Moriaz liked music; but he liked something else besides.When he could not go into society and was forbidden to work, he grew sleepy after dinner; in order to rouse himself he was glad to play a hand of /bezique/ or /ecarte/.For want of some one better, he played with Mlle.Moiseney; but this make-shift was little to his taste; he disliked immensely coming into too close proximity with the pinched visage and yellow ribbons of Pope Joan.He proposed to Count Larinski to take a hand with him, and his proposal was accepted with the best grace in the world."Decidedly this man is good for everything,"thought M.Moriaz, and he conceived a great liking for him.The result was, that during an entire week Count Abel passed every evening at the Hotel Badrutt.
"Your father is a most peculiar man," said Mlle.Moiseney, indignantly, to Antoinette."He is shockingly egotistical.He has confiscated M.Larinski.The idea of employing such a man as that to play /bezique/! He will stop coming."But the count's former savageness seemed wholly subdued.He did not stop coming.
One evening M.Moriaz committed an imprudence.In making an odd trick, he carelessly asked M.Larinski who had been his piano professor.
"One whose portrait I always carry about me," was the reply.
And, drawing from his vest-pocket a medallion, he presented it to M.
Moriaz, who, after having looked at it, passed it over to his daughter.The medallion contained the portrait of a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, a refined, lovely mouth, a fragile, delicate being with countenance at the same time sweet and sad, the face of an angel, but an angel who had lived and suffered.
"What an exquisite face!" cried Mlle.Moriaz.
Truly it was exquisite.Some one has asserted that a Polish woman is like punch made with holy-water.One may like neither the punch nor the holy-water, and yet be very fond of Polish women.They form one of the best chapters in the great book of the Creator.
"It is the portrait of my mother," said Count Larinski.
"Are you so fortunate as to still possess her?" asked Antoinette.
"She was a tender flower," he replied; "and tender flowers never live long.""Her portrait shows it plainly; one can see that she suffered much, but was resigned to live."For the first time the count departed from the reserve he had shown towards Mlle.Antoinette Moriaz."I have no words to tell you," he exclaimed, "how happy I am that my mother pleases you!"Othello was accused of having employed secret philters to win Desdemona's love.Brabantio had only himself to blame; he had taken a liking to Othello, and often invited him to come to him; he did not make him play /bezique/, but he questioned him on his past.The Moor recounted his life, his sufferings, his adventures, and Desdemona wept.The fathers question, the heroes or adventurers recount, and the daughters weep.Such are the outlines of a history as old as the world.Abel Larinski had left the card-table.He had taken his seat in an arm-chair, facing Mlle.Moiseney.He was questioned; he replied.
His destiny had been neither light nor easy.He was quite young when his father, Count Witold Larinski, implicated in a conspiracy, had been compelled to flee from Warsaw.His property was confiscated, but luckily he had some investments away from home, which prevented him from being left wholly penniless.He was a man of projects.He emigrated to America with his wife and his son; he dreamed of making a name and a fortune by cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama.
He repaired to New Granada, there to make his studies and his charts.
He made them so thoroughly that he died of yellow fever before having begun his work, having come to the end of his money and leaving his widow in the most cruel destitution.Countess Larinski said to her son: "We have nothing more to live on; but, then, is it so necessary to live?" She uttered these words with an angelic smile about her lips.Abel set out for California.He undertook the most menial services; he swept the streets, acted as porter; what cared he, so long as his mother did not die of hunger? All that he earned he sent to her, enduring himself the most terrible privations, making her think that he denied himself nothing.In the course of time Fortune favoured him; he had acquired a certain competency.The countess came to rejoin him in San Francisco; but angels cannot live in the rude, exciting atmosphere of the gold-seekers; they suffer, spread their wings, and fly away.Some weeks after having lost his mother--it was in 1863--Count Abel learned from a journal that fell into his hands that Poland had risen again.He was twenty-one years of age.He thought he heard a voice calling him, and another voice from the skies whispered: "She calls thee.Go; it is thy duty." And he went.Two months later he crossed the frontier of Galicia to join the bands of Langiewicz.
