The princess was herself a great traveller; two or three times a year Samuel Brohl received a visit from her. She questioned him, examined him, felt him, as we feel a peach to be certain it is ripe. Samuel was very happy; he was free, he enjoyed his life, he did as he pleased. One single thing spoiled his happiness; when he looked in the glass, he would sometimes say within himself: “These are the features of a man who is sold, and the woman who bought him is neither young nor beautiful.” Several times he determined to learn a trade, so that he might be in a position to refund the debt and break the bargain. But he never did. He was both ambitious and idle. He wanted to fly at once; he had a horror of beginnings of apprenticeships. His early education had been so neglected that in order to recover lost time he would have been compelled to study hard—all the more so because, although he was quick-witted, and had a marvellous facility for entering into the thoughts of others, his own stock was poor; he had no ideas of his own, nor individuality of mind. He possessed a collection of half-talents; even in music, he was incapable of originating; when he attempted to compose, his inspirations proved mere reminiscences. He did himself justice; he felt that, strive as he might, his half-talents never would aid him to secure the first position, and he disdained the second. In fact, what he most needed was will, which, after all, makes the man. He tried to fling himself from his horse, which carried him where he did not desire to go; but he felt that his feet held firm in the stirrup; he had not strength to disengage them, and he remained in the saddle. Not being able to be a great man, he abandoned himself to his fate, which condemned him to be only a knave. At the expiration of his term of freedom, he declared himself solvent, and the princess took possession of her merchandise.
“Yes, poets are corrupters,” thought Count Abel Larinski. “If Samuel Brohl never had read The Merchant of Venice, or Egmont, a tragedy in five acts, or Schiller’s ballads, he would have been resigned to his new position; he would have seen its good sides, and would have eaten and drunk his shame in peace, without experiencing any uncomfortable sensations; but he had read the poets, and he grew disgusted, nauseated. He was dying with desire to get away, and the princess suspected it. She kept him always in sight, she held him close, she paid him quarterly, shilling by shilling, his meagre allowance. She said to herself: ‘So long as he has nothing, he cannot escape.’ She mistook; he did escape, and he was so afraid of being retaken that for some time he hid like a criminal, pursued by the police. He fancied that this woman was always on his track. It was then, for the first time, that he felt hunger, for they eat in the land of Egypt. He lived by all sorts of expedients, and cursed the poets. One day he learned that his father was dead; he hastened to the old tavern in order to succeed to the inheritance. He was not aware that for two years old Jeremiah Brohl had been in his dotage, and that his debtors mocked him while devouring his substance. A fine inheritance! it was diminished to two or three rickety chairs, four cracked walls that scarcely could stand upright, and some jewellery concealed in a hiding-place that Samuel knew of. Old Jeremiah never had been able to dispose of it for the price he required, and he preferred to keep it rather than lower his charge. He had principles, which was well for Samuel, as the jewellery was useful to him. He sold a necklace, and set out for Bucharest, some one having told him that he certainly would make his fortune there. He gave music-lessons; this wearisome profession did not suit him, he could not endure the constraint and the regular hours. The boys plagued him—he would willingly have wrung their necks; the girls treated him like a dog—they never thought of his being handsome, because they suspected him of being a Jew. Why had he gone to Bucharest—a city where all Germans are Jews, and where Jews are not considered men? Although he had earned a little money, he grew melancholy, and he began to think seriously of killing himself.”
Count Abel Larinski leaned forward, plucked a spray of heather, tickled his lips with it, and began to laugh; then, striking his breast, he said, in an undertone, “Thank God, Samuel Brohl is not dead, for he is here!”
He spoke the truth: Samuel Brohl was not dead, and life was of value to him, since he had met Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz in the cathedral in Chur. It was Samuel Brohl who had come to Cormeilles, and who was seated, at this moment, in the midst of a grove of oaks. Perhaps the lark that he had heard singing a quarter of an hour before had recognised him, for it had ceased singing. The peacock continued its screaming, and its doleful cries sounded like a warning. Yes, the man seated among the heather, employed in narrating his own history to himself, was indeed Samuel Brohl, and the proof of this was that he had laughed, while Count Abel Larinski never laughed; moreover, for four years the latter had been out of the world. The second reason is, perhaps, the better.
He whom, with or without his consent, we shall call henceforth Samuel Brohl, reproached himself for this access of levity, as he would have reproached himself for a false note that had escaped him in executing a Mozart sonata. He resumed his grave, dignified air, in order to salute with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him. It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock, and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious reception. He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under essential obligations to him, and Samuel Brohl was no ingrate.
