to them supreme justice, and they
+asked nothing but their sword with which to defend their right. Andras's
+father, Prince Sandor, educated by a French tutor who had been driven
+from Paris by the Revolution, was the first of all his family to form
+any perception of a civilization based upon justice and law, and not
+upon the almighty power of the sabre. The liberal education which he
+had received, Prince Sandor transmitted to his son. The peasants, who
+detested the pride of the Magyars, and the middle classes of the cities,
+mostly tradesmen who envied the castles of these magnates, soon became
+attracted, fascinated, and enraptured with this transformation in the
+ancient family of the Zilahs. No man, not even Georgei, the Spartanlike
+soldier, nor the illustrious Kossuth, was more popular in 1849, at the
+time of the struggle against Austria, than Prince Sandor Zilah and his
+son, then a handsome boy of sixteen, but strong and well built as a
+youth of twenty.
+
+At this youthful age, Andras Zilah had been one of those magnates, who,
+the 'kalpach' on the head, the national 'attila' over the shoulder and
+the hand upon the hilt of the sword, had gone to Vienna to plead before
+the Emperor the cause of Hungary. They were not listened to, and one
+evening, the negotiations proving futile, Count Batthyanyi said to
+Jellachich:
+
+"We shall soon meet again upon the Drave!"
+
+"No," responded the Ban of Croatia, "I will go myself to seek you upon
+the Danube!"
+
+This was war; and Prince Sandor went, with his son, to fight bravely
+for the old kingdom of St. Stephen against the cannon and soldiers of
+Jellachich.
+
+All these years of blood and battle were now half forgotten by Prince
+Andras; but often Yanski Varhely, his companion of those days of
+hardship, the bold soldier who in former times had so often braved the
+broadsword of the Bohemian cuirassiers of Auersperg's regiment, would
+recall to him the past with a mournful shake of the head, and repeat,
+ironically, the bitter refrain of the song of defeat:
+
+        Dance, dance, daughters of Hungary!
+        Tread now the measure so long delayed.
+        Murdered our sons by the shot or the hangman!
+        In this land of pleasure, oh! be not dismayed;--
+        Now is the time, brown daughters of Hungary,
+        To dance to the measure of true hearts betrayed!
+
+And then, these melancholy words calling up the memory of disaster, all
+would revive before Andras Zilah's eyes--the days of mourning and the
+days of glory; the exploits of Bem; the victories of Dembiski; the
+Austrian flags taken at Goedolloe; the assaults of Buda; the defence
+of Comorn; Austria, dejected and defeated, imploring the aid of Russia;
+Hungary, beaten by the force of numbers, yet resisting Paskiewich as she
+had resisted Haynau, and appealing to Europe and the world in the name
+of the eternal law of nations, which the vanquished invoke, but which is
+never listened to by the countries where the lion is tearing his prey.
+And again, Zilah would remember the heroic fatherland struck down at
+Temesvar; the remnants of an armed people in refuge at Arad; and Klapka
+still holding out in the island of Comorn at the moment when Georgei
+had surrendered. Then, again, the obscure deaths of his comrades;
+the agonies in the ditches and in the depths of the woods; the last
+despairing cries of a conquered people overwhelmed by numbers:
+
+Dance, dance, daughters of Hungary!
+
+All this bloody past, enveloped as in a crimson cloud, but glorious with
+its gleams of hope and its flashes of victory, the Prince would revive
+with old Varhely, in the corner of whose eye at intervals a tear would
+glisten.
+
+They both saw again the last days of Comorn, with the Danube at the
+foot of the walls, and the leaves of the trees whirling in the September
+wind, and dispersed like the Hungarians themselves; and the shells
+falling upon the ramparts; and the last hours of the siege; and the
+years of mournful sadness and exile; their companions decimated,
+imprisoned, led to the gallows or the stake; the frightful silence and
+ruin falling like a winding-sheet over Hungary; the houses deserted, the
+fields laid waste, and the country, fertile yesterday, covered now with
+those Muscovite thistles, which were unknown in Hungary before the year
+of massacre, and the seeds of which the Cossack horses had imported in
+their thick manes and tails.
+
+Beloved Hungary, whose sons, disdaining the universe, used proudly to
+boast: "Have we not all that man needs? Banat, which gives us wheat;
+Tisza, wine; the mountain, gold and salt. Our country is sufficient for
+her children!" And this country, this fruitful country, was now covered
+with gibbets and corpses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. "WHEN HUNGARY IS FREE!"
+
+All these bitter memories Prince Andras, in spite of the years that had
+passed, kept ever in his mind one sad and tragic event--the burial of
+his father, Sandor Zilah, who was shot in the head by a bullet during an
+encounter with the Croats early in the month of January, 1849.
+
+Prince Sandor was able to grasp the hand of his son, and murmur in the
+ear of this hero of sixteen:
+
+"Remember! Love and defend the fatherland!"
+
+Then, as the Austrians were close at hand, it was necessary to bury the
+Prince in a trench dug in the snow, at the foot of a clump of fir-trees.
+
+Some Hungarian 'honveds, bourgeois' militia, and Varhely's hussars held
+at the edge of the black opening resinous torches, which the wintry wind
+shook like scarlet plumes, and which stained the snow with great red
+spots of light. Erect, at the head of the ditch, his fingers grasping
+the hand of Yanski Varhely, young Prince Andras gazed upon the earthy
+bed, where, in his hussar's uniform, lay Prince Sandor, his long blond
+moustache falling over his closed mouth, his blood-stained hands crossed
+upon his black embroidered vest, his right hand still clutching the
+handle of his sabre, and on his forehead, like a star, the round mark of
+the bit of lead that had killed him.
+
+Above, the whitened branches of the firs looked like spectres, and upon
+the upturned face of the dead soldier fell flakes of snow like congealed
+tears. Under the flickering of the torch-flames, blown about by the
+north wind, the hero seemed at times to move again, and a wild desire
+came to Andras to leap down into the grave and snatch away the body. He
+was an orphan now, his mother having died when he was an infant, and he
+was alone in the world, with only the stanch friendship of Varhely and
+his duty to his country to sustain him.
+
+"I will avenge you, father," he whispered to the patriot, who could no
+longer hear his words.
+
+The hussars and honveds had advanced, ready to fire a final salvo over
+the grave of the Prince, when, suddenly, gliding between the ranks of
+the soldiers, appeared a band of Tzigani, who began to play the March of
+Rakoczy, the Hungarian Marseillaise, the stirring melody pealing forth
+in the night-air, and lending a certain mysteriously touching element
+to the sad scene. A quick shudder ran through the ranks of the soldiers,
+ready to become avengers.
+
+The national hymn rang out like a song of glory over the resting-place
+of the vanquished. The soul of the dead seemed to speak in the voice of
+the heroic music, recalling to the harassed contestants for liberty the
+great days of the revolts of the fatherland, the old memories of the
+struggles against the Turks, the furious charges of the cavaliers across
+the free puszta, the vast Hungarian plain.
+
+And while, with long sweeps of his arm, the chief of the Tzigani marked
+the measure, and the 'czimbalom' poured forth its heartrending notes, it
+seemed to the poor fellows gathered about that the music of the March of
+Rakoczy summoned a whole fantastic squadron of avengers, horsemen with
+floating pelisses and herons' plumes in their hats, who, erect in their
+saddles and with sabres drawn, struck, struck the frightened enemy,
+and recovered, foot by foot, the conquered territory. There was in this
+exalted march a sound of horses' hoofs, the clash of arms, a shaking of
+the earth under the gallop of horsemen, a flash of agraffes, a rustle
+of pelisses in the wind, an heroic gayety and a chivalrous bravery,
+like the cry of a whole people of cavaliers sounding the charge of
+deliverance.
+
+And the young Prince, gazing down upon his dead father, remembered how
+many times those mute lips had related to him the legend of the czardas,
+that legend, symbolic of the history of Hungary, summing up all
+the bitter pain of the conquest, when the beautiful dark girls of
+Transylvania danced, their tears burning their cheeks, under the lash
+of the Osmanlis. At first, cold and motionless, like statues whose calm
+looks silently insulted their possessors, they stood erect beneath the
+eye of the Turk; then little by little, the sting of the master's whip
+falling upon their shoulders and tearing their sides and cheeks, their
+bodies twisted in painful, revolted spasms; the flesh trembled under the
+cord like the muscles of a horse beneath the spur; and, in the morbid
+exaltation of suffering, a sort of wild delirium took possession
+of them, their arms were waved in the air, their heads with hair
+dishevelled were thrown backward, and the captives, uttering a sound
+at once plaintive and menacing, danced, their dance, at first slow and
+melancholy, becoming gradually active, nervous, and interrupted by cries
+which resembled sobs. And the Hungarian czardas, symbolizing thus the
+dance of these martyrs, kept still, will always keep, the characteristic
+of contortions under the lash of bygone days; and, slow and languishing
+at first, then soon quick and agitated, tragically hysterical, it
+also is interrupted by melancholy chords, dreary, mournful notes and
+plaintive accents like drops of blood from a wound-from the mortal wound
+of Prince Sandor, lying there in his martial uniform.
+
+The bronzed Tzigani, fantastically illumined by the red glare of the
+torches, stood out against the white background like demons of revenge;
+and the hymn, feverish, bold, ardent, echoed through the snow-covered
+branches like a hurricane of victory. They were wandering musicians,
+who, the evening before, had been discovered in a neighboring village by
+some of Jellachich's Croats, and whom Prince Sandor had unceremoniously
+rescued at the head of his hussars; and they had come, with their
+ancient national airs, the voice of their country, to pay their debt to
+the fallen hero.
+
+When they had finished, the wintry night-wind bearing away the last
+notes of their war-song, the pistols of the hussars and the guns of
+the honveds discharged a salute over the grave. The earth and snow were
+shovelled in upon the body of Sandor Zilah, and Prince Andras drew away,
+after marking with a cross the place where his father reposed.
+
+A few paces away, he perceived, among the Tzigani musicians, a young
+girl, the only woman of the tribe, who wept with mournful sobbings like
+the echoes of the deserts of the Orient.
+
+He wondered why the girl wept so bitterly, when he, the son, could not
+shed a tear.
+
+"Because Prince Zilah Sandor was valiant among the valiant," she
+replied, in answer to his question, "and he died because he would not
+wear the talisman which I offered him."
+
+Andras looked at the girl.
+
+"What talisman?"
+
+"Some pebbles from the lakes of Tatra, sewn up in a little leather bag."
+
+Andras knew what a powerful superstition is attached by the people of
+Hungary to these deep lakes of Tatra, the "eyes of the sea," where, say
+the old legends, the most beautiful carbuncle in the world lies hidden,
+a carbuncle which would sparkle like the sun, if it could be discovered,
+and which is guarded by frogs with diamond eyes and with lumps of pure
+gold for feet. He felt more touched than astonished at the superstition
+of the Tzigana, and at the offer which, the evening before, Prince
+Sandor had refused with a smile.
+
+"Give me what you wished to give my father," he said. "I will keep it in
+memory of him."
+
+A bright, joyous light flashed for a moment across the face of the
+Tzigana. She extended to the young Prince the little bag of leather
+containing several small, round pebbles like grains of maize.
+
+"At all events," exclaimed the young girl, "there will be one Zilah whom
+the balls of the Croats will spare for the safety of Hungary."
+
+Andras slowly detached from his shoulder the silver agraffe, set with
+opals, which clasped his fur pelisse, and handed it to the gypsy, who
+regarded it with admiring eyes as it flashed in the red light.
+
+"The day when my father is avenged," he said, "and our Hungary is free,
+bring me this jewel, and you and yours come to the castle of the Zilahs.
+I will give you a life of peace in memory of this night of mourning."
+
+Already, at a distance, could be heard a rapid fusillade about the
+outposts. The Austrians had perhaps perceived the light from the
+torches, and were attempting a night attack.
+
+"Extinguish the torches!" cried Yanski Varhely.
+
+The resinous knots hissed as they were thrust into the snow, and the
+black, sinister night of winter, with the cries of the wind in the
+branches, fell upon the troop of men, ready to die as their chief had
+died; and all disappeared vision, phantoms--the Tzigani silently taking
+refuge in the sombre forest, while here and there could be heard the
+rattle of the ramrods as the honveds loaded their guns.
+
+This January night appeared now to Andras as an almost fantastic dream.
+Since then he had erected a mausoleum of marble on the very spot where
+Prince Sandor fell; and of all the moments of that romantic, picturesque
+war, the agonizing moment, the wild scene of the burial of his father,
+was most vivid in his memory--the picture of the warrior stretched in
+the snow, his hand on the handle of his sword, remained before his eyes,
+imperishable in its melancholy majesty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. "MY FATHER WAS A RUSSIAN!"
+
+When the war was over, the Prince roamed sadly for years about
+Europe--Europe, which, unmindful of the martyrs, had permitted the
+massacre of the vanquished. It was many years before he could accustom
+himself to the idea that he had no longer a country. He counted always
+upon the future; it was impossible that fate would forever be implacable
+to a nation. He often repeated this to Yanski Varhely, who had never
+forsaken him--Yanski Varhely, the impoverished old hussar, the ruined
+gentleman, now professor of Latin and mathematics at Paris, and living
+near the Prince off the product of his lessons and a small remnant he
+had managed to save from the wreck of his property.
+
+"Hungary will spring up again, Yanski; Hungary is immortal!" Andras
+would exclaim.
+
+"Yes, on one condition," was Varhely's response. "She must arrive at a
+comprehension that if she has succumbed, it is because she has committed
+faults. All defeats have their geneses. Before the enemy we were not
+a unit. There were too many discussions, and not enough action; such a
+state of affairs is always fatal."
+
+The years brought happy changes to Hungary. She practically regained her
+freedom; by her firmness she made the conquest of her own autonomy by
+the side of Austria. Deak's spirit, in the person of Andrassy, recovered
+the possession of power. But neither Andras nor Varhely returned to
+their country. The Prince had become, as he himself said with a smile,
+"a Magyar of Paris." He grew accustomed to the intellectual, refined
+life of the French city; and this was a consolation, at times, for the
+exile from his native land.
+
+"It is not a difficult thing to become bewitched with Paris," he would
+say, as if to excuse himself.
+
+He had no longer, it is true, the magnificent landscapes of his youth;
+the fields of maize, the steppes, dotted here and there with clumps of
+wild roses; the Carpathian pines, with their sombre murmur; and all
+the evening sounds which had been his infancy's lullaby; the cowbells,
+melancholy and indistinct; the snapping of the great whips of the
+czikos; the mounted shepherds, with their hussar jackets, crossing the
+plains where grew the plants peculiar to the country; and the broad
+horizons with the enormous arms of the windmills outlined against the
+golden sunset. But Paris, with its ever-varying seductions, its activity
+in art and science, its perpetual movement, had ended by becoming a real
+need to him, like a new existence as precious and as loved as the first.
+The soldier had become a man of letters, jotting down for himself, not
+for the public, all that struck him in his observation and his reading;
+mingling in all societies, knowing them all, but esteeming only one,
+that of honest people; and thus letting the years pass by, without
+suspecting that they were flying, regarding himself somewhat as a man
+away on a visit, and suddenly awaking one fine morning almost old,
+wondering how he had lived all this time of exile which, despite many
+mental troubles, seemed to him to have lasted only a few months.
+
+"We resemble," he said to Varhely, "those emigrants who never unpack
+their boxes, certain that they are soon to return home. They wait, and
+some day, catching a glimpse of themselves in a glass, they are amazed
+to find wrinkles and gray hairs."
+
+No longer having a home in his own country, Prince Andras had never
+dreamed of making another abroad. He hired the sumptuous hotel he
+inhabited at the top of the Champs Elysees, when houses were rather
+scattered there. Fashion, and the ascensional movement of Paris toward
+the Arc de Triomphe, had come to seek him. His house was rich in
+beautiful pictures and rare books, and he sometimes received there his
+few real friends, his companions in troublous times, like Varhely.
+He was generally considered a little of a recluse, although he loved
+society and showed himself, during the winter, at all entertainments
+where, by virtue of his fame and rank, he would naturally be expected
+to be present. But he carried with him a certain melancholy and
+gravity, which contrasted strongly with the frivolous trivialities and
+meaningless smiles of our modern society. In the summer, he usually
+passed two months at the seashore, where Varhely frequently joined him;
+and upon the leafy terrace of the Prince's villa the two friends had
+long and confidential chats, as they watched the sun sink into the sea.
+
+Andras had never thought of marrying. At first, he had a sort of feeling
+that he was doomed to an early death, ever expecting a renewal of the
+struggle with Austria; and he thought at that time that the future would
+bring to him his father's fate--a ball in the forehead and a ditch.
+Then, without knowing it, he had reached and passed his fortieth year.
+
+"Now it is too late," he said, gayly. "The psychological moment is long
+gone by. We shall both end old bachelors, my good Varhely, and spend our
+evenings playing checkers, that mimic warfare of old men."
+
+"Yes, that is all very well for me, who have no very famous name to
+perpetuate; but the Zilahs should not end with you. I want some sturdy
+little hussar whom I can teach to sit a horse, and who also will call me
+his good old Yanski."
+
+The Prince smiled, and then replied, gravely, almost sadly: "I greatly
+fear that one can not love two things at once; the heart is not elastic.
+I chose Hungary for my bride, and my life must be that of a widower."
+
+In the midst of the austere and thoughtful life he led, Andras
+preserved, nevertheless, a sort of youthful buoyancy. Many men of thirty
+were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who
+die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest
+kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and
+childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and
+which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by
+life, they never wholly lose; very manly and heroic in time of need and
+danger, they are by nature peculiarly exposed to treasons and deceptions
+which astonish but do not alter them. Since man, in the progress of
+time, must either harden or break to pieces, the hero in them is of
+iron; but, on the other hand, their hearts are easily wounded by the
+cruel hand of some woman or the careless one of a child.
+
+Andras Zilah had not yet loved deeply, as it was in his nature to
+love. More or less passing caprices had not dried up the spring of real
+passion which was at the bottom of his heart. But he had not sought this
+love; for he adored his Hungary as he would have loved a woman, and the
+bitter recollection of her defeat gave him the impression of a love that
+had died or been cruelly betrayed.
+
+Yanski, on the whole, had not greatly troubled himself to demonstrate
+mathematically or philosophically that a "hussar pupil" was an absolute
+necessity to him. People can not be forced, against their will, to
+marry; and the Prince, after all, was free, if he chose, to let the name
+of Zilah die with him.
+
+"Taking life as it is," old Varhely would growl, "perhaps it isn't
+necessary to bring into the world little beings who never asked to come
+here." And yet breaking off in his pessimism, and with a vision before
+his eyes of another Andras, young, handsome, leading his hussars to the
+charge "and yet, it is a pity, Andras, it is a pity."
+
+The decisions of men are more often dependent upon chance than upon
+their own will. Prince Andras received an invitation to dinner one day
+from the little Baroness Dinati, whom he liked very much, and whose
+husband, Orso Dinati, one of the defenders of Venice in the time of
+Manin, had been his intimate friend. The house of the Baroness was a
+very curious place; the reporter Jacquemin, who was there at all
+times, testing the wines and correcting the menus, would have called
+it "bizarre." The Baroness received people in all circles of society;
+oddities liked her, and she did not dislike oddities. Very honest, very
+spirituelle, an excellent woman at heart, she gave evening parties,
+readings from unheard-of books, and performances of the works of
+unappreciated musicians; and the reporters, who came to absorb her
+salads and drink her punch, laughed at her in their journals before
+their supper was digested.
+
+The Prince, as we have said, was very fond of the Baroness, with an
+affection which was almost fraternal. He pardoned her childishness and
+her little absurdities for the sake of her great good qualities. "My
+dear Prince," she said to him one day, "do you know that I would throw
+myself into the fire for you?"
+
+"I am sure of it; but there would not be any great merit in your doing
+so."
+
+"And why not, please?"
+
+"Because you would not run any risk of being burned. This must be so,
+because you receive in your house a crowd of highly suspicious people,
+and no one has ever suspected you yourself. You are a little salamander,
+the prettiest salamander I ever met. You live in fire, and you have
+neither upon your face nor your reputation the slightest little scorch."
+
+"Then you think that my guests are"----
+
+"Charming. Only, they are of two kinds: those whom I esteem, and who do
+not amuse me--often; and those who amuse me, and whom I esteem--never."
+
+"I suppose you will not come any more to the Rue Murillo, then?"
+
+"Certainly I shall--to see you."
+
+And it really was to see her that the Prince went to the Baroness
+Dinati's, where his melancholy characteristics clashed with so many
+worldly follies and extravagances. The Baroness seemed to have a
+peculiar faculty in choosing extraordinary guests: Peruvians, formerly
+dictators, now become insurance agents, or generals transformed into
+salesmen for some wine house; Cuban chiefs half shot to pieces by
+the Spaniards; Cretes exiled by the Turks; great personages from
+Constantinople, escaped from the Sultan's silken bowstring, and
+displaying proudly their red fez in Paris, where the opera permitted
+them to continue their habits of polygamy; Americans, whose gold-mines
+or petroleum-wells made them billionaires for a winter, only to go to
+pieces and make them paupers the following summer; politicians out of a
+place; unknown authors; misunderstood poets; painters of the future-in
+short, the greater part of the people who were invited by Prince Andras
+to his water-party, Baroness Dinati having pleaded for her friends and
+obtained for them cards of invitation. It was a sort of ragout of real
+and shady celebrities, an amusing, bustling crowd, half Bohemian, half
+aristocratic, entirely cosmopolitan. Prince Andras remembered once
+having dined with a staff officer of Garibaldi's army on one side of
+him, and the Pope's nuncio on the other.
+
+On a certain evening the Baroness was very anxious that the Prince
+should not refuse her latest invitation.
+
+"I am arranging a surprise for you," she said. "I am going to have to
+dinner"--
+
+"Whom? The Mikado? The Shah of Persia?"
+
+"Better than the Mikado. A charming young girl who admires you
+profoundly, for she knows by heart the whole history of your battles of
+1849. She has read Georgei, Klapka, and all the rest of them; and she is
+so thoroughly Bohemian in heart, soul and race, that she is universally
+called the Tzigana."
+
+"The Tzigana?"
+
+This simple word, resembling the clank of cymbals, brought up to Prince
+Andras a whole world of recollections. 'Hussad czigany'! The rallying
+cry of the wandering musicians of the puszta had some element in it like
+the cherished tones of the distant bells of his fatherland.
+
+"Ah! yes, indeed, my dear Baroness," he said; "that is a charming
+surprise. I need not ask if your Tzigana is pretty; all the Tzigani of
+my country are adorable, and I am sure I shall fall in love with her."
+
+The Prince had no notion how prophetic his words were. The Tzigana,
+whom the Baroness requested him to take in to dinner, was Marsa, Marsa
+Laszlo, dressed in one of the black toilettes which she affected, and
+whose clear, dark complexion, great Arabian eyes, and heavy, wavy hair
+seemed to Andras's eyes to be the incarnation, in a prouder and more
+refined type, of the warm, supple, nervous beauty of the girls of his
+country.
+
+He was surprised and strangely fascinated, attracted by the incongruous
+mixture of extreme refinement and a sort of haughty unconventionality he
+found in Marsa. A moment before, he had noticed how silent, almost rigid
+she was, as she leaned back in her armchair; but now this same face was
+strangely animated, illumined by some happy emotion, and her eyes burned
+like coals of fire as she fixed them upon Andras.
+
+During the whole dinner, the rest of the dining-room disappeared to the
+Prince; he saw only the girl at his side; and the candles and polished
+mirrors were only there to form a sparkling background for her pale,
+midnight beauty.
+
+"Do you know, Prince," said Marsa, in her rich, warm contralto voice,
+whose very accents were like a caress, "do you know that, among all
+those who fought for our country, you are the one admiration of my
+life?"
+
+He smiled, and mentioned more illustrious names.
+
+"No, no," she answered; "those are not the names I care for, but yours.
+I will tell you why."
+
+And she recalled, in a voice vibrating with emotion, all that Prince
+Zilah Sandor and his son had attempted, twenty years before, for the
+liberty of Hungary. She told the whole story in the most vivid manner;
+had her age permitted her to have been present at those battles, she
+could not have related them with more spirited enthusiasm.
+
+"I know, perfectly, how, at the head of your hussars, you wrested from
+the soldiers of Jellachich the first standard captured by the Hungarians
+from the ranks of Austria. Shall I tell you the exact date? and the day
+of the week? It was Thursday."
+
+The whole history, ignored, forgotten, lost in the smoke of more recent
+wars, the strange, dark-eyed girl, knew day by day, hour by hour; and
+there, in that Parisian dining-room, surrounded by all that crowd,
+where yesterday's 'bon mot', the latest scandal, the new operetta, were
+subjects of paramount importance, Andras, voluntarily isolated, saw
+again, present and living, his whole heroic past rise up before him, as
+beneath the wave of a fairy's wand.
+
+"But how do you know me so well?" he asked, fixing his clear eyes upon
+Marsa Laszlo's face. "Was your father one of my soldiers?"
+
+"My father was a Russian," responded Marsa, abruptly, her voice suddenly
+becoming harsh and cutting.
+
+"A Russian?"
+
+"Yes, a Russian," she repeated, emphasizing the word with a sort of dull
+anger. "My mother alone was a Tzigana, and my mother's beauty was part
+of the spoils of those who butchered your soldiers?"
+
+In the uproar of conversation, which became more animated with the
+dessert, she could not tell him of the sorrows of her life; and yet,
+he guessed there was some sad story in the life of the young girl, and
+almost implored her to speak, stopping just at the limit where sympathy
+might change into indiscretion.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, as she was silent, with a dark shadow
+overspreading her face. "I have no right to know your life simply
+because you are so well acquainted with mine."
+
+"Oh! you!" she said, with a sad smile; "your life is history; mine is
+drama, melodrama even. There is a great difference."
+
+"Pardon my presumption!"
+
+"Oh! I will willingly tell you of my life, if the existence of a useless
+being like myself can interest you; but not here in the noise of this
+dinner. It would be absurd," with a change of tone, "to mingle tears
+with champagne. By-and-bye! By-and-bye!"
+
+She made an evident effort to appear gay, like the pretty women who were
+there, and who, despite their prettiness, seemed to Andras perfectly
+insignificant; but she did not succeed in driving away the cloud of
+sadness which overshadowed her exquisite, dark face. And in the ears
+of the Prince rang again the bitter accents of that voice saying in a
+harsh, almost revolted tone:
+
+"Yes, a Russian! My father was a Russian!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. A GYPSY PRINCESS
+
+The mystery which seemed to envelop Marsa, the flash of anger with which
+she had spoken of the Russian who was her father, all attracted
+the Prince toward her; and he experienced a deliciously disquieting
+sentiment, as if the secret of this girl's existence were now grafted
+upon his own life.
+
+She seemed to have no wish to keep her secret from him. At their first
+meeting, during the conversation which followed the dinner and the
+musical exhibition given by extraordinary musicians with long, unkempt
+locks, Marsa, trusting with a sort of joy to the one whom she regarded
+as a hero, told Prince Andras the story of her life.
+
+She related to him the assault made by soldiers of Paskiewich upon
+the little Hungarian village, and how her grandfather, leaving his
+czimbalom, had fired upon the Russians from the ranks of the honveds.
+There was a combat, or rather a butchery, in the sole street of the
+town, one of the last massacres of the campaign. The Russians destroyed
+everything, shooting down the prisoners, and burning the poor little
+houses. There were some women among the Hungarians and Tzigani; they
+had loaded the guns of the wounded, comforted the dying and avenged the
+dead. Many of them were killed. One of them, the youngest and prettiest,
+a gypsy, was seized by the Russian officer, and, when peace was declared
+soon after, carried off by him to Russia. This was Tisza Laszlo, Marsa's
+mother. The officer, a great Russian nobleman, a handsome fellow and
+extremely rich, really loved her with a mad sort of love. He forced her
+to become his mistress; but he tried in every way to make her pardon the
+brutality of his passion; keeping her half a captive in his castle near
+Moscow, and yet offering her, by way of expiation, not only his
+fortune but his name, the princely title of which the Tchereteff s,
+his ancestors, had been so proud, and which the daughter of wandering
+Tzigani refused with mingled hatred and disgust. Princess? She, the
+gypsy, a Russian princess? The title would have appeared to her like
+a new and still more abhorrent stigma. He implored her, but she was
+obdurate. It was a strange, tragic existence these two beings led, shut
+up in the immense castle, from the windows of which Tisza could perceive
+the gilded domes of Moscow, the superb city in which she would never set
+her foot, preferring the palace, sad and gloomy as a cell. Alone in the
+world, the sole survivor of her massacred tribe, the Russians to her
+were the murderers of her people, the assassins of the free musicians
+with eagle profiles she used to follow as they played the czardas from
+village to village.
+
+She never saw Prince Tchereteff, handsome, generous, charming, loving
+her and trembling before her glance although he had ruthlessly kidnapped
+her from her country, that she did not think of him, sword in hand,
+entering the burning Hungarian village, his face reddened by the flames,
+as the bayonets of his soldiers were reddened with blood. She hated this
+tall young man, his drooping moustache, his military uniform, his broad
+figure, his white-gloved hands: he represented to the imprisoned Tzigana
+the conqueror and murderer of her people. And yet a daughter was born to
+them. She had defended herself with the cries of a tigress; and then she
+had longed to die, to die of hunger, since, a close prisoner, she could
+not obtain possession of a weapon, nor cast herself into the water. She
+had lived, nevertheless, and then her daughter reconciled her to life.
+The child which was born to her was all in all to Tizsa. Marsa was an
+exact reproduction, feature by feature, of her mother, and, strange
+to say, daughters generally resembling the father, had nothing of
+Tchereteff, nothing Russian about her: on the contrary, she was all
+Tzigana--Tzigana in the clear darkness of her skin, in her velvety eyes,
+and her long, waving black hair, with its bronze reflections, which the
+mother loved to wind about her thin fingers.
+
+Her beauty, faded by long, slow sorrow, Tisza found again in her child,
+a true daughter of Hungary like herself; and, as Marsa grew up, she
+told her the legends, the songs, the heroism, the martyrdom, of Hungary,
+picturing to the little girl the great, grassy plain, the free puszta,
+peopled with a race in whose proud language the word honor recurs again
+and again.
+
+Marsa grew up in the Muscovite castle, loving nothing in the world
+except her mother, and regarding with frightened eyes the blond stranger
+who sometimes took her upon his knees and gazed sadly into her face.
+Before this man, who was her father, she felt as if she were in the
+presence of an enemy. As Tisza never went out, Marsa rarely quitted
+the castle; and, when she went to Moscow, she hastened to return to her
+mother. The very gayeties of that noisy city weighed upon her heart; for
+she never forgot the war-tales of the Tzigana, and, perhaps, among the
+passers-by was the wretch who had shot down her grandfather, old Mihal.
+
+The Tzigana cultivated, with a sort of passion, a love of far-off
+Hungary and a hatred for the master in the impressionable mind of her
+daughter. There is a Servian proverb which says, that when a Wallachian
+has crossed the threshold the whole house becomes Wallachian. Tisza did
+not wish the house to become Hungarian; but she did wish that the child
+of her loins should be and should remain Hungarian.
+
+The servants of Prince Tchereteff never spoke of their mistress except
+as The Tzigana, and this was the name which Marsa wished to bear also.
+It seemed to her like a title of nobility.
+
+And the years passed without the Tzigana pardoning the Russian, and
+without Marsa ever having called him father.
+
+In the name of their child, the Prince one day solemnly asked Tisza
+Laszlo to consent to become his wife, and the mother refused.
+
+"But our daughter?" said the Prince.
+
+"My daughter? She will bear the name of her mother, which at least is
+not a Russian name."
+
+The Prince was silenced.
+
+As Marsa grew up, Moscow became displeasing to the Prince. He had his
+daughter educated as if she were destined to be the Czarina. He summoned
+to the castle a small army of instructors, professors of music and
+singing; French, English, and German masters, drawing masters, etc.,
+etc. The young girl, with the prodigious power of assimilation peculiar
+to her race, learned everything, loving knowledge for its own sake,
+but, nevertheless, always deeply moved by the history of that unknown
+country, which was that of her mother, and even her own, the land of
+her heart and her soul-Hungary. She knew, from her mother, about all its
+heroes: Klapka, Georgei, Dembiski; Bem, the conqueror of Buda; Kossuth,
+the dreamer of a sort of feudal liberty; and those chivalrous Zilah
+princes, father and son, the fallen martyr and the living hero.
