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-fashioned 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-shells 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 class. The ease, however, with which he bears himself among the fashionably-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 title 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, "Cimetière 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 succumbing 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 breasts, 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.