Chapter 2

Madame Laginska was silent, examining Adam. With her feet extended upon a cushion and her head poised like that of a bird on the edge of its nest listening to the noises in a grove, she would have seemed enchanting even to a blase man. Fair and slender, and wearing her hair in curls, she was not unlike those semi-romantic pictures in the Keepsakes, especially when dressed, as she was this morning, in a breakfast gown of Persian silk, the folds of which could not disguise the beauty of her figure or the slimness of her waist. The silk with its brilliant colors being crossed upon the bosom showed the spring of the neck,--its whiteness contrasting delightfully against the tones of a guipure lace which lay upon her shoulders. Her eyes and their long black lashes added at this moment to the expression of curiosity which puckered her pretty mouth. On the forehead, which was well modelled, an observer would have noticed a roundness characteristic of the true Parisian woman,--self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering fingers, slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like almonds, which caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife’s impatience, and looked at her with a glance which two years of married life had not yet chilled. Already the little countess had made herself mistress of the situation, for she scarcely paid attention to her husband’s admiration. In fact, in the look which she occasionally cast at him, there seemed to be the consciousness of a Frenchwoman’s ascendancy over the puny, volatile, and red-haired Pole.

“Here comes Paz,” said the count, hearing a step which echoed through the gallery.

The countess beheld a tall and handsome man, well-made, and bearing on his face the signs of pain which come of inward strength and secret endurance of sorrow. He wore one of those tight, frogged overcoats which were then called “polonaise.” Thick, black hair, rather unkempt, covered his square head, and Clementine noticed his broad forehead shining like a block of white marble, for Paz held his visored cap in his hand. The hand itself was like that of the Infant Hercules. Robust health flourished on his face, which was divided by a large Roman nose and reminded Clementine of some handsome Transteverino. A black silk cravat added to the martial appearance of this six-foot mystery, with eyes of jet and Italian fervor. The amplitude of his pleated trousers, which allowed only the tips of his boots to be seen, revealed his faithfulness to the fashions of his own land. There was something really burlesque to a romantic woman in the striking contrast no one could fail to remark between the captain and the count, the little Pole with his pinched face and the stalwart soldier.

“Good morning, Adam,” he said familiarly. Then he bowed courteously as he asked Clementine what he could do for her.

“You are Laginski’s friend!” exclaimed the countess.

“For life and death,” answered Paz, to whom the count threw a smile of affection as he drew a last puff from his perfumed pipe.

“Then why don’t you take your meals with us? why did you not accompany us to Italy and Switzerland? why do you hide yourself in such a way that I am unable to thank you for the constant services that you do for us?” said the countess, with much vivacity of manner but no feeling.

In fact, she thought she perceived in Paz a sort of voluntary servitude. Such an idea carried with it in her mind a certain contempt for a social amphibian, a being half-secretary, half-bailiff, and yet neither the one nor the other, a poor relation, an embarrassing friend.

“Because, countess,” he answered with perfect ease of manner, “there are no thanks due. I am Adam’s friend, and it gives me pleasure to take care of his interests.”

“And you remain standing for your pleasure, too,” remarked Comte Adam.

Paz sat down on a chair near the door.

“I remember seeing you about the time I was married, and afterwards in the courtyard,” said Clementine. “But why do you put yourself in a position of inferiority,--you, Adam’s friend?”

“I am perfectly indifferent to the opinion of the Parisians,” he replied. “I live for myself, or, if you like, for you two.”

“But the opinion of the world as to a friend of my husband is not indifferent to me--”

“Ah, madame, the world will be satisfied if you tell them I am ‘an original.’”

After a moment’s silence he added, “Are you going out to-day?”

“Will you come with us to the Bois?”

“Certainly.”

So saying, Paz bowed and withdrew.

“What a good soul he is!” said Adam. “He has all the simplicity of a child.”

“Now tell me all about your relations with him,” said Clementine.