+
+Prince Tchereteff, French in education and sentiment, wished to take to
+France the child, who did not bear his name, but whom he adored. France
+also exercised a powerful fascination over Marsa's imagination; and she
+departed joyously for Paris, accompanied by the Tzigana, her mother, who
+felt like a prisoner set at liberty. To quit Russian soil was in itself
+some consolation, and who knew? perhaps she might again see her dear
+fatherland.
+
+Tisza, in fact, breathed more freely in Paris, repeating however, like a
+mournful refrain, the proverb of her country: Away from Hungary, life
+is not life. The Prince purchased, at Maisons-Lafitte, not far from the
+forest of Saint-Germain, a house surrounded by an immense garden. Here,
+as formerly at Moscow, Tisza and the Prince lived together, and yet
+apart--the Tzigana, implacable in her resentment, bitterly refusing all
+pardon to the Russian, and always keeping alive in Marsa a hatred of
+all that was Muscovite; the Prince, disconsolate, gloomy, discouraged
+between the woman whom he adored and whose heart he could not win, and
+the girl, so wonderfully beautiful, the living portrait of her mother,
+and who treated him with the cold respect one shows to a stranger.
+
+Not long after their arrival in Paris, a serious heart trouble attacked
+Marsa's father. He summoned to his deathbed the Tzigana and her
+daughter; and, in a sort of supreme confession, he openly asked his
+child, before the mother, to forgive him for her birth.
+
+"Marsa," he said, slowly, "your birth, which should make the joy of my
+existence, is the remorse of my whole life. But I am dying of the love
+which I can not conquer. Will you kiss me as a token that you have
+pardoned me?"
+
+For the first time, perhaps, Marsa's lips, trembling with emotion, then
+touched the Prince's forehead. But, before kissing him, her eyes had
+sought those of her mother, who bowed her head in assent.
+
+"And you," murmured the dying Prince, "will you forgive me, Tisza?"
+
+The Tzigana saw again her native village in flames, her brothers dead,
+her father murdered, and this man, now lying thin and pale amid the
+pillows, erect, with sabre drawn, crying: "Courage! Charge! Forward!"
+
+Then she saw herself dragged almost beneath a horse's hoofs, cast into
+a wagon with wrists bound together, carried in the rear of an army with
+the rest of the victor's spoils, and immured within Russian walls. She
+felt again on her lips the degradation of the first kiss of this man
+whose suppliant, pitiful love was hideous to her.
+
+She made a step toward the dying man as if to force herself to whisper,
+"I forgive you;" but all the resentment and suffering of her life
+mounted to her heart, almost stifling her, and she paused, going no
+farther, and regarding with a haggard glance the man whose eyes implored
+her pardon, and who, after raising his pale face from the pillow, let
+his head fall back again with one long, weary sigh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE STORY OF MARSA
+
+Prince Tchereteff left his whole fortune to Marsa Laszlo, leaving her in
+the hands of his uncle Vogotzine, an old, ruined General, whose property
+had been confiscated by the Czar, and who lived in Paris half imbecile
+with fear, having become timid as a child since his release from
+Siberia, where he had been sent on some pretext or other, no one knew
+exactly the reason why.
+
+It had been necessary to obtain the sovereign intervention of the
+Czar--that Czar whose will is the sole law, a law above laws--to permit
+Prince Tchereteff to give his property to a foreigner, a girl without a
+name. The state would gladly have seized upon the fortune, as the Prince
+had no other relative save an outlaw; but the Czar graciously gave his
+permission, and Marsa inherited.
+
+Old General Vogotzine was, in fact, the only living relative of Prince
+Tchereteff. In consideration of a yearly income, the Prince charged him
+to watch over Marsa, and see to her establishment in life. Rich as she
+was, Marsa would have no lack of suitors; but Tisza, the half-civilized
+Tzigana, was not the one to guide and protect a young girl in Paris.
+The Prince believed Vogotzine to be less old and more acquainted with
+Parisian life than he really was, and it was a consolation to the father
+to feel that his daughter would have a guardian.
+
+Tisza did not long survive the Prince. She died in that Russian house,
+every stone of which she hated, even to the Muscovite crucifix over the
+door, which her faith, however, forbade her to have removed; she died
+making her daughter swear that the last slumber which was coming to her,
+gently lulling her to rest after so much suffering, should be slept
+in Hungarian soil; and, after the Tzigana's death, this young girl of
+twenty, alone with Vogotzine, who accompanied her on the gloomy journey
+with evident displeasure, crossed France, went to Vienna, sought in
+the Hungarian plain the place where one or two miserable huts and some
+crumbling walls alone marked the site of the village burned long ago by
+Tchereteff's soldiers; and there, in Hungarian soil, close to the spot
+where the men of her tribe had been shot down, she buried the Tzigana,
+whose daughter she so thoroughly felt herself to be, that, in breathing
+the air of the puszta, she seemed to find again in that beloved land
+something already seen, like a vivid memory of a previous existence.
+
+And yet, upon the grave of the martyr, Marsa prayed also for the
+executioner. She remembered that the one who reposed in the cemetery of
+Pere-Lachaise, beneath a tomb in the shape of a Russian dome, was her
+father, as the Tzigana, interred in Hungary, was her mother; and she
+asked in her prayer, that these two beings, separated in life, should
+pardon each other in the unknown, obscure place of departed souls.
+
+So Marsa Laszlo was left alone in the world. She returned to France,
+which she had become attached to, and shut herself up in the villa of
+Maisons-Lafitte, letting old Vogotzine install himself there as a sort
+of Mentor, more obedient than a servant, and as silent as a statue;
+and this strange guardian, who had formerly fought side by side with
+Schamyl, and cut down the Circassians with the sang-froid of a butcher's
+boy wringing the neck of a fowl, and who now scarcely dared to open his
+lips, as if the entire police force of the Czar had its eye upon him;
+this old soldier, who once cared nothing for privations, now, provided
+he had his chocolate in the morning, his kummel with his coffee at
+breakfast, and a bottle of brandy on the table all day--left Marsa free
+to think, act, come and go as she pleased.
+
+She had accepted the Prince's legacy, but with this mental reservation
+and condition, that the Hungarian colony of Paris should receive half of
+it. It seemed to her that the money thus given to succor the compatriots
+of her mother would be her father's atonement. She waited, therefore,
+until she had attained her majority; and then she sent this enormous sum
+to the Hungarian aid society, saying that the donor requested that
+part of the amount should be used in rebuilding the little village
+in Transylvania which had been burned twenty years before by Russian
+troops. When they asked what name should be attached to so princely a
+gift, Marsa replied: "That which was my mother's and which is mine, The
+Tzigana." More than ever now did she cling to that cognomen of which she
+was so proud.
+
+"And," she said to Zilah, after she had finished the recital of her
+story, "it is because I am thus named that I have the right to speak to
+you of yourself."
+
+Prince Andras listened with passionate attention to the beautiful girl,
+thus evoking for him the past, confident and even happy to speak and
+make herself known to the man whose life of heroic devotion she knew so
+well.
+
+He was not astonished at her sudden frankness, at the confidence
+displayed at a first meeting; and it seemed to him that he had long been
+acquainted with this Tzigana, whose very name he had been ignorant of
+a few hours before. It appeared to him quite simple that Marsa should
+confide in him, as he on his side would have related to her his whole
+life, if she had asked it with a glance from her dark eyes. He felt that
+he had reached one of the decisive moments of his life. Marsa called up
+visions of his youth-his first tender dreams of love, rudely broken by
+the harsh voice of war; and he felt as he used to feel, in the days
+long gone by, when he sat beneath the starry skies of a summer night
+and listened to the old, heart-stirring songs of his country and the
+laughter of the brown maidens of Budapest.
+
+"Prince," said Marsa Laszlo, suddenly, "do you know that I have been
+seeking you for a long time, and that when the Baroness Dinati presented
+you to me, she fulfilled one of my most ardent desires?"
+
+"Me, Mademoiselle? You have been seeking me?"
+
+"Yes, you. Tisza, of whom I spoke to you, my Tzigana mother, who bore
+the name of the blessed river of our country, taught me to repeat your
+name. She met you years ago, in the saddest moment of your life."
+
+"Your mother?" said Andras, waiting anxiously for the young girl to
+continue.
+
+"Yes, my mother."
+
+She pointed to the buckle which clasped the belt of her dress.
+
+"See," she said.
+
+Andras felt a sudden pang, which yet was not altogether pain, dart
+through his heart, and his eyes wandered questioningly from the buckle
+to Marsa's face. Smiling, but her beautiful lips mute, Marsa seemed
+to say to him: "Yes, it is the agraffe which you detached from your
+soldier's pelisse and gave to an unknown Tzigana near your father's
+grave."
+
+The silver ornament, incrusted with opals, recalled sharply to Prince
+Zilah that sad January night when the dead warrior had been laid in his
+last resting-place. He saw again the sombre spot, the snowy fir-trees,
+the black trench, and the broad, red reflections of the torches, which,
+throwing a flickering light upon the dead, seemed to reanimate the pale,
+cold face.
+
+And that daughter of the wandering musicians who had, at the open grave,
+played as a dirge, or, rather, as a ringing hymn of resurrection and
+deliverance, the chant of the fatherland-that dark girl to whom he
+had said: "Bring me this jewel, and come and live in peace with the
+Zilahs"--was the mother of this beautiful, fascinating creature, whose
+every word, since he had first met her a few hours before, had exercised
+such a powerful effect upon him.
+
+"So," he said, slowly, with a sad smile, "your mother's talisman was
+worth more than mine. I have kept the lake pebbles she gave me, and
+death has passed me by; but the opals of the agraffe did not bring
+happiness to your mother. It is said that those stones are unlucky. Are
+you superstitious?"
+
+"I should not be Tisza's daughter if I did not believe a little in all
+that is romantic, fantastic, improbable, impossible even. Besides, the
+opals are forgiven now: for they have permitted me to show you that
+you were not unknown to me, Prince; and, as you see, I wear this dear
+agraffe always. It has a double value to me, since it recalls the memory
+of my poor mother and the name of a hero."
+
+She spoke these words in grave, sweet accents, which seemed more
+melodious to Prince Andras than all the music of Baroness Dinati's
+concert. He divined that Marsa Laszlo found as much pleasure in speaking
+to him as he felt in listening. As he gazed at her, a delicate flush
+spread over Marsa's pale, rather melancholy face, tingeing even her
+little, shell-like ears, and making her cheeks glow with the soft, warm
+color of a peach.
+
+Just at this moment the little Baroness came hastily up to them, and,
+with an assumed air of severity, began to reproach Marsa for neglecting
+the unfortunate musicians, suddenly breaking off to exclaim:
+
+"Really, you are a hundred times prettier than ever this evening, my
+dear Marsa. What have you been doing to yourself?"
+
+"Oh! it is because I am very happy, I suppose," replied Marsa.
+
+"Ah! my dear Prince," and the Baroness broke into a merry peal of
+laughter, "it is you, O ever-conquering hero, who have worked this
+miracle."
+
+But, as if she had been too hasty in proclaiming aloud her happiness,
+the Tzigana suddenly frowned, a harsh, troubled look crept into her dark
+eyes, and her cheeks became pale as marble, while her gaze was fixed
+upon a tall young man who was crossing the salon and coming toward her.
+
+Instinctively Andras Zilah followed her look. Michel Menko was advancing
+to salute Marsa Laszlo, and take with affectionate respect the hand
+which Andras extended to him.
+
+Marsa coldly returned the low bow of the young man, and took no part
+in the conversation which followed. Menko remained but a few moments,
+evidently embarrassed at his reception; and after his departure, Zilah,
+who had noticed the Tzigana's coldness, asked her if she knew his
+friend.
+
+"Very well," she said, in a peculiar tone.
+
+"It would be difficult to imagine so from the way in which you received
+him," said Andras, laughing. "Poor Michel! Have you any reason to be
+angry with him?"
+
+"None."
+
+"I like him very much. He is a charming boy, and his father was one of
+my companions in arms. I have been almost a guardian to his son. We are
+kinsmen, and when the young count entered diplomacy he asked my advice,
+as he hesitated to serve Austria. I told him that, after having fought
+Austria with the sword, it was our duty to absorb it by our talents and
+devotion. Was I not right? Austria is to-day subservient to Hungary,
+and, when Vienna acts, Vienna glances toward Pesth to see if the Magyars
+are satisfied. Michel Menko has therefore served his country well; and I
+don't understand why he gave up diplomacy. He makes me uneasy: he seems
+to me, like all young men of his generation, a little too undecided what
+object to pursue, what duty to fulfil. He is nervous, irresolute.
+We were more unfortunate but more determined; we marched straight on
+without that burden of pessimism with which our successors are loaded
+down. I am sorry that Michel has resigned his position: he had a fine
+future before him, and he would have made a good diplomatist."
+
+"Too good, perhaps," interrupted Marsa, dryly.
+
+"Ah, decidedly," retorted the Prince, with a smile, "you don't like my
+poor Menko."
+
+"He is indifferent to me;" and the way in which she pronounced the words
+was a terrible condemnation of Michel Menko. "But," added the Tzigana,
+"he himself has told me all that you have said of him. He, on his side,
+has a great affection and a deep veneration for you; and it is not
+astonishing that it should be so, for men like you are examples for men
+like him, and--"
+
+She paused abruptly, as if unwilling to say more.
+
+"And what?" asked the Prince.
+
+"Nothing. 'Examples' is enough; I don't know what I was going to say."
+
+She made a little gesture with her pretty hand as if to dismiss the
+subject; and, after wondering a moment at the girl's singular reticence
+after her previous frankness, Andras thought only of enjoying her grace
+and charm, until the Tzigana gave him her hand and bade him good-night,
+begging him to remember that she would be very happy and proud to
+receive him in her own house.
+
+"But, indeed," she added, with a laugh which displayed two rows of
+pearly teeth, "it is not for me to invite you. That is a terrible breach
+of the proprieties. General!"
+
+At her call, from a group near by, advanced old General Vogotzine, whom
+Zilah had not noticed since the beginning of the evening. Marsa laid her
+hand on his arm, and said, distinctly, Vogotzine being a little deaf:
+
+"Prince Andras Zilah, uncle, will do us the honor of coming to see us at
+Maisons-Lafitte."
+
+"Ah! Ah! Very happy! Delighted! Very flattering of you, Prince,"
+stammered the General, pulling his white moustache, and blinking his
+little round eyes. "Andras Zilah! Ah! 1848! Hard days, those! All
+over now, though! All over now! Ah! Ah! We no longer cut one another's
+throats! No! No! No longer cut one another's throats!"
+
+He held out to Andras his big, fat hand, and repeated, as he shook that
+of the Prince:
+
+"Delighted! Enchanted! Prince Zilah! Yes! Yes!"
+
+In another moment they were gone, and the evening seemed to Andras like
+a vision, a beautiful, feverish dream.
+
+He sent away his coupe, and returned home on foot, feeling the need
+of the night air; and, as he walked up the Champs-Elysees beneath the
+starry sky, he was surprised to find a new, youthful feeling at his
+heart, stirring his pulses like the first, soft touch of spring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. "HAVE I NO RIGHT TO BE HAPPY"
+
+There was a certain womanly coquetry, mingled with a profound love of
+the soil where her martyred mother reposed, in the desire which Marsa
+Laszlo had to be called the Tzigana, instead of by her own name.
+The Tzigana! This name, as clear cut, resonant and expressive as the
+czimbaloms of the Hungarian musicians, lent her an additional, original
+charm. She was always spoken of thus, when she was perceived riding her
+pure-blooded black mare, or driving, attached to a victoria, a pair of
+bay horses of the Kisber breed. Before the horses ran two superb Danish
+hounds, of a lustrous dark gray, with white feet, eyes of a peculiar
+blue, rimmed with yellow, and sensitive, pointed ears--Duna and Bundas,
+the Hungarian names for the Danube and the Velu.
+
+These hounds, and an enormous dog of the Himalayas, with a thick, yellow
+coat and long, sharp teeth, a half-savage beast, bearing the name
+of Ortog (Satan), were Marsa's companions in her walks; and their
+submission to their young mistress, whom they could have knocked
+down with one pat of their paws, gave the Tzigana reputation for
+eccentricity; which, however, neither pleased nor displeased her, as she
+was perfectly indifferent to the opinion of the public at large.
+
+She continued to inhabit, near the forest of Saint-Germain, beyond the
+fashionable avenues, the villa, ornamented with the holy Muscovite icon,
+which Prince Tchereteff had purchased; and she persisted in remaining
+there alone with old Vogotzine, who regarded her respectfully with his
+round eyes, always moist with 'kwass' or brandy.
+
+Flying the crowded city, eager for space and air, a true daughter of
+Hungary, Marsa loved to ride through the beautiful, silent park, down
+the long, almost deserted avenues, toward the bit of pale blue horizon
+discernible in the distance at the end of the sombre arch formed by the
+trees. Birds, startled by the horses' hoofs, rose here and there out of
+the bushes, pouring forth their caroling to the clear ether; and Marsa,
+spurring her thoroughbred, would dash in a mad gallop toward a little,
+almost unknown grove of oaks, with thickets full of golden furze and
+pink heather, where woodcutters worked, half buried in the long grass
+peppered with blue cornflowers and scarlet poppies.
+
+Or, at other times, with Duna and Bundas bounding before her,
+disappearing, returning, disappearing again with yelps of joy, it was
+Marsa's delight to wander alone under the great limes of the Albine
+avenue--shade over her head, silence about her--and then slowly, by way
+of a little alley bordered with lofty poplars trembling at every breath
+of wind, to reach the borders of the forest. In ten steps she would
+suddenly find herself plunged in solitude as in a bath of verdure, shade
+and oblivion. The sweet silence surrounding her calmed her, and she
+would walk on and on though the thick grass under the great trees. The
+trunks of the giant oaks were clothed in robes of emerald moss, and wild
+flowers of all descriptions raised their heads amid the grass. There
+was no footstep, no sound; a bee lazily humming, a brilliant butterfly
+darting across the path, something quick and red flashing up a tree--a
+squirrel frightened by the Danish hounds; that was all. And Marsa was
+happy with the languorous happiness which nature gives, her forehead
+cooled by the fresh breeze, her eyes rested by the deep green which hid
+the shoes, her whole being refreshed by the atmosphere of peace which
+fell from the trees.
+
+Then, calling her dogs, she would proceed to a little farmhouse, and,
+sitting down under the mulberry trees, wait until the farmer's wife
+brought her some newly baked bread and a cup of milk, warm from the
+cows. Then she would remain idly there, surrounded by chickens, ducks,
+and great, greedy geese, which she fed, breaking the bread between her
+white fingers, while Duna and Bundas crouched at her feet, pricking up
+their ears, and watching these winged denizens of the farmyard, which
+Marsa forbade them to touch. Finally the Tzigana would slowly wend her
+way home, enter the villa, sit down before the piano, and play, with
+ineffable sweetness, like souvenirs of another life, the free and
+wandering life of her mother, the Hungarian airs of Janos Nemeth, the
+sad "Song of Plevna," the sparkling air of "The Little Brown Maid of
+Budapest," and that bitter; melancholy romance, "The World holds but One
+Fair Maiden," a mournful and despairing melody, which she preferred
+to all others, because it responded, with its tearful accents, to a
+particular state of her own heart.
+
+The girl was evidently concealing some secret suffering. The bitter
+memory of her early years? Perhaps. Physical pain? Possibly. She had
+been ill some years before, and had been obliged to pass a winter at
+Pau. But it seemed rather some mental anxiety or torture which impelled
+the Tzigana to seek solitude and silence in her voluntary retreat.
+
+The days passed thus in that villa of Maisons-Lafitte, where Tisza died.
+Very often, in the evening, Marsa would shut herself up in the solitude
+of that death-chamber, which remained just as her mother had left it.
+Below, General Vogotzine smoked his pipe, with a bottle of brandy for
+company: above, Marsa prayed.
+
+One night she went out, and through the sombre alleys, in the tender
+light of the moon, made her way to the little convent in the Avenue
+Egle, where the blue sisters were established; those sisters whom she
+often met in the park, with their full robes of blue cloth, their white
+veils, a silver medallion and crucifix upon their breasts, and a rosary
+of wooden beads suspended at their girdles. The little house of the
+community was shut, the grating closed. The only sign of life was in the
+lighted windows of the chapel.
+
+Marsa paused there, leaning her heated brow against the cold bars of
+iron, with a longing for death, and a terrible temptation to end all by
+suicide.
+
+"Who knows?" she murmured. "Perhaps forgetfulness, deep, profound
+forgetfulness, lies within these walls." Forgetfulness! Marsa, then,
+wished to forget? What secret torture gave to her beautiful face that
+expression so bitter, so terrible in its agony?
+
+She stood leaning there, gazing at the windows of the chapel. Broken
+words of prayers, of muttered verses and responses, reached her like the
+tinkling of far-off chimes, like the rustling of invisible wings. The
+blue sisters, behind those walls, were celebrating their vesper service.
+
+Does prayer drive away anguish and heartrending memories?
+
+Marsa was a Catholic, her mother having belonged to the minority of
+Tzigani professing the faith of Rome; and Tisza's daughter could,
+therefore, bury her youth and beauty in the convent of the blue sisters.
+
+The hollow murmur of the verses and prayers, which paused, began again,
+and then died away in the night like sighs, attracted her, and, like
+the trees of the forest, gave her an impression of that peace, that deep
+repose, which was the longed-for dream of her soul.
+
+But, suddenly, the Tzigana started, removed her gaze from the light
+streaming through the blue and crimson glass, and hurried away, crying
+aloud in the darkness:
+
+"No! repose is not there. And, after all, where is repose? Only in
+ourselves! It can be found nowhere, if it is not in the heart!"
+
+Then, after these hours of solitude, this longing for the cloister, this
+thirsting for annihilation and oblivion, Marsa would experience a desire
+for the dashing, false, and frivolous life of Paris. She would quit
+Maisons, taking with her a maid, or sometimes old Vogotzine, go to some
+immense hotel, like the Continental or the Grand, dine at the table
+d'hote, or in the restaurant, seeking everywhere bustle and noise, the
+antithesis of the life of shade and silence which she led amid the
+leafy trees of her park. She would show herself everywhere, at
+races, theatres, parties--as when she accepted the Baroness Dinati's
+invitation; and, when she became nauseated with all the artificiality
+of worldly life, she would return eagerly to her woods, her dogs and her
+solitude, and, if it were winter, would shut herself up for long months
+in her lonely, snow-girt house.
+
+And was not this existence sweet and pleasant, compared with the life
+led by Tisza in the castle of the suburbs of Moscow?
+
+In this solitude, in the villa of Maisons-Lafitte, Andras Zilah was
+again to see Marsa Laszlo. He came not once, but again and again. He
+was, perhaps, since the death of Prince Tchereteff, the only man General
+Vogotzine had seen in his niece's house, and Marsa was always strangely
+happy when Andras came to see her.
+
+"Mademoiselle is very particular when Prince Zilah is coming to
+Maisons," said her maid to her.
+
+"Because Prince Zilah is not a man like other men. He is a hero. In my
+mother's country there is no name more popular than his."
+
+"So I have heard Count Menko say to Mademoiselle."
+
+If it were the maid's wish to remove all happiness from her mistress's
+face, she had met with complete success.
+
+At the name of Menko, Marsa's expression became dark and threatening.
+Prince Andras had noticed this same change in the Tzigana's face, when
+he was speaking to her at Baroness Dinati's.
+
+The Prince had forgotten no detail of that first fascinating interview,
+at which his love for the Tzigana was born. This man, who had hardly
+any other desire than to end in peace a life long saddened by defeat and
+exile, suddenly awoke to a happy hope of a home and family joys. He was
+rich, alone in the world, and independent; and he was, therefore,
+free to choose the woman to be made his princess. No caste prejudice
+prevented him from giving his title to the daughter of Tisza. The
+Zilahs, in trying to free their country, had freed themselves from all
+littleness; and proud, but not vain, they bore but slight resemblance to
+those Magyars of whom Szechenyi, the great count, who died of despair
+in 1849, said: "The overweening haughtiness of my people will be their
+ruin."
+
+The last of the Zilahs did not consider his pride humiliated by loving
+and wedding a Tzigana. Frankly, in accents of the deepest love and the
+most sincere devotion, Andras asked Marsa Laszlo if she would consent to
+become his wife. But he was terrified at the expression of anguish which
+passed over the pale face of the young girl.
+
+Marsa, Princess Zilah! Like her mother, she would have refused from a
+Tchereteff this title of princess which Andras offered her, nay, laid at
+her feet with passionate tenderness. But--Princess Zilah!
+
+She regarded with wild eyes the Prince, who stood before her, timid and
+with trembling lips, awaiting her reply. But, as she did not answer, he
+stooped over and took her hands in his.
+
+"What is it?" he cried; for Marsa's fingers were icy.
+
+It cost the young girl a terrible effort to prevent herself from losing
+consciousness.
+
+"But speak to me, Marsa," exclaimed Andras, "do not keep me in
+suspense."
+
+He had loved her now for six months, and an iron hand seemed to clutch
+the heart of this man, who had never known what it was to fear, at the
+thought that perhaps Marsa did not return his love.
+
+He had, doubtless, believed that he had perceived in her a tender
+feeling toward himself which had emboldened him to ask her to be his
+wife. But had he been deceived? Was it only the soldier in him that had
+pleased Marsa? Was he about to suffer a terrible disappointment? Ah,
+what folly to love, and to love at forty years, a young and beautiful
+girl like Marsa!
+
+Still, she made him no answer, but sat there before him like a statue,
+pale to the lips, her dark eyes fixed on him in a wild, horrified stare.
+
+Then, as he pressed her, with tears in his voice, to speak, she forced
+her almost paralyzed tongue to utter a response which fell, cruel as a
+death-sentence, upon the heart of the hero:
+
+"Never!"
+
+Andras stood motionless before her in such terrible stillness that she
+longed to throw herself at his feet and cry out: "I love you! I love
+you! But your wife--no, never!"
+
+She loved him? Yes, madly-better than that, with a deep, eternal
+passion, a passion solidly anchored in admiration, respect and esteem;
+with an unconquerable attraction toward what represented, to her
+harassed soul, honor without a blemish, perfect goodness in perfect
+courage, the immolation of a life to duty, all incarnate in one man,
+radiant in one illustrious name--Zilah.
+
+And Andras himself divined something of this feeling; he felt that
+Marsa, despite her enigmatical refusal, cared for him in a way that was
+something more than friendship; he was certain of it. Then, why did she
+command him thus with a single word to despair? "Never!" She was not
+free, then? And a question, for which he immediately asked her pardon by
+a gesture, escaped, like the appeal of a drowning man, from his lips:
+
+"Do you love some one else, Marsa?"
+
+She uttered a cry.
+
+"No! I swear to you--no!"
+
+He urged her, then, to explain what was the meaning of her refusal, of
+the fright she had just shown; and, in a sort of nervous hysteria which
+she forced herself to control, in the midst of stifled sobs, she told
+him that if she could ever consent to unite herself to anyone, it
+would be to him, to him alone, to the hero of her country, to him whose
+chivalrous devotion she had admired long before she knew him, and that
+now--And here she stopped short, just on the brink of an avowal.
+
+"Well, now? Now?" demanded Andras, awaiting the word which, in her
+overstrung condition, Marsa had almost spoken. "Now?"
+
+But she did not speak these words which Zilah begged for with newly
+awakened hope. She longed to end this interview which was killing her,
+and in broken accents asked him to excuse her, to forgive her--but she
+was really ill.
+
+"But if you are suffering, I can not, I will not leave you."
+
+"I implore you. I need to be alone."
+
+"At least you will permit me to come to-morrow, Marsa, and ask for your
+answer?"
+
+"My answer? I have given it to you."
+
+"No! No! I do not accept that refusal. No! you did not know what you
+were saying. I swear to you, Marsa, that without you life is impossible
+to me; all my existence is bound up in yours. You will reflect there was
+an accent in your voice which bade me hope. I will come again to-morrow.
+Tomorrow, Marsa. What you have said to-day does not count. Tomorrow,
+to-morrow; and remember that I adore you."
+
+And she, shuddering at the tones of his voice, not daring to say no,
+and to bid him an eternal farewell, let him depart, confident, hopeful,
+despite the silence to which she obstinately, desperately clung. Then,
+when Andras was gone, at the end of her strength, she threw herself,
+like a mad woman, down upon the divan. Once alone, she gave way utterly,
+sobbing passionately, and then, suddenly ceasing, with wild eyes fixed
+upon vacancy, to mutter with dry, feverish lips:
+
+"Yet--it is life he brings to me--happiness he offers me. Have I no
+right to be happy--I? My God! To be the wife of such a man! To love
+him--to devote myself to him-to make his existence one succession of
+happy days! To be his slave, his thing! Shall I marry him? Or--shall I
+kill myself? Kill myself!" with a horrible, agonizing laugh. "Yes, that
+is the only thing for me to do. But--but--I am a coward, now that I
+love him--a coward! a coward! a miserable wretch!" And she fell headlong
+forward, crouching upon the floor in a fierce despair, as if either life
+or reason was about to escape from her forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. "O LIBERTY! O LOVE! THESE TWO I NEED!"
+
+When Zilah came the next day he found Marsa perfectly calm. At first he
+only questioned her anxiously as to her health.
+
+"Oh! I am well," she replied, smiling a little sadly; and, turning to
+the piano at which she was seated, she began to play the exquisitely sad
+romance which was her favorite air.
+
+"That is by Janos Nemeth, is it not?" asked the Prince.
+
+"Yes, by Janos Nemeth. I am very fond of his music; it is so truly
+Hungarian in its spirit."
+
+The music fell upon the air like sighs--like the distant tones of a bell
+tolling a requiem--a lament, poetic, mournful, despairing, yet ineffably
+sweet and tender, ending in one deep, sustained note like the last clod
+of earth falling upon a new-made grave.
+
+"What is that called, Marsa?" said Andras.
+
+She made no reply.
+
+Rising, he looked at the title, printed in Hungarian; then, leaning over
+the Tzigana till his breath fanned her cheek, he murmured:
+
+"Janos Nemeth was right. The world holds but one fair maiden."
+
+She turned very pale, rose from the piano, and giving him her hand,
+said:
+
+"It is almost a madrigal, my dear Prince, is it not? I am going to be
+frank with you. You love me, I know; and I also love you. Will you give
+me a month to reflect? A whole month?"
+
+"My entire life belongs to you now," said the Prince. "Do with it what
+you will."
+
+"Well! Then in a month I will give you your answer," she said firmly.
+
+"But," said Andras, smiling beneath his blond moustache, "remember that
+I once, took for my motto the verses of Petoefi. You know well those
+beautiful verses of our country:
+
+             O Liberty! O Love!
+              These two I need.
+              My chosen meed,
+             To give my love for Liberty,
+              My life for Love.
+
+"Well," he added, "do you know, at this moment the Andras Zilah of
+'forty-eight would almost give liberty, that passion of his whole life,
+for your love, Marsa, my own Marsa, who are to me the living incarnation
+of my country."
+
+Marsa was moved to the depths of her heart at hearing this man speak
+such words to her. The ideal of the Tzigana, as it is of most women, was
+loyalty united with strength. Had she ever, in her wildest flights of
+fancy, dreamed that she should hear one of the heroes of the war of
+independence, a Zilah Andras, supplicate her to bear his name?
+
+Marsa knew Yanski Varhely. The Prince had brought him to see her at
+Maisons-Lafitte. She was aware that Count Varhely knew the Prince's most
+secret thoughts, and she was certain that Andras had confided all his
+hopes and his fears to his old friend.
+
+"What do you think would become of the Prince if I should not marry
+him?" she asked him one day without warning.
+
+"That is a point-blank question which I hardly expected," said Yanski,
+gazing at her in astonishment. "Don't you wish to become a Zilah?"
+
+Any hesitation even seemed to him insulting, almost sacrilegious.
+
+"I don't say that," replied the Tzigana, "but I ask you what would
+become of the Prince if, for one reason or another--"
+
+"I can very easily inform you," interrupted Varhely. "The Prince, as you
+must be aware, is one of those men who love but once during their lives.
+Upon my word of honor, I believe that, if you should refuse him,
+he would commit some folly, some madness, something--fatal. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Ah!" ejaculated Marsa, with an icy chill in her veins.
+
+"That is my opinion," continued Yanski, harshly. "He is wounded. It
+remains with you to decide whether the bullet be mortal or not."
