Part 22 (1/2)

The lieutenant bites his lip, makes a private sign to Wodin, and takes pains not to look at Treurenberg.

Lato flushes, and is absorbed in polis.h.i.+ng his eyegla.s.s, which has slipped out of his eye.

”I lose three thousand,” he says, slowly, consulting his tablets.

”Shall we have another game, Wodin?”

CHAPTER XII.

A GRAVEYARD IN PARIS.

Paris, in the middle of August.

At about five in the afternoon, an old gentleman in a greenish-black overcoat that flutters about his thickset figure almost like a soutane, trousers that are too short, low shoes with steel buckles, and an old-fas.h.i.+oned high hat beneath which can be seen a rusty brown wig, issues from a quiet hotel much frequented by strangers of rank.

His features are marked and strong. His brown skin reminds one of walnut-sh.e.l.ls or crumpled parchment. Beneath his bushy eyebrows his prominent eyes glance suspiciously about him. It would be difficult to guess at this man's social position from his exterior. To the superficial observer he might suggest the peasant cla.s.s. The ease, however, with which he bears himself among the fas.h.i.+onably-dressed men in the street, the despotic abruptness of his manner, the irritability with which he disputes some petty item in his hotel bill, while he is not at all dismayed by the large sum total, give the kellner, who stands in the door-way looking after him, occasion for reflection.

”He's another of those miserly old aristocrats who suppress their t.i.tle for fear of being plundered,” he decides, with a shrug, as he turns back into the hotel, stopping on his way to inform the _concierge_ that, in his opinion, the old man is some half-barbaric Russian prince who has come to Europe to have a look at civilization.

The name in the strangers' book is simply Franz Leskjewitsch.

Meanwhile, the stranger has walked on through the Rue de Rivoli to the corner of the Rue Castiglione, where he pauses, beckons to a fiacre, and, as he puts his foot heavily and awkwardly upon its step, calls to the driver, ”_Cimetire Montmartre!_”

The vehicle starts. The old man's eyes peer about sharply from the window. How changed it all is since he was last in this Babylon, twenty-two years ago, while the Imperial court was in its splendour, and Fritz was still alive!

”Yes, yes, it is all different,--radically different,” he murmurs, angrily. ”The noise is the same, but the splendour has vanished. Paris without the Empire is like Baden-Baden without the gaming-tables. Ah, how fine it was twenty-two years ago, when Fritz was living!”

Yes, he was not only living, but until then he had never been anything but a source of pleasure to his father; the same Fritz who had afterwards so embittered life for him that the same father had stricken him from his heart and had refused him even a place in his memory. But it is dangerous to try to rid ourselves of the remembrance of one whom we have once loved idolatrously. We may, for fear of succ.u.mbing to the old affection, close our hearts and lock them fast against all feeling of any kind. But if they do not actually die in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, there will, sooner or later, come a day when memory will reach them in spite of our locks, and will demand for the dead that tribute of tears which we have refused to grant.

There are few things more ghastly in life than tears shed for the dead twenty years too late.

”Yes, a frivolous fellow, Fritz was,--frivolous and obstinate,” the old man says to himself, staring at the brilliant shop-windows in the Rue de la Paix and at the gilded youths sauntering past them; ”but when was there ever a man his equal? What a handsome, elegant, charming fellow, bubbling over with merriment and good humour and chivalric generosity!

And the fellow insisted on marrying a shop-girl!” he mutters, between his teeth. The thought even now throws him into a fury. He had been so proud of the lad, and then--in one moment it was all over; no future to look to, the young diplomat's career cut short, the family pride levelled in the dust.

The old rage had well-nigh filled his soul, when a lovely, pallid face rises upon his memory. Could Manette Duval have really been as charming as that golden-haired girl he had met awhile ago in the woods? The little witch looked as like Fritz as a delicate girl can look like a bearded man, and she had, withal, a foreign grace, the like of which had never hitherto characterized any Leskjewitsch child, and which might perhaps be an inheritance from her Parisian mother.

And suddenly the father's conscience, silenced through all these long years, a.s.serts itself. Yes, the marriage had been a folly, and Fritz had ruined his career by it. But suppose Fritz had, through his own fault, broken both his arms, or put out his eyes, or done anything else that would have destroyed his future, would it have been for his father to turn from him, reproaching him angrily for his folly, saying, ”You have annihilated your happiness by your own fault; you have blasted the hopes I had for you; henceforth be as wretched as you deserve to be; I will have none of you, since I can no longer be proud of you!”

The old man bites his lip and hangs his head.

The carriage rolls on. The weather is excessively warm. In front of the shabby cafs on the Boulevard Clichy some people are sitting, brown and languid. Behind the dusty windows of the shops the shop-girls stand gazing drearily out upon their weary world, as if longing for somewhat of which they have read or dreamed,--something fresh and green; long shadows upon moist, fragrant lawns; gurgling brooks mirroring the sun.

An emotion of compa.s.sion stirs in the old man's breast at sight of these ”prisoners,” and if one by chance seems to him prettier, paler, sadder than the rest, he asks himself, ”Did she perhaps look so? No wonder Fritz pitied the poor creature! he had such a warm, tender heart!”

The fiacre stops; the old man rubs his eyes. ”How much?” he asks the driver.

The man scans his fare from head to foot with a knowing glance: