The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her——
'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of faisant des madrigaux!'
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna, and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands for finesse and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and splendour it required.
He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his nerve, his self-command, his insouciance; he was once more capable of honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must always exist, sub rosa, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked moujik in the isba of a Persian peasant.
Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.
'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;' and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless and ill at ease.
He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate, dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly, that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.
This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life; not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed of constancy.