+
+Varhely's response must have had great weight in Marsa Laszlo's
+reflections, full of anguish, fever, revolt and despair as they were,
+during the few weeks preceding the day upon which she had promised to
+tell Prince Andras if she would consent to become his wife or not. It
+was a yes, almost as curt as another refusal, which fell at last from
+the lips of the Tzigana. But the Prince was not cool enough to analyze
+an intonation.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, "I have suffered so much during these weeks of
+doubt; but this happiness makes amends for all."
+
+"Do you know what Varhely said to me?" asked Marsa.
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"Well, since the Zilahs treat their love-affairs as they do their duels,
+and risk their whole existence, so be it! I accept. Your existence for
+mine! Gift for gift! I do not wish you to die!"
+
+He did not try to understand her; but he took her burning hands between
+his own, and covered them with kisses. And she, with trembling lip,
+regarded, through her long eyelashes, the brave man who now bent before
+her, saying: "I love you."
+
+Then, in that moment of infinite happiness, on the threshold of the
+new life which opened before her, she forgot all to think only of the
+reality, of the hero whose wife she was to be. His wife! So, as in a
+dream, without thinking, without resisting, abandoning herself to the
+current which bore her along, not trying to take account of time or
+of the future, loving, and beloved, living in a sort of charmed
+somnambulism, the Tzigana watched the preparations for her marriage.
+
+The Prince, with the impatience of a youth of twenty, had urged an early
+day for their union. He announced his engagement to the society, at once
+Parisian and foreign, of which he formed a part; and this marriage of
+the Magyar with the Tzigana was an event in aristocratic circles. There
+was an aroma of chivalrous romance about this action of Prince Andras,
+who was rich enough and independent enough to have married, if he had
+wished, a shepherdess, like the kings of fairy tales.
+
+"Isn't it perfectly charming?" exclaimed the little Baroness Dinati,
+enthusiastically. "Jacquemin, my dear friend, I will give you all the
+details of their first meeting. You can make a delicious article out of
+it, delicious!"
+
+The little Baroness was almost as delighted as the Prince. Ah! what a
+man that Zilah was! He would give, as a wedding-gift to the Tzigana, the
+most beautiful diamonds in the world, those famous Zilah diamonds, which
+Prince Joseph had once placed disdainfully upon his hussar's uniform
+when he charged the Prussian cuirassiers of Ziethen, sure of escaping
+the sabre cuts, and not losing a single one of the stones during the
+combat. It was said that Marsa, until she was his wife, would not accept
+any jewels from the Prince. The opals in the silver agraffe were all she
+wanted.
+
+"You know them, don't you, Jacquemin? The famous opals of the Tzigana?
+Put that all in, every word of it."
+
+"Yes, it is chic enough." answered the reporter. "It is very romantic,
+a little too much so; my readers will never believe it. Never mind,
+though, I will write it all up in my best manner."
+
+The fete on board the steamer, given by the Prince in honor of his
+betrothal, had been as much talked of as a sensational first night at
+the Francais, and it added decidedly to the romantic prestige of Andras
+Zilah. There was not a marriageable young girl who was not a little in
+love with him, and their mothers envied the luck of the Tzigana.
+
+"It is astonishing how jealous the mammas are," said the Baroness,
+gayly. "They will make me pay dearly for having been the matchmaker; but
+I am proud of it, very proud. Zilah has good taste, that is all. And, as
+for him, I should have been in love with him myself, if I had not had my
+guests to attend to. Ah, society is as absorbing as a husband!"
+
+Upon the boat, Paul Jacquemin did not leave the side of the matchmaker.
+He followed her everywhere. He had still to obtain a description of the
+bride's toilettes, the genealogy of General Vogotzine, a sketch of the
+bridegroom's best friend, Varhely, and a thousand other details.
+
+"Where will the wedding take place?" he asked the Baroness.
+
+"At Maisons-Lafitte. Oh! everything is perfect, my dear Jacquemin,
+perfect! An idyl! All the arrangements are exquisite, exquisite! I only
+wish that you had charge of the supper."
+
+Jacquemin, general overseer of the Baroness's parties in the Rue
+Murillo, did not confess himself inferior to any one as an epicure. He
+would taste the wines, with the air of a connoisseur, holding his glass
+up to the light, while the liquor caressed his palate, and shutting his
+eyes as if more thoroughly to decide upon its merits.
+
+"Pomard!" would slowly fall from his lips, or "Acceptable Musigny!"
+"This Chambertin is really very fair!" "The Chateau Yquem is not half
+bad!" etc., etc. And the next morning would appear in the reports,
+which he wrote himself under various pseudonyms: "Our compliments to
+our friend Jacquemin, if he had anything to do with the selection of
+the wines, in addition to directing the rehearsals of the Baroness's
+operetta, which latter work he most skilfully accomplished. Jacquemin
+possesses talents of all kinds; he knows how to make the best of all
+materials. As the proverb says, 'A good mill makes everything flour.'"
+
+Jacquemin had already cast an eye over the menu of the Prince's fete,
+and declared it excellent, very correct, very pure.
+
+          ....................
+
+The steamer was at last ready to depart, and Prince Zilah had done
+the honors to all his guests. It started slowly off, the flags waving
+coquettishly in the breeze, while the Tzigani musicians played with
+spirit the vibrating notes of the March of Rakoczy, that triumphant
+air celebrating the betrothal of Zilah, as it had long ago saluted the
+burial of his father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. "IS FATE SO JUST?"
+
+"We are moving! We are off!" cried the lively little Baroness. "I hope
+we shan't be shipwrecked," retorted Jacquemin; and he then proceeded
+to draw a comical picture of possible adventures wherein figured white
+bears, icebergs, and death by starvation. "A subject for a novel,--'The
+Shipwreck of the Betrothed.'"
+
+As they drew away from Paris, passing the quays of Passy and the taverns
+of Point-du-jour, tables on wooden horses were rapidly erected, and
+covered with snowy cloths; and soon the guests of the Prince were seated
+about the board, Andras between Marsa and the Baroness, and Michel Menko
+some distance down on the other side of the table. The pretty women and
+fashionably dressed men made the air resound with gayety and laughter,
+while the awnings flapped joyously in the wind, and the boat glided on,
+cutting the smooth water, in which were reflected the long shadows of
+the aspens and willows on the banks, and the white clouds floating in
+the clear sky. Every now and then a cry of admiration would be uttered
+at some object in the panorama moving before them, the slopes of
+Suresnes, the black factories of Saint-Denis with their lofty chimneys,
+the red-roofed villas of Asnieres, or the heights of Marly dotted with
+little white houses.
+
+"Ah! how pretty it is! How charming!"
+
+"Isn't it queer that we have never known anything about all this? It is
+a veritable voyage of discovery."
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," cried, above the other voices, Jacquemin, whom
+Zilah did not know, and to whom the Baroness had made him give a card of
+invitation, "we are now entering savage countries. It is Kamtschatka, or
+some such place, and there must be cannibals here."
+
+The borders of the Seine, which were entirely fresh to them, and which
+recalled the pictures of the salon, were a delightful novelty to these
+people, accustomed to the dusty streets of the city.
+
+Seated between the Prince and the Japanese, and opposite Varhely and
+General Vogotzine, the Baroness thoroughly enjoyed her breakfast. Prince
+Andras had not spared the Tokay--that sweet, fiery wine, of which the
+Hungarians say proudly: "It has the color and the price of gold;" and
+the liquor disappeared beneath the moustache of the Russian General as
+in a funnel. The little Baroness, as she sipped it with pretty little
+airs of an epicure, chatted with the Japanese, and, eager to increase
+her culinary knowledge, asked him for the receipt for a certain dish
+which the little yellow fellow had made her taste at a dinner given at
+his embassy.
+
+"Send it to me, will you, Yamada? I will have my cook make it; nothing
+gives me so much pleasure as to be able to offer to my guests a new and
+strange dish. I will give you the receipt also, Jacquemin. Oh! it
+is such an odd-tasting dish! It gives you a sensation of having been
+poisoned."
+
+"Like the guests in Lucrezia Borgia," laughed the Parisian Japanese.
+
+"Do you know Lucrezia Borgia?"
+
+"Oh, yes; they have sung it at Yokohama. Oh! we are no longer savages,
+Baroness, believe me. If you want ignorant barbarians, you must seek the
+Chinese."
+
+The little Japanese was proud of appearing so profoundly learned in
+European affairs, and his gimlet eyes sought an approving glance from
+Paul Jacquemin or Michel Menko; but the Hungarian was neither listening
+to nor thinking of Yamada. He was entirely absorbed in the contemplation
+of Marsa; and, with lips a little compressed, he fixed a strange look
+upon the beautiful young girl to whom Andras was speaking, and who,
+very calm, almost grave, but evidently happy, answered the Prince with a
+sweet smile.
+
+There was a sort of Oriental grace about Marsa, with her willowy figure,
+flexible as a Hindoo convolvulus, and her dark Arabian eyes fringed with
+their heavy lashes. Michel Menko took in all the details of her beauty,
+and evidently suffered, suffered cruelly, his eyes invincibly attracted
+toward her. In the midst of these other women, attired in robes of the
+last or the next fashion, of all the colors of the rainbow, Marsa, in
+her gown of black lace, was by far the loveliest of them all. Michel
+watched her every movement; but she, quiet, as if a trifle weary, spoke
+but little, and only in answer to the Prince and Varhely, and, when
+her beautiful eyes met those of Menko, she turned them away, evidently
+avoiding his look with as much care as he sought hers.
+
+The breakfast over, they rose from the table, the men lighting cigars,
+and the ladies seeking the mirrors in the cabin to rearrange their
+tresses disheveled by the wind.
+
+The boat stopped at Marly until it was time for the lock to be opened,
+before proceeding to Maisons-Lafitte, where Marsa was to land. Many of
+the passengers, with almost childish gayety, landed, and strolled about
+on the green bank.
+
+Marsa was left alone, glad of the silence which reigned on the steamer
+after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the
+boat, listening idly to the swish of the water along its sides.
+
+Michel Menko was evidently intending to approach her, and he had made
+a few steps toward her, when he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder. He
+turned, thinking it was the Prince; but it was Yanski Varhely, who said
+to the young man:
+
+"Well, my dear Count, you did right to come from London to this fete.
+Not only is Zilah delighted to see you, but the fantastic composition
+of the guests is very curious. Baroness Dinati has furnished us with an
+'ollapodrida' which would have pleased her husband. There is a little of
+everything. Doesn't it astonish you?"
+
+"No," said Michel. "This hybrid collection is representative of modern
+society. I have met almost all these faces at Nice; they are to be seen
+everywhere."
+
+"To me," retorted Yanski, in his guttural voice, "these people are
+phenomena."
+
+"Phenomena? Not at all. Life of to-day is so complicated that the most
+unexpected people and events find their place in it. You have not
+lived, Varhely, or you have lived only for your idol, your country, and
+everything amazes you. If you had, like me, wandered all over the
+world, you would not be astonished at anything; although, to tell the
+truth"--and the young man's voice became bitter, trenchant, and almost
+threatening--"we have only to grow old to meet with terrible surprises,
+very hard to bear."
+
+As he spoke, he glanced, involuntarily perhaps, at Marsa Laszlo, leaning
+on the railing just below him.
+
+"Oh! don't speak of old age before you have passed through the trials
+that Zilah and I have," responded Varhely. "At eighteen, Andras Zilah
+could have said: 'I am old.' He was in mourning at one and the same time
+for all his people and for our country. But you! You have grown up,
+my dear fellow, in happy times. Austria, loosening her clutch, has
+permitted you to love and serve our cause at your ease. You were born
+rich, you married the most charming of women"--
+
+Michel frowned.
+
+"That is, it is true, the sorrow of your life," continued Varhely. "It
+seems to me only yesterday that you lost the poor child."
+
+"It is over two years, however," said Michel, gravely. "Two years! How
+time flies!"
+
+"She was so charming," said old Yanski, not perceiving the expression of
+annoyance mingled with sadness which passed over the young man's face.
+"I knew your dear wife when she was quite small, in her father's
+house. He gave me an asylum at Prague, after the capitulation signed by
+Georgei. Although I was an Hungarian, and he a Bohemian, her father and
+I were great friends."
+
+"Yes," said Menko, rapidly, "she often spoke of you, my dear Varhely.
+They taught her to love you, too. But," evidently seeking to turn the
+conversation to avoid a subject which was painful to him, "you spoke of
+Georgei. Ah! our generation has never known your brave hopes; and
+your grief, believe me, was better than our boredom. We are useless
+encumberers of the earth. Upon my word, it seems to me that we are
+unsettled, enfeebled, loving nothing and loving everything, ready to
+commit all sorts of follies. I envy you those days of battle, those
+magnificent deeds of 'forty-eight and 'forty-nine. To fight thus was to
+live!"
+
+But even while he spoke, his thin face became more melancholy, and his
+eyes again sought the direction of Prince Andras's fiancee.
+
+After a little more desultory conversation, he strolled away from
+Varhely, and gradually approached Marsa, who, her chin resting on her
+hand, and her eyes lowered, seemed absorbed in contemplation of the
+ceaseless flow of the water.
+
+Greatly moved, pulling his moustache, and glancing with a sort of
+uneasiness at Prince Andras, who was promenading on the bank with the
+Baroness, Michel Menko paused before addressing Marsa, who had
+not perceived his approach, and who was evidently far away in some
+day-dream.
+
+Gently, hesitatingly, and in a low voice, he at last spoke her name:
+
+"Marsa!"
+
+The Tzigana started as if moved by an electric shock, and, turning
+quickly, met the supplicating eyes of the young man.
+
+"Marsa!" repeated Michel, in a humble tone of entreaty.
+
+"What do you wish of me?" she said. "Why do you speak to me? You must
+have seen what care I have taken to avoid you."
+
+"It is that which has wounded me to the quick. You are driving me mad.
+If you only knew what I am suffering!"
+
+He spoke almost in a whisper, and very rapidly, as if he felt that
+seconds were worth centuries.
+
+She answered him in a cutting, pitiless tone, harsher even than the
+implacable look in her dark eyes. "You suffer? Is fate so just as that?
+You suffer?"
+
+Her tone and expression made Michel Menko tremble as if each syllable of
+these few words was a blow in the face.
+
+"Marsa!" he exclaimed, imploringly. "Marsa!"
+
+"My name is Marsa Laszlo; and, in a few days, I shall be Princess
+Zilah," responded the young girl, passing haughtily by him, "and I think
+you will hardly force me to make you remember it."
+
+She uttered these words so resolutely, haughtily, almost disdainfully,
+and accompanied them with such a flash from her beautiful eyes that
+Menko instinctively bowed his head, murmuring:
+
+"Forgive me!"
+
+But he drove his nails into the palm of his clenched hand as he saw her
+leave that part of the boat, and retire as far from him as she could,
+as if his presence were an insult to her. Tears of rage started into
+the young man's eyes as he watched her graceful figure resume its former
+posture of dreamy absorption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. A RIVER FETE
+
+Close alongside of the Prince's boat, waiting also for the opening of
+the lock, was one of those great barges which carry wood or charcoal up
+and down the Seine.
+
+A whole family often lives on board these big, heavy boats. The smoke of
+the kitchen fire issues from a sort of wooden cabin where several human
+beings breathe, eat, sleep, are born and die, sometimes without hardly
+ever having set foot upon the land. Pots of geranium or begonia give
+a bit of bright color to the dingy surroundings; and the boats travel
+slowly along the river, impelled by enormous oars, which throw long
+shadows upon the water.
+
+It was this motionless barge that Marsa was now regarding.
+
+The hot sun, falling upon the boat, made its brown, wet sides sparkle
+like the brilliant wings of some gigantic scarabee; and, upon the
+patched, scorched deck, six or seven half-naked, sunburned children,
+boys and girls, played at the feet of a bundle of rags and brown flesh,
+which was a woman, a young woman, but prematurely old and wasted, who
+was nursing a little baby.
+
+A little farther off, two men-one tough and strong, a man of thirty,
+whom toil had made forty, the other old, wrinkled, white-haired and
+with skin like leather, father and grandfather, doubtless, of the little
+brats beyond--were eating bread and cheese, and drinking, turn by turn,
+out of a bottle of wine, which they swallowed in gulps. The halt was a
+rest to these poor people.
+
+As Marsa watched them, she seemed to perceive in these wanderers of the
+river, as in a vision, those other wanderers of the Hungarian desert,
+her ancestors, the Tzigani, camped in the puszta, the boundless plain,
+crouched down in the long grass beneath the shade of the bushes, and
+playing their beautiful national airs. She saw the distant fires of the
+bivouac of those unknown Tzigani whose daughter she was; she seemed to
+breathe again the air of that country she had seen but once, when upon a
+mournful pilgrimage; and, in the presence of that poor bargeman's wife,
+with her skin tanned by the sun, she thought of her dead, her cherished
+dead, Tisza.
+
+Tisza! To the gipsy had doubtless been given the name of the river on
+the banks of which she had been born. They called the mother Tisza, in
+Hungary, as in Paris they called the daughter the Tzigana. And Marsa was
+proud of her nickname; she loved these Tzigani, whose blood flowed in
+her veins; sons of India, perhaps, who had descended to the valley
+of the Danube, and who for centuries had lived free in the open air,
+electing their chiefs, and having a king appointed by the Palatine--a
+king, who commanding beggars, bore, nevertheless, the name of
+Magnificent; indestructible tribes, itinerant republics, musicians
+playing the old airs of their nation, despite the Turkish sabre and the
+Austrian police; agents of patriotism and liberty, guardians of the old
+Hungarian honor.
+
+These poor people, passing their lives upon the river as the Tzigani
+lived in the fields and hedges, seemed to Marsa like the very spectres
+of her race. More than the musicians with embroidered vests did the
+poor prisoners of the solitary barge recall to her the great proscribed
+family of her ancestors.
+
+She called to the children playing upon the sunbeaten deck: "Come here,
+and hold up your aprons!"
+
+They obeyed, spreading out their little tattered garments. "Catch
+these!" she cried.
+
+They could not believe their eyes. From the steamer she threw down to
+them mandarins, grapes, ripe figs, yellow apricots, and great velvety
+peaches; a rain of dainties which would have surprised a gourmand: the
+poor little things, delighted and afraid at the same time, wondered if
+the lady, who gave them such beautiful fruit, was a fairy.
+
+The mother then rose; and, coming toward Marsa to thank her, her
+sunburnt skin glowing a deeper red, the poor woman, with tears in her
+tired eyes, and a wan smile upon her pale lips, touched, surprised,
+happy in the pleasure of her children, murmured, faltering and confused:
+
+"Ah! Madame! Madame! how good you are! You are too good, Madame!"
+
+"We must share what we have!" said Marsa, with a smile. "See how happy
+the children are!"
+
+"Very happy, Madame. They are not accustomed to such things. Say 'Thank
+you,' to the beautiful lady. Say 'Thank you,' Jean; you are the oldest.
+Say like this: 'Thank-you-Ma-dame.'"
+
+"Thank-you-Ma-dame" faltered the boy, raising to Marsa big, timid eyes,
+which did not understand why anybody should either wish him ill or do
+him a kindness. And other low, sweet little voices repeated, like a
+refrain: "Thank-you-Ma-dame."
+
+The two men, in astonishment, came and stood behind the children, and
+gazed silently at Marsa.
+
+"And your baby, Madame?" said the Tzigana, looking at the sleeping
+infant, that still pressed its rosy lips to the mother's breast. "How
+pretty it is! Will you permit me to offer it its baptismal dress?"
+
+"Its baptismal dress?" repeated the mother.
+
+"Oh, Madame!" ejaculated the father, twisting his cap between his
+fingers.
+
+"Or a cloak, just as you please," added Marsa.
+
+The poor people on the barge made no reply, but looked at one another in
+bewilderment.
+
+"Is it a little girl?" asked the Tzigana.
+
+"No, Madame, no," responded the mother. "A boy."
+
+"Come here, jean," said Marsa to the oldest child. "Yes, come here, my
+little man."
+
+Jean came forward, glancing askance at his mother, as if to know whether
+he should obey.
+
+"Here, jean," said the young girl, "this is for your baby brother."
+
+And into the little joined hands of the boy, Marsa let fall a purse,
+through whose meshes shone yellow pieces of gold.
+
+The people of the barge thought they were dreaming, and stood
+open-mouthed in amazement, while Jean cried out:
+
+"Mamma, see, mamma! Mamma! Mamma!"
+
+Then the younger bargeman said to Marsa:
+
+"Madame, no, no! we can not accept. It is too much. You are too good.
+Give it back, Jean."
+
+"It is true, Madame," faltered his wife. "It is impossible. It is too
+much."
+
+"You will cause me great pain if you refuse to accept it," said Marsa.
+"Chance has brought us together for a moment, and I am superstitious. I
+would like to have the little children pray that those I love--that the
+one I love may be happy." And she turned her eyes upon Prince Andras,
+who had returned to the deck, and was coming toward her.
+
+The lock was now opened.
+
+"All aboard!" shouted the captain of the steamer.
+
+The poor woman upon the barge tried to reach the hand of Marsa to kiss
+it.
+
+"May you be happy, Madame, and thank you with all our hearts for your
+goodness to both big and little."
+
+The two bargemen bowed low in great emotion, and the whole bevy of
+little ones blew kisses to the beautiful lady in the black dress, whom
+the steamer was already bearing away.
+
+"At least tell us your name, Madame," cried the father. "Your name, that
+we may never forget you."
+
+A lovely smile appeared on Marsa's lips, and, in almost melancholy
+accents, she said:
+
+"My name!" Then, after a pause, proudly: "The Tzigana!"
+
+The musicians, as she spoke, suddenly struck up one of the Hungarian
+airs. Then, as in a flying vision, the poor bargemen saw the steamer
+move farther and farther away, a long plume of smoke waving behind it.
+
+Jacquemin, hearing one of those odd airs, which in Hungary start all
+feet moving and keeping time to the music, exclaimed:
+
+"A quadrille! Let us dance a quadrille! An Hungarian quadrille!"
+
+The poor people on the barge listened to the music, gradually growing
+fainter and fainter; and they would have believed that they had been
+dreaming, if the purse had not been there, a fortune for them, and the
+fruit which the children were eating. The mother, without understanding,
+repeated that mysterious name: "The Tzigana."
+
+And Marsa also gazed after them, her ears caressed by the czardas of the
+musicians. The big barge disappeared in the distance in a luminous haze;
+but the Tzigana could still vaguely perceive the little beings perched
+upon the shoulders of the men, and waving, in sign of farewell, pieces
+of white cloth which their mother had given them.
+
+A happy torpor stole over Marsa; and, while the guests of the Baroness
+Dinati, the Japanese Yamada, the English heiresses, the embassy
+attaches, all these Parisian foreigners, led by Jacquemin, the director
+of the gayety, were organizing a ballroom on the deck, and asking the
+Tzigani for polkas of Fahrbach and waltzes of Strauss, the young girl
+heard the voice of Andras murmur low in her ear:
+
+"Ah! how I love you! And do you love me, Marsa?"
+
+"I am happy," she answered, without moving, and half closing her eyes,
+"and, if it were necessary for me to give my life for you, I would give
+it gladly."
+
+In the stern of the boat, Michel Menko watched, without seeing them,
+perhaps, the fields, the houses of Pecq, the villas of Saint-Germain,
+the long terrace below heavy masses of trees, the great plain beside
+Paris with Mont Valerien rising in its midst, the two towers of the
+Trocadero, whose gilded dome sparkled in the sun, and the bluish-black
+cloud which hung over the city like a thick fog.
+
+The boat advanced very slowly, as if Prince Andras had given the order
+to delay as much as possible the arrival at Maisons-Lafitte, where the
+whole fete would end for him, as Marsa was to land there. Already, upon
+the horizon could be perceived the old mill, with its broad, slated
+roof. The steeple of Sartrouville loomed up above the red roofs of the
+houses and the poplars which fringe the bank of the river. A pale blue
+light, like a thin mist, enveloped the distant landscape.
+
+"The dream is over," murmured Marsa.
+
+"A far more beautiful one will soon begin," said Andras, "and that one
+will be the realization of what I have waited for all my life and never
+found--love."
+
+Marsa turned to the Prince with a look full of passionate admiration and
+devotion, which told him how thoroughly his love was returned.
+
+The quadrille had ended, and a waltz was beginning. The little Japanese,
+with his eternal smile, like the bronze figures of his country, was
+dancing with a pre-raphaelite English girl.
+
+"How well you dance," she said.
+
+"If we only had some favors," replied the Japanese, showing his teeth in
+a grin, "I would lead the cotillon."
+
+The boat stopped at last at Maisons-Lafitte. The great trees of the
+park formed a heavy mass, amid which the roof of the villa was just
+discernible.
+
+"What a pity it is all over," cried the Baroness, who was ruddy as
+a cherry with the exercise of dancing. "Let us have another; but
+Maisons-Lafitte is too near. We will go to Rouen the next time; or
+rather, I invite you all to a day fete in Paris, a game of polo, a
+lunch, a garden party, whatever you like. I will arrange the programme
+with Yamada and Jacquemin."
+
+"Willingly," responded the Japanese, with a low bow. "To collaborate
+with Monsieur Jacquemin will be very amusing."
+
+As Marsa Laszlo was leaving the boat, Michel Menko stood close to the
+gangway, doubtless on purpose to speak to her; and, in the confusion of
+landing, without any one hearing him, he breathed in her ear these brief
+words:
+
+"At your house this evening. I must see you."
+
+She gave him an icy glance. Michel Menko's eyes were at once full of
+tears and flames.
+
+"I demand it!" he said, firmly.
+
+The Tzigana made no reply; but, going to Andras Zilah, she took his arm;
+while Michel, as if nothing had happened, raised his hat.
+
+General Vogotzine, with flaming face, followed his niece, muttering, as
+he wiped the perspiration unsteadily from his face:
+
+"Fine day! Fine day! By Jove! But the sun was hot, though! Ah, and the
+wines were good!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. A DARK PAGE
+
+As Marsa departed with Vogotzine in the carriage which had been waiting
+for them on the bank, she waved her hand to Zilah with a passionate
+gesture, implying an infinity of trouble, sadness, and love. The Prince
+then returned to his guests, and the boat, which Marsa watched through
+the window of the carriage, departed, bearing away the dream, as she
+had said to Andras. During the drive home she did not say a word. By her
+side the General grumbled sleepily of the sun, which, the Tokay aiding,
+had affected his head. But, when Marsa was alone in her chamber, the
+cry which was wrung from her breast was a cry of sorrow, of despairing
+anger:
+
+"Ah, when I think--when I think that I am envied!"
+
+She regretted having allowed Andras to depart without having told him on
+the spot, the secret of her life. She would not see him again until the
+next day, and she felt as if she could never live through the long, dull
+hours. She stood at the window, wrapped in thought, gazing mechanically
+before her, and still hearing the voice of Michel Menko hissing like
+a snake in her ear. What was it this man had said? She did not dare to
+believe it. "I demand it!" He had said: "I demand it!" Perhaps some one
+standing near had heard it. "I demand it!"
+
+Evening came. Below the window the great masses of the chestnut-trees
+and the lofty crests of the poplars waved in the breeze like forest
+plumes, their peaks touched by the sun setting in a sky of tender
+blue, while the shadowy twilight crept over the park where, through the
+branches, patches of yellow light, like golden and copper vapors, still
+gave evidence of the god of day.
+
+Marsa, her heart full of a melancholy which the twilight increased,
+repeated over and over again, with shudders of rage and disgust, those
+three words which Michel Menko had hurled at her like a threat: "I
+demand it!" Suddenly she heard in the garden the baying of dogs, and she
+saw, held in check by a domestic, Duna and Bundas, bounding through the
+masses of flowers toward the gate, where a man appeared, whom Marsa,
+leaning over the balcony, recognized at once.
+
+"The wretch!" she exclaimed between her clenched teeth. It was Menko.
+
+He must have debarked before reaching Paris, and have come to
+Maisons-Lafitte in haste.
+
+Marsa's only thought, in the first moment of anger, was to refuse to
+see him. "I can not," she thought, "I will not!" Then suddenly her mind
+changed. It was braver and more worthy of her to meet the danger face
+to face. She rang, and said to the domestic who answered the bell: "Show
+Count Menko into the little salon."
+
+"We shall see what he will dare," muttered the Tzigana, glancing at the
+mirror as if to see whether she appeared to tremble before danger and an
+enemy.
+
+The little salon into which the young Count was introduced was in the
+left wing of the villa; and it was Marsa's favorite room, because it was
+so quiet there. She had furnished it with rare taste, in half Byzantine
+and half Hindoo fashion--a long divan running along the wall, covered
+with gray silk striped with garnet; Persian rugs cast here and there
+at random; paintings by Petenkofen--Hungarian farms and battle-scenes,
+sentinels lost in the snow; two consoles loaded with books, reviews, and
+bric-a-brac; and a round table with Egyptian incrustations, covered with
+an India shawl, upon which were fine bronzes of Lanceray, and little
+jewelled daggers.
+
+This salon communicated with a much larger one, where General Vogotzine
+usually took his siesta, and which Marsa abandoned to him, preferring
+the little room, the windows of which, framed in ivy, looked out upon
+the garden, with the forest in the distance.
+
+Michel Menko was well acquainted with this little salon, where he had
+more than once seen Marsa seated at the piano playing her favorite airs.
+He remembered it all so well, and, nervously twisting his moustache, he
+longed for her to make her appearance. He listened for the frou-frou
+of Marsa's skirts on the other side of the lowered portiere which hung
+between the two rooms; but he heard no sound.
+
+The General had shaken hands with Michel, as he passed through the large
+salon, saying, in his thick voice:
+
+"Have you come to see Marsa? You have had enough of that water-party,
+then? It was very pretty; but the sun was devilish hot. My head is
+burning now; but it serves me right for not remaining quiet at home."
+
+Then he raised his heavy person from the armchair he had been sitting
+in, and went out into the garden, saying: "I prefer to smoke in the open
+air; it is stifling in here." Marsa, who saw Vogotzine pass out, let him
+go, only too willing to have him at a distance during her interview with
+Michel Menko; and then she boldly entered the little salon, where the
+Count, who had heard her approach, was standing erect as if expecting
+some attack.
+
+Marsa closed the door behind her; and, before speaking a word, the
+two faced each other, as if measuring the degree of hardihood each
+possessed. The Tzigana, opening fire first, said, bravely and without
+preamble:
+
+"Well, you wished to see me. Here I am! What do you want of me?"
+
+"To ask you frankly whether it is true, Marsa, that you are about to
+marry Prince Zilah."
+
+She tried to laugh; but her laugh broke nervously off. She said,
+however, ironically:
+
+"Oh! is it for that that you are here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It was perfectly useless, then, for you to take the trouble: you ask
+me a thing which you know well, which all the world knows, which all the
+world must have told you, since you had the audacity to be present at
+that fete to-day."
+
+"That is true," said Michel, coldly; "but I only learned it by chance. I
+wished to hear it from your own lips."
+
+"Do I owe you any account of my conduct?" asked Marsa, with crushing
+hauteur.
+
+He was silent a moment, strode across the room, laid his hat down upon
+the little table, and suddenly becoming humble, not in attitude, but in
+voice, said:
+
+"Listen, Marsa: you are a hundred times right to hate me. I have
+deceived you, lied to you. I have conducted myself in a manner unworthy
+of you, unworthy of myself. But to atone for my fault--my crime, if you
+will--I am ready to do anything you order, to be your miserable slave,
+in order to obtain the pardon which I have come to ask of you, and which
+I will ask on my knees, if you command me to do so."
+
+The Tzigana frowned.
+
+"I have nothing to pardon you, nothing to command you," she said with
+an air more wearied than stern, humiliating, and disdainful. "I only ask
+you to leave me in peace, and never appear again in my life."
+
+"So! I see that you do not understand me," said Michel, with sudden
+brusqueness.
+
+"No, I acknowledge it, not in the least."
+
+"When I asked you whether you were to marry Prince Andras, didn't you
+understand that I asked you also another thing: Will you marry me,
+me--Michel Menko?"
+
+"You!" cried the Tzigana.
+
+And there was in this cry, in this "You!" ejaculated with a rapid
+movement of recoil-amazement, fright, scorn, and anger.
+
+"You!" she said again. And Michel Menko felt in this word a mass of
+bitter rancor and stifled hatred which suddenly burst its bonds.
+
+"Yes, me!" he said, braving the insult of Marsa's cry and look. "Me, who
+love you, and whom you have loved!"
+
+"Ah, don't dare to say that!" she cried, drawing close to the little
+table where the daggers rested amid the objects of art. "Don't be vile
+enough to speak to me of a past of which nothing remains to me but
+disgust! Let not one word which recalls it to me mount to your lips, not
+one, you understand, or I will kill you like the coward you are!"
