After getting over her first impression of profound astonishment, Antoinette laughed, and then gave way to curiosity. Who had brought the flowers? "A little peasant boy," said the hotel porter, "but I did not know him. He must have come from another village."
For some days, Mlle. Moriaz glanced at everybody she met, but she never found a single romantic figure in the crowd of invalids that sauntered about St. Moritz. If, however, she had always accompanied her father, who, growing stronger every day, began to go out on long geological excursions, she might have met a very picturesque and striking young man. For Count Abel Larinski now always followed M. Moriaz, and watched over him like a guardian angel. "Oh, if he would only fall down one of the rocks he is always hammering at, and break a leg, or even sprain an ankle!" said the gallant Polish nobleman. "Wouldn't that be a lucky accident for me!"
All things, it is said, come to those who know how to wait. One afternoon M. Moriaz climbed up a very steep slope of crumbling rock, and came to a narrow gorge over which he was afraid to leap. He could not descend by the way he had come up, for the slope was really dangerous. It looked as though he should have to wait hours, and perhaps, days, until some herdsman passed by; and he began to shout wildly in the hopes of attracting attention. To his great joy, his shout was answered, and Count Larinski climbed up the other side of the gorge, carrying a plank, torn from a fence he passed on his way. By means of this, he bridged the gorge, and rescued the father of Antoinette, and naturally, he had to accompany him to the hotel, and stay to dinner. As we have said, Count Larinski was a very handsome man; tall, broad-shouldered, with strange green eyes touched with soft golden tints. When he began to talk, simply and modestly of the part he had played in the last Polish Revolution against the despotic power of Russia, Antoinette felt at last that she was in the presence of a hero. And what a cultivated man he was! He played the piano divinely, and they passed many pleasant evenings together. One night, the Count left behind him a piece of music, inscribed "Abel Larinski." "Surely," Mlle. Moriaz thought, "I have seen that writing somewhere!" Her breath came quickly, as with a trembling hand she took out of her bosom the letter which had been sent with the flowers, and compared the handwritings. They were identical.
II.--A Conversation with a Dead Man
Just a week afterwards, Count Larinski had a very serious conversation with his partner, Samuel Brohl. The strange thing about the conversation was that there was only one man in the room, and he talked all the time to himself. Sometimes he spoke in German with lapses into Yiddish, and any one would then have said that he was Samuel Brohl, a notorious Jewish adventurer. Then, recovering himself, he talked in Polish, and he might have been mistaken for a Polish gentleman. He seemed to be a man who was trying to study a difficult matter from two different points of view, and he undoubtedly had an actor's talent for throwing himself into the character of the nobleman he was impersonating.
"Do you see," said Samuel Brohl, "fortune at last smiles upon us. The charming girl is ours. I have won her for you, dear Larinski, by the means Othello used to charm the imagination and capture the heart of Desdemona. Do you not remember, my dear Count, the tales you used to tell us, when we were living together in a garret in Bucharest? How you fought in the streets of Warsaw against the Cossacks? How they tracked you through the snow-covered forest by the trail of blood you left behind you? Oh, I recollected it all, and I flatter myself that I related it with just that proud, sombre, subdued melancholy with which you used to speak of your sufferings."
"Do you think that she has really fallen in love with me?" asked Count Larinski. "I am afraid of her father. In spite of all that I have done for that famous man of science, he does not seem to fancy me as a son-in-law. Do you imagine it is merely because of my poverty? Or does he find anything wrong with me?"
This last question profoundly disturbed the soul of Samuel Brohl. What! were all the skilful intrigues which he had spent four years in weaving, to come to nothing? For it was now four years since Samuel Brohl had entered into his strange partnership with the Polish nobleman. Brohl himself was the son of a Jewish tavern-keeper in Gallicia. A great Russian lady, Princess Gulof, attracted by his handsome presence, and strange green eyes, had engaged him as her secretary and educated him. He had repaid her by robbing her of her jewels and running off with them to Bucharest. There he had met Count Larinski, who, for more honourable motives, was also hiding from the Russian secret police. By representing himself as a persecuted anarchist, Brohl completely won the confidence of large-hearted, chivalrous Polish patriot.
"Ah, it was a lucky chance that brought us together!" said Samuel Brohl. "If you had not met me, you would have been dead, four years ago, and clean forgotten. Do you remember your last instructions? After giving me every bit of money you had--a little over two thousand florins, wasn't it?--you showed me a box containing your family jewels, your letters, your diary, your papers, and you said to me: 'Destroy everything it contains. Poland is dead. Let my name die too!'
"But, my dear Count," continued Samuel Brohl, "how could I let a man of your heroic worth and romantic character be forgotten by the world? No, it was Samuel Brohl who died and was buried in an unknown grave. I have the certificate of his death. Count Abel Larinski still lives. It is true that he is so changed by all his sufferings that his oldest friends would never recognise him. His hair used to be black, it is now brown; his blue eyes have become golden green; moreover he has grown considerably taller. But what does it matter? He is still a handsome man, with a noble air and charming manner."