‘That is very possible,’ said Othmar, himself astonished at her insight. ‘I could pardon anything if he would not speak of the Othmar as Jews speak of Jehovah. It is so intolerably absurd.’
‘But they are your people.’
‘Alas! yes. But I despise them; I dislike them. They were intolerably bad men, my dear; they did intolerably bad things. All this,’ he continued, with a gesture of his hand towards the mighty building of Amyôt, with its marble terraces and its many towers dazzling in the sunlight, ‘they would never have possessed save through hundreds of unscrupulous actions heaped one on the other to make stepping-stones across the salt-marsh of poverty to the yellow sands of fortune. Oh, I do not mean that Amyôt was not bought fairly. It was bought quite fairly, at a very high price, by my great grandfather, but the wealth which enabled him to buy it was ill-gotten. His father was a common Croat horse-dealer, which is a polite word for horse-stealer, who lived in the last century in the city of Agram. There are millions of loose horses in the vast oak woods of Western Hungary and the immense plains of Croatia, and to this day there are many men who live almost like savages, and steal these half-wild horses as a means of subsistence. There were, of course, many more of these robbers in the last century than in this. Marc Othmar did not actually steal the horses, but he bought them at a tenth part of their value from these rough men of the woods and plains when stolen, and the large profits he made by this illegal traffic laid the foundations of the much-envied fortunes which I enjoy, and which you grace to-day.’
He had spoken as though he explained the matter to a child, but Yseulte’s ready imagination supplied the colour to his bare outlines. She was silent, revolving in her thoughts what he had said.
‘I would rather your people had been warriors,’ she said, with hesitation, thinking of her own long line of crusaders.
‘I would rather they had been peasants,’ he returned. ‘But being what they were, I must bear their burdens.’
‘Then what is it he wishes you to do that you do not?’
‘He wishes me to have many ambitions, but as I regard it, the fortunes which I have been born to entirely smother ambition; whatever eminence I might achieve, if I did achieve it, would never appear better than so much preference purchased. If I had been as great a soldier as Soult, they would have said I bought my victories. If I had had the talent of Balzac, they would have said I bought the press. If I had written the music of the “Hamlet” or the “Roi de Lahore,” they would have said that I bought the whole musical world for my claque. If I could have the life that I should like, I should choose such a life as Lamartine’s, but a rival of the Rothschilds cannot be either a poet or a leader of a revolution. The monstrari digito ruins the peace and comfort of life: if I walk down the boulevard with the Comte de Paris the fools cry that I wish to crown Philippe VII., if I speak to M. Wilson in the foyer of the Français they scream that there is to be a concession for a new loan; if the Prince Orloff come to breakfast with me a Russian war is suspected, and if Prince Hohenlohe dine with me I have too German a bias. This kind of notoriety is agreeable to my uncle. It makes him feel that he holds the strings of the European puppet show. But to myself it is detestable. To come and go unremarked seems to me the first condition of all for the quiet enjoyment of life, but I have been condemned to be one of those unfortunates who cannot drive a phaeton down to Chantilly without the press and the public becoming nervous about the intentions of M. d’Aumale. Last year, one very hot day, I was passing through Paris, and I asked for a glass of water at a little café at the barrière. They stared, and brought me some. When I told them that I only wanted water, the waiter said, with a smile, “Monsieur ne peut pas être sérieux! nous avons l’honneur de le connaître.” The world, like the waiter, will not let me have plain water when I wish for it. I dare say my wish may be perversity, but, at any rate, it is always thwarted by the very people who imagine they are gratifying me with indulgences.’
‘But some of the people love you,’ she insisted. ‘Did not the workmen of Paris give you that beautiful casket the other day? Was it not bought by a two-sous subscription?’