Othello spoke to Desdemona of caverns, deserts, quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven; of cannibals, the anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.Count Abel spoke to Mlle.Moriaz of the fortunes and vicissitudes of partisan warfare, of vain exploits, of obscure glories, of bloody encounters that never are decisive, of defeats from which survive hope, hunger, thirst, cold, snow stained with blood, and long captivities in forests, tracked by the enemy; then disasters, discouragements, the vanishing of the last hope, punishment, the gallows, and finally a mute, feverish resignation, swallowed up in that vast solitude with which silence surrounds misfortune.After the dispersion of the band whose destinies he had followed, he had gone over to Roumania.
This narration, exact and precise, bore the impress of truth.Count Abel made it in a simple, modest tone, keeping himself as much as possible in the background, and growing persuasive without apparent effort.There were moments when his face would flame up with enthusiasm, when his voice would become husky and broken, when he would seek for a word, become impatient because he could not find it, find it at last, and this effort added to the energy of his spasmodic and disjointed eloquence.In conclusion, he said: "In his youth man believes himself born to roll; the day comes when he experiences the necessity of being seated.I am seated; my seat is a little hard, but when I am tempted to murmur, I think of my mother and refrain.""What did you do in Roumania?" inquired M.Moriaz, who liked to have stories circumstantially detailed.
"Ah! I beg of you to excuse me from recounting to you the worst employed years of my life.I am my father's own son.He dreamed of cutting through an isthmus, I of inventing a gun.I spent four years of my life in fabricating it, and the first time it was used it burst."And thereupon he plunged into a somewhat humorous description of his invention, his hopes, his golden dreams, his disappointments, and his chagrin."The only admirable thing in the whole affair," he concluded, "and something that I believe never has happened to any other inventor, is that I am cured entirely of my chimera; I defy it to take possession of me again.I propose to put myself under discipline in order to expiate my extravagance.So soon as my cure is entirely finished I will set out for Paris, where I will do penance.""What kind of penance?" asked M.Moriaz."Paris is not a hermitage.""Nor is it my intention to live there as a hermit," was the reply, given with perfect simplicity."I go to give lessons in music and in the languages.""Indeed!" exclaimed M.Moriaz."Do you see no other career open to you, my dear count?""I am no longer a count," he replied, with an heroic smile."Counts do not run about giving private lessons." And a strange light flashed in his eyes as he spoke."I shall run about giving private lessons until I hear anew the voice that spoke to me in California.It will find me ever ready; my reply will be: 'I belong to thee; dispose of me at thy pleasure.' Ah! this chimera is one that I never will renounce!"Then suddenly he started as one just awakening from a dream; he drew his hand over his brow, looked confusedly around him, and said:
"/Grand Dieu!/ here I have been talking to you of myself for two hours! It is the most stupid way of passing one's time, and I promise you it shall not happen again."With these words he rose, took up his hat, and left.
M.Moriaz paced the floor for some moments, his hands behind his back;presently he said: "This /diable/ of a man has strangely moved me.One thing alone spoils his story for me--that is the gun.A man who once has drunk will drink again; one who has invented will invent again.No man in the world ever remained satisfied with his first gun.""I beg of you, monsieur," cried Mlle.Moiseney, "could you not speak to the Minister of War about adopting the Larinski musket?""Are you your country's enemy?" he asked."Do you wish its destruction? Have you sworn that after Alsace we must lose Champagne?""I am perfectly sure," she replied, mounting on her high horse, "that the Larinski musket is a /chef-d'oeuvre/, and I would pledge my life that he who invented it is a man of genius.""If you would pledge your word of honour to that, mademoiselle," he replied, making her a profound bow, "you may well feel assured that the French Government would not hesitate a moment."Mlle.Moriaz took no part in this conversation.Her face slightly contracted, buried in her thoughts as in a solitude inaccessible to earthly sounds, her cheek resting in the palm of her left hand, she held in her right hand a paper-cutter, and she kept pricking the point into one of the grooves of the table on which her elbow rested, while her half-closed eyes were fixed on a knot of the mahogany.She saw in this knot the Isthmus of Panama, San Francisco, the angelic countenance of the beautiful Polish woman who had given birth to Count Abel Larinski; she saw there also fields of snow, ambuscades, retreats more glorious than victories, and, beyond all else, the bursting of a gun and of a man's heart.
She arose, and saluted her father without a word.In crossing the /salon/ she perceived that M.Larinski had forgotten a book he had left on the piano when he came in.She opened the volume; he had written his name on the top of the first page, and Antoinette recognised the handwriting of the note.
Shut up in her own room, while taking down and combing her hair, her imagination long wandered through California and Poland.She compared M.Larinski with all the other men she ever had known, and she concluded that he resembled none of them.And it was he who had written: "I arrived in this village disgusted with life, sorrowful and so weary that I longed to die.I saw you pass by, and I know not what mysterious virtue entered into me.I will live."It seemed to her that for long years she had been seeking some one, and that she had done well to come to the Engadine, because here she had found the object of her search.
