A Useless Victory

(A Story)

Chapter I

The sun was halfway to the west when Zwibush and Ilka Dog-Teeth turned off the highway and made for the park of the Counts Goldaugen. It was hot and close.

In June the Hungarian steppe makes itself felt. The earth cracks, and the road turns into a river in which gray dust surges instead of water. The wind, when there is any, is scorching and dries the skin. From morning to evening the air stands in silence. That silence brings on a traveler’s melancholy. Only the luxuriant Hungarian gardens and vineyards, famous the whole world over, do not fade, do not yellow, do not dry up under the scorching rays of the steppe sun. Scattered by a cultivated hand along the banks of the many rivers and streams, they flaunt their greenery from early spring to the middle of autumn, they lure the passer-by, and they serve as a refuge for every living thing fleeing the sun. In them shade, coolness, and marvelous air hold sway.

Zwibush and Ilka walked down a long avenue. This avenue was the shortest distance between the little gate opening onto the steppe and the little gate looking into the count’s garden. It cut the garden into two equal halves.

“This avenue reminds me of the ruler they used to rap your father’s knuckles with at school, once upon a time,” said Zwibush, trying to make out the end of the avenue. Its end vanished and merged with the green distance. The sun did not touch it. It was no more than a fathom wide, and the trees standing along its sides sent their branches out to meet each other. It was a tunnel that nature had built out of olive, oak, linden, and alder boughs. Zwibush and Ilka walked in as under a roof. Fat, short-legged Zwibush was streaming with sweat. His face was purple, like a boiled beet. Again and again he wiped his damp chin with the skirt of his short jacket. He puffed and wheezed like a badly greased threshing engine.

“This is divine coolness, my little finch!” he muttered, unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt with his fat fingers. “I swear it on my fiddle. Don’t you think we’ve fallen out of hell straight into paradise?”

Ilka’s face was no paler than her pink lips. On her broad forehead and on the bridge of her nose beads of sweat glistened. The poor girl was terribly worn out and could barely stand on her feet. The strap of the harp weighed on her shoulder, and its sharp edge chafed indelicately against her side. The shade made her smile a few times and breathe more deeply. She took off her shoes and walked barefoot. Her small, pretty bare feet went slapping happily through the cool sand.

“Shall we sit down a while?” Zwibush proposed. “The avenue is long as an old maid’s tongue. It runs on for a good three versts!”

“No, papa! If we sit down it will be hard to get up again after. Better we walk to the end and rest there.”

“Well then... Today, my little finch, is your birthday. What will fate give you, I wonder, what little present?”

“I should like fate to give me a dinner today...”

“Well, look at that! Ha-ha! Aiming high! Won’t that be a bit much for you, my girl? Wouldn’t you like supper too, while you’re at it?”

“It’s been so long since I ate anything hot... You can’t imagine, papa, how dry my throat has gone from dry bread and smoked sausage! If fate offered me today a choice of gifts – ten extra years of life, or a cup of broth – I’d choose the second without a moment’s thought.”

“And you’d do exactly right. The worst broth in the world is many times better than our idiotic life.”

“I’d choose the second and eat it, and with what appetite! I am terribly hungry.”

Zwibush looked at Ilka with sympathy, sighed, and let out a whistling sound through his thick lips. He always made these abrupt whistling sounds when something troubled him or set him thinking. After a short silence he turned on Ilka his heavy, drooping eyebrows, from under which peered his smiling eyes, and said:

“Now wait, be patient... I have a feeling that the present fate is going to hand you today will be worthy of our attention... Heh-heh... I have a feeling we are not trudging to the courtyard of the noble Counts Goldaugen for nothing! Heh-heh... When we go in and start playing, they’ll shower us with base metal. We’ll stuff our pockets with coin. Ilka will be given a dinner... Heh-heh... Dream, Ilka! What doesn’t happen in this world? Maybe everything I’m saying is true!”

Ilka shifted the harp strap on her shoulder and laughed.

“The count himself will listen to us!” Zwibush went on. “And suddenly, my soul, it will occur to him, the count, that we oughtn’t to be driven off the grounds! And suddenly Goldaugen will listen to you, he’ll smile... And if he’s drunk, then I swear to you on my fiddle, he’ll throw a gold coin at your feet! A gold one! Heh-heh-heh. And suppose, by our good luck, he’s sitting right now at the window, drunk as forty thousand brothers! That gold coin belongs to you, Ilka! Ho-ho-ho...”