“Paz, my dear,” said Laginski, “belongs to a noble family as old and illustrious as our own. One of the Pazzi of Florence, at the time of their disasters, fled to Poland, where he settled with some of his property and founded the Paz family, to which the title of count was granted. This family, which distinguished itself greatly in the glorious days of our royal republic, became rich. The graft from the tree that was felled in Italy flourished so vigorously in Poland that there are several branches of the family still there. I need not tell you that some are rich and some are poor. Our Paz is the scion of a poor branch. He was an orphan, without other fortune than his sword, when he served in the regiment of the Grand Duke Constantine at the time of our revolution. Joining the Polish cause, he fought like a Pole, like a patriot, like a man who has nothing,--three good reasons for fighting well. In his last affair, thinking he was followed by his men, he dashed upon a Russian battery and was taken prisoner. I was there. His brave act roused me. ‘Let us go and get him!’ I said to my troop, and we charged the battery like a lot of foragers. I got Paz--I was the seventh man; we started twenty and came back eight, counting Paz. After Warsaw was sold we were forced to escape those Russians. By a curious chance, Paz and I happened to come together again, at the same hour and the same place, on the other side of the Vistula. I saw the poor captain arrested by some Prussians, who made themselves the blood-hounds of the Russians. When we have fished a man out of the Styx we cling to him. This new danger for poor Paz made me so unhappy that I let myself be taken too, thinking I could help him. Two men can get away where one will perish. Thanks to my name and some family connections in Prussia, the authorities shut their eyes to my escape. I got my dear captain through as a man of no consequence, a family servant, and we reached Dantzic. There we got on board a Dutch vessel and went to London. It took us two months to get there. My mother was ill in England, and expecting me. Paz and I took care of her till her death, which the Polish troubles hastened. Then we left London and came to France. Men who go through such adversities become like brothers. When I reached Paris, at twenty-two years of age, and found I had an income of over sixty thousand francs a year, without counting the proceeds of the diamonds and the pictures sold by my mother, I wanted to secure the future of my dear Paz before I launched into dissipation. I had often noticed the sadness in his eyes--sometimes tears were in them. I had had good reason to understand his soul, which is noble, grand, and generous to the core. I thought he might not like to be bound by benefits to a friend who was six years younger than himself, unless he could repay them. I was careless and frivolous, just as a young fellow is, and I knew I was certain to ruin myself at play, or get inveigled by some woman, and Paz and I might then be parted; and though I had every intention of always looking out for him, I knew I might sometime or other forget to provide for him. In short, my dear angel, I wanted to spare him the pain and mortification of having to ask me for money, or of having to hunt me up if he got into distress. SO, one morning, after breakfast, when we were sitting with our feet on the andirons smoking pipes, I produced,--with the utmost precaution, for I saw him look at me uneasily,--a certificate of the Funds payable to bearer for a certain sum of money a year.”

Clementine jumped up and went and seated herself on Adam’s knee, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him. “Dear treasure!” she said, “how handsome he is! Well, what did Paz do?”

“Thaddeus turned pale,” said the count, “but he didn’t say a word.”

“Oh! his name is Thaddeus, is it?”

“Yes; Thaddeus folded the paper and gave it back to me, and then he said: ‘I thought, Adam, that we were one for life or death, and that we should never part. Do you want to be rid of me?’ ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘if you take it that way, Thaddeus, don’t let us say another word about it. If I ruin myself you shall be ruined too.’ ‘You haven’t fortune enough to live as a Laginski should,’ he said, ‘and you need a friend who will take care of your affairs, and be a father and a brother and a trusty confidant.’ My dear child, as Paz said that he had in his look and voice, calm as they were, a maternal emotion, and also the gratitude of an Arab, the fidelity of a dog, the friendship of a savage,--not displayed, but ever ready. Faith! I seized him, as we Poles do, with a hand on each shoulder, and I kissed him on the lips. ‘For life and death, then! all that I have is yours--do what you will with it.’ It was he who found me this house and bought it for next to nothing. He sold my Funds high and bought in low, and we have paid for this barrack with the profits. He knows horses, and he manages to buy and sell at such advantage that my stable really costs very little; and yet I have the finest horses and the most elegant equipages in all Paris. Our servants, brave Polish soldiers chosen by him, would go through fire and water for us. I seem, as you say, to be ruining myself; and yet Paz keeps the house with such method and economy that he has even repaired some of my foolish losses at play,--the thoughtless folly of a young man. My dear, Thaddeus is as shrewd as two Genoese, as eager for gain as a Polish Jew, and provident as a good housekeeper. I never could force him to live as I did when I was a bachelor. Sometimes I had to use a sort of friendly coercion to make him go to the theatre with me when I was alone, or to the jovial little dinners I used to give at a tavern. He doesn’t like social life.”