+
+"Do so, Marsa!" he cried with wild, mad passion. "I should die by your
+hand, and you would not marry that man!"
+
+Afraid of herself, wresting her eyes from the glittering daggers, she
+threw herself upon the divan, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and
+watched, with the look of a tigress, Michel, who said to her now, in a
+voice which trembled with the tension of his feelings: "You must know
+well, Marsa, that death is not the thing that can frighten a man like
+me! What does frighten me is that, having lost you once, I may lose you
+forever; to know that another will be your husband, will love you,
+will receive your kisses. The very idea that that is possible drives
+me insane. I feel myself capable of any deed of madness to prevent it.
+Marsa! Marsa! You did love me once!"
+
+"I love honor, truth, justice," said Marsa, sternly and implacably. "I
+thought I loved you; but I never did."
+
+"You did not love me?" he said.
+
+This cruel recalling of the past, which was the remorse of her life, was
+like touching her flesh with a red-hot iron.
+
+"No, no, no! I did not love you! I repeat, I thought I loved you. What
+did I know of life when I met you? I was suffering, ill; I thought
+myself dying, and I never heard a word of pity fall from any other lips
+than yours. I thought you were a man of honor. You were only a wretch.
+You deceived me; you represented yourself to me as free--and you
+were married. Weakly--oh, I could kill myself at the very thought!--I
+listened to you! I took for love the trite phrases you had used to
+dozens of other women; half by violence, half by ruse, you became my
+lover. I do not know when--I do not know how. I try to forget that
+horrible dream; and when, deluded by you, thinking that what I felt for
+you was love, for I did think so, I imagined that I had given myself for
+life to a man worthy of the deepest devotion, ready for all sacrifices
+for me, as I felt myself to be for him; when you had taken me, body and
+soul, I learn by what? by a trifling conversation, by a chance, in a
+crowded ballroom--that, this Michel Menko, whose name I was to bear, who
+was to be my husband; this Count Menko, this man of honor, the one in
+whom I believed blindly, was married! Married at Vienna, and had already
+given away the name on which he traded! Oh, it is hideous!" And
+the Tzigana, whose whole body was shuddering with horror, recoiled
+instinctively to the edge of the divan as at the approach of some
+detested contact.
+
+Michel, his face pale and convulsed, had listened to her with bowed
+head.
+
+"All that you say is the truth, Marsa; but I will give my life, my whole
+life, to expiate that lie!"
+
+"There are infamies which are never effaced. There is no pardon for him
+who has no excuse."
+
+"No excuse? Yes, Marsa; I have one! I have one: I loved you!"
+
+"And because you loved me, was it necessary for you to betray me, lie to
+me, ruin me?"
+
+"What could I do? I did not love the woman I had married; you dawned on
+me like a beautiful vision; I wished, hoping I know not what impossible
+future, to be near you, to make you love me, and I did not dare to
+confess that I was not free. If I lied to you, it was because I trembled
+at not being able to surround you with my devotion; it was because I was
+afraid to lose your love, knowing that the adoration I had for you would
+never die till my heart was cold and dead! Upon all that is most sacred,
+I swear this to you! I swear it!"
+
+He then recalled to her, while she sat rigid and motionless with an
+expression of contempt and disdain upon her beautiful, proud lips, their
+first meetings; that evening at Lady Brolway's, in Pau, where he had met
+her for the first time; their conversation; the ineffaceable impression
+produced upon him by her beauty; that winter season; the walks they had
+taken together beneath the trees, which not a breath of wind stirred;
+their excursions in the purple and gold valleys, with the Pyrenees in
+the distance crowned with eternal snow. Did she not remember their long
+talks upon the terrace, the evenings which felt like spring, and that
+day when she had been nearly killed by a runaway horse, and he had
+seized the animal by the bridle and saved her life? Yes, he had loved
+her, loved her well; and it was because, possessing her love, he feared,
+like a second Adam, to see himself driven out of paradise, that he had
+hidden from Marsa the truth. If she had questioned one of the Hungarians
+or Viennese, who were living at Pau, she could doubtless have known that
+Count Menko, the first secretary of the embassy of Austria-Hungary at
+Paris, had married the heiress of one of the richest families of Prague;
+a pretty but unintelligent girl, not understanding at all the character
+of her husband; detesting Vienna and Paris, and gradually exacting from
+Menko that he should live at Prague, near her family, whose ancient
+ideas and prejudices and inordinate love of money displeased the
+young Hungarian. He was left free to act as he pleased; his wife would
+willingly give up a part of her dowry to regain her independence. It
+was only just, she said insolently, that, having been mistaken as to the
+tastes of the man she had married for reasons of convenience rather than
+of inclination, she should pay for her stupidity. Pay! The word made
+the blood mount to Menko's face. If he had not been rich, as he was, he
+would have hewn stone to gain his daily bread rather than touch a
+penny of her money. He shook off the yoke the obstinate daughter of the
+Bohemian gentleman would have imposed upon him, and departed, brusquely
+breaking a union in which both husband and wife so terribly perceived
+their error.
+
+Marsa might have known of all this if she had, for a moment, doubted
+Menko's word. But how was she to suspect that the young Count was
+capable of a lie or of concealing such a secret? Besides, she knew
+hardly any one at Pau, as her physicians had forbidden her
+any excitement; at the foot of the Pyrenees, she lived, as at
+Maisons-Lafitte, an almost solitary life; and Michel Menko had been
+during that winter, which he now recalled to Marsa, speaking of it as
+of a lost Eden, her sole companion, the only guest of the house she
+inhabited with Vogotzine in the neighborhood of the castle.
+
+Poor Marsa, enthusiastic, inexperienced, her heart enamored with
+chivalrous audacity, intrepid courage, all the many virtues which were
+those of Hungary herself; Marsa, her mind imbued from her infancy with
+the almost fantastic recitals of the war of independence, and later,
+with her readings and reflections; Marsa, full of the stories of the
+heroic past-must necessarily have been the dupe of the first being who,
+coming into her life, was the personal representative of the bravery and
+charm of her race. So, when she encountered one day Michel Menko, she
+was invincibly attracted toward him by something proud, brave, and
+chivalrous, which was characteristic of the manly beauty of the young
+Hungarian. She was then twenty, very ignorant of life, her great
+Oriental eyes seeing nothing of stern reality; but, with all her
+gentleness, there was a species of Muscovite firmness which was betrayed
+in the contour of her red lips. It was in vain that sorrow had early
+made her a woman; Marsa remained ignorant of the world, without any
+other guide than Vogotzine; suffering and languid, she was fatally at
+the mercy of the first lie which should caress her ear and stir her
+heart. From the first, therefore, she had loved Michel; she had, as she
+herself said, believed that she loved him with a love which would never
+end, a very ingenuous love, having neither the silliness of a girl who
+has just left the convent, nor the knowledge of a Parisienne whom the
+theatre and the newspapers have instructed in all things. Michel, then,
+could give to this virgin and pliable mind whatever bent he chose; and
+Marsa, pure as the snow and brave as her own favorite heroes, became his
+without resistance, being incapable of divining a treachery or fearing
+a lie. Michel Menko, moreover, loved her madly; and he thought only of
+winning and keeping the love of this incomparable maiden, exquisite
+in her combined gentleness and pride. The folly of love mounted to his
+brain like intoxication, and communicated itself to the poor girl who
+believed in him as if he were the living faith; and, in the madness
+of his passion, Michel, without being a coward, committed a cowardly
+action.
+
+No: a coward he certainly was not. He was one of those nervous natures,
+as prompt to hope as to despair, going to all extremes, at times
+foolishly gay, and at others as grave and melancholy as Hamlet. There
+were days when Menko did not value his life at a penny, and when he
+asked himself seriously if suicide were not the simplest means to reach
+the end; and again, at the least ray of sunshine, he became sanguine and
+hopeful to excess. Of undoubted courage, he would have faced the muzzle
+of a loaded cannon out of mere bravado, at the same time wondering, with
+a sarcastic smile upon his lips, 'Cui bono'?
+
+He sometimes called heroism a trick; and yet, in everyday life, he had
+not much regard for tricksters. Excessively fond of movement, activity,
+and excitement, he yet counted among his happiest days those spent in
+long meditations and inactive dreams. He was a strange combination of
+faults and good qualities, without egregious vices, but all his virtues
+capable of being annihilated by passion, anger, jealousy, or grief. With
+such a nature, everything was possible: the sublimity of devotion, or
+a fall into the lowest infamy. He often said, in self-analysis: "I am
+afraid of myself." In short, his strength was like a house built upon
+sand; all, in a day, might crumble.
+
+"If I had to choose the man I should prefer to be," he said once,
+"I would be Prince Andras Zilah, because he knows neither my useless
+discouragements, apropos of everything and nothing, nor my childish
+delights, nor my hesitations, nor my confidence, which at times
+approaches folly as my misanthropy approaches injustice; and because, in
+my opinion, the supreme virtue in a man is firmness."
+
+The Zilahs were connected by blood with the Menkos, and Prince Andras
+was very fond of this young man, who promised to Hungary one of those
+diplomats capable of wielding at once the pen and the sword, and who
+in case of war, before drawing up a protocol, would have dictated its
+terms, sabre in hand. Michel indeed stood high with his chief in the
+embassy, and he was very much sought after in society. Before the day he
+met Marsa, he had, to tell the truth, only experienced the most trivial
+love-affairs.
+
+He did not speak of his wife at Pau any more than he did on the
+boulevards. She lived far away, in the old city of Prague, and troubled
+Michel no more than if she had never existed. Perhaps he had forgotten,
+really forgotten, with that faculty of forgetfulness which belongs to
+the imaginative, that he was married, when he encountered Marsa, the
+candid, pure-hearted girl, who did not reflect nor calculate, but simply
+believed that she had met a man of honor.
+
+So, what sudden revolt, humiliation, and hatred did the poor child feel
+when she learned that the man in whom she had believed as in a god had
+deceived her, lied to her! He was married. He had treated her as the
+lowest of women; perhaps he had never even loved her! The very thought
+made her long to kill herself, or him, or both. She, unhappy, miserable
+woman, was ruined, ruined forever!
+
+She had certainly never stopped to think where the love she had for
+Michel would lead her. She thought of nothing except that Michel was
+hers, and she was his, and she believed that their love would last
+forever. She did not think that she had long to live, and her existence
+seemed to her only a breath which any moment might cease. Why had she
+not died before she knew that Menko had lied?
+
+All deception seemed hideous to Marsa Laszlo, and this hideousness she
+had discovered in the man to whom she had given herself, believing in
+the eternity as well as in the loyalty of his love.
+
+It was at a ball, at the English embassy, after her return from Pau,
+that, while smiling and happy, she overheard between two Viennese,
+strangers to her, this short dialogue, every word of which was like a
+knife in her heart: "What a charming fellow that Menko is!" "Yes; is
+his wife ugly or a humpback? or is he jealous as Othello? She is
+never seen." "His wife! Is he married?" "Yes: he married a Blavka, the
+daughter of Angel Blavka, of Prague. Didn't you know it?"
+
+Married!
+
+Marsa felt her head reel, and the sudden glance she cast at the speakers
+silenced, almost terrified them. Half insane, she reached home, she
+never knew how. The next day Michel Menko presented himself at her
+apartments in the hotel where she was living; she ordered him out of her
+presence, not allowing him to offer any excuse or explanation.
+
+"You are married, and you are a coward!"
+
+He threw himself at her knees, and implored her to listen to him.
+
+"Go! Go!"
+
+"But our love, Marsa? For I love you, and you love me."
+
+"I hate and scorn you. My love is dead. You have killed it. All is over.
+Go! And let me never know that there exists a Michel Menko in the world!
+Never! Never! Never!"
+
+He felt his own cowardice and shame, and he disappeared, not daring
+again to see the woman whose love haunted him, and who shut herself away
+from the world more obstinately than ever. She left Paris, and in the
+solitude of Maisons-Lafitte lived the life of a recluse, while Michel
+tried in vain to forget the bitterness of his loss. The Tzigana hoped
+that she was going to die, and bear away with her forever the secret
+of her betrayal. But no; science had been mistaken; the poor girl
+was destined to live. In spite of her sorrow and anguish, her beauty
+blossomed in the shade, and she seemed each day to grow more lovely,
+while her heart became more sad, and her despair more poignant.
+
+Then death, which would not take Marsa, came to another, and gave Menko
+an opportunity to repair and efface all. He learned that his wife had
+died suddenly at Prague, of a malady of the heart. This death, which
+freed him, produced a strange effect upon him, not unmingled with
+remorse. Poor woman! She had worthily borne his name, after all.
+Unintelligent, cold, and wrapped up in her money, she had never
+understood him; but, perhaps, if he had been more patient, things might
+have gone better between them.
+
+But no; Marsa was his one, his never-to-be-forgotten love. As soon as
+he heard of his freedom, he wrote her a letter, telling her that he was
+able now to dispose of his future as he would, imploring her to pardon
+him, offering her not his love, since she repelled it, but his name,
+which was her right--a debt of honor which he wished her to acquit with
+the devotion of his life. Marsa answered simply with these words: "I
+will never bear the name of a man I despise."
+
+The wound made in her heart by Menko's lie was incurable; the Tzigana
+would never forgive. He tried to see her again, confident that, if he
+should be face to face with her, he could find words to awaken the past
+and make it live again; but she obstinately refused to see him, and,
+as she did not go into society, he never met her. Then he cast himself,
+with a sort of frenzy, into the dissipation of Paris, trying to forget,
+to forget at any cost: failing in this, he resigned his position at the
+embassy, and went away to seek adventure, going to fight in the Balkans
+against the Russians, only to return weary and bored as he had departed,
+always invincibly and eternally haunted by the image of Marsa, an image
+sad as a lost love, and grave as remorse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. "MY LETTERS OR MYSELF"
+
+It was that past, that terrible past, which Michel Menko had dared to
+come and speak of to the Tzigana. At first, she had grown crimson with
+anger, as if at an insult; now, by a sudden opposite sentiment, as she
+listened to him recalling those days, she felt an impression of deadly
+pain as if an old wound had been reopened. Was it true that all this had
+ever existed? Was it possible, even?
+
+The man who had been her lover was speaking to her; he was speaking to
+her of his love; and, if the terrible agony of memory had not burned
+in her heart, she would have wondered whether this man before her, this
+sort of stranger, had ever even touched her hand.
+
+She waited, with the idle curiosity of a spectator who had no share in
+the drama, for the end of Menko's odious argument: "I lied because I
+loved you!"
+
+He returned again and again, in the belief that women easily forgive the
+ill-doing of which they are the cause, to that specious plea, and Marsa
+asked herself, in amazement, what aberration had possession of this man
+that he should even pretend to excuse his infamy thus.
+
+"And is that," she said at last, "all that you have to say to me?
+According to you, the thief has only to cry 'What could I do? I loved
+that money, and so I stole it.' Ah," rising abruptly, "this interview
+has lasted too long! Good-evening!"
+
+She walked steadily toward the door; but Michel, hastening round the
+other side of the table, barred her exit, speaking in a suppliant tone,
+in which, however, there was a hidden threat:
+
+"Marsa! Marsa, I implore you, do not marry Prince Andras! Do not marry
+him if you do not wish some horrible tragedy to happen to you and me!"
+
+"Really?" she retorted. "Do I understand that it is you who now threaten
+to kill me?"
+
+"I do not threaten; I entreat, Marsa. But you know all that there is in
+me at times of madness and folly. I am almost insane: you know it well.
+Have pity upon me! I love you as no woman was ever loved before; I live
+only in you; and, if you should give yourself to another--"
+
+"Ah!" she said, interrupting him with a haughty gesture, "you speak
+to me as if you had a right to dictate my actions. I have given you my
+forgetfulness after giving you my love. That is enough, I think. Leave
+me!"
+
+"Marsa!"
+
+"I have hoped for a long time that I was forever delivered from your
+presence. I commanded you to disappear. Why have you returned?"
+
+"Because, after I saw you one evening at Baroness Dinati's (do you
+remember? you spoke to the Prince for the first time that evening), I
+learned, in London, of this marriage. If I have consented to live away
+from you previously, it was because, although you were no longer mine,
+you at least were no one else's; but I will not--pardon me, I can
+not--endure the thought that your beauty, your grace, will be another's.
+Think of the self-restraint I have placed upon myself! Although living
+in Paris, I have not tried to see you again, Marsa, since you drove me
+from your presence; it was by chance that I met you at the Baroness's;
+but now--"
+
+"It is another woman you have before you. A woman who ignores that she
+has listened to your supplications, yielded to your prayers. It is a
+woman who has forgotten you, who does not even know that a wretch has
+abused her ignorance and her confidence, and who loves--who loves as one
+loves for the first time, with a pure and holy devotion, the man whose
+name she is to bear."
+
+"That man I respect as honor itself. Had it been another, I should
+already have struck him in the face. But you who accuse me of having
+lied, are you going to lie to him, to him?"
+
+Marsa became livid, and her eyes, hollow as those of a person sick to
+death, flamed in the black circles which surrounded them.
+
+"I have no answer to make to one who has no right to question me,"
+she said. "But, should I have to pay with my life for the moment of
+happiness I should feel in placing my hand in the hand of a hero, I
+would grasp that moment!"
+
+"Then," cried Menko, "you wish to push me to extremities! And yet I
+have told you there are certain hours of feverish insanity in which I am
+capable of committing a crime."
+
+"I do not doubt it," replied the young girl, coldly. "But, in fact, you
+have already done that. There is no crime lower than that of treachery."
+
+"There is one more terrible," retorted Michel Menko. "I have told you
+that I loved you. I love you a hundred times more now than ever before.
+Jealousy, anger, whatever sentiment you choose to call it, makes my
+blood like fire in my veins! I see you again as you were. I feel your
+kisses on my lips. I love you madly, passionately! Do you understand,
+Marsa? Do you understand?" and he approached with outstretched hands
+the Tzigana, whose frame was shaken with indignant anger. "Do you
+understand? I love you still. I was your lover, and I will, I will be so
+again."
+
+"Ah, miserable coward!" cried the Tzigana, with a rapid glance toward
+the daggers, before which stood Menko, preventing her from advancing,
+and regarding her with eyes which burned with reckless passion, wounded
+self-love, and torturing jealousy. "Yes, coward!" she repeated, "coward,
+coward to dare to taunt me with an infamous past and speak of a still
+more infamous future!"
+
+"I love you!" exclaimed Menko again.
+
+"Go!" she cried, crushing him with look and gesture. "Go! I order you
+out of my presence, lackey! Go!"
+
+All the spirit of the daughters of the puszta, the violent pride of her
+Hungarian blood, flashed from her eyes; and Menko, fascinated, gazed at
+her as if turned to stone, as she stood there magnificent in her anger,
+superb in her contempt.
+
+"Yes, I will go to-day," he said at last, "but tomorrow night I shall
+come again, Marsa. As my dearest treasure, I have preserved the key
+of that gate I opened once to meet you who were waiting for me in the
+shadow of the trees. Have you forgotten that, also? You say you have
+forgotten all."
+
+And as he spoke, she saw again the long alley behind the villa, ending
+in a small gate which, one evening after the return from Pau, Michel
+opened, and came, as he said, to meet her waiting for him. It was true.
+Yes, it was true. Menko did not lie this time! She had waited for him
+there, two years before, unhappy girl that she was! All that hideous
+love she had believed lay buried in Pau as in a tomb.
+
+"Listen, Marsa," continued Menko, suddenly recovering, by a strong
+effort of the will, his coolness, "I must see you once again, have one
+more opportunity to plead my cause. The letters you wrote to me, those
+dear letters which I have covered with my kisses and blistered with my
+tears, those letters which I have kept despite your prayers and your
+commands, those letters which have been my only consolation--I will
+bring them to you to-morrow night. Do you understand me?"
+
+Her great eyes fixed, and her lips trembling horribly, Marsa made no
+reply.
+
+"Do you understand me, Marsa?" he repeated, imploring and threatening at
+once.
+
+"Yes," she murmured at last.
+
+She paused a moment; then a broken, feverish laugh burst from her lips,
+and she continued, with stinging irony:
+
+"Either my letters or myself! It is a bargain pure and simple! Such a
+proposition has been made once before--it is historical--you probably
+remember it. In that case, the woman killed herself. I shall act
+otherwise, believe me!"
+
+There was in her icy tones a threat, which gave pleasure to Michel
+Menko. He vaguely divined a danger. "You mean?" he asked.
+
+"I mean, you must never again appear before me. You must go to London,
+to America; I don't care where. You must be dead to the one you have
+cowardly betrayed. You must burn or keep those letters, it little
+matters to me which; but you must still be honorable enough not to use
+them as a weapon against me. This interview, which wearies more than it
+angers me, must be the last. You must leave me to my sorrows or my joys,
+without imagining that you could ever have anything in common with a
+woman who despises you. You have crossed the threshold of this house for
+the last time. Or, if not--Ah! if not--I swear to you that I have energy
+enough and resolution enough to defend myself alone, and alone to punish
+you! In your turn, you understand me, I imagine?"
+
+"Certainly," said Michel. "But you are too imprudent, Marsa. I am not a
+man to make recoil by speaking of danger. Through the gate, or over the
+wall if the gate is barricaded, I shall come to you again, and you will
+have to listen to me."
+
+The lip of the Tzigana curled disdainfully.
+
+"I shall not even change the lock of that gate, and besides, the large
+gate of the garden remains open these summer nights. You see that you
+have only to come. But I warn you neither to unlock the one nor to pass
+through the other. It is not I whom you will find at the rendezvous."
+
+"Still, I am sure that it would be you, blarsa, if I should tell you
+that to-morrow evening I shall be under the window of the pavilion at
+the end of the garden, and that you must meet me there to receive from
+my hand your letters, all your letters, which I shall bring you."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I am certain of it."
+
+"Certain? Why?"
+
+"Because you will reflect."
+
+"I have had time to reflect. Give me another reason."
+
+"Another reason is that you can not afford to leave such proofs in my
+hands. I assure you that it would be folly to make of a man like me, who
+would willingly die for you, an open and implacable enemy."
+
+"I understand. A man like you would die willingly for a woman, but he
+insults and threatens her, like the vilest of men, with a punishment
+more cruel than death itself. Well! it matters little to me. I shall not
+be in the pavilion where you have spoken to me of your love, and I will
+have it torn down and the debris of it burned within three days. I shall
+not await you. I shall never see you again. I do not fear you. And I
+leave you the right of doing with those letters what you please!"
+
+Then, surveying him from head to foot, as if to measure the degree of
+audacity to which he could attain, "Adieu!" she said.
+
+"Au revoir!" he rejoined coldly, giving to the salutation an emphasis
+full of hidden meaning.
+
+The Tzigana stretched out her hand, and pulled a silken bellcord.
+
+A servant appeared.
+
+"Show this gentleman out," she said, very quietly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. "HAVE I THE RIGHT TO LIE?"
+
+Then the Tzigana,'s romance, in which she had put all her faith and her
+belief, had ended, like a bad dream, she said to herself: "My life is
+over!"
+
+What remained to her? Expiation? Forgetfulness?
+
+She thought of the cloister and the life of prayer of those blue sisters
+she saw under the trees of Maisons-Lafitte. She lived in the solitude of
+her villa, remaining there during the winter in a melancholy tete-a-tete
+with old Vogotzine, who was always more or less under the effect of
+liquor. Then, as death would not take her, she gradually began to go
+into Parisian society, slowly forgetting the past, and the folly which
+she had taken for love little by little faded mistily away. It was like
+a recovery from an illness, or the disappearance of a nightmare in the
+dawn of morning. Now, Marsa Laszlo, who, two years before, had longed
+for annihilation and death, occasionally thought the little Baroness
+Dinati right when she said, in her laughing voice: "What are you
+thinking of, my dear child? Is it well for a girl of your age to bury
+herself voluntarily and avoid society?" She was then twenty-four: in
+three or four years she had aged mentally ten; but her beautiful oval
+face had remained unchanged, with the purity of outline of a Byzantine
+Madonna.
+
+Then--life has its awakenings--she met Prince Andras: all her
+admirations as a girl, her worship of patriotism and heroism, flamed
+forth anew; her heart, which she had thought dead, throbbed, as it had
+never throbbed before, at the sound of the voice of this man, truly
+loyal, strong and gentle, and who was (she knew it well, the unhappy
+girl!) the being for whom she was created, the ideal of her dreams. She
+loved him silently, but with a deep and eternal passion; she loved him
+without saying to herself that she no longer had any right to love. Did
+she even think of her past? Does one longer think of the storm when the
+wind has driven off the heavy, tear-laden clouds, and the thunder has
+died away in the distance? It seemed to her now that she had never had
+but one name in her heart, and upon her lips--Zilah.
+
+And then this man, this hero, her hero, asked her hand, and said to her,
+"I love you."
+
+Andras loved her! With what a terrible contraction of the heart did she
+put to herself the formidable question: "Have I the right to lie? Shall
+I have the courage to confess?"
+
+She held in her grasp the most perfect happiness a woman could hope
+for, the dream of her whole life; and, because a worthless scoundrel
+had deceived her, because there were, in her past, hours which she
+remembered only to curse, effaced hours, hours which appeared to her now
+never to have existed, was she obliged to ruin her life, to break her
+heart, and, herself the victim, to pay for the lie uttered by a coward?
+Was it right? Was it just? Was she to be forever bound to that past,
+like a corpse to its grave? What! She had no longer the right to love?
+no longer the right to live?
+
+She adored Andras; she would have given her life for him. And he also
+loved her; she was the first woman who had ever touched his heart. He
+had evidently felt himself isolated, with his old chivalrous ideas, in
+a world devoted to the worship of low things, tangible successes, and
+profitable realities. He was, so to speak, a living anachronism in
+the midst of a society which had faith in nothing except victorious
+brutalities, and which marched on, crushing, beneath its iron-shod
+heels, the hopes and visions of the enthusiastic. He recalled those
+evenings after a battle when, in the woods reddened by the setting sun,
+his father and Varhely said to him: "Let us remain to the last, and
+protect the retreat!" And it seemed to him that, amid the bestialities
+of the moment and the vulgarities of the century, he still protected
+the retreat of misunderstood virtues and generous enthusiasms; and it
+pleased him to be the rear guard of chivalry in defeat.
+
+He shut himself up obstinately in his isolation, like Marsa in her
+solitude; and he did not consider himself ridiculously absurd or
+foolishly romantic, when he remembered that his countrymen, the
+Hungarians, were the only people, perhaps, who, in the abasement of all
+Europe before the brutality of triumph and omnipotent pessimism, had
+preserved their traditions of idealism, chivalry, and faith in the
+old honor; the Hungarian nationality was also the only one which had
+conquered its conquerors by its virtues, its persistence in its hopes,
+its courage, its contempt of all baseness, its extraordinary heroism,
+and had finally imposed its law upon Austria, bearing away the old
+empire as on the croup of its horse toward the vast plains of liberty.
+The ideal would, therefore, have its moments of victory: an entire
+people proved it in history.
+
+"Let this world boast," said Andras, "of the delights of its villainy,
+and grovel in all that is low and base. Life is not worth living unless
+the air one breathes is pure and free! Man is not the brother of swine!"
+
+And these same ideas, this same faith, this same dreamy nature and
+longing for all that is generous and brave, he suddenly found again in
+the heart of Marsa. She represented to him a new and happy existence.
+Yes, he thought, she would render him happy; she would understand him,
+aid him, surround him with the fondest love that man could desire. And
+she, also, thinking of him, felt herself capable of any sacrifice. Who
+could tell? Perhaps the day would come when it would be necessary to
+fight again; then she would follow him, and interpose her breast between
+him and the balls. What happiness to die in saving him! But, no, no!
+To live loving him, making him happy, was her duty now; and was it
+necessary to renounce this delight because hated kisses had once soiled
+her lips? No, she could not! And yet--and yet, strict honor whispered
+to Marsa, that she should say No to the Prince; she had no right to his
+love.
+
+But, if she should reject Andras, he would die, Varhely had said it. She
+would then slay two beings, Andras and herself, with a single word. She!
+She did not count! But he! And yet she must speak. But why speak? Was
+it really true that she had ever loved another? Who was it? The one whom
+she worshipped with all her heart, with all the fibres of her being, was
+Andras! Oh, to be free to love him! Marsa's sole hope and thought were
+now to win, some day, forgiveness for having said nothing by the most
+absolute devotion that man had ever encountered. Thinking continually
+these same thoughts, always putting off taking a decision till the
+morrow, fearing to break both his heart and hers, the Tzigana let the
+time slip by until the day came when the fete in celebration of her
+betrothal was to take place. And on that very day Michel Menko appeared
+before her, not abashed, but threatening. Her dream of happiness ended
+in this reality--Menko saying: "You have been mine; you shall be mine
+again, or you are lost!"
+
+Lost! And how?
+
+With cold resolution, Marsa Laszlo asked herself this question, terrible
+as a question of life or death:
+
+"What would the Prince do, if, after I became his wife, he should learn
+the truth?"
+
+"What would he do? He would kill me," thought the Tzigana. "He would
+kill me. So much the better!" It was a sort of a bargain which she
+proposed to herself, and which her overwhelming love dictated.
+
+"To be his wife, and with my life to pay for that moment of happiness!
+If I should speak now, he would fly from me, I should never see him
+again--and I love him. Well, I sacrifice what remains to me of existence
+to be happy for one short hour!" She grew to think that she had a right
+thus to give her life for her love, to belong to Andras, to be the wife
+of that hero if only for a day, and to die then, to die saying to him:
+"I was unworthy of you, but I loved you; here, strike!" Or rather to
+say nothing, to be loved, to take opium or digitalis, and to fall asleep
+with this last supremely happy thought: "I am his wife, and he loves
+me!" What power in the world could prevent her from realizing her dream?
+Would she resemble Michel in lying thus? No; since she would immediately
+sacrifice herself without hesitation, with joy, for the honor of her
+husband.
+
+"Yes, my life against his love. I shall be his wife and die!"
+
+She did not think that, in sacrificing her life, she would condemn
+Zilah to death. Or rather, with one of those subterfuges by which we
+voluntarily deceive ourselves, she thought: "He will be consoled for my
+death, if he ever learns what I was." But why should he ever learn it?
+She would take care to die so that it should be thought an accident.
+
+Marsa's resolve was taken. She had contracted a debt, and she would pay
+it with her blood. Michel now mattered little to her, let him do what he
+would. The young man's threat: "To-morrow night!" returned to her mind
+without affecting her in the least. The contemptuous curl of her lip
+seemed silently to brave Michel Menko.
+
+In all this there was a different manifestation of her double nature: in
+her love for Andras and her longing to become his wife, the blood of the
+Tzigana, her mother, spoke; Prince Tchereteff, the Russian, on the other
+hand, revived in her silent, cold bravado.
+
+She lay down to rest, still feverish from the struggle, and worn out,
+slept till morning, to awaken calm, languid, but almost happy.
+
+She passed the whole of the following day in the garden, wondering at
+times if the appearance of Menko and his tomorrow were not a dream, a
+nightmare. Tomorrow? That was to-day.
+
+"Yes, yes, he will come! He is quite capable of coming," she murmured.
+
+She despised him enough to believe that he would dare, this time, to
+keep his word.
+
+Lying back in a low wicker chair, beneath a large oak, whose trunk was
+wreathed with ivy, she read or thought the hours away. A Russian belt,
+enamelled with gold and silver, held together her trailing white robes
+of India muslin, trimmed with Valenciennes, and a narrow scarlet ribbon
+encircled her throat like a line of blood. The sunlight, filtering
+through the leaves, flickered upon her dress and clear, dark cheeks,
+while, near by, a bush of yellow roses flung its fragrance upon the air.
+The only sound in the garden was the gentle rustle of the trees, which
+recalled to her the distant murmur of the sea. Gradually she entirely
+forgot Michel, and thought only of the happy moments of the previous
+day, of the boat floating down the Seine past the silvery willows on the
+banks of the sparkling water, of the good people on the barge calling
+out to her, "Be happy! be happy!" and the little children throwing
+smiling kisses to her.
+
+A gentle languor enveloped the warm, sunny garden. Old Sol poured his
+golden light down upon the emerald turf, the leafy trees, the brilliant
+flowerbeds and the white walls of the villa. Under the green arch of
+the trees, where luminous insects, white and flame-colored butterflies,
+aimlessly chased one another, Marsa half slumbered in a sort of
+voluptuous oblivion, a happy calm, in that species of nirvana which the
+open air of summer brings. She felt herself far away from the entire
+world in that corner of verdure, and abandoned herself to childish hopes
+and dreams, in profound enjoyment of the beautiful day.
