"We had no other course than to assure him, so far as our services went, he was free to make use of us. So it was settled. We go for him to-morrow at daybreak. How it will all end, God only knows!"
With these words Edmund took himself away. Angela never noticed he had left the room.
That night she never lay down. All through the long hours of the night she walked to and fro in her room. When fatigue forced her to sit down for a moment she could not rest. Once only the thought that was in her mind found expression in words:
"I have treated him as Julia Gonzaga treated the man who saved her life."
When daylight broke she threw herself, dressed as she was, upon her bed. The maid next morning found the pillow, in which she had buried her face, wet with tears.
CHAPTER XIV
THIRTY-THREE PARTS
It must certainly be said of our philosopher that he was acting somewhat inconsistently. He had left his home and property, where he had lived a simple country life amid his own people, happy in the study of those mysterious powers—fire and water; he had abandoned all his scientific pursuits to belong to a world to which he was, and must ever be, a stranger, feeling more or less like a fish upon dry land. Even his science he had turned into a farce, so bringing it into disgrace. He had lent himself to lectures and tableaux, to singing operas, and dancing Hungarian cotillons, to hunting foxes at breakneck speed, to rescuing beautiful ladies, mixing himself up therewhile in the affairs of noble families, to fighting duels with officers for the sake of lovely countesses, and running the risk of being sabred by an intemperate savage! It was no wonder that, reviewing all this, Ivan should say to himself, "Good heavens, what an ass I have made, and am making, of myself! What have I to do with all the nonsense that goes on in this fashionable world of Pesth? Above all, what is it to me whether Countess Angela is at war with her grandfather, whether she goes to Vienna, or whether he comes to Pesth? Why is it necessary for me to remain here, leading such an uncongenial life, apparently without any object?—and, although I have an object, yet if this were known to the world I should be considered an even greater fool than I am at present deemed to be."
Now, as Ivan's reflections have been made public, it is only proper that the reason of his apparently objectless conduct should be laid before the reader of these pages, so that he or she may be in a position to judge whether he was a fool or a wise man, or something between the two—a man of sentiment and feeling, who does what his heart commands him to do. With some natures the heart cannot be silenced; it has its rights. We may remember that when the Abbé Samuel paid his first visit to Ivan, he found that gentleman in the act of writing a refusal to the Countess Theudelinde's invitation; that he was, in fact, upon the point of returning to Bondavara, and that the arrival of a letter changed all his plans, and was the cause of his remaining in Pesth. This letter came from Vienna; the writer was a certain pianist whose name had been for some years mentioned among the first class of artists—Arpad Belenyi.
Nearly fourteen years before our story began Ivan had lived for a long time in the house of the Belenyis. We shall know later what he did there. Arpad was at that time a child of five years old; he was already counted a prodigy, and could play long pieces upon the piano. At that time warlike and patriotic marches were all the fashion. One day the bread-winner of the family, the father, died suddenly. The widow was in despair, especially for her orphaned boy. Ivan consoled her with the promise that he would look after him, and provide for his education.