“What does he like, then?” asked Clementine.

“Poland; he loves Poland and pines for it. His only spendings are sums he gives, more in my name than in his own, to some of our poor brother-exiles.”

“Well, I shall love him, the fine fellow!” said the countess, “he looks to me as simple-hearted as he is grand.”

“All these pretty things you have about you,” continued Adam, who praised his friend in the noblest sincerity, “he picked up; he bought them at auction, or as bargains from the dealers. Oh! he’s keener than they are themselves. If you see him rubbing his hands in the courtyard, you may be sure he has traded away one good horse for a better. He lives for me; his happiness is to see me elegant, in a perfectly appointed equipage. The duties he takes upon himself are all accomplished without fuss or emphasis. One evening I lost twenty thousand francs at whist. ‘What will Paz say?’ thought I as I walked home. Paz paid them to me, not without a sigh; but he never reproached me, even by a look. But that sigh of his restrained me more than the remonstrances of uncles, mothers, or wives could have done. ‘Do you regret the money?’ I said to him. ‘Not for you or me, no,’ he replied; ‘but I was thinking that twenty poor Poles could have lived a year on that sum.’ You must understand that the Pazzi are fully the equal of the Laginski, so I couldn’t regard my dear Paz as an inferior. I never went out or came in without going first to Paz, as I would to my father. My fortune is his; and Thaddeus knows that if danger threatened him I would fling myself into it and drag him out, as I have done before.”

“And that is saying a good deal, my dear friend,” said the countess. “Devotion is like a flash of lightning. Men devote themselves in battle, but they no longer have the heart for it in Paris.”

“Well,” replied Adam, “I am always ready, as in battle, to devote myself to Paz. Our two characters have kept their natural asperities and defects, but the mutual comprehension of our souls has tightened the bond already close between us. It is quite possible to save a man’s life and kill him afterwards if we find him a bad fellow; but Paz and I know THAT of each other which makes our friendship indissoluble. There’s a constant exchange of happy thoughts and impressions between us; and really, perhaps, such a friendship as ours is richer than love.”

A pretty hand closed the count’s mouth so promptly that the action was somewhat like a blow.

“Yes,” he said, “friendship, my dear angel, knows nothing of bankrupt sentiments and collapsed joys. Love, after giving more than it has, ends by giving less than it receives.”

“One side as well as the other,” remarked Clementine laughing.

“Yes,” continued Adam, “whereas friendship only increases. You need not pucker up your lips at that, for we are, you and I, as much friends as lovers; we have, at least I hope so, combined the two sentiments in our happy marriage.”

“I’ll explain to you what it is that has made you and Thaddeus such good friends,” said Clementine. “The difference in the lives you lead comes from your tastes and from necessity; from your likings, not your positions. As far as one can judge from merely seeing a man once, and also from what you tell me, there are times when the subaltern might become the superior.”

“Oh, Paz is truly my superior,” said Adam, naively; “I have no advantage over him except mere luck.”

His wife kissed him for the generosity of those words.

“The extreme care with which he hides the grandeur of his feelings is one form of his superiority,” continued the count. “I said to him once: ‘You are a sly one; you have in your heart a vast domain within which you live and think.’ He has a right to the title of count; but in Paris he won’t be called anything but captain.”