+
+The Baroness Dinati came during the afternoon to see Marsa; she
+fluttered out into the garden, dressed in a clinging gown of some light,
+fluffy material, with a red umbrella over her head; and upon her tiny
+feet, of all things in the world, ebony sabots, bearing her monogram in
+silver upon the instep. It was a short visit, made up of the chatter and
+gossip of Paris. Little Jacquemin's article upon Prince Zilah's nautical
+fete had created a furore. That little Jacquemin was a charming
+fellow; Marsa knew him. No! Really? What! she didn't know Jacquemin
+of 'L'Actualite'? Oh! but she must invite him to the wedding, he would
+write about it, he wrote about everything; he was very well informed,
+was Jacquemin, on every subject, even on the fashions.
+
+"Look! It was he who told me that these sabots were to be worn.
+The miserable things nearly madame break my neck when I entered the
+carriage; but they are something new. They attract attention. Everybody
+says, What are they? And when one has pretty feet, not too large, you
+know," etc., etc.
+
+She rattled on, moistening her pretty red lips with a lemonade, and
+nibbling a cake, and then hastily departed just as Prince Andras's
+carriage stopped before the gate. The Baroness waved her hand to him
+with a gay smile, crying out:
+
+"I will not take even a minute of your time. You have to-day something
+pleasanter to do than to occupy yourself with poor, insignificant me!"
+
+Marsa experienced the greatest delight in seeing Andras, and listening
+to the low, tender accents of his voice; she felt herself to be loved
+and protected. She gave herself up to boundless hopes--she, who had
+before her, perhaps, only a few days of life. She felt perfectly happy
+near Andras; and it seemed to her that to-day his manner was tenderer,
+the tones of his voice more caressing, than usual.
+
+"I was right to believe in chimeras," he said, "since all that I longed
+for at twenty years is realized to-day. Very often, dear Marsa, when I
+used to feel sad and discouraged, I wondered whether my life lay behind
+me. But I was longing for you, that was all. I knew instinctively that
+there existed an exquisite woman, born for me, my wife--my wife! and I
+waited for you."
+
+He took her hands, and gazed upon her face with a look of infinite
+tenderness.
+
+"And suppose that you had not found me?" she asked.
+
+"I should have continued to drag out a weary existence. Ask Varhely what
+I have told him of my life."
+
+Marsa felt her heart sink within her; but she forced herself to smile.
+All that Varhely had said to her returned to her mind. Yes, Zilah had
+staked his very existence upon her love. To drag aside the veil from
+his illusion would be like tearing away the bandages from a wound.
+Decidedly, the resolution she had taken was the best one--to say
+nothing, but, in the black silence of suicide, which would be at once
+a deliverance and a punishment, to disappear, leaving to Zilah only a
+memory.
+
+But why not die now? Ah! why? why? To this eternal question Marsa made
+reply, that, for deceiving him by becoming his wife, she would pay with
+her life. A kiss, then death. In deciding to act a lie, she condemned
+herself. She only sought to give to her death the appearance of
+an accident, not wishing to leave to Andras the double memory of a
+treachery and a crime.
+
+She listened to the Prince as he spoke of the future, of all the
+happiness of their common existence. She listened as if her resolution
+to die had not been taken, and as if Zilah was promising her, not a
+minute, but an eternity, of joy.
+
+General Vogotzine and Marsa accompanied the Prince to the station, he
+having come to Maisons by the railway. The Tzigana's Danish hounds went
+with them, bounding about Andras, and licking his hands as he caressed
+them.
+
+"They already know the master," laughed Vogotzine. "I have rarely seen
+such gentle animals," remarked the Prince.
+
+"Gentle? That depends!" said Marsa.
+
+After separating from the Prince, she returned, silent and abstracted,
+with Vogotzine. She saw Andras depart with a mournful sadness, and a
+sudden longing to have him stay--to protect her, to defend her, to be
+there if Michel should come.
+
+It was already growing dark when they reached home. Marsa ate but little
+at dinner, and left Vogotzine alone to finish his wine.
+
+Later, the General came, as usual, to bid his niece goodnight. He found
+Marsa lying upon the divan in the little salon.
+
+"Don't you feel well? What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I feel a little tired, and I was going to bed. You don't care to have
+me keep you company, do you, my dear?"
+
+Sometimes he was affectionate to her, and sometimes he addressed her
+with timid respect; but Marsa never appeared to notice the difference.
+
+"I prefer to remain alone," she answered.
+
+The General shrugged his shoulders, bent over, took Marsa's delicate
+hand in his, and kissed it as he would have kissed that of a queen.
+
+Left alone, Marsa lay there motionless for more than an hour. Then she
+started suddenly, hearing the clock strike eleven, and rose at once.
+
+The domestics had closed the house. She went out by a back door which
+was used by the servants, the key of which was in the lock.
+
+She crossed the garden, beneath the dark shadows of the trees, with a
+slow, mechanical movement, like that of a somnambulist, and proceeded
+to the kennel, where the great Danish hounds and the colossus of the
+Himalayas were baying, and rattling their chains.
+
+"Peace, Ortog! Silence, Duna!"
+
+At the sound of her voice, the noise ceased as by enchantment.
+
+She pushed open the door of the kennel, entered, and caressed the heads
+of the dogs, as they placed their paws upon her shoulders. Then she
+unfastened their chains, and in a clear, vibrating voice, said to them:
+
+"Go!"
+
+She saw them bound out, run over the lawn, and dash into the bushes,
+appearing and disappearing like great, fantastic shadows, in the pale
+moonlight. Then, slowly, and with the Muscovite indifference which her
+father, Prince Tchereteff, might have displayed when ordering a spy or
+a traitor to be shot, she retraced her steps to the house, where all
+seemed to sleep, murmuring, with cold irony, in a sort of impersonal
+affirmation, as if she were thinking not of herself, but of another:
+
+"Now, I hope that Prince Zilah's fiancee is well guarded!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. "AS CLINGS THE LEAF UNTO THE TREE"
+
+Michel Menko was alone in the little house he had hired in Paris, in the
+Rue d'Aumale. He had ordered his coachman to have his coupe in readiness
+for the evening. "Take Trilby," he said. "He is a better horse than
+Jack, and we have a long distance to go; and take some coverings for
+yourself, Pierre. Until this evening, I am at home to no one."
+
+The summer day passed very slowly for him in the suspense of waiting. He
+opened and read the letters of which he had spoken to Marsa the evening
+before; they always affected him like a poison, to which he returned
+again and again with a morbid desire for fresh suffering--love-letters,
+the exchange of vows now borne away as by a whirlwind, but which revived
+in Michel's mind happy hours, the only hours of his life in which he had
+really lived, perhaps. These letters, dated from Pau, burned him like
+a live coal as he read them. They still retained a subtle perfume, a
+fugitive aroma, which had survived their love, and which brought Marsa
+vividly before his eyes. Then, his heart bursting with jealousy and
+rage, he threw the package into the drawer from which he had taken it,
+and mechanically picked up a volume of De Musset, opening to some page
+which recalled his own suffering. Casting this aside, he took up another
+book, and his eyes fell upon the passionate verses of the soldier-poet,
+Petoefi, addressed to his Etelka:
+
+     Thou lovest me not? What matters it?
+     My soul is linked to thine,
+     As clings the leaf unto the tree:
+     Cold winter comes; it falls; let be!
+     So I for thee will pine. My fate pursues me to the tomb.
+     Thou fliest? Even in its gloom
+     Thou art not free.
+     What follows in thy steps? Thy shade?
+     Ah, no! my soul in pain, sweet maid,
+     E'er watches thee.
+
+"My soul is linked to thine, as clings the leaf unto the tree!" Michel
+repeated the lines with a sort of defiance in his look, and longed
+impatiently and nervously for the day to end.
+
+A rapid flush of anger mounted to his face as his valet entered with a
+card upon a salver, and he exclaimed, harshly:
+
+"Did not Pierre give you my orders that I would receive no one?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Monsieur; but Monsieur Labanoff insisted so
+strongly--"
+
+"Labanoff?" repeated Michel.
+
+"Monsieur Labanoff, who leaves Paris this evening, and desires to see
+Monsieur before his departure."
+
+The name of Labanoff recalled to Michel an old friend whom he had met in
+all parts of Europe, and whom he had not seen for a long time. He liked
+him exceedingly for a sort of odd pessimism of aggressive philosophy,
+a species of mysticism mingled with bitterness, which Labanoff took no
+pains to conceal. The young Hungarian had, perhaps, among the men of his
+own age, no other friend in the world than this Russian with odd ideas,
+whose enigmatical smile puzzled and interested him.
+
+He looked at the clock. Labanoff's visit might make the time pass until
+dinner.
+
+"Admit Monsieur Labanoff!"
+
+In a few moments Labanoff entered. He was a tall, thin young man, with
+a complexion the color of wax, flashing eyes, and a little pointed
+mustache. His hair, black and curly, was brushed straight up from his
+forehead. He had the air of a soldier in his long, closely buttoned
+frock-coat.
+
+It was many months since these two men had met; but they had been
+long bound together by a powerful sympathy, born of quiet talks and
+confidences, in which each had told the other of similar sufferings.
+A long deferred secret hope troubled Labanoff as the memory of Marsa
+devoured Menko; and they had many times exchanged dismal theories upon
+the world, life, men, and laws. Their common bitterness united them.
+And Michel received Labanoff, despite his resolution to receive no one,
+because he was certain that he should find in him the same suffering as
+that expressed by De Musset and Petoefi.
+
+Labanoff, to-day, appeared to him more enigmatical and gloomy than ever.
+From the lips of the Russian fell only words of almost tragical mystery.
+
+Menko made him sit down by his side upon a divan, and he noticed that an
+extraordinary fever seemed to burn in the blue eyes of his friend.
+
+"I learned that you had returned from London," said Labanoff; "and, as
+I was leaving Paris, I wished to see you before my departure. It is
+possible that we may never see each other again."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I am going to St. Petersburg on pressing business."
+
+"Have you finished your studies in Paris?"
+
+"Oh! I had already received my medical diploma when I came here. I have
+been living in Paris only to be more at my ease to pursue--a project
+which interests me."
+
+"A project?"
+
+Menko asked the question mechanically, feeling very little curiosity to
+know Labanoff's secret; but the Russian's face wore a strange, ironical
+smile as he answered:
+
+"I have nothing to say on that subject, even to the man for whom I have
+the most regard."
+
+His brilliant eyes seemed to see strange visions before them. He
+remained silent for a moment, and then rose with an abrupt movement.
+
+"There," he said, "that is all I had to tell you, my dear Menko. Now,
+'au revoir', or rather, good-by; for, as I said before, I shall probably
+never see you again."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know; it is an idea of mine. And then, my beloved Russia is
+such a strange country. Death comes quickly there."
+
+He had still upon his lips that inexplicable smile, jesting and sad at
+once.
+
+Menko grasped the long, white hand extended to him.
+
+"My dear Labanoff, it is not difficult to guess that you are going on
+some dangerous errand." Smiling: "I will not do you the injustice to
+believe you a nihilist."
+
+Labanoff's blue eyes flashed.
+
+"No," he said, "no, I am not a nihilist. Annihilation is absurd; but
+liberty is a fine thing!"
+
+He stopped short, as if he feared that he had already said too much.
+
+"Adieu, my dear Menko."
+
+The Hungarian detained him with a gesture, saying, with a tremble in his
+voice:
+
+"Labanoff! You have found me when a crisis in my life is also impending.
+I am about, like yourself, to commit a great folly; a different one from
+yours, no doubt. However, I have no right to tell you that you are about
+to commit some folly."
+
+"No," calmly replied the Russian, very pale, but still smiling, "it is
+not a folly."
+
+"But it is a danger?" queried Menko.
+
+Labanoff made no reply.
+
+"I do not know either," said Michel, "how my affair will end. But, since
+chance has brought us together today, face to face--"
+
+"It was not chance, but my own firm resolution to see you again before
+my departure."
+
+"I know what your friendship for me is, and it is for that reason that I
+ask you to tell me frankly where you will be in a month."
+
+"In a month?" repeated Labanoff.
+
+"Give me the route you are going to take? Shall you be a fixture at St.
+Petersburg?"
+
+"Not immediately," responded the Russian, slowly, his gaze riveted upon
+Menko. "In a month I shall still be at Warsaw. At St. Petersburg the
+month after."
+
+"Thanks. I only ask you to let me know, in some way, where you are."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, I should like to join you."
+
+"You!"
+
+"It is only a fancy," said Menko, with an attempt at a laugh. "I am
+bored with life--you know it; I find it a nuisance. If we did not spur
+it like an old, musty horse, it would give us the same idiotic round of
+days. I do not know--I do not wish to know--why you are going to Russia,
+and what this final farewell of which you have just spoken signifies; I
+simply guess that you are off on some adventure, and it is possible that
+I may ask you to allow me to share it."
+
+"Why?" said Labanoff, coldly. "You are not a Russian."
+
+Menko smiled, and, placing his hands upon the thin shoulders of his
+friend, he said:
+
+"Those words reveal many things. It is well that they were not said
+before an agent of police."
+
+"Yes," responded Labanoff, firmly. "But I am not in the habit of
+recklessly uttering my thoughts; I know that I am speaking now to Count
+Menko."
+
+"And Count Menko will be delighted, my dear Labanoff, if you will let
+him know where, in Poland or Russia, he must go, soon, to obtain news
+of you. Fear nothing: neither there nor here will I question you. But
+I shall be curious to know what has become of you, and you know that I
+have enough friendship for you to be uneasy about you. Besides, I long
+to be on the move; Paris, London, the world, in short, bores me, bores
+me, bores me!"
+
+"The fact is, it is stupid, egotistical and cowardly," responded
+Labanoff.
+
+He again held out to Menko his nervous hand, burning, like his blue
+eyes, with fever.
+
+"Farewell!" he said.
+
+"No, no, 'au revoir'!"
+
+"'Au revoir' be it then. I will let you know what has become of me."
+
+"And where you are?"
+
+"And where I am."
+
+"And do not be astonished if I join you some fine morning."
+
+"Nothing ever astonishes me," said the Russian. "Nothing!"
+
+And in that word nothing were expressed profound disgust with life and
+fierce contempt of death.
+
+Menko warmly grasped his friend's thin and emaciated hand; and, the last
+farewell spoken to the fanatic departing for some tragical adventure,
+the Hungarian became more sombre and troubled than before, and
+Labanoff's appearance seemed like a doubtful apparition. He returned to
+his longing to see the end of the most anxious day of his life.
+
+At last, late in the evening, Michel entered his coupe, and was driven
+away-down the Rue d'Aumale, through the Rue Pigalle and the Rue de
+Douai, to the rondpoint of the Place Clichy, the two lanterns casting
+their clear light into the obscurity. The coupe then took the road
+to Maisons-Lafitte, crossing the plain and skirting wheat-fields and
+vineyards, with the towering silhouette of Mont Valerien on the left,
+and on the right, sharply defined against the sky, a long line of hills,
+dotted with woods and villas, and with little villages nestling at their
+base, all plunged in a mysterious shadow.
+
+Michel, with absent eyes, gazed at all this, as Trilby rapidly trotted
+on. He was thinking of what lay before him, of the folly he was about to
+commit, as he had said to Labanoff. It was a folly; and yet, who could
+tell? Might not Marsa have reflected? Might she not; alarmed at his
+threats, be now awaiting him? Her exquisite face, like a lily, rose
+before him; an overwhelming desire to annihilate time and space took
+possession of him, and he longed to be standing, key in hand, before the
+little gate in the garden wall.
+
+He was well acquainted with the great park of Maisons-Lafitte, with the
+white villas nestling among the trees. On one side Prince Tchereteff's
+house looked out upon an almost desert tract of land, on which a
+racecourse had been mapped out; and on the other extended with the
+stables and servants' quarters to the forest, the wall of the Avenue
+Lafitte bounding the garden. In front of the villa was a broad lawn,
+ending in a low wall with carved gates, allowing, through the branches
+of the oaks and chestnuts, a view of the hills of Cormeilles.
+
+After crossing the bridge of Sartrouville, Michel ordered his coachman
+to drive to the corner of the Avenue Corneille, where he alighted in the
+shadow of a clump of trees.
+
+"You will wait here, Pierre," he said, "and don't stir till I return."
+
+He walked past the sleeping houses, under the mysterious alleys of the
+trees, until he reached the broad avenue which, cutting the park in
+two, ran from the station to the forest. The alley that he was seeking
+descended between two rows of tall, thick trees, forming an arch
+overhead, making it deliciously cool and shady in the daytime, but now
+looking like a deep hole, black as a tunnel. Pushing his way through the
+trees and bushes, and brushing aside the branches of the acacias, the
+leaves of which fell in showers about him, Michel reached an old wall,
+the white stones of which were overgrown with ivy. Behind the wall the
+wind rustled amid the pines and oaks like the vague murmur of a coming
+storm. And there, at the end of the narrow path, half hidden by the
+ivy, was the little gate he was seeking. He cautiously brushed aside the
+leaves and felt for the keyhole; but, just as he was about to insert the
+key, which burned in his feverish fingers, he stopped short.
+
+Was Marsa awaiting him? Would she not call for help, drive him forth,
+treat him like a thief?
+
+Suppose the gate was barred from within? He looked at the wall, and saw
+that by clinging to the ivy he could reach the top. He had not come here
+to hesitate. No, a hundred times no!
+
+Besides, Marsa was certainly there, trembling, fearful, cursing him
+perhaps, but still there.
+
+"No," he murmured aloud in the silence, "were even death behind that
+gate, I would not recoil."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. "IT IS A MAN THEY ARE DEVOURING!"
+
+Michel Menko was right. The beautiful Tzigana was awaiting him.
+
+She stood at her window, like a spectre in her white dress, her hands
+clutching the sill, and her eyes striving to pierce the darkness which
+enveloped everything, and opened beneath her like a black gulf. With
+heart oppressed with fear, she started at the least sound.
+
+All she could see below in the garden were the branches defined against
+the sky; a single star shining through the leaves of a poplar, like a
+diamond in a woman's tresses; and under the window the black stretch of
+the lawn crossed by a band of a lighter shade, which was the sand of
+the path. The only sound to be heard was the faint tinkle of the water
+falling into the fountain.
+
+Her glance, shifting as her thoughts, wandered vaguely over the trees,
+the open spaces which seemed like masses of heavy clouds, and the sky
+set with constellations. She listened with distended ears, and a shudder
+shook her whole body as she heard suddenly the distant barking of a dog.
+
+The dog perceived some one. Was it Menko?
+
+No: the sound, a howling rather than a barking, came from a long
+distance, from Sartrouville, beyond the Seine.
+
+"It is not Duna or Bundas," she murmured, "nor Ortog. What folly to
+remain here at the window! Menko will not come. Heaven grant that he
+does not come!"
+
+And she sighed a happy sigh as if relieved of a terrible weight.
+
+Suddenly, with a quick movement, she started violently back, as if some
+frightful apparition had risen up before her.
+
+Hoarse bayings, quite different from the distant barking of a moment
+before, rent the air, and were repeated more and more violently below
+there in the darkness. This time it was indeed the great Danish hounds
+and the shaggy colossus of the Himalayas, which were precipitating
+themselves upon some prey.
+
+"Great God! He is there, then! He is there!" whispered Marsa, paralyzed
+with horror.
+
+There was something gruesome in the cries of the dogs, By the continued
+repetition of the savage noises, sharp, irritated, frightful snarls and
+yelps, Marsa divined some horrible struggle in the darkness, of a man
+against the beasts. Then all her terror seemed to mount to her lips in a
+cry of pity, which was instantly repressed. She steadied herself against
+the window, striving, with all her strength, to reason herself into
+calmness.
+
+"It was his own wish," she thought.
+
+Did she not know, then, what she was doing when, wishing to place a
+living guard between herself and danger, she had descended to the kennel
+and unloosed the ferocious animals, which, recognizing her voice, had
+bounded about her and licked her hands with many manifestations of joy?
+She had ascended again to her chamber and extinguished the light, around
+which fluttered the moths, beating the opal shade with their downy
+wings; and, in the darkness, drinking in the night air at the open
+window, she had waited, saying to herself that Michel Menko would not
+come; but, if he did come, it was the will of fate that he should fall a
+victim to the devoted dogs which guarded her.
+
+Why should she pity him?
+
+She hated him, this Michel. He had threatened her, and she had
+defended herself, that was all. Ortog's teeth were made for thieves
+and intruders. No pity! No, no--no pity for such a coward, since he had
+dared--
+
+But yet, as the ferocious bayings of the dogs below became redoubled in
+their fury, she imagined, in terror, a crunching of bones and a
+tearing of flesh; and, as her imagination conjured up before her
+Michel fighting, in hideous agony, against the bites of the dogs, she
+shuddered; she was afraid, and again a stifled cry burst forth from her
+lips. A sort of insanity took possession of her. She tried to cry out
+for mercy as if the animals could hear her; she sought the door of her
+chamber, groping along the wall with her hands outspread before her,
+in order to descend the staircase and rush out into the garden; but her
+limbs gave way beneath her, and she sank an inert mass upon the carpet
+in an agony of fear and horror.
+
+"My God! My God! It is a man they are devouring;" and her voice died
+away in a smothered call for help.
+
+Then she suddenly raised her head, as if moved by an electric shock.
+
+There was no more noise! Nothing! The black night had all at once
+returned to its great, mysterious silence. Marsa experienced a sensation
+of seeing a pall stretched over a dead body. And in the darkness there
+seemed to float large spots of blood.
+
+"Ah! the unhappy man!" she faltered.
+
+Then, again, the voices of the dogs broke forth, rapid, angry, still
+frightfully threatening. The animals appeared now to be running, and
+their bayings became more and more distant.
+
+What had happened?
+
+One would have said that they were dragging away their prey, tearing it
+with hideous crimson fangs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. MARSA'S GUARDIANS.
+
+Was Michel Menko indeed dead? We left him just as he was turning the key
+in the little gate in the wall. He walked in boldly, and followed a
+path leading to an open space where was the pavilion he had spoken of
+to Marsa. He looked to see whether the windows of the pavilion were
+lighted, or whether there were a line of light under the door. No: the
+delicate tracery of the pagoda-like structure showed dimly against the
+sky; but there was no sign of life. Perhaps, however, Marsa was there in
+the darkness.
+
+He would glide under the window and call. Then, hearing him and
+frightened at so much audacity, she would descend.
+
+He advanced a few steps toward the pavilion; but, all at once, in the
+part of the garden which seemed lightest, upon the broad gravel walk, he
+perceived odd, creeping shadows, which the moon, emerging from a cloud,
+showed to be dogs, enormous dogs, with their ears erect, which, with
+abound and a low, deep growl, made a dash toward him with outspread
+limbs--a dash terrible as the leap of a tiger.
+
+A quick thought illumined Michel's brain like a flash of electricity:
+"Ah! this is Marsa's answer!" He had just time to mutter, with raging
+irony:
+
+"I was right, she was waiting for me!"
+
+Then, before the onslaught of the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands
+upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their
+ferocious attacks. With a sudden tightening of the muscles he repulsed
+the Danish hounds, which rolled over writhing on the ground, and then,
+with formidable baying, returned more furiously still to the charge.
+
+Michel Menko had no weapon.
+
+With a knife he could have defended himself, and slit the bellies of the
+maddened animals; but he had nothing! Was he to be forced, then, to fly,
+pursued like a fox or a deer?
+
+Suppose the servants, roused by the noise of the dogs, should come
+in their turn, and seize him as a thief? At all events, that would be
+comparative safety; at least, they would rescue him from these monsters.
+But no: nothing stirred in the silent, impassive house.
+
+The hounds, erect upon their hind legs, rushed again at Michel, who,
+overturning them with blows from his feet, and striking them violently
+in the jaws, now staggered back, Ortog having leaped at his throat. By
+a rapid movement of recoil, the young man managed to avoid being
+strangled; but the terrible teeth of the dog, tearing his coat and shirt
+into shreds, buried themselves deep in the flesh of his shoulder.
+
+The steel-like muscles and sinewy strength of the Hungarian now stood
+him in good stead. He must either free himself, or perish there in the
+hideous carnage of a quarry. He seized with both hands, in a viselike
+grip, Ortog's enormous neck, and, at the same time, with a desperate
+jerk, shook free his shoulder, leaving strips of his flesh between the
+jaws of the animal, whose hot, reeking breath struck him full in the
+face. With wild, staring eyes, and summoning up, in an instinct of
+despair, all his strength and courage, he buried his fingers in Ortog's
+neck, and drove his nails through the skin of the colossus, which struck
+and beat with his paws against the young man's breast. The dog's tongue
+hung out of his mouth, under the suffocating pressure of the hands
+of the human being struggling for his life. As he fought thus against
+Ortog, the Hungarian gradually retreated, the two hounds leaping about
+him, now driven off by kicks (Duna's jaw was broken), and now, with
+roars of rage and fiery eyes, again attacking their human prey.
+
+One of them, Bundas, his teeth buried in Michel's left thigh, shook him,
+trying to throw him to the ground. A slip, and all would be over; if
+he should fall upon the gravel, the man would be torn to pieces and
+crunched like a deer caught by the hounds.
+
+A terrible pain nearly made Michel faint--Bundas had let go his hold,
+stripping off a long tongue of flesh; but, in a moment, it had the same
+effect upon him as that of the knife of a surgeon opening a vein, and
+the weakness passed away. The unfortunate man still clutched, as in a
+death-grip, Ortog's shaggy neck, and he perceived that the struggles of
+the dog were no longer of the same terrible violence; the eyes of the
+ferocious brute were rolled back in his head until they looked like two
+large balls of gleaming ivory. Michel threw the heavy mass furiously
+from him, and the dog, suffocated, almost dead, fell upon the ground
+with a dull, heavy sound.
+
+Menko had now to deal only with the Danish hounds, which were rendered
+more furious than ever by the smell of blood. One of them, displaying
+his broken teeth in a hideous, snarling grin, hesitated a little to
+renew the onslaught, ready, as he was, to spring at his enemy's throat
+at the first false step; but the other, Bundas, with open mouth, still
+sprang at Michel, who repelled, with his left arm, the attacks of
+the bloody jaws. Suddenly a hollow cry burst from his lips like a
+death-rattle, forced from him as the dog buried his fangs in his
+forearm, until they nearly met. It seemed to him that the end had now
+come.
+
+Each second took away more and more of his strength. The tremendous
+tension of muscles and nerves, which had been necessary in the battle
+with Ortog, and the blood he had lost, his whole left side being gashed
+as with cuts from a knife, weakened him. He calculated, that, unless he
+could reach the little gate before the other dog should make up his mind
+to leap upon him, he was lost, irredeemably lost.
+
+Bundas did not let go his hold, but twisting himself around Michel's
+body, he clung with his teeth to the young man's lacerated arm; the
+other, Duna, bayed horribly, ready to spring at any moment.
+
+Michel gathered together all the strength that remained to him, and
+ran rapidly backward, carrying with him the furious beast, which was
+crushing the very bones of his arm.
+
+He reached the end of the walk, and the gate was there before him.
+Groping in the darkness with his free hand, he found the key, turned it,
+and the gate flew open. Fate evidently did not wish him to perish.
+
+Then, in the same way as he had shaken off Ortog, whom he could now hear
+growling and stumbling over the gravel a little way off, Michel freed
+his arm from Bundas, forcing his fingers and nails into the animal's
+ears; and the moment he had thrown the brute to the ground, he dashed
+through the gate, and slammed it to behind him, just as the two dogs
+together were preparing to leap again upon him.
+
+Then, leaning against the gate, and steadying himself, so as not to
+fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side
+of the wooden partition which now separated him from death--and what a
+death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried
+to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn
+from the barrier which kept them from their human prey.
+
+Michel never knew how long he remained there, listening to the hideous
+growling of his bloodthirsty enemies. At last the thought came to him
+that he must go; but how was he to drag himself to the place where
+Pierre was waiting for him? It was so far! so far! He would faint twenty
+times before reaching there. Was he about to fail now after all he had
+gone through?
+
+His left leg was frightfully painful; but he thought he could manage to
+walk with it. His left shoulder and arm, however, at the least movement,
+caused him atrocious agony, as if the bones had been crushed by the
+wheel of some machine. He sought for his handkerchief, and enveloped
+his bleeding arm in it, tying the ends of it with his teeth. Then he
+tottered to a woodpile near by, and, taking one of the long sticks, he
+managed with its aid to drag himself along the alley, while through the
+branches the moon looked calmly down upon him.
+
+He was worn out, and his head seemed swimming in a vast void, when he
+reached the end of the alley, and saw, a short way off down the avenue,
+the arch of the old bridge near which the coupe had stopped. One effort
+more, a few steps, and he was there! He was afraid now of falling
+unconscious, and remaining there in a dying condition, without his
+coachman even suspecting that he was so near him.
+
+"Courage!" he murmured. "On! On!"
+
+Two clear red lights appeared-the lanterns of the coup. "Pierre!" cried
+Michel in the darkness, "Pierre!" But he felt that his feeble voice
+would not reach the coachman, who was doubtless asleep on his box. Once
+more he gathered together his strength, called again, and advanced a
+little, saying to himself that a step or two more perhaps meant safety.
+Then, all at once, he fell prostrate upon his side, unable to proceed
+farther; and his voice, weaker and weaker, gradually failed him.
+
+Fortunately, the coachman had heard him cry, and realized that something
+had happened. He jumped from his box, ran to his master, lifted him up,
+and carried him to the carriage. As the light of the lamps fell on the
+torn and bloody garments of the Count, whose pallid and haggard face was
+that of a dead man, Pierre uttered a cry of fright.
+
+"Great heavens! Where have you been?" he exclaimed. "You have been
+attacked?"
+
+"The coup--place me in the coup."
+
+"But there are doctors here. I will go--"
+
+"No--do nothing. Make no noise. Take me to Paris--I do not wish any one
+to know--To Paris--at once," and he lost consciousness.
+
+Pierre, with some brandy he luckily had with him, bathed his master's
+temples, and forced a few drops between his lips; and, when the Count
+had recovered, he whipped up his horse and galloped to Paris, growling,
+with a shrug of the shoulders:
+
+"There must have been a woman in this. Curse the women! They make all
+the trouble in the world."
+
+It was daybreak when the coup reached Paris.
+
+Pierre heard, as they passed the barrier, a laborer say to his mate
+
+"That's a fine turnout. I wish I was in the place of the one who is
+riding inside!"
+
+"So do I!" returned the other.
+
+And Pierre thought, philosophically: "Poor fools! If they only knew!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. "THERE IS NO NEED OF ACCUSING ANYONE."
+
+At the first streak of daylight, Marsa descended, trembling, to the
+garden, and approached the little gate, wondering what horror would meet
+her eyes.
+
+Rose-colored clouds, like delicate, silky flakes of wool, floated across
+the blue sky; the paling crescent of the moon, resembling a bent thread
+of silver wire, seemed about to fade mistily away; and, toward the east,
+in the splendor of the rising sun, the branches of the trees stood out
+against a background of burnished gold as in a Byzantine painting. The
+dewy calm and freshness of the early morning enveloped everything as in
+a bath of purity and youth.
+
+But Marsa shuddered as she thought that perhaps this beautiful day was
+dawning upon a dead body. She stopped abruptly as she saw the gardener,
+with very pale face, come running toward her.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, something terrible has happened! Last night the dogs
+barked and barked; but they bark so often at the moon and the shadows,
+that no one got up to see what was the matter."
+
+"Well--well?" gasped Marsa, her hand involuntarily seeking her heart.
+
+"Well, there was a thief here last night, or several of them, for poor
+Ortog is half strangled; but the rascals did not get away scot free. The
+one who came through the little path to the pavilion was badly bitten;
+his tracks can be followed in blood for a long distance a very long
+distance."
+
+"Then," asked Marsa, quickly, "he escaped? He is not dead?"
+
+"No, certainly not. He got away."
+
+"Ah! Thank heaven for that!" cried the Tzigana, her mind relieved of a
+heavy weight.
+
+"Mademoiselle is too good," said the gardener. "When a man enters, like
+that, another person's place, he exposes himself to be chased like a
+rabbit, or to be made mincemeat of for the dogs. He must have had big
+muscles to choke Ortog, the poor beast!--not to mention that Duna's
+teeth are broken. But the scoundrel got his share, too; for he left big
+splashes of blood upon the gravel."
+
+"Blood!"
+
+"The most curious thing is that the little gate, to which there is no
+key, is unlocked. They came in and went out there. If that idiot of
+a Saboureau, whom General Vogotzine discharged--and rightly too,
+Mademoiselle--were not dead, I should say that he was at the bottom of
+all this."