“Ah! well, my poor friend, I am here,” he said, in that mute language that phantoms understand. “I have taken your place, and almost your form; I play your part in the great fair of this world, and, although your noble body has rested for four years, six feet underground, thanks to me you still live. I always have had a most sincere admiration for you. I considered you a phenomenon, a prodigy. You were courageous, devoted, generosity itself; you esteemed honour above all the gold deposits in California; you detested all coarse thoughts and doubtful actions; your mother had nourished you in all sublime follies. You were a true chevalier, a true Pole, the last Don Quixote in this age of sceptics, plunderers, and interlopers. Blessed be the chance that made us acquainted! You lived retired, solitary, unknown, in a miserable hovel just outside of Bucharest. So goes the world! You were in hiding—you who had nothing to hide from either God or man—you who deserved a crown. Alas! the Russian Government had the poor taste not to appreciate your exploits, and you feared that it would claim and obtain your extradition. At our first meeting I pleased you, and you took me into your friendship; I spoke Polish, and you loved music. I became your intimate friend, your sole companion, your confidant. You must grant that you owe to me the last happy moments of your short existence. I soon knew your origin, the history of your youth, of your enterprises, and of your misfortunes. You initiated me into the secret of the great invention that you had just made; you explained to me in detail the mechanism of your famous gun. I was intelligent; I understood, or thought I understood. This gun, you said, would one day make my fortune, for, on your own account, you had renounced all hope; you had heart-disease, and you knew that you were condemned to a speedy end. My imagination was kindled. Through my entreaty you decided to leave with me for Vienna. This expedition was fatal to you, but I swear to you I did not foresee it.”
Samuel crossed his hands on his knee; then he continued: “May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, may my blood cease to flow in my veins, may the marrow dry up in my bones, if ever I forget to be grateful for what I owe to you, Abel Larinski, or cease to remember the forlorn hovel in which we passed the first night of our journey! You were attacked by suffocation. You had only time to call and wake me. I hastened to you. You gave me, in a dying voice, your last instructions. You delivered into my hands your last fifty florins, which were as acceptable as an orange would have been to the shipwrecked passengers of the Medusa. Then you pointed with your finger to a box, in which were inclosed family relics, letters, your journal, and papers. You said: ‘Destroy all that; Poland is dead, let no one remember that I have lived!’ After that you breathed your last. Well! I confess that I did not fulfil your orders. I kept your mother’s portrait, the papers, all; and, in announcing your decease to the police, I made them believe that the man who was dead was named Samuel Brohl, and that Count Larinski still lived. What would you have me do? The temptation was too great. Samuel Brohl had disgraceful antecedents, he was base-born, he had been sold; there was a stain on his past that never could be wiped away, and, as he had had the misfortune to read the poets, it had come about that he often despised himself. It was, indeed, time that he should be thrown into the shade, and my joy was extreme to know that he was dead, and to feel that I was alive. As soon as I succeeded in persuading myself that I was indeed Count Abel Larinski, I was as happy as a child whose parents have dressed him in new clothes, and who struts about to show them. With your name I acquired a noble past; in thought, I roamed through it with delight; I visited its every nook and corner, as a poor devil would make the circuit of a park that he has just come to inherit. You bequeathed me your relations, your adventures, your exploits. When you fought for your country, I was there; when you received a gun-shot-wound near Dubrod, it was into my flesh that the bullet penetrated. Of what do you complain? Between friends is not everything in common? I left my own skin, I entered yours; I was satisfied there, and desired to remain. To-day I resemble you in everything; I assure you that if we were seen together it would be difficult to tell us apart. I have assumed your habits, your manners, your language, the poise of your head, your playful melancholy, your pride, your opinions, all, even to the colour of your hair and your handwriting. Abel Larinski, I have become you: I mistake, I am more Pole, more Larinski, than you were yourself.”
At this moment Samuel Brohl had a singular expression of countenance; his gaze was fixed. He was no longer of this world—he conversed with a spirit; but he was neither terrified nor awed, as was Hamlet in talking to the shade of his father. He treated familiarly the shade of the true Abel Larinski; it was precisely as we treat a partner that has transacted business with us in the same firm.
“It is very true, my dear Abel,” he continued, “that the principle of partnership accomplishes wonders; one man alone is a small affair. But, of all partnerships, the most useful and convenient is the one that we have made together. The living and the dead can render each other important services, and they never quarrel. You should be satisfied; you play a fine role; you are the signature of the house. We will not speak of your gun; that was a poor speculation, for which I scarcely can pardon you. It was the fault of your disordered brain that we wandered off on that bypath, but, thanks be to Heaven! we have at last gained the highway. Five weeks ago we met a woman, and what a woman! She has velvety-brown eyes, whence glances well forth like fresh and living waters. To praise her grace properly, I must borrow the language of the ‘Song of Solomon’: ‘Thy lips, O my spouse! drop as the honey-comb; honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. This thy stature is like to a palm-tree. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee. A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse: a spring shut up—a fountain sealed.’ Some day she will cry out, with the Shulamite, ‘Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.’ She belongs to us, my dear Larinski—my dear partner; she had yielded, and you and I share the honour of the victory. I presented myself before her, and my presence did not displease her. I related to her your history, as you would have related it yourself, with delicacy and simplicity, neither adding nor omitting. Her heart was touched; her heart was taken captive. You will wed her—she will bear your name; but you will marry her by proxy, and I shall be your proctor. I promise to consider myself your mandatory, or, to express it better, you will own the property and I will have the usufruct. Never fear that I shall forget what I owe to you, or the modesty proper to my estate.”
At these words, he made a grand gesture, as if to banish the phantom that he had conjured up, and that fled away trembling with sorrow, shame, and indignation. The peacock cried anew a mournful shriek. “Stupid bird!” thought Samuel Brohl, quaking with sudden dread.