The party, meanwhile, had risen from the table, and was standing about in little groups, awaiting Zeneida's return.
Ryleieff and Krizsanowski retired together into a corner. The Pole, smoking furiously, blew thick clouds of smoke about him, as though considering his rigid features a too transparent mask, likely to betray him. And in order not to be questioned, he began to question.
"There are one or two points I should be glad to have cleared up. The first spring of every great aim proceeds from selfish motives. Freedom—well, yes, is the sun; private aims are earth. We are upon the earth. From mere abstract motives a new era has never been started. My private motives require no explanation; they are expressed in two words—I am a Pole. That is sufficient ground for me to stand upon. Fräulein Ilmarinen is a Finn. I take it that is sufficient reason for her action. I have no fear that she will be dazzled by the pinnacle she stands on, encircled with wreaths and diamonds. I can also understand your moving spring. You love your own race; you see how it has remained behind other nations, and would raise it to their level. Pestel's motives also I can grasp. He has immense ambition. He would fain be the head of a newly formed state. The basis is broad enough; his foot rests on a sure pedestal. The rest are shifting, unstable, attracted to the movement by the hope of playing some brilliant part in it. Then we have Apostol Muravieff. He, too, is constrained to it by a paternal heritage, from which he cannot free himself. Pushkin is in love with Zeneida; that, too, is sure ground enough. That madman Jakuskin is actuated by revenge; another safe passion on which one may rely. His sense of puritanical integrity binds that fine fellow Turgenieff to us. From earliest youth he has ever been in the advance guard of freedom, first in the first rank. Such iron rectitude can be recast in no other form, rather it would break than yield. Now there is but one man here whose presence I cannot understand: that is Duke Ghedimin. A member of one of the twelve old Russian dynastic families, his possessions so immense that he is simply unable to expend his yearly income on Russian soil, holding the highest grade at Court, himself an accomplished, brilliant, sought-after aristocrat, who by any changes you may effect has everything to lose, nothing to gain—what does he seek here? What is his interest in making himself one of this conspiracy?"
"He is the very one, among us all, who has the weightiest reason: the recollection of an irreconcilable affront, for it was a personal one. You know the Czar. You know that, as a man, no one is his enemy. Even Jakuskin merely hates in him the Czar, not the man. Duke Ghedimin is the sole one who stands opposed to him, as man to man. The Czar was married very young, to a delicate wife; his children died early. He grew cold towards his wife, and sought compensation in a new passion. The only daughter of one of our first families, renowned far and wide for her great beauty, was willing to console him. The illicit connection had consequences—a daughter. The affair was kept strictly secret. The young duchess journeyed to Italy as an unmarried girl, and returned from there the same. Soon after she married Duke Ghedimin. Meanwhile a young girl was growing up in Italy who went by the name of Princess Sophie Narishkin, and who, in her fourteenth year, was brought to St. Petersburg. It was her father, not her mother, who brought her here. The girl resides in a house surrounded by a garden in the outskirts of the capital, where her father visits her constantly, her mother never. The father worships the child, who, moreover, is terribly delicate. The mother simply hates her. Her father is the Czar, her mother, Princess Ghedimin. Now do you see what brings Prince Ghedimin among us?"
"Yes, yes. But does he know the secret of the girl's birth?"
"Know it? We all do."
"Still, no reason why the husband should. Think a moment. What human being is there who could go to a man like Prince Ghedimin and breathe to him such a foul statement about his own wife? At the least whisper of such a slander an inferior would receive the knout, an equal be shot. A shopkeeper may denounce his wife; no gentleman does such a thing. Who could have made this known to Ghedimin?"
"Who other than his sweetheart! Is not Zeneida Prince Ghedimin's sweetheart, and has she not a thousand reasons to enlighten him upon his wife's shame?"
"Do not believe a word of it! She has not done it. You do not know Fräulein Zeneida; I do. First of all, I do not believe she is Ghedimin's sweetheart; or, if she love him, it is with a real love, not that of a Ninon de l'Enclos. But my belief is that she is in love with some one else; and I believe, moreover, that she controls that love. She is a woman capable of defying the scorn of the whole world, but not of doing anything to merit her own self-contempt. And for a woman who loves a man to denounce his own wife to him is a piece of vileness only fit for the lowest of the low. You do not know with whom you have to deal. Zeneida is playing some far-seeing game with you. You are mere chessmen in her hands; one may be a castle, another a bishop, the third a knight. Possibly Ghedimin may be your king of chess, but she is not the queen. She is playing the game."