+
+"There is no need of accusing anyone," said Marsa, turning away.
+
+The gardener returned to the neighborhood of the pavilion, and,
+examining the red stains upon the ground, he said: "All the same, this
+did not happen by itself. I am going to inform the police!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. "A BEAUTIFUL DREAM"
+
+It was the eve of the marriage-day of Prince Andras Zilah and
+Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo, and Marsa sat alone in her chamber, where the
+white robes she was to wear next day were spread out on the bed; alone
+for the last time--to-morrow she would be another's.
+
+The fiery Tzigana, who felt in her heart, implacable as it was to evil
+and falsehood, all capabilities of devotion and truth, was condemned
+to lie, or to lose the love of Prince Andras, which was her very life.
+There was no other alternative. No, no: since she had met this man,
+superior to all others, since he loved her and she loved him, she would
+take an hour of his life and pay for that hour with her own. She had no
+doubt but that an avowal would forever ruin her in Andras's eyes. No,
+again and forever no: it was much better to take the love which fate
+offered her in exchange for her life.
+
+And, as she threw herself back in her chair with an expression of
+unchangeable determination in her dark, gazelle-like eyes, there
+suddenly came into her mind the memory of a day long ago, when, driving
+along the road from Maisons-Lafitte to Saint-Germain, she had met some
+wandering gipsies, two men and a woman, with copper-colored skins and
+black eyes, in which burned, like a live coal, the passionate melancholy
+of the race. The woman, a sort of long spear in her hand, was driving
+some little shaggy ponies, like those which range about the plains of
+Hungary. Bound like parcels upon the backs of these ponies were four or
+five little children, clothed in rags, and covered with the dust of the
+road. The woman, tall, dark and faded, a sort of turban upon her head,
+held out her hand toward Marsa's carriage with a graceful gesture and a
+broad smile--the supplicating smile of those who beg. A muscular young
+fellow, his crisp hair covered with a red fez, her brother--the woman
+was old, or perhaps she was less so than she seemed, for poverty brings
+wrinkles--walked by her side behind the sturdy little ponies. Farther
+along, another man waited for them at a corner of the road near a
+laundry, the employees of which regarded him with alarm, because, at the
+end of a rope, the gipsy held a small gray bear. As she passed by
+them, Marsa involuntarily exclaimed, in the language of her mother "Be
+szomoru!" (How sad it is!) The man, at her words, raised his head, and
+a flash of joy passed over his face, which showed, or Marsa thought so
+(who knows? perhaps she was mistaken), a love for his forsaken country.
+Well, now, she did not know why, the remembrance of these poor beings
+returned to her, and she said to herself that her ancestors, humble and
+insignificant as these unfortunates in the dust and dirt of the highway,
+would have been astonished and incredulous if any one had told them that
+some day a girl born of their blood would wed a Zilah, one of the chiefs
+of that Hungary whose obscure and unknown minstrels they were! Ah! what
+an impossible dream it seemed, and yet it was realized now.
+
+At all events, a man's death did not lie between her and Zilah. Michel
+Menko, after lying at death's door, was cured of his wounds. She knew
+this from Baroness Dinati, who attributed Michel's illness to a sword
+wound secretly received for some woman. This was the rumor in Paris. The
+young Count had, in fact, closed his doors to every one; and no one
+but his physician had been admitted. What woman could it be? The little
+Baroness could not imagine.
+
+Marsa thought again, with a shudder, of the night when the dogs howled;
+but, to tell the truth, she had no remorse. She had simply defended
+herself! The inquiry begun by the police had ended in no definite
+result. At Maisons-Lafitte, people thought that the Russian house had
+been attacked by some thieves who had been in the habit of entering
+unoccupied houses and rifling them of their contents. They had even
+arrested an old vagabond, and accused him of the attempted robbery at
+General Vogotzine's; but the old man had answered: "I do not even know
+the house." But was not this Menko a hundred times more culpable than a
+thief? It was more and worse than money or silver that he had dared
+to come for: it was to impose his love upon a woman whose heart he had
+well-nigh broken. Against such an attack all weapons were allowable,
+even Ortog's teeth. The dogs of the Tzigana had known how to defend her;
+and it was what she had expected from her comrades.
+
+Had Michel Menko died, Marsa would have said, with the fatalism of the
+Orient: "It was his own will!" She was grateful, however, to fate, for
+having punished the wretch by letting him live. Then she thought no more
+of him except to execrate him for having poisoned her happiness, and
+condemned her either to a silence as culpable as a lie, or to an avowal
+as cruel as a suicide.
+
+The night passed and the day came at last, when it was necessary for
+Marsa to become the wife of Prince Andras, or to confess to him her
+guilt. She wished that she had told him all, now that she had not the
+courage to do so. She had accustomed herself to the idea that a woman is
+not necessarily condemned to love no more because she has encountered a
+coward who has abused her love. She was in an atmosphere of illusion
+and chimera; what was passing about her did not even seem to exist. Her
+maids dressed her, and placed upon her dark hair the bridal veil: she
+half closed her eyes and murmured:
+
+"It is a beautiful dream."
+
+A dream, and yet a reality, consoling as a ray of light after a
+hideous nightmare. Those things which were false, impossible, a lie, a
+phantasmagoria born of a fever, were Michel Menko, the past years,
+the kisses of long ago, the threats of yesterday, the bayings of the
+infuriated dogs at that shadow which did not exist.
+
+General Vogotzine, in a handsome uniform, half suffocated in his high
+vest, and with a row of crosses upon his breast--the military cross of
+St. George, with its red and black ribbon; the cross of St. Anne, with
+its red ribbon; all possible crosses--was the first to knock at his
+niece's door, his sabre trailing upon the floor.
+
+"Who is it?" said Marsa.
+
+"I, Vogotzine."
+
+And, permission being given him, he entered the room.
+
+The old soldier walked about his niece, pulling his moustache, as if
+he were conducting an inspection. He found Marsa charming. Pale as her
+white robe, with Tizsa's opal agraffe at her side, ready to clasp the
+bouquet of flowers held by one of her maids, she had never been so
+exquisitely beautiful; and Vogotzine, who was rather a poor hand at
+turning a compliment, compared her to a marble statue.
+
+"How gallant you are this morning, General," she said, her heart
+bursting with emotion.
+
+She waved away, with a brusque gesture, the orange-flowers which her
+maid was about to attach to her corsage.
+
+"No," she said. "Not that! Roses."
+
+"But, Mademoiselle--"
+
+"Roses," repeated Marsa. "And for my hair white rosebuds also."
+
+At this, the old General risked another speech.
+
+"Do you think orange-blossoms are too vulgar, Marsa? By Jove! They don't
+grow in the ditches, though!"
+
+And he laughed loudly at what he considered wit. But a frowning
+glance from the Tzigana cut short his hilarity; and, with a mechanical
+movement, he drew himself up in a military manner, as if the Czar were
+passing by.
+
+"I will leave you to finish dressing, my dear," he said, after a moment.
+
+He already felt stifled in the uniform, which he was no longer
+accustomed to wear, and he went out in the garden to breathe freer.
+While waiting there for Zilah, he ordered some cherry cordial,
+muttering, as he drank it:
+
+"It is beautiful August weather. They will have a fine day; but I shall
+suffocate!"
+
+The avenue was already filled with people. The marriage had been much
+discussed, both in the fashionable colony which inhabited the park
+and in the village forming the democratic part of the place; even from
+Sartrouville and Mesnil, people had come to see the Tzigana pass in her
+bridal robes.
+
+"What is all that noise?" demanded Vogotzine of the liveried footman.
+
+"That noise, General? The inhabitants of Maisons who have come to see
+the wedding procession."
+
+"Really? Ah! really? Well, they haven't bad taste. They will see a
+pretty woman and a handsome uniform." And the General swelled out his
+breast as he used to do in the great parades of the time of Nicholas,
+and the reviews in the camp of Tsarskoe-Selo.
+
+Outside the garden, behind the chestnut-trees which hid the avenue,
+there was a sudden sound of the rolling of wheels, and the gay cracking
+of whips.
+
+"Ah!" cried the General, "It is Zilah!"
+
+And, rapidly swallowing a last glass of the cordial, he wiped his
+moustache, and advanced to meet Prince Andras, who was descending from
+his carriage.
+
+Accompanying the Prince were Yanski Varhely, and an Italian friend of
+Zilah's, Angelo Valla, a former minister of the Republic of Venice,
+in the time of Manin. Andras Zilah, proud and happy, appeared to have
+hardly passed his thirtieth year; a ray of youth animated his clear
+eyes. He leaped lightly out upon the gravel, which cracked joyously
+beneath his feet; and, as he advanced through the aromatic garden, to
+the villa where Marsa awaited him, he said to himself that no man in the
+world was happier than he.
+
+Vogotzine met him, and, after shaking his hand, asked him why on earth
+he had not put on his national Magyar costume, which the Hungarians wore
+with such graceful carelessness.
+
+"Look at me, my dear Prince! I am in full battle array!"
+
+Andras was in haste to see Marsa. He smiled politely at the General's
+remark, and asked him where his niece was.
+
+"She is putting on her uniform," replied Vogotzine, with a loud laugh
+which made his sabre rattle.
+
+Most of the invited guests were to go directly to the church of Maisons.
+Only the intimate friends came first to the house, Baroness Dinati,
+first of all, accompanied by Paul Jacquemin, who took his eternal notes,
+complimenting both Andras and the General, the latter especially
+eager to detain as many as possible to the lunch after the ceremony.
+Vogotzine, doubtless, wished to show himself in all the eclat of his
+majestic appetite.
+
+Very pretty, in her Louis Seize gown of pink brocade, and a Rembrandt
+hat with a long white feather (Jacquemin, who remained below, had
+already written down the description in his note-book), the little
+Baroness entered Marsa's room like a whirlwind, embracing the young
+girl, and going into ecstasy over her beauty.
+
+"Ah! how charming you are, my dear child! You are the ideal of a bride!
+You ought to be painted as you are! And what good taste to wear
+roses, and not orange-flowers, which are so common, and only good for
+shopgirls. Turn around! You are simply exquisite."
+
+Marsa, paler than her garments, looked at herself in the glass, happy
+in the knowledge of her beauty, since she was about to be his, and yet
+contemplating the tall, white figure as if it were not her own image.
+
+She had often felt this impression of a twofold being, in those
+dreams where one seems to be viewing the life of another, or to be the
+disinterested spectator of one's own existence.
+
+It seemed to her that it was not she who was to be married, or that
+suddenly the awakening would come.
+
+"The Prince is below," said the Baroness Dinati.
+
+"Ah!" said Marsa.
+
+She started with a sort of involuntary terror, as this very name of
+Prince was at once that of a husband and that of a judge. But when,
+superb in the white draperies, which surrounded her like a cloud of
+purity, her long train trailing behind her, she descended the stairs,
+her little feet peeping in and out like two white doves, and appeared at
+the door of the little salon where Andras was waiting, she felt herself
+enveloped in an atmosphere of love. The Prince advanced to meet her,
+his face luminous with happiness; and, taking the young girl's hands,
+he kissed the long lashes which rested upon her cheek, saying, as he
+contemplated the white vision of beauty before him:
+
+"How lovely you are, my Marsa! And how I love you!"
+
+The Prince spoke these words in a tone, and with a look, which touched
+the deepest depths of Marsa's heart.
+
+Then they exchanged those words, full of emotion, which, in their
+eternal triteness, are like music in the ears of those who love. Every
+one had withdrawn to the garden, to leave them alone in this last,
+furtive, happy minute, which is never found again, and which, on the
+threshold of the unknown, possesses a joy, sad as a last farewell, yet
+full of hope as the rising of the sun.
+
+He told her how ardently he loved her, and how grateful he was to her
+for having consented, in her youth and beauty, to become the wife of
+a quasi-exile, who still kept, despite his efforts, something of the
+melancholy of the past.
+
+And she, with an outburst of gratitude, devotion, and love, in which all
+the passion of her nature and her race vibrated, said, in a voice which
+trembled with unshed tears:
+
+"Do not say that I give you my life. It is you who make of a girl of
+the steppes a proud and honored wife, who asks herself why all this
+happiness has come to her." Then, nestling close to Andras, and resting
+her dark head upon his shoulder, she continued: "We have a proverb, you
+remember, which says, Life is a tempest. I have repeated it very often
+with bitter sadness. But now, that wicked proverb is effaced by the
+refrain of our old song, Life is a chalet of pearls."
+
+And the Tzigana, lost in the dream which was now a tangible reality,
+saying nothing, but gazing with her beautiful eyes, now moist, into
+the face of Andras, remained encircled in his arms, while he smiled and
+whispered, again and again, "I love you!"
+
+All the rest of the world had ceased to exist for these two beings,
+absorbed in each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. THE BRIDAL DAY
+
+The little Baroness ran into the room, laughing, and telling them how
+late it was; and Andras and Marsa, awakened to reality, followed her
+to the hall, where Varhely, Vogotzine, Angelo Valla, Paul Jacquemin and
+other guests were assembled as a sort of guard of honor to the bride and
+groom.
+
+Andras and the Baroness, with Varhely, immediately entered the Prince's
+carriage; Vogotzine taking his place in the coupe with Marsa. Then there
+was a gay crackling of the gravel, a flash of wheels in the sunlight, a
+rapid, joyous departure. Clustered beneath the trees in the ordinarily
+quiet avenues of Maisons, the crowd watched the cortege; and old
+Vogotzine good-humoredly displayed his epaulettes and crosses for the
+admiration of the people who love uniforms.
+
+As she descended from the carriage, Marsa cast a superstitious glance at
+the facade of the church, a humble facade, with a Gothic porch and cheap
+stained-glass windows, some of which were broken; and above a plaster
+tower covered with ivy and surmounted with a roughly carved cross. She
+entered the church almost trembling, thinking again how strange was this
+fate which united, before a village altar, a Tzigana and a Magyar. She
+walked up the aisle, seeing nothing, but hearing about her murmurs of
+admiration, and knelt down beside Andras, upon a velvet cushion, near
+which burned a tall candle, in a white candlestick.
+
+The little church, dimly lighted save where the priest stood, was hushed
+to silence, and Marsa felt penetrated with deep emotion. She had really
+drunk of the cup of oblivion; she was another woman, or rather a young
+girl, with all a young girl's purity and ignorance of evil. It seemed
+to her that the hated past was a bad dream; one of those unhealthy
+hallucinations which fly away at the dawn of day.
+
+She saw, in the luminous enclosure of the altar, the priest in his white
+stole, and the choir boys in their snowy surplices. The waxen candles
+looked like stars against the white hangings of the chancel; and above
+the altar, a sweet-faced Madonna looked down with sad eyes upon the
+man and woman kneeling before her. Through the parti-colored windows,
+crossed with broad bands of red, the branches of the lindens swayed
+in the wind, and the fluttering tendrils of the ivy cast strange,
+flickering shadows of blue, violet, and almost sinister scarlet upon the
+guests seated in the nave.
+
+Outside, in the square in front of the church, the crowd waited the end
+of the ceremony. Shopgirls from the Rue de l'Eglise, and laundresses
+from the Rue de Paris, curiously contemplated the equipages, with their
+stamping horses, and the coachmen, erect upon their boxes, motionless,
+and looking neither to the right nor the left. Through the open door
+of the church, at the end of the old oak arches, could be seen Marsa's
+white, kneeling figure, and beside her Prince Zilah, whose blond head,
+as he stood gazing down upon his bride, towered above the rest of the
+party.
+
+The music of the organ, now tremulous and low, now strong and deep,
+caused a profound silence to fall upon the square; but, as the last note
+died away, there was a great scrambling for places to see the procession
+come out.
+
+Above the mass of heads, the leaves of the old lindens rustled with a
+murmur which recalled that of the sea; and now and then a blossom of a
+yellowish white would flutter down, which the girls disputed, holding up
+their hands and saying:
+
+"The one who catches it will have a husband before the year is out!"
+
+A poor old blind man, cowering upon the steps of the sanctuary, was
+murmuring a monotonous prayer, like the plaint of a night bird.
+
+Yanski Varhely regarded the scene with curiosity, as he waited for the
+end of the ceremony. Somewhat oppressed by the heavy atmosphere of the
+little church, and being a Huguenot besides, the old soldier had come
+out into the open air, and bared his head to the fresh breeze under the
+lindens.
+
+His rugged figure had at first a little awed the crowd; but they soon
+began to rattle on again like a brook over the stones.
+
+Varhely cast, from time to time, a glance into the interior of the
+church. Baroness Dinati was now taking up the collection for the poor,
+holding the long pole of the alms-box in her little, dimpled hands, and
+bowing with a pretty smile as the coins rattled into the receptacle.
+
+Varhely, after a casual examination of the ruins of an old castle which
+formed one side of the square, was about to return to the church, when a
+domestic in livery pushed his way through the crowd, and raising himself
+upon his toes, peered into the church as if seeking some one. After
+a moment the man approached Yanski, and, taking off his hat, asked,
+respectfully:
+
+"Is it to Monsieur Varhely that I have the honor to speak?"
+
+"Yes," replied Yanski, a little surprised.
+
+"I have a package for Prince Andras Zilah: would Monsieur have the
+kindness to take charge of it, and give it to the Prince? I beg
+Monsieur's pardon; but it is very important, and I am obliged to go away
+at once. I should have brought it to Maisons yesterday."
+
+As he spoke, the servant drew from an inside pocket a little package
+carefully wrapped, and sealed with red sealing-wax.
+
+"Monsieur will excuse me," he said again, "but it is very important."
+
+"What is it?" asked Varhely, rather brusquely. "Who sent it?"
+
+"Count Michel Menko."
+
+Varhely knew very well (as also did Andras), that Michel had been
+seriously ill; otherwise, he would have been astonished at the young
+man's absence from the wedding of the Prince.
+
+He thought Michel had probably sent a wedding present, and he took the
+little package, twisting it mechanically in his hands. As he did so, he
+gave a slight start of surprise; it seemed as if the package contained
+letters.
+
+He looked at the superscription. The name of Prince Andras Zilah was
+traced in clear, firm handwriting, and, in the left-hand corner, Michel
+Menko had written, in Hungarian characters: "Very important! With the
+expression of my excuses and my sorrow." And below, the signature "Menko
+Mihaly."
+
+The domestic was still standing there, hat in hand. "Monsieur will be
+good enough to pardon me," he said; "but, in the midst of this crowd, I
+could not perhaps reach his Excellency, and the Count's commands were so
+imperative that--"
+
+"Very well," interrupted Varhely. "I will myself give this to the Prince
+immediately."
+
+The domestic bowed, uttered his thanks, and left Varhely vaguely uneasy
+at this mysterious package which had been brought there, and which Menko
+had addressed to the Prince.
+
+With the expression of his excuses and his sorrow! Michel doubtless
+meant that he was sorry not to be able to join Andras's friends--he who
+was one of the most intimate of them, and whom the Prince called "my
+child." Yes, it was evidently that. But why this sealed package? and
+what did it contain? Yanski turned it over and over between his fingers,
+which itched to break the wrapper, and find out what was within.
+
+He wondered if there were really any necessity to give it to the Prince.
+But why should he not? What folly to think that any disagreeable news
+could come from Michel Menko! The young man, unable to come himself to
+Maisons, had sent his congratulations to the Prince, and Zilah would
+be glad to receive them from his friend. That was all. There was no
+possible trouble in all this, but only one pleasure the more to Andras.
+
+And Varhely could not help smiling at the nervous feeling a letter
+received under odd circumstances or an unexpected despatch sometimes
+causes. The envelope alone, of some letters, sends a magnetic thrill
+through one and makes one tremble. The rough soldier was not accustomed
+to such weaknesses, and he blamed himself as being childish, for having
+felt that instinctive fear which was now dissipated.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and turned toward the church.
+
+From the interior came the sound of the organ, mingled with the murmur
+of the guests as they rose, ready to depart. The wedding march from the
+Midsummer Night's Dream pealed forth majestically as the newly-married
+pair walked slowly down the aisle. Marsa smiled happily at this music
+of Mendelssohn, which she had played so often, and which was now singing
+for her the chant of happy love. She saw the sunshine streaming through
+the open doorway, and, dazzled by this light from without, her eyes
+fixed upon the luminous portal, she no longer perceived the dim shadows
+of the church.
+
+Murmurs of admiration greeted her as she appeared upon the threshold,
+beaming with happiness. The crowd, which made way for her, gazed upon
+her with fascinated eyes. The door of Andras's carriage was open; Marsa
+entered it, and Andras, with a smile of deep, profound content, seated
+himself beside her, whispering tenderly in the Tzigana's ear as the
+carriage drove off:
+
+"Ah! how I love you! my beloved, my adored Marsa! How I love you, and
+how happy I am!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. "THE TZIGANA IS THE MOST LOVED OF ALL!"
+
+The chimes rang forth a merry peal, and Mendelssohn's music still
+thundered its triumphal accents, as the marriage guests left the church.
+
+"It is a beautiful wedding, really a great success! The bride, the
+decorations, the good peasants and the pretty girls--everything is
+simply perfect. If I ever marry again," laughed the Baroness, "I shall
+be married in the country."
+
+"You have only to name the day, Baroness," said old Vogotzine, inspired
+to a little gallantry.
+
+And Jacquemin, with a smile, exclaimed, in Russian:
+
+"What a charming speech, General, and so original! I will make a note of
+it."
+
+The carriages rolled away toward Marsa's house through the broad
+avenues, turning rapidly around the fountains of the park, whose jets of
+water laughed as they fell and threw showers of spray over the masses
+of flowers. Before the church, the children disputed for the money and
+bonbons Prince Andras had ordered to be distributed. In Marsa's large
+drawing-rooms, where glass and silver sparkled upon the snowy cloth,
+servants in livery awaited the return of the wedding-party. In a
+moment there was an assault, General Vogotzine leading the column. All
+appetites were excited by the drive in the fresh air, and the guests did
+honor to the pates, salads, and cold chicken, accompanied by Leoville,
+which Jacquemin tasted and pronounced drinkable.
+
+The little Baroness was ubiquitous, laughing, chattering, enjoying
+herself to her heart's content, and telling every one that she was to
+leave that very evening for Trouviile, with trunks, and trunks, and
+trunks--a host of them! But then, it was race-week, you know!
+
+With her eyeglasses perched upon her little nose, she stopped before a
+statuette, a picture, no matter what, exclaiming, merrily:
+
+"Oh, how pretty that is! How pretty it is! It is a Tanagra! How queer
+those Tanagras are. They prove that love existed in antiquity, don't
+they, Varhely? Oh! I forgot; what do you know about love?"
+
+At last, with a glass of champagne in her hand, she paused before a
+portrait of Marsa, a strange, powerful picture, the work of an artist
+who knew how to put soul into his painting.
+
+"Ah! this is superb! Who painted it, Marsa?"
+
+"Zichy," replied Marsa.
+
+"Ah, yes, Zichy! I am no longer astonished. By the way, there is another
+Hungarian artist who paints very well. I have heard of him. He is an old
+man; I don't exactly remember his name, something like Barabas."
+
+"Nicolas de Baratras," said Varhely.
+
+"Yes, that's it. It seems he is a master. But your Zichy pleases me
+infinitely. He has caught your eyes and expression wonderfully; it is
+exactly like you, Princess. I should like to have my portrait painted by
+him. His first name is Michel, is it not?"
+
+She examined the signature, peering through her eyeglass, close to the
+canvas.
+
+"Yes, I knew it was. Michel Zichy!"
+
+This name of "Michel!" suddenly pronounced, sped like an arrow through
+Marsa's heart. She closed her eyes as if to shut out some hateful
+vision, and abruptly quitted the Baroness, who proceeded to analyze
+Zichy's portrait as she did the pictures in the salon on varnishing day.
+Marsa went toward other friends, answering their flatteries with smiles,
+and forcing herself to talk and forget.
+
+Andras, in the midst of the crowd where Vogotzine's loud laugh
+alternated with the little cries of the Baroness, felt a complex
+sentiment: he wished his friends to enjoy themselves and yet he longed
+to be alone with Marsa, and to take her away. They were to go first to
+his hotel in Paris; and then to some obscure corner, probably to the
+villa of Sainte-Adresse, until September, when they were going to
+Venice, and from there to Rome for the winter.
+
+It seemed to the Prince that all these people were taking away from
+him a part of his life. Marsa belonged to them, as she went from one
+to another, replying to the compliments which desperately resembled one
+another, from those of Angelo Valla, which were spoken in Italian, to
+those of little Yamada, the Parisianized Japanese. Andras now longed
+for the solitude of the preceding days; and Baroness Dinati, shaking her
+finger at him, said: "My dear Prince, you are longing to see us go,
+I know you are. Oh! don't say you are not! I am sure of it, and I can
+understand it. We had no lunch at my marriage. The Baron simply carried
+me off at the door of the church. Carried me off! How romantic that
+sounds! It suggests an elopement with a coach and four! Have no fear,
+though; leave it to me, I will disperse your guests!"
+
+She flew away before Zilah could answer; and, murmuring a word in the
+ears of her friends, tapping with her little hand upon the shoulders
+of the obstinate, she gradually cleared the rooms, and the sound of the
+departing carriages was soon heard, as they rolled down the avenue.
+
+Andras and Marsa were left almost alone; Varhely still remaining, and
+the little Baroness, who ran up, all rosy and out of breath, to the
+Prince, and said, gayly, in her laughing voice:
+
+"Well! What do you say to that? all vanished like smoke, even Jacquemin,
+who has gone back by train. The game of descampativos, which Marie
+Antoinette loved to play at Trianon, must have been a little like this.
+Aren't you going to thank me? Ah! you ingrate!"
+
+She ran and embraced Marsa, pressing her cherry lips to the Tzigana's
+pale face, and then rapidly disappeared in a mock flight, with a gay
+little laugh and a tremendous rustle of petticoats.
+
+Of all his friends, Varhely was the one of whom Andras was fondest;
+but they had not been able to exchange a single word since the morning.
+Yanski had been right to remain till the last: it was his hand which the
+Prince wished to press before his departure, as if Varhely had been his
+relative, and the sole surviving one.
+
+"Now," he said to him, "you have no longer only a brother, my dear
+Varhely; you have also a sister who loves and respects you as I love and
+respect you myself."
+
+Yanski's stern face worked convulsively with an emotion he tried to
+conceal beneath an apparent roughness.
+
+"You are right to love me a little," he said, brusquely, "because I am
+very fond of you--of both of you," nodding his head toward Marsa. "But
+no respect, please. That makes me out too old."
+
+The Tzigana, taking Vogotzine's arm, led him gently toward the door, a
+little alarmed at the purple hue of the General's cheeks and forehead.
+"Come, take a little fresh air," she said to the old soldier, who
+regarded her with round, expressionless eyes.
+
+As they disappeared in the garden, Varhely drew from his pocket the
+little package given to him by Menko's valet.
+
+"Here is something from another friend! It was brought to me at the door
+of the church."
+
+"Ah! I thought that Menko would send me some word of congratulation,"
+said Andras, after he had read upon the envelope the young Count's
+signature. "Thanks, my dear Varhely."
+
+"Now," said Yanski, "may happiness attend you, Andras! I hope that you
+will let me hear from you soon."
+
+Zilah took the hand which Varhely extended, and clasped it warmly in
+both his own.
+
+Upon the steps Varhely found Marsa, who, in her turn, shook his hand.
+
+"Au revoir, Count."
+
+"Au revoir, Princess."
+
+She smiled at Andras, who accompanied Varhely, and who held in his hand
+the package with the seals unbroken.
+
+"Princess!" she said. "That is a title by which every one has been
+calling me for the last hour; but it gives me the greatest pleasure to
+hear it spoken by you, my dear Varhely. But, Princess or not, I shall
+always be for you the Tzigana, who will play for you, whenever you wish
+it, the airs of her country--of our country--!"
+
+There was, in the manner in which she spoke these simple words, a gentle
+grace which evoked in the mind of the old patriot memories of the past
+and the fatherland.
+
+"The Tzigana is the most charming of all! The Tzigana is the most loved
+of all!" he said, in Hungarian, repeating a refrain of a Magyar song.
+
+With a quick, almost military gesture, he saluted Andras and Marsa as
+they stood at the top of the steps, the sun casting upon them dancing
+reflections through the leaves of the trees.
+
+The Prince and Princess responded with a wave of the hand; and General
+Vogotzine, who was seated under the shade of a chestnut-tree, with his
+coat unbuttoned and his collar open, tried in vain to rise to his feet
+and salute the departure of the last guest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. A DREAM SHATTERED
+
+They were alone at last; free to exchange those eternal vows which they
+had just taken before the altar and sealed with a long, silent pressure
+when their hands were united; alone with their love, the devoted love
+they had read so long in each other's eyes, and which had burned, in the
+church, beneath Marsa's lowered lids, when the Prince had placed upon
+her finger the nuptial ring.
+
+This moment of happiness and solitude after all the noise and excitement
+was indeed a blessed one!
+
+Andras had placed upon the piano of the salon Michel Menko's package,
+and, seated upon the divan, he held both Marsa's hands in his, as she
+stood before him.
+
+"My best wishes, Princess!" he said. "Princess! Princess Zilah! That
+name never sounded so sweet in my ears before! My wife! My dear and
+cherished wife!" As she listened to the music of the voice she loved,
+Marsa said to herself, that sweet indeed was life, which, after so many
+trials, still had in reserve for her such joys. And so deep was her
+happiness, that she wished everything could end now in a beautiful dream
+which should have no awakening.
+
+"We will depart for Paris whenever you like," said the Prince.
+
+"Yes," she exclaimed, sinking to his feet, and throwing her arms about
+his neck as he bent over her, "let us leave this house; take me away,
+take me away, and let a new life begin for me, the life I have longed
+for with you and your love!"
+
+There was something like terror in her words, and in the way she clung
+to this man who was her hero. When she said "Let us leave this house,"
+she thought, with a shudder, of all her cruel suffering, of all that she
+hated and which had weighed upon her like a nightmare. She thirsted for
+a different air, where no phantom of the past could pursue her, where
+she should feel free, where her life should belong entirely to him.
+
+"I will go and take off this gown," she murmured, rising, "and we will
+run away like two eloping lovers."
+
+"Take off that gown? Why? It would be such a pity! You are so lovely as
+you are!"
+
+"Well," said Marsa, glancing down upon him with an almost mutinous
+smile, which lent a peculiar charm to her beauty, "I will not change
+this white gown, then; a mantle thrown over it will do. And you will
+take your wife in her bridal dress to Paris, my Prince, my hero--my
+husband!"
+
+He rose, threw his arms about her, and, holding her close to his heart,
+pressed one long, silent kiss upon the exquisite lips of his beautiful
+Tzigana.
+
+She gently disengaged herself from his embrace, with a shivering sigh;
+and, going slowly toward the door, she turned, and threw him a kiss,
+saying:
+
+"I will come back soon, my Andras!"
+
+And, although wishing to go for her mantle, nevertheless she still
+stood there, with her eyes fixed upon the Prince and her mouth sweetly
+tremulous with a passion of feeling, as if she could not tear herself
+away.
+
+The piano upon which Andras had cast the package given him by Varhely
+was there between them; and the Prince advanced a step or two, leaning
+his hand upon the ebony cover. As Marsa approached for a last embrace
+before disappearing on her errand, her glance fell mechanically upon the
+small package sealed with red wax; and, as she read, in the handwriting
+she knew so well, the address of the Prince and the signature of Michel
+Menko, she raised her eyes violently to the face of Prince Zilah, as if
+to see if this were not a trap; if, in placing this envelope within her
+view, he were not trying to prove her. There was in her look fright,
+sudden, instinctive fright, a fright which turned her very lips to
+ashes; and she recoiled, her eyes returning fascinated to the package,
+while Andras, surprised at the unexpected expression of the Tzigana's
+convulsed features, exclaimed, in alarm:
+
+"What is it, Marsa? What is the matter?" "I--I"
+
+She tried to smile.
+
+"Nothing--I do not know! I--"
+
+She made a desperate effort to look him in the face; but she could not
+remove her eyes from that sealed package bearing the name Menko.
+
+Ah! that Michel! She had forgotten him! Miserable wretch! He returned,
+he threatened her, he was about to avenge himself: she was sure of it!
+
+That paper contained something horrible. What could Michel Menko have
+to say to Prince Andras, writing him at such an hour, except to tell him
+that the wretched woman he had married was branded with infamy?
+
+She shuddered from head to foot, steadying herself against the piano,
+her lips trembling nervously.
+
+"I assure you, Marsa--" began the Prince, taking her hands. "Your hands
+are cold. Are you ill?"
