Samuel Brohl and Company

by Victor Cherbuliez

Count Abel had not forgotten that he was the bearer of a commission from Mlle Moriaz. A few days after his arrival, he decided to go to Maisons, but to take the longest route there; he wanted to see Cormeilles in passing, and a certain villa in which he was particularly interested. He went in the Argenteuil cars, got out at Sannois, climbed that pretty hill that commands the loveliest of views, and stopped at the inn of Trouillet mills in order to breakfast there. The morning was charming—it was in the middle of August—and the approach of autumn was already felt, which enhances the beauty of all things. The sky was flecked with small gray clouds; a light, silvery mist hung on the brow of the hills; in two places the Seine appeared glittering in the sunshine. Abel breakfasted in the open air; while eating he gazed on the sky and on the great garden-plain extending at his feet, covered with vegetables, grape-vines, and asparagus, interspersed with fruit-trees. The wooded hills bordering it formed an admirable frame. In his present mood Count Larinski was charmed with the landscape, which was at once grand and smiling. Then he questioned himself as to how much a bed of asparagus would yield at the gates of Paris, and, having finished his calculation, he surveyed with the eye of a poet the heather and broom that surrounded him. He decided that the Sannois Hill is more beautiful than Koseg; and indeed it is not necessary to be in love with Mlle. Moriaz to hold that opinion.

After having had a good breakfast, he again set out, following the crest of the hill and going through the woods. As he approached Cormeilles, he saw in the distance, beyond a grove of oaks, the white walls of a pretty villa. His heart beat faster, and by a sort of divination he said within himself, “That must be it.” He inquired; he had made no mistake. Five minutes later he stood before a railing, through which he saw a green lawn. At the entrance of the porter’s lodge a woman sat knitting.

“Can you tell me where M. Moriaz lives?” asked Count Larinski.

“Here, monsieur,” she replied; “but M. Moriaz is absent; he will not return for a month. If you come from a distance, monsieur,” she added, graciously, “perhaps you would like to rest awhile on the terrace. The view is beautiful.”

This hospitable reception seemed a good omen, for, sensible as he was, he believed in presentiments and prognostics. He entered without waiting to be urged. When he had crossed the lawn he stood facing two detached buildings, separated by a mass of verdure: to the right, an old summer-house, used from time immemorial for M. Moriaz’s collections, laboratory, and library; to the left, a new two-story house, part stone, part brick, built in an elegant but unobtrusive style, without ornament or pretension, and flanked by a turret covered with ivy and clematis, which served for a dove-cote. The house was not a palace, but there was an air about it of well-being, comfort, and happiness. In looking at it you felt like saying, “The inmates here ought to be happy!” This was about what Count Abel said to himself; in fact, he could hardly refrain from exclaiming, “Dieu! how happy I shall be here!” The situation, the terrace, the garden, everything pleased him infinitely. It seemed to him that the air here was fresher, more delightful than elsewhere, that it was exhilarating in the extreme; it seemed to him that the grass on the lawn was greener than any grass he ever had seen before, that the flowers in the carefully tended borders exhaled an unusually delicious perfume. He espied an open window on the ground-floor. He drew near it; the room into which he gazed, full of bric-a-brac of exquisite choice, was Mlle. Moriaz’s study. There was in the appearance of this little sanctuary, hung with white silken drapery, and as elegant as the divinity whose favourite tarrying-place it was, something of purity, chastity, and maidenliness. It opened its windows to the fresh breezes and to the perfume of the flowers; but it seemed as if nothing could penetrate there that was coarse or suspicious; that the entrance was forbidden to all doubtful or malignant beings who might have a secret crime to hide, to all pilgrims through life who had travelled its highways and had brought hence dust and mud on the soles of their shoes. Strange to say, Count Abel experienced an attack of timidity and embarrassment. He felt that he was indiscreet; he averted his eyes and went away.