“Why must he be drunk?” asked Ilka.

“Because a drunk man is kinder and cleverer than a sober one. A drunk man loves music more than a sober one. Oh, my sweet-voiced fifth-string! If there were no drunkards in this world, art wouldn’t have got very far! So pray that whoever listens to us today is drunk!”

Ilka fell to thinking. Yes, Zwibush was a little bit right. Up to now it had mostly been drunks who threw coins to her. If there were no drunkards, she and her father would go hungry oftener, much oftener. They had to play, more often than not, outside taverns and public houses, not in front of the clean porches of sober burghers. Their listeners were mostly men whose distinguishing marks were a bloated face, a big red nose, and disconnected, vulgar words. Ilka fell to thinking on this unhappy subject, and it made her bitter, resentful. It became clear to her now why her father’s goat-bleat singing and vulgar little jokes drew more attention than her own songs – why so often people asked her to replace her singing with a dance. Often enough her song broke off in the middle and was replaced by a senseless jig danced to the screech of her father’s fiddle. So far not a single listener had ever cared to find out who had written the songs she sang with such feeling. “The Song of the Three Knights” and some empty dance tune were heard out with exactly the same interest.

“The sober despise you and me, because they see beggars in us, while the drunk let us near them, because our music drowns out their headache a little.”

With these words Zwibush brought the resentful Ilka all the way down to despondency. She wanted to cry and to break something – her fingers, say. But fingers do not break, twist and turn them as you like; she had to make do with tears alone.

“Greetings to the house of the honorable Counts Goldaugen!” Zwibush muttered.

He caught sight of a little gate woven of thin wire, twined with flowering sweet peas.

“Greetings! A man with no ancestors enters the den of men who have ancestors – scoundrel ancestors! Better nothing than something vile! In the seventeenth century Count Karl Goldaugen, having married beneath his rank, died of a guilty conscience, while his brother Moritz danced for a whole month with joy after the holy father allowed him to divorce the woman he, Moritz, had robbed and driven into consumption. Do you see, my little bird, this house? If it were possible to lay open the history of this house and look into it, you would cry out, ’What a beast is man!’ – and you, who don’t know a single foul word, would curse the way only... Russians curse! Remember, my dear, the Russians? Their word is as hard as their cold. Let our instruments be tuned!”

Zwibush tuned his fiddle. Ilka wiped the dust off her harp with her apron.

“Fate, we challenge you! Take up the glove that doesn’t exist!”

Zwibush and Ilka drew themselves up, put on cheerful faces, and marched boldly into the count’s courtyard. Despite the heat the yard was not empty. Work was in full swing there. Some twenty workmen in blue smocks, dusty, soot-blackened, and sweating, were paving the courtyard with asphalt. Blue smoke poured from three vats.

Zwibush and Ilka went briskly up to the house itself. Casting their eyes over the windows, they made out, in the largest window, a large human countenance... The countenance was red.

“The count!” Zwibush muttered. “That’s him, I think! My prophecy is coming true! And drunk into the bargain... Begin!”

Ilka struck the harp. Zwibush stamped his foot and raised the fiddle to his chin. The workmen, hearing the music, turned round. The red countenance in the window opened its eyes, frowned, and rose higher. Behind the red mug a woman’s face flickered, hands flickered... The window flew open...

“Back, back!” came a shout from the window. “Off the grounds! You! Musicians, devil take you and your music!”

The red countenance leaned out of the window and waved an arm.

“Play, play!” a woman’s voice cried.

The workmen left off their work and, scratching themselves, drew closer to the musicians. They stood in front, so as to have a good view of Ilka’s face.

“There are many countries in the world,” Ilka began to sing, running her fingers over the strings, “beautiful and bright as the sun, and rich; and better than all of them is Hungary with her gardens, her pastures, her climate, her wine, and her oxen, whose horns are a fathom long. Ilka loves this country. She loves too the people who dwell in it.”

The red countenance smiled and fixed its oily little eyes on Ilka.

“Her people are good,” Ilka went on singing. “They are handsome, brave, they have beautiful wives. There are no people who could beat them in war or in a war of words. Nations envy them. They have only one failing: they do not know how to sing. Their song is pitiful and worthless. It has no fire. Its sound makes one grieve for Hungary...”

“Mr. Pichterstein, his lordship’s chief steward, orders you to sing something merrier!” boomed a footman in a red jacket who had come up to Ilka.

Ilka’s voice fell silent. The girl had not managed to finish her thought.