+
+His eyes followed the direction of Marsa's, which were still riveted
+upon the piano with a dumb look of unutterable agony.
+
+He instantly seized the sealed package, and, holding it up, exclaimed:
+
+"One would think that it was this which troubled you!"
+
+"O Prince! I swear to you!--"
+
+"Prince?"
+
+He repeated in amazement this title which she suddenly gave him; she,
+who called him Andras, as he called her Marsa. Prince? He also, in his
+turn, felt a singular sensation of fright, wondering what that package
+contained, and if Marsa's fate and his own were not connected with some
+unknown thing within it.
+
+"Let us see," he said, abruptly breaking the seals, "what this is."
+
+Rapidly, and as if impelled, despite herself, Marsa caught the wrist of
+her husband in her icy hand, and, terrified, supplicating, she cried, in
+a wild, broker voice:
+
+"No, no, I implore you! No! Do not read it! Do not read it!"
+
+He contemplated her coldly, and, forcing himself to be calm, asked:
+
+"What does this parcel of Michel Menko's contain?"
+
+"I do not know," gasped Marsa. "But do not read it! In the name of the
+Virgin" (the sacred adjuration of the Hungarians occurring to her mind,
+in the midst of her agony), "do not read it!"
+
+"But you must be aware, Princess," returned Andras, "that you are taking
+the very means to force me to read it."
+
+She shivered and moaned, there was such a change in the way Andras
+pronounced this word, which he had spoken a moment before in tones so
+loving and caressing--Princess.
+
+Now the word threatened her.
+
+"Listen! I am about to tell you: I wished--Ah! My God! My God! Unhappy
+woman that I am! Do not read, do not read!"
+
+Andras, who had turned very pale, gently removed her grasp from the
+package, and said, very slowly and gravely, but with a tenderness in
+which hope still appeared:
+
+"Come, Marsa, let us see; what do you wish me to think? Why do you wish
+me not to read these letters? for letters they doubtless are. What have
+letters sent me by Count Menko to do with you? You do not wish me to
+read them?"
+
+He paused a moment, and then, while Marsa's eyes implored him with
+the mute prayer of a person condemned to death by the executioner, he
+repeated:
+
+"You do not wish me to read them? Well, so be it; I will not read them,
+but upon one condition: you must swear to me, understand, swear to me,
+that your name is not traced in these letters, and that Michel Menko has
+nothing in common with the Princess Zilah."
+
+She listened, she heard him; but Andras wondered whether she understood,
+she stood so still and motionless, as if stupefied by the shock of a
+moral tempest.
+
+"There is, I am certain," he continued in the same calm, slow voice,
+"there is within this envelope some lie, some plot. I will not even know
+what it is. I will not ask you a single question, and I will throw these
+letters, unread, into the fire; but swear to me, that, whatever this
+Menko, or any other, may write to me, whatever any one may say, is an
+infamy and a calumny. Swear that, Marsa."
+
+"Swear it, swear again? Swear always, then? Oath upon oath? Ah! it is
+too much!" she cried, her torpor suddenly breaking into an explosion of
+sobs and cries. "No! not another lie, not one! Monsieur, I am a wretch,
+a miserable woman! Strike me! Lash me, as I lash my dogs! I have
+deceived you! Despise me! Hate me! I am unworthy even of pity! The man
+whose letters you hold revenges himself, and stabs me, has been--my
+lover!"
+
+"Michel!"
+
+"The most cowardly, the vilest being in the world! If he hated me,
+he might have killed me; he might have torn off my veil just now, and
+struck me across the lips. But to do this, to do this! To attack you,
+you, you! Ah! miserable dog; fit only to be stoned to death! Judas! Liar
+and coward! Would to heaven I had planted a knife in his heart!"
+
+"Ah! My God!" murmured the Prince, as if stabbed himself.
+
+At this cry of bitter agony from Andras Zilah, Marsa's imprecations
+ceased; and she threw herself madly at his feet; while he stood erect
+and pale--her judge.
+
+She lay there, a mass of white satin and lace, her loosened hair falling
+upon the carpet, where the pale bridal flowers withered beneath her
+husband's heel; and Zilah, motionless, his glance wandering from the
+prostrate woman to the package of letters which burned his fingers,
+seemed ready to strike, with these proofs of her infamy, the distracted
+Tzigana, a wolf to threaten, a slave to supplicate.
+
+Suddenly he leaned over, seized her by the wrists, and raised her almost
+roughly.
+
+"Do you know," he said, in low, quivering tones, "that the lowest
+of women is less culpable than you? Ten times, a hundred times, less
+culpable! Do you know that I have the right to kill you?"
+
+"Ah! that, yes! Do it! do it! do it!" she cried, with the smile of a mad
+woman.
+
+He pushed her slowly from him.
+
+"Why have you committed this infamy? It was not for my fortune; you are
+rich."
+
+Marsa moaned, humiliated to the dust by this cold contempt. She would
+have preferred brutal anger; anything, to this.
+
+"Ah! your fortune!" she said, finding a last excuse for herself out of
+the depth of her humiliation, which had now become eternal; "it was not
+that, nor your name, nor your title that I wished: it was your love!"
+
+The heart of the Prince seemed wrung in a vise as this word fell from
+those lips, once adored, nay, still adored, soiled as they were.
+
+"My love!"
+
+"Yes, your love, your love alone! I would have confessed all, been your
+mistress, your slave, your thing, if I--I had not feared to lose you,
+to see myself abased in the eyes of you, whom I adored! I was afraid,
+afraid of seeing you fly from me--yes, that was my crime! It is
+infamous, ah! I know it; but I thought only of keeping you, you alone;
+you, my admiration, my hero, my life, my god! I deserve to be punished;
+yes, yes, I deserve it--But those letters--those letters which you would
+have cast into the fire if I had not revealed the secret of my life--you
+told me so yourself--I might have sworn what you asked, and you would
+have believed me--I might have done so; but no, it would have been too
+vile, too cowardly! Ah! kill me! That is what I deserve, that is what--"
+
+"Where are you going?" she cried, interrupting herself, her eyes dilated
+with fear, as she saw that Zilah, without answering, was moving toward
+the door.
+
+She forgot that she no longer had the right to question; she only felt,
+that, once gone, she would never see him again. Ah! a thousand times
+a blow with a knife rather than that! Was this the way the day, which
+began so brightly, was to end?
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"What does that matter to you?"
+
+"True! I beg your pardon. At least--at least, Monsieur, one word, I
+implore. What are your commands? What do you wish me to do? There must
+be laws to punish those who have done what I have done! Shall I accuse
+myself, give myself up to justice? Ah! speak to me! speak to me!"
+
+"Live with Michel Menko, if he is still alive after I have met him!"
+responded Andras, in hard, metallic tones, waving back the unhappy woman
+who threw herself on her knees, her arms outstretched toward him.
+
+The door closed behind him. For a moment she gazed after him with
+haggard eyes: and then, dragging herself, her bridal robes trailing
+behind her, to the door, she tried to call after him, to detain the man
+whom she adored, and who was flying from her; but her voice failed her,
+and, with one wild, inarticulate cry, she fell forward on her face, with
+a horrible realization of the immense void which filled the house, this
+morning gay and joyous, now silent as a tomb.
+
+And while the Prince, in the carriage which bore him away, read the
+letters in which Marsa spoke of her love for another, and that other the
+man whom he called "my child;" while he paused in this agonizing reading
+to ask himself if it were true, if such a sudden annihilation of his
+happiness were possible, if so many misfortunes could happen in such a
+few hours; while he watched the houses and trees revolve slowly by him,
+and feared that he was going mad--Marsa's servants ate the remnants of
+the lunch, and drank what was left of the champagne to the health of the
+Prince and Princess Zilah.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. "THE WORLD HOLDS BUT ONE FAIR MAIDEN"
+
+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."
+
+Zilah resigned himself to his fate; and followed the physicians without
+saying a word; he could hear the panting respiration of Vogotzine
+trudging along behind him. All at once the Prince felt a sensation as of
+a heavy hand resting upon his heart. Fargeas had exclaimed:
+
+"There she is!"
+
+He pointed, through the branches of the lilac-bushes, to two women who
+were approaching with slow steps, one a light-haired woman in a nurse's
+dress, and the other in black garments, as if in mourning for her own
+life, Marsa herself.
+
+Marsa! She was coming toward Zilah; in a moment, he would be able to
+touch her, if he wished, through the leaves! Even Vogotzine held his
+breath.
+
+Zilah eagerly questioned Marsa's face, as if to read thereon a secret,
+to decipher a name--Menko's or his own. Her exquisite, delicate features
+had the rigidity of marble; her dark eyes were staring straight ahead,
+like two spots of light, where nothing, nothing was reflected. Zilah
+shuddered again; she alarmed him.
+
+Alarm and pity! He longed to thrust aside the bushes, and hasten with
+extended arms toward the pale vision before him. It was as if the moving
+spectre of his love were passing by. But, with a strong effort of will,
+he remained motionless where he was.
+
+Old Vogotzine seemed very ill at ease. Dr. Fargeas was very calm; and,
+after a questioning glance at his colleague, he said distinctly to the
+Prince:
+
+"Now you must show yourself!"
+
+The physician's order, far from displeasing Zilah, was like music in
+his ears. He was beginning to doubt, if, after all, Fargeas intended to
+attempt the experiment. He longed, with keen desire, to speak to Marsa;
+to know if his look, his breath, like a puff of wind over dying ashes,
+would not rekindle a spark of life in those dull, glassy eyes.
+
+What was she thinking of, if she thought at all? What memory vacillated
+to and fro in that vacant brain? The memory of himself, or of--the
+other? He must know, he must know!
+
+"This way," said Dr. Sims. "We will go to the end of the alley, and meet
+her face to face."
+
+"Courage!" whispered Fargeas.
+
+Zilah followed; and, in a few steps, they reached the end of the alley,
+and stood beneath a clump of leafy trees. The Prince saw, coming to him,
+with a slow but not heavy step, Marsa--no, another Marsa, the spectre or
+statue of Marsa.
+
+Fargeas made a sign to Vogotzine, and the Russian and the two doctors
+concealed themselves behind the trees.
+
+Zilah, trembling with emotion, remained alone in the middle of the walk.
+
+The nurse who attended Marsa, had doubtless received instructions from
+Dr. Sims; for, as she perceived the Prince, she fell back two or three
+paces, and allowed Marsa to go on alone.
+
+Lost in her stupor, the Tzigana advanced, her dark hair ruffled by
+the wind; and, still beautiful although so thin, she moved on, without
+seeing anything, her lips closed as if sealed by death, until she was
+not three feet from Zilah.
+
+He stood waiting, his blue eyes devouring her with a look, in which
+there were mingled love, pity, and anger. When the Tzigana reached him,
+and nearly ran into him in her slow walk, she stopped suddenly, like an
+automaton. The instinct of an obstacle before her arrested her, and she
+stood still, neither recoiling nor advancing.
+
+A few steps away, Dr. Fargeas and Dr. Sims studied her stony look, in
+which there was as yet neither thought nor vision.
+
+Still enveloped in her stupor, she stood there, her eyes riveted upon
+Andras. Suddenly, as if an invisible knife had been plunged into her
+heart, she started back. Her pale marble face became transfigured, and
+an expression of wild terror swept across her features; shaking with a
+nervous trembling, she tried to call out, and a shrill cry, which rent
+the air, burst from her lips, half open, like those of a tragic mask.
+Her two arms were stretched out with the hands clasped; and, falling
+upon her knees, she--whose light of reason had been extinguished, who
+for so many days had only murmured the sad, singing refrain: "I do not
+know; I do not know!"--faltered, in a voice broken with sobs: "Forgive!
+Forgive!"
+
+Then her face became livid, and she would have fallen back unconscious
+if Zilah had not stooped over and caught her in his arms.
+
+Dr. Sims hastened forward, and, aided by the nurse, relieved him of his
+burden.
+
+Poor Vogotzine was as purple as if he had had a stroke of apoplexy.
+
+"But, gentlemen," said the Prince, his eyes burning with hot tears, "it
+will be horrible if we have killed her!"
+
+"No, no," responded Fargeas; "we have only killed her stupor. Now leave
+her to us. Am I not right, my dear Sims? She can and must be cured!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. "LET THE DEAD PAST BURY ITS DEAD"
+
+Prince Andras had heard no news of Varhely for a long time. He only knew
+that the Count was in Vienna.
+
+Yanski had told the truth when he said that he had been summoned away by
+his friend, Angelo Valla.
+
+They were very much astonished, at the Austrian ministry of foreign
+affairs, to see Count Yanski Varhely, who, doubtless, had come from
+Paris to ask some favor of the minister. The Austrian diplomats smiled
+as they heard the name of the old soldier of '48 and '49. So, the famous
+fusion of parties proclaimed in 1875 continued! Every day some sulker of
+former times rallied to the standard. Here was this Varhely, who, at one
+time, if he had set foot in Austria-Hungary, would have been speedily
+cast into the Charles barracks, the jail of political prisoners, now
+sending in his card to the minister of the Emperor; and doubtless the
+minister and the old commander of hussars would, some evening, together
+pledge the new star of Hungary, in a beaker of rosy Crement!
+
+"These are queer days we live in!" thought the Austrian diplomats.
+
+The minister, of whom Yanski Varhely demanded an audience, his
+Excellency Count Josef Ladany, had formerly commanded a legion of Magyar
+students, greatly feared by the grenadiers of Paskiewisch, in Hungary.
+The soldiers of Josef Ladany, after threatening to march upon Vienna,
+had many times held in check the grenadiers and Cossacks of the
+field-marshal. Spirited and enthusiastic, his fair hair floating above
+his youthful forehead like an aureole, Ladany made war like a patriot
+and a poet, reciting the verses of Petoefi about the camp-fires, and
+setting out for battle as for a ball. He was magnificent (Varhely
+remembered him well) at the head of his students, and his floating,
+yellow moustaches had caused the heart of more than one little Hungarian
+patriot to beat more quickly.
+
+Varhely would experience real pleasure in meeting once more his old
+companion in arms. He remembered one afternoon in the vineyards, when
+his hussars, despite the obstacles of the vines and the irregular
+ground, had extricated Ladany's legion from the attack of two regiments
+of Russian infantry. Joseph Ladany was standing erect upon one of his
+cannon for which the gunners had no more ammunition, and, with drawn
+sabre, was rallying his companions, who were beginning to give way
+before the enemy. Ah, brave Ladany! With what pleasure would Varhely
+grasp his hand!
+
+The former leader had doubtless aged terribly--he must be a man of
+fifty-five or fifty-six, to-day; but Varhely was sure that Joseph
+Ladany, now become minister, had preserved his generous, ardent nature
+of other days.
+
+As he crossed the antechambers and lofty halls which led to the
+minister's office, Varhely still saw, in his mind's eye, Ladany, sabre
+in hand, astride of the smoking cannon.
+
+An usher introduced him into a large, severe-looking room, with a lofty
+chimney-piece, above which hung a picture of the Emperor-King in full
+military uniform. Varhely at first perceived only some large armchairs,
+and an enormous desk covered with books; but, in a moment, from behind
+the mass of volumes, a man emerged, smiling, and with outstretched hand:
+the old hussar was amazed to find himself in the presence of a species
+of English diplomat, bald, with long, gray side-whiskers and shaven lip
+and chin, and scrupulously well dressed.
+
+Yanski's astonishment was so evident that Josef Ladany said, still
+smiling:
+
+"Well, don't you recognize me, my dear Count?" His voice was pleasant,
+and his manner charming; but there was something cold and politic in his
+whole appearance which absolutely stupefied Varhely. If he had seen
+him pass in the street, he would never have recognized, in this elegant
+personage, the young man, with yellow hair and long moustaches, who sang
+war songs as he sabred the enemy.
+
+And yet it was indeed Ladany; it was the same clear eye which had once
+commanded his legion with a single look; but the eye was often veiled
+now beneath a lowered eyelid, and only now and then did a glance shoot
+forth which seemed to penetrate a man's most secret thoughts. The
+soldier had become the diplomat.
+
+"I had forgotten that thirty years have passed!" thought Varhely, a
+little saddened.
+
+Count Ladany made his old comrade sit down in one of the armchairs, and
+questioned him smilingly as to his life, his friendships, Paris, Prince
+Zilah, and led him gradually and gracefully to confide what he, Varhely,
+had come to ask of the minister of the Emperor of Austria.
+
+Varhely felt more reassured. Josef Ladany seemed to him to have remained
+morally the same. The moustache had been cut off, the yellow hair had
+fallen; but the heart was still young and without doubt Hungarian.
+
+"You can," he said, abruptly, "render me a service, a great service.
+I have never before asked anything of anybody; but I have taken this
+journey expressly to see you, and to ask you, to beg you rather, to--"
+
+"Go on, my dear Count. What you desire will be realized, I hope."
+
+But his tone had already become colder, or perhaps simply more official.
+
+"Well," continued Varhely, "what I have come to ask of you is; in
+memory of the time when we were brothers in arms" (the minister started
+slightly, and stroked his whiskers a little nervously), "the liberty of
+a certain man, of a man whom you know."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said Count Josef.
+
+He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and,
+through his half-opened eyelids, examined Varhely, who looked him boldly
+in the face.
+
+The contrast between these two men was striking; the soldier with his
+hair and moustache whitened in the harness, and the elegant government
+official with his polished manners; two old-time companions who had
+heard the whistling of the same balls.
+
+"This is my errand," said Varhely. "I have the greatest desire that one
+of our compatriots, now a prisoner in Warsaw, I think--at all events,
+arrested at Warsaw a short time ago--should be set at liberty. It is of
+the utmost importance to me," he added, his lips turning almost as white
+as his moustache.
+
+"Oh!" said the minister. "I fancy I know whom you mean."
+
+"Count Menko."
+
+"Exactly! Menko was arrested by the Russian police on his arrival at
+the house of a certain Labanoff, or Ladanoff--almost my name in Russian.
+This Labanoff, who had lately arrived from Paris, is suspected of a plot
+against the Czar. He is not a nihilist, but simply a malcontent; and,
+besides that, his brain is not altogether right. In short, Count Menko
+is connected in some way, I don't know how, with this Labanoff. He went
+to Poland to join him, and the Russian police seized him. I think myself
+that they were quite right in their action."
+
+"Possibly," said Varhely; "but I do not care to discuss the right of the
+Russian police to defend themselves or the Czar. What I have come for is
+to ask you to use your influence with the Russian Government to obtain
+Menko's release."
+
+"Are you very much interested in Menko?"
+
+"Very much," replied Yanski, in a tone which struck the minister as
+rather peculiar.
+
+"Then," asked Count Ladany with studied slowness, "you would like?--"
+
+"A note from you to the Russian ambassador, demanding Menko's release.
+Angelo Valla--you know him--Manin's former minister--"
+
+"Yes, I know," said Count Josef, with his enigmatical smile.
+
+"Valla told me of Menko's arrest. I knew that Menko had left Paris,
+and I was very anxious to find where he had gone. Valla learned, at the
+Italian embassy in Paris, of the affair of this Labanoff and of the real
+or apparent complicity of Michel Menko; and he told me about it. When
+we were talking over the means of obtaining the release of a man held by
+Muscovite authority, which is not an easy thing, I know, we thought
+of you, and I have come to your Excellency as I would have gone to the
+chief of the Legion of Students to demand his aid in a case of danger!"
+
+Yanski Varhely was no diplomat; and his manner of appealing to the
+memories of the past was excessively disagreeable to the minister, who,
+however, allowed no signs of his annoyance to appear.
+
+Count Ladany was perfectly well acquainted with the Warsaw affair. As an
+Hungarian was mixed up in it, and an Hungarian of the rank and standing
+of Count Menko, the Austro-Hungarian authorities had immediately been
+advised of the whole proceeding. There were probably no proofs of actual
+complicity against Menko; but, as Josef Ladany had said, it seemed
+evident that he had come to Poland to join Labanoff. An address given to
+Menko by Labanoff had been found, and both were soon to depart for St.
+Petersburg. Labanoff had some doubtful acquaintances in the Russian
+army: several officers of artillery, who had been arrested and sent to
+the mines, were said to be his friends.
+
+"The matter is a grave one," said the Count. "We can scarcely, for one
+particular case, make our relations more strained with a--a friendly
+nation, relations which so many others--I leave you to divine who,
+my dear Varhely--strive to render difficult. And yet, I would like to
+oblige you; I would, I assure you."
+
+"If Count Menko is not set at liberty, what will happen to him?" asked
+Yanski.
+
+"Hmm--he might, although a foreigner, be forced to take a journey to
+Siberia."
+
+"Siberia! That is a long distance off, and few return from that
+journey," said Varhely, his voice becoming almost hoarse. "I would give
+anything in the world if Menko were free!"
+
+"It would have been so easy for him not to have been seized by the
+Russian police."
+
+"Yes; but he is. And, I repeat, I have come to you to demand his
+release. Damn it! Such a demand is neither a threat nor a cases belli."
+
+The minister calmed the old hussar with a gesture.
+
+"No," he replied, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth;
+"but it is embarrassing, embarrassing! Confound Menko! He always was a
+feather-brain! The idea of his leaving diplomacy to seek adventures! He
+must know, however, that his case is--what shall I say?--embarrassing,
+very embarrassing. I don't suppose he had any idea of conspiring. He is
+a malcontent, this Menko, a malcontent! He would have made his mark
+in our embassies. The devil take him! Ah! my dear Count, it is very
+embarrassing, very embarrassing!"
+
+The minister uttered these words in a calm, courteous, polished manner,
+even when he said "The devil take him!" He then went on to say, that
+he could not make Varhely an absolute promise; he would look over the
+papers in the affair, telegraph to Warsaw and St. Petersburg, make a
+rapid study of what he called again the "very embarrassing" case of
+Michel Menko, and give Varhely an answer within twenty-four hours.
+
+"That will give you a chance to take a look at our city, my dear Count.
+Vienna has changed very much. Have you seen the opera-house? It is
+superb. Hans Makart is just exhibiting a new picture. Be sure to see it,
+and visit his studio, too; it is well worth examining. I have no need to
+tell you that I am at your service to act as your cicerone, and show you
+all the sights."
+
+"Are any of our old friends settled here?" asked Varhely.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the minister, softly. "But they are deputies,
+university professors, or councillors of the administration. All
+changed! all changed!"
+
+Then Varhely wished to know if certain among them whom he had not
+forgotten had "changed," as the minister said.
+
+"Where is Armand Bitto?"
+
+"Dead. He died very poor."
+
+"And Arpad Ovody, Georgei's lieutenant, who was so brave at the assault
+of Buda? I thought that he was killed with that bullet through his
+cheek."
+
+"Ovody? He is at the head of the Magyar Bank, and is charged by the
+ministry with the conversion of the six per cent. Hungarian loan. He is
+intimately connected with the Rothschild group. He has I don't know
+how many thousand florins a year, and a castle in the neighborhood of
+Presburg. A great collector of pictures, and a very amiable man!"
+
+"And Hieronymis Janos, who wrote such eloquent proclamations and calls
+to arms? Kossuth was very fond of him."
+
+"He is busy, with Maurice Jokai, preparing a great book upon the
+Austro-Hungarian monarchy, a book patronized by the Archduke Rudolph. He
+will doubtless edit the part relative to the kingdom of Saint Stephen."
+
+"Ha! ha! He will have a difficult task when he comes to the recital of
+the battle at Raab against Francis Joseph in person! He commanded at
+Raab himself, as you must remember well."
+
+"Yes, he did, I remember," said the minister. Then, with a smile, he
+added: "Bah! History is written, not made. Hieronymis Janos's book will
+be very good, very good!"
+
+"I don't doubt it. What about Ferency Szilogyi? Is he also writing books
+under the direction of the Archduke Rudolph?"
+
+"No! no! Ferency Szilogyi is president of the court of assizes, and a
+very good magistrate he is."
+
+"He! an hussar?"
+
+"Oh! the world changes! His uniform sleeps in some chest, preserved in
+camphor. Szilogyi has only one fault: he is too strongly anti-Semitic."
+
+"He! a Liberal?"
+
+"He detests the Israelites, and he allows it to be seen a little
+too much. He embarrasses us sometimes. But there is one extenuating
+circumstance--he has married a Jewess!"
+
+This was said in a light, careless, humorously sceptical tone.
+
+"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--"
+
+"Why?" interrupted Andras, turning quickly to Vogotzine.
+
+"Ah! why? Because!" said the General, trying to give to his heavy face
+an expression of shrewd, dignified gravity.
+
+"What has happened?" asked the Prince. "Is she suffering again? Ill?"
+
+"Oh, insane, I tell you! absolutely insane! mad as a March hare! Two
+days ago, you see--"
+
+"Well, what? two days ago?"
+
+"Because, two days ago!--"
+
+"Well, what? What is it? Speak, Vogotzine!"
+
+"The despatch," stammered the General.
+
+"What despatch?"
+
+"The des--despatch from Florence."
+
+"She has received a despatch from Florence?"
+
+"A telegram--blue paper--she read it before me; upon my word, I thought
+it was from you! She said--no; those miserable bits of paper, it is
+astonishing how they alarm you. There are telegrams which have given
+me a fit of indigestion, I assure you--and I haven't the heart of a
+chicken!"
+
+"Go on! Marsa? This despatch? Whom was it from? What did Marsa say?"
+
+"She turned white as a sheet; she began to tremble--an attack of the
+nerves--and she said: 'Well, in two days I shall know, at last, whether
+I am to live!' Queer, wasn't it? I don't know what she meant! But it is
+certain--yes, certain, my dear fellow--that she expects, this evening,
+some one who is coming--or who is not coming, from Florence--that
+depends."
+
+"Who is it? Who?" cried Andras. "Michel Menko?"
+
+"I don't know," faltered Vogotzine in alarm, wondering whether it were
+Froloff's hand that had seized him by the collar of his coat.
+
+"It is Menko, is it not?" demanded Andras; while the terrified General
+gasped out something unintelligible, his intoxication increasing every
+yard the carriage advanced in the Bois.
+
+Andras was almost beside himself with pain and suspense. What did it
+mean? Who had sent that despatch? Why had it caused Marsa such emotion?
+"In two days I shall know, at last, whether I am to live!" Who could
+make her utter such a cry? Who, if not Michel Menko, was so intimately
+connected with her life as to trouble her so, to drive her insane, as
+Vogotzine said?
+
+"It is Menko, is it not? it is Menko?" repeated Andras again.
+
+And Vogotzine gasped:
+
+"Perhaps! anything is possible!"
+
+But he stopped suddenly, as if he comprehended, despite his inebriety,
+that he was in danger of going too far and doing some harm.
+
+"Come, Vogotzine, come, you have told me too much not to tell me all!"
+
+"That is true; yes, I have said too much! Ah! The devil! this is not my
+affair!--Well, yes, Count Menko is in Florence or near Florence--I
+don't know where. Marsa told me that--without meaning to. She
+was excited--very excited--talked to herself. I did not ask her
+anything--but--she is insane, you see, mad, mad! She first wrote a
+despatch to Italy--then she tore it up like this, saying: 'No, what is
+to happen, will happen!' There! I don't know anything but that. I don't
+know anything!"
+
+"Ah! she is expecting him!" cried Andras. "When?"
+
+"I don't know!"
+
+"You told me it was to be this evening. This evening, is it not?"
+
+The old General felt as ill at ease as if he had been before a military
+commission or in the hands of Froloff.
+
+"Yes, this evening."
+
+"At Maisons-Lafitte?"
+
+"At Maisons," responded Vogotzine, mechanically. "And all this wearies
+me--wearies me. Was it for this I decided to come to Paris? A fine idea!
+At least, there are no Russian days at Maisons!"
+
+Andras made no reply.
+
+He stopped the carriage, got out, and, saluting the General with a brief
+"Thank you!" walked rapidly away, leaving Vogotzine in blank amazement,
+murmuring, as he made an effort to sit up straight:
+
+"Well, well, are you going to leave me here, old man? All alone? This
+isn't right!"
+
+And, like a forsaken child, the old General, with comic twitchings of
+his eyebrows and nostrils, felt a strong desire to weep.
+
+"Where shall I drive you, Monsieur?" asked the coachman.
+
+"Wherever you like, my friend," responded Vogotzine, modestly, with an
+appealing look at the man. "You, at least, must not leave me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. THE VALE OF VIOLETS
+
+In the Prince's mind the whole affair seemed clear as day, and he
+explained the vague anxiety with which he had been afflicted for several
+days as a mysterious premonition of a new sorrow. Menko was at Florence!
+Menko, for it could be no other than he, had telegraphed to Marsa,
+arranging a meeting with her. That very evening he was to be in the
+house of Marsa Laszlo--Marsa who bore, in spite of all, the title and
+name of the Zilahs. Was it possible? After the marriage, after this
+woman's vows and tears, these two beings, separated for a time, were to
+be united again. And he, Andras, had almost felt pity for her! He
+had listened to Varhely, an honest man; drawing a parallel between a
+vanquished soldier and this fallen girl--Varhely, the rough, implacable
+Varhely, who had also been the dupe of the Tzigana, and one evening at
+Sainte-Adresse had even counselled the deceived husband to pardon her.
+
+In a state bordering on frenzy, Zilah returned to his hotel, thinking:
+
+"He will be with her this evening!"
+
+This was worse than all the rest. How could he punish her?
+
+Punish her?
+
+Why not? Was not Marsa Laszlo his wife? That villa of Maisons-Lafitte,
+where she thought herself so safe, was his by law. He, the husband, had
+a right to enter there at any hour and demand of his wife an account of
+his honor.
+
+"She wished this name of Zilah! Well! she shall know at least what it
+costs and what it imposes upon her!" he hissed through his clenched
+teeth. He walked nervously to and fro in the library of his hotel, his
+excitement increasing at every step.
+
+"She is Princess Zilah! She--a princess! Nothing can wrest from her that
+title which she has stolen! Princess be it, then; but the Prince has
+the right to deal out life or death to his wife--to his wife and to the
+lover of his wife!" with a spasmodic burst of laughter. "Her lover is
+to be there; Menko is to be there, and I complain! The man whom I have
+sought in vain will be before me. I shall hold him at my mercy, and I do
+not thank the kind fate which gives me that joy! This evening! He will
+be at her house this evening! Good! Justice shall be done!"
+
+Every moment added to his fever. He would have given ten years of his
+life if it were already evening. He waited impatiently for the hour
+to come when he could go and surprise them. He even thought of meeting
+Menko at the railway station on his arrival from Italy: but what would
+be the use? Menko would be at Maisons; and he would kill him before her
+face, in a duel if Menko would fight, or like a thief caught in the act
+if he attempted to fly. That would be better. Yes, he would kill him
+like a dog, if the other--but no! The Hungarian, struck in the presence
+of the Tzigana, would certainly not recoil before a pistol. Marsa should
+be the sole witness of the duel, and the blood of the Prince or of Menko
+should spatter her face--a crimson stain upon her pale cheek should be
+her punishment.
+
+Early in the evening Andras left the hotel, after slipping into the
+pocket of his overcoat a pair of loaded pistols: one of them he would
+cast at Menko's feet. It was not assassination he wished, but justice.
+
+He took the train to Maisons, and, on his arrival there, crossed the
+railway bridge, and found himself almost alone in the broad avenue which
+runs through the park. As he walked on through the rapidly darkening
+shadows, he began to feel a strange sensation, as if nothing had
+happened, and as if he were shaking off, little by little, a hideous
+nightmare. In a sort of voluntary hallucination, he imagined that he was
+going, as in former days, to Marsa's house; and that she was awaiting
+him in one of those white frocks which became her so well, with her
+silver belt clasped with the agraffe of opals. As he advanced, a host
+of memories overwhelmed him. He had walked with Marsa under these great
+lindens forming an arch overhead like that of a cathedral. He remembered
+conversations they had had in the evening, when a slight mist silvered
+the majestic park, and the white villa loomed vaguely before them like
+some phantom palace of fairyland. With the Tzigana clinging to his arm,
+he had seen those fountains, with their singing waters, that broad lawn
+between the two long lines of trees, those winding paths through the
+shrubbery; and, in the emotion aroused by these well-remembered places,
+there was a sensation of bitter pain at the thought of the happiness
+that might have been his had fate fulfilled her promises, which
+increased, rather than appeased, the Prince's anger.
+
+As his steps led him mechanically nearer and nearer to the house where
+she lived, all the details of his wedding-day rose in his memory, and he
+turned aside to see again the little church, the threshold of which they
+had crossed together--she exquisitely lovely in her white draperies, and
+he overflowing with happiness.