“The fact is that the Florentine of the middle-ages has reappeared in our century,” said the countess. “Dante and Michael Angelo are in him.”

“That’s the very truth,” cried Adam. “He is a poet in soul.”

“So here I am, married to two Poles,” said the young countess, with a gesture worthy of some genius of the stage.

“Dear child!” said Adam, pressing her to him, “it would have made me very unhappy if my friend did not please you. We were both rather afraid of it, he and I, though he was delighted at my marriage. You will make him very happy if you tell him that you love him,--yes, as an old friend.”

“I’ll go and dress, the day is so fine; and we will all three ride together,” said Clementine, ringing for her maid.

II

Paz was leading so subterranean a life that the fashionable world of Paris asked who he was when the Comtesse Laginska was seen in the Bois de Boulogne riding between her husband and a stranger. During the ride Clementine insisted that Thaddeus should dine with them. This caprice of the sovereign lady compelled Paz to make an evening toilet. Clementine dressed for the occasion with a certain coquetry, in a style that impressed even Adam himself when she entered the salon where the two friends awaited her.

“Comte Paz,” she said, “you must go with us to the Opera.”

This was said in the tone which, coming from a woman means: “If you refuse we shall quarrel.”

“Willingly, madame,” replied the captain. “But as I have not the fortune of a count, have the kindness to call me captain.”

“Very good, captain; give me your arm,” she said,--taking it and leading the way to the dining-room with the flattering familiarity which enchants all lovers.

The countess placed the captain beside her; his behavior was that of a poor sub-lieutenant dining at his general’s table. He let Clementine talk, listened deferentially as to a superior, did not differ with her in anything, and waited to be questioned before he spoke at all. He seemed actually stupid to the countess, whose coquettish little ways missed their mark in presence of such frigid gravity and conventional respect. In vain Adam kept saying: “Do be lively, Thaddeus; one would really suppose you were not at home. You must have made a wager to disconcert Clementine.” Thaddeus continued heavy and half asleep. When the servants left the room at the end of the dessert the captain explained that his habits were diametrically opposite to those of society,--he went to bed at eight o’clock and got up very early in the morning; and he excused his dulness on the ground of being sleepy.

“My intention in taking you to the Opera was to amuse you, captain; but do as you prefer,” said Clementine, rather piqued.

“I will go,” said Paz.

“Duprez sings ‘Guillaume Tell,’” remarked Adam. “But perhaps you would rather go to the ‘Varietes’?”

The captain smiled and rang the bell. “Tell Constantin,” he said to the footman, “to put the horses to the carriage instead of the coupe. We should be rather squeezed otherwise,” he said to the count.

“A Frenchman would have forgotten that,” remarked Clementine, smiling.

“Ah! but we are Florentines transplanted to the North,” answered Thaddeus with a refinement of accent and a look in his eyes which made his conduct at table seem assumed for the occasion. There was too evident a contrast between his involuntary self-revelation in this speech and his behavior during dinner. Clementine examined the captain with a few of those covert glances which show a woman’s surprise and also her capacity for observation.

It resulted from this little incident that silence reigned in the salon while the three took their coffee, a silence rather annoying to Adam, who was incapable of imagining the cause of it. Clementine no longer tried to draw out Thaddeus. The captain, on the other hand, retreated within his military stiffness and came out of it no more, neither on the way to the Opera nor in the box, where he seemed to be asleep.

“You see, madame, that I am a very stupid man,” he said during the dance in the last act of “Guillaume Tell.” “Am I not right to keep, as the saying is, to my own specialty?”

“In truth, my dear captain, you are neither a talker nor a man of the world, but you are perhaps Polish.”

“Therefore leave me to look after your pleasures, your property, your household--it is all I am good for.”