This impression was soon dispelled. He regained his assurance, and walked around the terrace twice, treading the gravel with the step of a conqueror, making it feel the full weight of his foot. He finally seated himself on a bench; he had the nonchalant attitude of a man who is at home. Five or six doves were billing and cooing on the ledge of the roof; he could readily understand that they were talking of him, and that they were saying, “Here he is—we have been waiting for him.” A beautiful Angora cat, white as snow, with delicate nose and silky hair, came, arching her back and waving her bushy tail, from out a grove, and advanced towards him. She examined him curiously an instant, rubbed herself against the bench, and then sat coquettishly at the feet of the intruder. He caressed her, saying: “You are as white and graceful as your mistress; you are an intelligent animal; you understand, my dear, that I come from her. Shall I tell you a secret? She loves Count Abel Larinski.”

With these words he rose and left, after thanking the portress, who would have been extremely astonished had she been aware of the reflections that had just been occupying his mind. He went a short distance on the highway, then finding, to the right, a road that led to Cormeilles, he took it, but soon struck into a path that wound through the woods. He was sorry to leave a spot that spoke vividly to his heart, and even more so to his imagination. He seated himself on the turf, in the midst of a grove of oaks; around him stretched a blooming heath. Through an opening in the grove, he could see Saint-Germain, its forests, and the Seine glittering in the sunshine, with the two bridges of Maisons Lafitte spanning it with their arches. Through another opening he caught a glimpse, to his left, of the proud bastions of Mont-Valerien, and, in the distance, Paris, the Arc de l’Etoile, the gilt dome of the Invalides, and the smoke of the factories rising slowly in the air, then by turns remaining stiff and motionless, or being swept away by the wind.

The place was retired, solitary, very still. No sound was to be heard save the singing of a lark, and at intervals the melancholy cry of a peacock. Abel Larinski was overcome by a mysterious emotion; he felt a voluptuous languor steal through his veins. He watched the smoke over Paris, and he saw floating in it an ethereal form whose face was partly concealed by a red hood. It smiled on him, and he read in this smile a promise of all the joys of the land of Canaan.

He turned away his eyes, partially closing them, and there appeared another form to him—in truth, very different from the first. It was that of a man whom he had known intimately, of a man whom he had deeply loved. In vain the lark sang aloud, in vain the peacock wailed—Abel Larinski no longer heard them. He was thinking of a certain Samuel Brohl; he was reviewing in his mind all the history of this Samuel, a man who never had had a secret from him. This history was quite as sad a one as that of Abel Larinski, but much less brilliant, much less heroic. Samuel Brohl prided himself neither on being a patriot nor a paladin; his mother had not been a noble woman with the smile of an angel, and the thought never had occurred to him of fighting for any cause or any person. He was not a Pole, although born in a Polish province of the Austrian Empire. His father was a Jew, of German extraction, as indicated by his name, which signifies a place where one sinks in the mire, a bog, swamp, or something of that nature; and he kept a tavern in a wretched little market-town near the eastern frontier of Galicia—a forlorn tavern, a forlorn tavern-keeper. Although always on the alert to sell adulterated brandy to his neighbour, and to seize the opportunity to lend him money on usury, he did not thrive: he was a coward of whose timidity every one took advantage to make him disgorge his ill-gotten gains. His creed consisted in three doctrines: he firmly believed that the arts of lying well, of stealing well, and of receiving a blow in the face without apparently noticing it, were the most useful arts to human life; but, of the three, the last was the only one that he practised successfully. His intentions were good, but his intellect deficient. This arrant rogue was only a petty knave that any one could dupe.

Abel Larinski transported himself, in thought, to the tavern in which Samuel Brohl had spent his first youth, and which was as familiar to him as though he had lived there himself. The smoky hovel rose before him: he could smell the odour of garlic and tallow; he could see the drunken guests—some seated round the long table, others lying under it—the damp and dripping walls, and the rough, dirty ceiling. He remembered a panel in the wainscoting against which a bottle had been broken, in the heat of some dispute; it had left a great stain of wine that resembled a human face. He remembered, too, the tavern-keeper, a little man with a dirty, red beard, whose demeanour was at once timid and impudent. He saw him as he went and came, then saw him suddenly turn, lift the end of his caftan and wipe his cheek on it. What had happened? An insolvent debtor had spit in his face; he bore it smilingly. This smile was more repulsive to Count Abel than the great stain that resembled a human face.