+
+The square in front of the sanctuary was now deserted and the leaves
+were beginning to fall from the trees. A man was lying asleep upon the
+steps before the bolted door. Zilah stood gazing at the Gothic portal,
+with a statue of the Virgin Mother above it, and wondered whether it
+were he who had once led there a lovely girl, about to become his wife;
+and the sad, closed church produced upon him the effect of a tomb.
+
+He dragged himself away from the contemplation of the stone threshold,
+where slept the tired man--drunk perhaps, at all events happier than the
+Prince--and proceeded on his way through the woods to the abode of Marsa
+Laszlo.
+
+There was, Zilah remembered well, quite near there, a sort of narrow
+valley (where the Mayor of Maisons was said to have royally entertained
+Louis XIV and his courtiers, as they were returning from Marly), a
+lovely spot, surrounded by grassy slopes covered with violets, a little
+shady, Virgilian wood, where he and Marsa had dreamed away many happy
+hours. They had christened it The Vale o f Violets. How many memories
+were in that sweet name, each one of which stabbed and exasperated
+Zilah, rising before him like so many spectres.
+
+He hastened his steps, repeating:
+
+"He is there! She is waiting for him! Her lover is there!"
+
+At the end of the road, before the villa, closed and silent like the
+old church, he stopped. He had reached his destination; but what was he
+about to do, he who--who up to this time had protected his name from the
+poisonous breath of scandal?
+
+He was about to kill Menko, or to be killed himself. A duel! But what
+was the need of proposing a duel, when, exercising his rights as a
+husband, he could punish both the man and the woman?
+
+He did not hesitate long, however, but advanced to the gate, saying,
+aloud:
+
+"I have a right to enter my own house."
+
+The ringing of the bell was answered by the barking of Duna, Bundas, and
+Ortog, who tore furiously at their iron chains.
+
+A man presently appeared on the other side of the gate. It was a
+domestic whom Andras did not know and had never seen.
+
+"Whom do you wish to see?" asked the man.
+
+"The Princess Zilah!"
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the man, his hand upon the inner bolt of the
+gate.
+
+"Prince Zilah!"
+
+The other stood stock-still in amazement, trying to see, through the
+darkness, the Prince's face.
+
+"Do you hear me?" demanded Andras.
+
+And, as the domestic opened the gate, as if to observe the appearance of
+the visitor, the Prince gave it a nervous push, which threw the servant
+backward; and, once within the garden, he came close to him, and said:
+
+"Look well at me, in order that you may recognize me again. I am master
+here."
+
+Zilah's clear eye and imperious manner awed the man, and he bowed
+humbly, not daring to speak.
+
+Andras turned on his heel, mounted the steps, and entered the house;
+then he stopped and listened.
+
+She was with him. Yes, a man was there, and the man was speaking,
+speaking to Marsa, speaking doubtless of love.
+
+Menko, with his twisted moustache, his pretty smile and his delicate
+profile, was there, behind that door. A red streak of light from the
+salon where Marsa was showed beneath the door, which the Prince longed
+to burst open with his foot. With anger and bitterness filling his
+heart, he felt capable of entering there, and striking savagely, madly,
+at his rival.
+
+How these two beings had played with him; the woman who had lied to him,
+and the coward who had sent him those letters.
+
+Suddenly Marsa's voice fell upon his ear, that rich, contralto voice he
+knew so well, speaking in accents of love or joy.
+
+What was he waiting for? His hot, feverish hand sought the handle of his
+pistol, and, striding forward, he threw open the door of the room.
+
+The light from an opal-tinted lamp fell full upon his face. He stood
+erect upon the threshold, while two other faces were turned toward him,
+two pale faces, Marsa's and another's.
+
+Andras paused in amazement.
+
+He had sought Menko; he found--Varhely!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. THE DUEL
+
+"Yanski!"
+
+Marsa recoiled in fear at hearing this cry and the sudden appearance
+of the Prince; and, trembling like a leaf, with her face still turned
+toward that threshold where Andras stood, she murmured, in a voice
+choked with emotion:
+
+"Who is there? Who is it?"
+
+Yanski Varhely, unable to believe his eyes, advanced, as if to make
+sure.
+
+"Zilah!" he exclaimed, in his turn.
+
+He could not understand; and Zilah himself wondered whether he were not
+the victim of some illusion, and where Menko could be, that Menko whom
+Marsa had expected, and whom he, the husband, had come to chastise.
+
+But the most bewildered, in her mute amazement, was Marsa, her lips
+trembling, her face ashen, her eyes fixed upon the Prince, as she leaned
+against the marble of the mantelpiece to prevent herself from falling,
+but longing to throw herself on her knees before this man who had
+suddenly appeared, and who was master of her destiny.
+
+"You here?" said Varhely at last. "You followed me, then?"
+
+"No," said Andras. "The one whom I expected to find here was not you."
+
+"Who was it, then?"
+
+"Michel Menko!"
+
+Yanski Varhely turned toward Marsa.
+
+She did not stir; she was looking at the Prince.
+
+"Michel Menko is dead," responded Varhely, shortly. "It was to announce
+that to the Princess Zilah that I am here."
+
+Andras gazed alternately upon the old Hungarian, and upon Marsa, who
+stood there petrified, her whole soul burning in her eyes.
+
+"Dead?" repeated Zilah, coldly.
+
+"I fought and killed him," returned Varhely.
+
+Andras struggled against the emotion which seized hold of him. Pale as
+death, he turned from Varhely to the Tzigana, with an instinctive desire
+to know what her feelings might be.
+
+The news of this death, repeated thus before the man whom she regarded
+as the master of her existence, had, apparently, made no impression
+upon her, her thoughts being no longer there, but her whole heart being
+concentrated upon the being who had despised her, hated her, fled from
+her, and who appeared there before her as in one of her painful dreams
+in which he returned again to that very house where he had cursed her.
+
+"There was," continued Varhely, slowly, "a martyr who could not raise
+her head, who could not live, so long as that man breathed. First of
+all, I came to her to tell her that she was delivered from a detested
+past. Tomorrow I should have informed a man whose honor is my own, that
+the one who injured and insulted him has paid his debt."
+
+With lips white as his moustache, Varhely spoke these words like a judge
+delivering a solemn sentence.
+
+A strange expression passed over Zilah's face. He felt as if some
+horrible weight had been lifted from his heart.
+
+Menko dead!
+
+Yet there was a time when he had loved this Michel Menko: and, of the
+three beings present in the little salon, the man who had been injured
+by him was perhaps the one who gave a pitying thought to the dead, the
+old soldier remaining as impassive as an executioner, and the Tzigana
+remembering only the hatred she had felt for the one who had been her
+ruin.
+
+Menko dead!
+
+Varhely took from the mantelpiece the despatch he had sent from
+Florence, three days before, to the Princess Zilah, the one of which
+Vogotzine had spoken to Andras.
+
+He handed it to the Prince, and Andras read as follows:
+
+"I am about to risk my life for you. Tuesday evening either I shall be
+at Maisons-Lafitte, or I shall be dead. I fight tomorrow with Count M.
+If you do not see me again, pray for the soul of Varhely."
+
+Count Varhely had sent this despatch before going to keep his
+appointment with Michel Menko.
+
+          ...................
+
+It had been arranged that they were to fight in a field near Pistoja.
+
+Some peasant women, who were braiding straw hats, laughed as they saw
+the men pass by.
+
+One of them called out, gayly:
+
+"Do you wish to find your sweethearts, signori? That isn't the way!"
+
+A little farther, Varhely and his adversary encountered a monk with
+a cowl drawn over his head so that only his eyes could be seen, who,
+holding out a zinc money-box, demanded 'elemosina', alms for the sick in
+hospitals.
+
+Menko opened his pocketbook, and dropped in the box a dozen pieces of
+gold.
+
+"Mille grazie, signor!"
+
+"It is of no consequence."
+
+They arrived on the ground, and the seconds loaded the pistols.
+
+Michel asked permission of Yanski to say two words to him.
+
+"Speak!" said Varhely.
+
+The old Hungarian stood at his post with folded arms and lowered eyes,
+while Michel approached him, and said:
+
+"Count Varhely, I repeat to you that I wished to prevent this marriage,
+but not to insult the Prince. I give you my word of honor that this is
+true. If you survive me, will you promise to repeat this to him?"
+
+"I promise."
+
+"I thank you."
+
+They took their positions.
+
+Angelo Valla was to give the signal to fire.
+
+He stood holding a white handkerchief in his outstretched hand, and with
+his eyes fixed upon the two adversaries, who were placed opposite each
+other, with their coats buttoned up to the chin, and their pistols held
+rigidly by their side.
+
+Varhely was as motionless as if made of granite. Menko smiled.
+
+"One! Two!" counted Valla.
+
+He paused as if to take breath: then--
+
+"Three!" he exclaimed, in the tone of a man pronouncing a
+death-sentence; and the handkerchief fell.
+
+There were two reports in quick succession.
+
+Varhely stood erect in his position; Menko's ball had cut a branch above
+his head, and the green leaves fell fluttering to the ground.
+
+Michel staggered back, his hand pressed to his left side.
+
+His seconds hastened toward him, seized him under the arms, and tried to
+raise him.
+
+"It is useless," he said. "It was well aimed!"
+
+And, turning to Varhely, he cried, in a voice which he strove to render
+firm:
+
+"Remember your promise!"
+
+They opened his coat. The ball had entered his breast just above the
+heart.
+
+They seated him upon the grass, with his back against a tree.
+
+He remained there, with fixed eyes, gazing, perhaps, into the infinite,
+which was now close at hand.
+
+His lips murmured inarticulate names, confused words:
+"Pardon--punishment--Marsa--"
+
+As Yanski Varhely, with his two seconds, again passed the straw-workers,
+the girls saluted them with:
+
+"Well, where are your other friends? Have they found their sweethearts?"
+
+And while their laughter rang out upon the air, the gay, foolish
+laughter of youth and health, over yonder they were bearing away the
+dead body of Michel Menko.
+
+          ....................
+
+Andras Zilah, with a supreme effort at self-control, listened to his old
+friend relate this tale; and, while Varhely spoke, he was thinking:
+
+It was not a lover, it was not Menko, whom Marsa expected. Between the
+Tzigana and himself there was now nothing, nothing but a phantom. The
+other had paid his debt with his life. The Prince's anger disappeared as
+suddenly in proportion as his exasperation had been violent.
+
+He contemplated Marsa, thin and pale, but beautiful still. The very
+fixedness of her great eyes gave her a strange and powerful attraction;
+and, in the manner in which Andras regarded her, Count Varhely, with his
+rough insight, saw that there were pity, astonishment, and almost fear.
+
+He pulled his moustache a moment in reflection, and then made a step
+toward the door.
+
+Marsa saw that he was about to leave the room; and, moving away from the
+marble against which she had been leaning, with a smile radiant with
+the joy of a recovered pride, she held out her hand to Yanski, and, in a
+voice in which there was an accent of almost terrible gratitude for the
+act of justice which had been accomplished, she said, firmly:
+
+"I thank you, Varhely!"
+
+Varhely made no reply, but passed out of the room, closing the door
+behind him.
+
+The husband and wife, after months of torture, anguish, and despair,
+were alone, face to face with each other.
+
+Andras's first movement was one of flight. He was afraid of himself. Of
+his own anger? Perhaps. Perhaps of his own pity.
+
+He did not look at Marsa, and in two steps he was at the door.
+
+Then, with a start, as one drowning catches at a straw, as one condemned
+to death makes a last appeal for mercy, with a feeble, despairing cry
+like that of a child, a strange contrast to the almost savage thanks
+given to Varhely, she exclaimed:
+
+"Ah! I implore you, listen to me!"
+
+Andras stopped.
+
+"What have you to say to me?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing--nothing but this: Forgive! ah, forgive! I have seen you once
+more; forgive me, and let me disappear; but, at least, carrying away
+with me a word from you which is not a condemnation."
+
+"I might forgive," said Andras; "but I could not forget."
+
+"I do not ask you to forget, I do not ask you that! Does one ever
+forget? And yet--yes, one does forget, one does forget, I know it. You
+are the only thing in all my existence, I know only you, I think only of
+you. I have loved only you!"
+
+Andras shivered, no longer able to fly, moved to the depths of his being
+by the tones of this adored voice, so long unheard.
+
+"There was no need of bloodshed to destroy that odious past," continued
+Marsa. "Ah! I have atoned for it! There is no one on earth who has
+suffered as I have. I, who came across your path only to ruin your life!
+Your life, my God, yours!"
+
+She looked at him with worshipping eyes, as believers regard their god.
+
+"You have not suffered so much as the one you stabbed, Marsa. He had
+never had but one love in the world, and that love was you. If you had
+told him of your sufferings, and confessed your secret, he would have
+been capable of pardoning you. You deceived him. There was something
+worse than the crime itself--the lie."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "if you knew how I hated that lie! Would to heaven that
+some one would tear out my tongue for having deceived you!"
+
+There was an accent of truth in this wild outburst of the Tzigana; and
+upon the lips of this daughter of the puszta, Hungarian and Russian at
+once, the cry seemed the very symbol of her exceptional nature.
+
+"What is it you wish that I should do?" she said. "Die? yes, I would
+willingly, gladly die for you, interposing my breast between you and
+a bullet. Ah! I swear to you, I should be thankful to die like one of
+those who bore your name. But, there is no fighting now, and I can
+not shed my blood for you. I will sacrifice my life in another manner,
+obscurely, in the shadows of a cloister. I shall have had neither lover
+nor husband, I shall be nothing, a recluse, a prisoner. It will be well!
+yes, for me, the prison, the cell, death in a life slowly dragged out!
+Ah! I deserve that punishment, and I wish my sentence to come from you;
+I wish you to tell me that I am free to disappear, and that you order
+me to do so--but, at the same time, tell me, oh, tell me, that you have
+forgiven me!"
+
+"I!" said Andras.
+
+In Marsa's eyes was a sort of wild excitement, a longing for sacrifice,
+a thirst for martyrdom.
+
+"Do I understand that you wish to enter a convent?" asked Andras,
+slowly.
+
+"Yes, the strictest and gloomiest. And into that tomb I shall carry,
+with your condemnation and farewell, the bitter regret of my love, the
+weight of my remorse!"
+
+The convent! The thought of such a fate for the woman he loved filled
+Andras Zilah with horror. He imagined the terrible scene of Marsa's
+separation from the world; he could hear the voice of the officiating
+bishop casting the cruel words upon the living, like earth upon the
+dead; he could almost see the gleam of the scissors as they cut through
+her beautiful dark hair.
+
+Kneeling before him, her eyes wet with tears, Marsa was as lovely in her
+sorrow as a Mater Dolorosa. All his love surged up in his heart, and a
+wild temptation assailed him to keep her beauty, and dispute with the
+convent this penitent absolved by remorse.
+
+She knelt there repentant, weeping, wringing her hands, asking nothing
+but pardon--a word, a single word of pity--and the permission to bury
+herself forever from the world.
+
+"So," he said, abruptly, "the convent cell, the prison, does not terrify
+you?"
+
+"Nothing terrifies me except your contempt."
+
+"You would live far from Paris, far from the world, far from
+everything?"
+
+"In a kennel of dogs, under the lash of a slavedriver; breaking stones,
+begging my bread, if you said to me: 'Do that, it is atonement!'"
+
+"Well!" cried Andras, passionately, his lips trembling, his blood
+surging through his veins. "Live buried in our Hungary, forgetting,
+forgotten, hidden, unknown, away from all, away from Paris, away from
+the noise of the world, in a life with me, which will be a new life!
+Will you?"
+
+She looked at him with staring, terrified eyes, believing his words to
+be some cruel jest.
+
+"Will you?" he said again, raising her from the floor, and straining
+her to his breast, his burning lips seeking the icy ones of the Tzigana.
+"Answer me, Marsa. Will you?"
+
+Like a sigh, the word fell on the air: "Yes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. A NEW LIFE
+
+The following day, with tender ardor, he took her away to his old
+Hungarian castle, with its red towers still bearing marks of the ravages
+of the cannon--the castle which he never had beheld since Austria had
+confiscated it, and then, after long years, restored it to its rightful
+owner. He fled from Paris, seeking a pure existence, and returned to his
+Hungary, to the country of his youth, the land of the vast plains. He
+saw again the Danube and the golden Tisza. In the Magyar costume, his
+heart beating more proudly under the national attila, he passed before
+the eyes of the peasants who had known him when a child, and had fought
+under his orders; and he spoke to them by name, recognizing many of his
+old companions in these poor people with cheeks tanned by the sun, and
+heads whitened by age.
+
+He led Marsa, trembling and happy, to the door of the castle, where
+they offered him the wine of honor, drank from the 'tschouttora', the
+Hungarian drinking-vessel, the 'notis' and cakes made of maize cooked in
+cream.
+
+Upon the lawns about the castle, the 'tschiko' shepherds, who had come
+on horseback to greet the Prince, drank plum brandy, and drank with
+their red wine the 'kadostas' and the bacon of Temesvar. They had come
+from their farms, from their distant pusztas, peasant horsemen, like
+soldiers, with their national caps; and they joyously celebrated the
+return of Zilah Andras, the son of those Zilahs whose glorious history
+they all knew. The dances began, the bright copper heels clinked
+together, the blue jackets, embroidered with yellow, red, or gold,
+swung in the wind, and it seemed that the land of Hungary blossomed with
+flowers and rang with songs to do honor to the coming of Prince Andras
+and his Princess.
+
+Then Andras entered with Marsa the abode of his ancestors. And, in
+the great halls hung with tapestry and filled with pictures which the
+conquerors had respected, before those portraits of magnates superb
+in their robes of red or green velvet edged with fur, curved sabres by
+their sides and aigrettes upon their heads, all reproducing a common
+trait of rough frankness, with their long moustaches, their armor and
+their hussar uniforms--Marsa Laszlo, who knew them well, these heroes
+of her country, these Zilah princes who had fallen upon the field of
+battle, said to the last of them all, to Andras Zilah, before Ferency
+Zilah, before Sandor, before the Princesses Zilah who had long slept in
+"dull, cold marble," and who had been no prouder than she of the great
+name they bore:
+
+"Do you know the reason why, equal to these in devotion and courage, you
+are superior to them all! It is because you are good, as good as they
+were brave.
+
+"To their virtues, you, who forgive, add this virtue, which is your own:
+pity!"
+
+She looked at him humbly, raising to his face her beautiful dark eyes,
+as if to let him read her heart, in which was only his image and his
+name. She pressed closely to his side, with an uneasy, timid tenderness,
+as if she were a stranger in the presence of his great ancestors, who
+seemed to demand whether the newcomer were one of the family; and
+he, putting his arm about her, and pressing to his beating heart the
+Tzigana, whose eyes were dim with tears, said: "No, I am not better than
+these. It is not pity which is my virtue, Marsa: it is my love. For--I
+love you!"
+
+Yes, he loved her, and with all the strength of a first and only love.
+He loved her so that he forgot everything, so that he did not see
+that in Marsa's smile there was a look of the other side of the great,
+eternal river. He loved her so that he thought only of this woman,
+of her beauty, of the delight of her caresses, of his dream of love
+realized in the air of the adored fatherland. He loved her so that he
+left without answers the charming letters which Baroness Dinati wrote
+him from Paris, so far away now, and the more serious missives which he
+received from his compatriots, wishing him to utilize for his country,
+now that he had returned to it, his superior intelligence, as he had
+formerly utilized his courage.
+
+"The hour is critical," wrote his old friends. "An attempt is being made
+to awaken in Hungary, against the Russians, whom we like, memories
+of combats and extinct hatreds, and that to the profit of a German
+alliance, which is repugnant to our race. Bring the support of your name
+and your valor to our cause. Enter the Diet of Hungary. Your place is
+marked out for you there in the first rank, as it was in the old days
+upon the battlefield."
+
+Andras only smiled.
+
+"If I were ambitious!" he said to Marsa. Then he added: "But I am
+ambitious only for your happiness."
+
+Marsa's happiness! It was deep, calm, and clear as a lake. It seemed to
+the Tzigana that she was dreaming a dream, a beautiful dream, a dream
+peaceful, sweet, and restful. She abandoned herself to her profound
+happiness with the trustfulness of a child. She was all the more happy
+because she had the exquisite sensation that her dream would have no
+awakening. It would end in all the charm of its poetry.
+
+She was sure that she could not survive the immense joy which destiny
+had accorded her; and she did not rebel against this decree. It seemed
+to her right and just. She had never desired any other ending to her
+love than to die beloved, to die with Andras's kiss of forgiveness upon
+her lips, with his arms about her, and to sink with a smile into the
+eternal sleep. What more beautiful thing could she, the Tzigana, have
+wished?
+
+When the Prince's people saluted her by that title of "Princess" which
+was hers, she trembled as if she had usurped it; she wished to be Marsa
+to the Prince, Marsa, his devoted slave, who looked at him with her
+great eyes full of gratitude and love. And she wished to be only that.
+It seemed to her that, in the ancient home of the Zilahs, the birthplace
+of soldiers, the eyrie of eagles, she was a sort of stranger; but, at
+the same time, she thought, with a smile:
+
+"What matters it? It is for so short a time."
+
+One day Prince Zilah received from Vienna a large sealed envelope.
+Minister Ladany earnestly entreated him to come to the Austrian capital
+and present, in the salons of Vienna and at the imperial court, Princess
+Zilah, of whose beauty the Austrian colony of Paris raved.
+
+Marsa asked the Prince what the letter contained.
+
+"Nothing. An invitation to leave our solitude. We are too happy here."
+
+Marsa questioned him no further; but she resolved that she would never
+allow the Prince to take her to that court which claimed his presence.
+In her eyes, she was always the Tzigana; and, although Menko was dead,
+she would never permit Zilah to present her to people who might have
+known Count Michel.
+
+No, no, let them remain in the dear old castle, he living only for her,
+she breathing only for him; and let the world go, with its fascinations
+and its pleasures, its false joys and its false friendships! Let them
+ask of life only what truth it possesses; an hour of rest between two
+ordeals, a smile between two sobs, and--the right to love each other. To
+love each other until that fatal separation which she felt was coming,
+until that end which was fast advancing; her poor, frail body being now
+only the diaphanous prison of her soul. She did not complain, as she
+felt the hour gently approach when, with a last kiss, a last sigh, she
+must say to Andras, Adieu!
+
+He, seeing her each day more pale, each day more feeble, was alarmed;
+but he hoped, that, when the winter, which was very severe there, was
+over, Marsa would regain her strength. He summoned to the castle a
+physician from Vienna, who battled obstinately and skilfully against the
+malady from which the Tzigana was suffering. Her weakness and languor
+kept Marsa, during the cold months, for whole days before the lofty,
+sculptured chimney-piece, in which burned enormous logs of oak. As
+the flames gave a rosy tinge to her cheeks and made her beautiful eyes
+sparkle, Andras said to herself, as he watched her, that she would live,
+live and be happy with him.
+
+The spring came, with the green leaflets and the white blossoms at the
+ends of the branches. The buds opened and the odors of the rejuvenated
+earth mounted subtly into the soft air.
+
+At her window, regarding the young grass and the masses of tender
+verdure in which clusters of pale gold or silvery white gleamed like
+aigrettes, Marsa said to Andras:
+
+"It must be lovely at Maisons, in the Vale of Violets!" but she added,
+quickly:
+
+"We are better here, much better! And it even seems to me that I have
+always, always lived here in this beautiful castle, where you have
+sheltered me, like a swallow beaten by the wind."
+
+There was, beneath the window, stretching out like a ribbon of silver, a
+road, which the mica dust caused, at times, in the sunlight to resemble
+a river. Marsa often looked out on this road, imagining that she saw
+again the massive dam upon the Seine, or wondering whether a band of
+Tzigani would not appear there with the April days.
+
+"I should like," she said one day to Andras, "to hear again the airs my
+people used to play."
+
+She found that, with the returning spring, she was more feeble than
+she had ever been. The first warmth in the air entered her veins like a
+sweet intoxication. Her head felt heavy, and in her whole body she felt
+a pleasant languor. She had wished to sink thus to rest, as nature was
+awakening.
+
+The doctor seemed very uneasy at this languidness, of which Marsa said:
+
+"It is delicious!"
+
+He whispered one evening to Andras:
+
+"It is grave!"
+
+Another sorrow was to come into the life of the Prince, who had known so
+many.
+
+A few days after, with a sort of presentiment, he wrote to Yanski
+Varhely to come and spend a few months with him. He felt the need of his
+old friend; and the Count hastened to obey the summons.
+
+Varhely was astonished to see the change which so short a time had
+produced in Marsa. In seven months her face, although still beautiful,
+had become emaciated, and had a transparent look. The little hand, white
+as snow, which she gave to Varhely, burned him; the skin was dry and
+hot.
+
+"Well, my dear Count," said Marsa, as she lay extended in a
+reclining-chair, "what news of General Vogotzine?"
+
+"The General is well. He hopes to return to Russia. The Czar has been
+appealed to, and he does not say no."
+
+"Ah! that is good news," she said. "He must be greatly bored at Maisons;
+poor Vogotzine!"
+
+"He smokes, drinks, takes the dogs out--"
+
+The dogs! Marsa started. Those hounds would survive Menko, herself, the
+love which she now tasted as the one joy of her life! Mechanically her
+lips murmured, too low to be heard: "Ortog! Bundas!"
+
+Then she said, aloud:
+
+"I shall be very, glad if the poor General can return to St. Petersburg
+or Odessa. One is best off at home, in one's own country. If you only
+knew, Varhely, how happy I am, happy to be in Hungary. At home!"
+
+She was very weak. The doctor made a sign to Andras to leave her for a
+moment.
+
+"Well," asked the Prince anxiously of Varhely, "how do you think she
+is?"
+
+"What does the doctor say?" replied Yanski. "Does he hope to save her?"
+
+Zilah made no response. Varhely's question was the most terrible of
+answers.
+
+Ensconced in an armchair, the Prince then laid bare his heart to old
+Varhely, sitting near him. She was about to die, then! Solitude! Was
+that to be the end of his life? After so many trials, it was all to
+end in this: an open grave, in which his hopes were to be buried. What
+remained to him now? At the age when one has no recourse against fate,
+love, the one love of his life, was to be taken away from him. Varhely
+had administered justice, and Zilah had pardoned--for what? To watch
+together a silent tomb; yes, yes, what remained to him now?
+
+"What remains to you if she dies?" said old Yanski, slowly. "There
+remains to you what you had at twenty years, that which never dies.
+There remains to you what was the love and the passion of all the Zilah
+princes who lie yonder, and who experienced the same suffering, the same
+torture, the same despair, as you. There remains to you our first love,
+my dear Andras, the fatherland!"
+
+The next day some Tzigana musicians, whom the Prince had sent for,
+arrived at the castle. Marsa felt invigorated when she heard the
+czimbalom and the piercing notes of the czardas. She had been longing
+for those harmonies and songs which lay so near her heart. She listened,
+with her hand clasped in that of Andras, and through the open window
+came the "March of Rakoczy," the same strains which long ago had been
+played in Paris, upon the boat which bore them down the Seine that July
+morning.
+
+An heroic air, a song of triumph, a battle-cry, the gallop of horses, a
+chant of victory. It was the air which had saluted their betrothal like
+a fanfare. It was the chant which the Tzigani had played that sad night
+when Andras's father had been laid in the earth of Attila.
+
+"I would like," said Marsa, when the music had ceased, "to go to the
+little village where my mother rests. She was a Tzigana also! Like them,
+like me! Can I do so, doctor?"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"Oh, Princess, not yet! Later, when the warm sun comes."
+
+"Is not that the sun?" said Marsa, pointing to the April rays entering
+the old feudal hall and making the bits of dust dance like sparks of
+gold.
+
+"It is the April sun, and it is sometimes dangerous for--"
+
+The doctor paused; and, as he did not finish, Marsa said gently, with a
+smile which had something more than resignation in it--happiness:
+
+"For the dying?"
+
+Andras shuddered; but Marsa's hand, which held his, did not even
+tremble.
+
+Old Varhely's eyes were dim with tears.
+
+She knew that she was about to die. She knew it, and smiled at kindly
+death. It would take away all shame. Her memory would be to Andras the
+sacred one of the woman he adored. She would die without being held to
+keep that oath she had made not to survive her dreamed-of happiness, the
+union she had desired and accepted. Yes, it was sweet and welcome, this
+death, which taking her from Andras's love, washed away all stain.
+
+She whispered in his ear the oft-repeated avowal:
+
+"I love you! I love you! I love you! And I die content, for I feel that
+you will love me always. Think a moment! Could I live? Would there not
+be a spectre between you and your Marsa?"
+
+She threw her arms about him as he leaned over the couch upon which she
+lay, and he made a gesture of denial, unable to speak, for each word
+would have been a sob.
+
+"Oh, do not deny it!" she said. "Now, no. But later, who knows? On the
+other hand, you see, there will be no other phantom near you but mine,
+no other image but mine. I feel that I shall be always near you, yes,
+always, eternally, my beloved! Dear death! blessed death! which renders
+our love infinite, yes, infinite. Ah, I love you! I love you!"
+
+She wished to see once more, through the open window, the sunny woods
+and the new blossoms. Behind those woods, a few leagues away, was the
+place where Tisza was buried.
+
+"I should like to rest by her side," said the Tzigana. "I am not of
+your family, you see. A princess, I? your wife? I have been only your
+sweetheart, my Andras."
+
+Andras, whiter than the dying girl, seemed petrified by the approach of
+the inevitable grief.
+
+Now, as they went slowly down the white road, the Tzigani played the
+plaintive melancholy air of Janos Nemeth, that air impregnated with
+tears, that air which she used so often to play herself--"The World
+holds but One Fair Maiden!"
+
+And this time, bursting into tears, he said to her, with his heart
+breaking in his breast:
+
+"Yes, there is but thee, Marsa! but thee, my beloved, thee, thee alone!
+Do not leave me! Stay with me! Stay with me, Marsa, my only love!"
+
+Then, as she listened, over the lovely face of the Tzigana passed an
+expression of absolute, perfect happiness, as if, in Zilah's tears, she
+read all his forgiveness, all his love, all his devotion. She raised
+herself, her little hands resting upon the window-sill, her head heavy
+with sleep--the deep, dreamless sleep-and held up her sweet lips to him:
+when she felt Andras's kiss, she whispered, so that he barely heard it:
+
+"Do not forget me! Never forget me, my darling!" Then her head drooped
+slowly, and fell upon the Prince's shoulder, like that of a tired child,
+with a calm sweet smile upon her flower-like face.
+
+Like the salute they had once given to Prince Sandor, the Tzigani began
+proudly the heroic march of free Hungary, their music sending a fast
+farewell to the dead as the sun gave her its last kiss.
+
+Then, as the hymn died slowly away in the distance, soft as a sigh, with
+one last, low, heart-breaking note, Andras Zilah laid the light form of
+the Tzigana upon the couch; and, winding his arms about her, with his
+head pillowed upon her breast, he murmured, in a voice broken with sobs:
+"I will love only, now, what you loved so much, my poor Tzigana. I will
+love only the land where you lie asleep."
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     A man's life belongs to his duty, and not to his happiness
+     All defeats have their geneses
+     An hour of rest between two ordeals, a smile between two sobs
+     Anonymous, that velvet mask of scandal-mongers
+     At every step the reality splashes you with mud
+     Bullets are not necessarily on the side of the right
+     Does one ever forget?
+     Foreigners are more Parisian than the Parisians themselves
+     History is written, not made.
+     "I might forgive," said Andras; "but I could not forget"
+     If well-informed people are to be believe
+     Insanity is, perhaps, simply the ideal realized
+     It is so good to know nothing, nothing, nothing
+     Let the dead past bury its dead!
+     Life is a tempest
+     Man who expects nothing of life except its ending
+     Nervous natures, as prompt to hope as to despair
+     No answer to make to one who has no right to question me
+     Not only his last love, but his only love
+     Nothing ever astonishes me
+     One of those beings who die, as they have lived, children
+     Pessimism of to-day sneering at his confidence of yesterday
+     Playing checkers, that mimic warfare of old men
+     Poverty brings wrinkles
+     Sufferer becomes, as it were, enamored of his own agony
+     Superstition which forbids one to proclaim his happiness
+     Taken the times as they are
+     The Hungarian was created on horseback
+     There were too many discussions, and not enough action
+     Unable to speak, for each word would have been a sob
+     What matters it how much we suffer
+     Why should I read the newspapers?
+     Willingly seek a new sorrow
+     Would not be astonished at anything
+     You suffer? Is fate so just as that
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Prince Zilah, Complete, by Jules Claretie
+
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