“Tartufe! pooh!” cried Adam, laughing. “My dear, he is full of ardor; he is thoroughly educated; he can, if he chooses, hold his own in any salon. Clementine, don’t believe his modesty.”

“Adieu, comtesse; I have obeyed your wishes so far; and now I will take the carriage and go home to bed and send it back for you.”

Clementine bowed her head and let him go without replying.

“What a bear!” she said to the count. “You are a great deal nicer.”

Adam pressed her hand when no one was looking.

“Poor, dear Thaddeus,” he said, “he is trying to make himself disagreeable where most men would try to seem more amiable than I.”

“Oh!” she said, “I am not sure but what there is some _calculation_ in his behavior; he would have taken in an ordinary woman.”

Half an hour later, when the chasseur, Boleslas, called out “Gate!” and the carriage was waiting for it to swing back, Clementine said to her husband, “Where does the captain perch?”

“Why, there!” replied Adam, pointing to a floor above the porte-cochere which had one window looking on the street. “His apartments are over the coachhouse.”

“Who lives on the other side?” asked the countess.

“No one as yet,” said Adam; “I mean that apartment for our children and their instructors.”

“He didn’t go to bed,” said the countess, observing lights in Thaddeus’s rooms when the carriage had passed under the portico supported by columns copied from those of the Tuileries, which replaced a vulgar zinc awning painted in stripes like cloth.

The captain, in his dressing-gown with a pipe in his mouth, was watching Clementine as she entered the vestibule. The day had been a hard one for him. And here is the reason why: A great and terrible emotion had taken possession of his heart on the day when Adam made him go to the Opera to see and give his opinion on Mademoiselle du Rouvre; and again when he saw her on the occasion of her marriage, and recognized in her the woman whom a man is forced to love exclusively. For this reason Paz strongly advised and promoted the long journey to Italy and elsewhere after the marriage. At peace so long as Clementine was away, his trial was renewed on the return of the happy household. As he sat at his window on this memorable night, smoking his latakia in a pipe of wild-cherry wood six feet long, given to him by Adam, these are the thoughts that were passing through his mind:--

“I, and God, who will reward me for suffering in silence, alone know how I love her! But how shall I manage to have neither her love nor her dislike?”

And his thoughts travelled far on this strange theme.

It must not be supposed that Thaddeus was living without pleasure, in the midst of his sufferings. The deceptions of this day, for instance, were a source of inward joy to him. Since the return of the count and countess he had daily felt ineffable satisfactions in knowing himself necessary to a household which, without his devotion to its interests, would infallibly have gone to ruin. What fortune can bear the strain of reckless prodigality? Clementine, brought up by a spendthrift father, knew nothing of the management of a household which the women of the present day, however rich or noble they are, are often compelled to undertake themselves. How few, in these days, keep a steward. Adam, on the other hand, son of one of the great Polish lords who let themselves be preyed on by the Jews, and are wholly incapable of managing even the wreck of their vast fortunes (for fortunes are vast in Poland), was not of a nature to check his own fancies or those of his wife. Left to himself he would probably have been ruined before his marriage. Paz had prevented him from gambling at the Bourse, and that says all.

Under these circumstances, Thaddeus, feeling that he loved Clementine in spite of himself, had not the resource of leaving the house and travelling in other lands to forget his passion. Gratitude, the key-note of his life, held him bound to that household where he alone could look after the affairs of the heedless owners. The long absence of Adam and Clementine had given him peace. But the countess had returned more lovely than ever, enjoying the freedom which marriage brings to a Parisian woman, displaying the graces of a young wife and the nameless attraction she gains from the happiness, or the independence, bestowed upon her by a young man as trustful, as chivalric, and as much in love as Adam. To know that he was the pivot on which the splendor the household depended, to see Clementine when she got out of her carriage on returning from some fete, or got into it in the morning when she took her drive, to meet her on the boulevards in her pretty equipage, looking like a flower in a whorl of leaves, inspired poor Thaddeus with mysterious delights, which glowed in the depths of his heart but gave no signs upon his face.