“Merrier? Hm... Tell his lordship, Mr. Pichterstein, that his wish will be carefully carried out! Though I myself shall have the honor of taking the matter up with him!”

Having said this, Zwibush took off his hat, went up to the great window, and scraped his foot.

“You command,” he asked, smiling respectfully, “that something merrier be sung?”

“Yes.”

“Would your lordship care to hear a diplomatic song? My own composition! This song settles one of the essential European questions, a question of the first importance. Do you have the honor of being a Magyar, your lordship?”

The red countenance let out a column of tobacco smoke and nodded graciously with its lips.

“I invite the patriotic gentlemen to attend! May I vouch, gentlemen, for discretion? Is there among you...”

Zwibush ran his eyes over the workmen. They nodded their heads and, growing interested, drew closer.

“What is Austria?” Zwibush sang in a goatish voice. “Men of politics, princes of the land, tell me, what is Austria? Is it not a hodgepodge that the greedy neighbors are ready to swallow down? Yes, they would swallow it, were there not in this hodgepodge a golden perch on which one might choke. That perch is Hungary.”

“Bravo, bravo!” the fat man began to mutter.

“Austria is a bird painted in a hundred colors!” Zwibush went on singing. “She is made up of a hundred members. She has many legs, many wings, many stomachs, but only one head. That head is Hungary. Let a beast attack the bird, let it swallow all the members, it will never crack the skull! The skull is as dense as ivory.”

“Bravo, bravo!”

“There is the French tongue, there is German, there is Russian, there is Hungarian. All the wise men marvel at the richness of the Hungarian language. Go on, if you please, to Vienna, and ask: where lives the sphinx who speaks Austrian?”

“Bravo, bravo! Take that!”

A large silver coin flashed and flew down from the window, rolling with a ring to Zwibush’s feet. Another such coin struck Ilka’s shoe. Zwibush picked up the coin and cried out:

“A thousand thanks! I’ll go and drink to your honor’s health! I’ll drink, and I swear on my own fat mug, I won’t breathe! For your health I’ll drink with two throats: the ordinary one and the breathing one! There’ll be no time for breathing!”

Zwibush waved his hat. At that moment something unexpected happened at the window. The red countenance turned purple, a girl cried out, and the window suddenly slammed shut. The workmen drew back and stood stiffly at attention. Zwibush swung his hat backward and felt some obstruction behind it. He turned and crouched down. Beside him, rearing up, frightened by the indelicate hat, stood a handsome black horse. On the horse sat a tall, slender beauty, known throughout Hungary, the wife of Count Goldaugen, born Baroness von Heilenstrahl. Zwibush found himself facing the most beautiful of women, full of beauty, youth, dignity, and... rage. She reined in the horse and, pale, trembling with anger, lightning flashing from her eyes, raised her riding crop.

“Wretch!” she whispered, and very nearly slid from the saddle when Zwibush, stunned by the blow, staggered and, falling, struck against the black horse’s forelegs with his large, heavy body. He could not help but fall.

The blow had caught him on the temple, the cheek, and the upper lip. The countess struck with all her strength.

Another woman’s face, a face like Goethe’s Gretchen and like Ilka’s, framed in a billion strands of fair hair, lovely and young, was twisted now with fury and inexpressible despair. It went pale, it contorted... Spasms ran across it. Ilka bared her white teeth like a dog, took a step forward, and, finding no stone on the ground, flung the silver coin at the countess. The coin only grazed the veil fluttering in the wind and flew on toward the house. A strange, heavy silence fell. The countess and the fair little head stared into each other’s eyes. The silence lasted a full minute. The countess raised her crop, but, seeing that pale, wretched, contorted face, slowly lowered her hand and rode slowly toward the house. Reaching the porch, she looked back twice.

“Let them go!” she cried.

Zwibush got up, brushed off the dust, and, smiling through the blood streaming down his face, went up to Ilka, who stood as though turned to stone.

“Are you surprised, my friend?” he began. “Ho-ho! Your father’s been beaten? Don’t be surprised! It’s not the first time, it’s the forty-first! High time I got used to it!”

Ilka seized her father’s hand and, shaking all over, clung to him.

“Oh, how happy I am!” Zwibush began. “Trying, meanwhile, not to let the blood from his face drip onto Ilka’s head. “How happy I am! How am I to thank her ladyship! My fiddle is whole! I haven’t crushed my fiddle!”

And, catching up the harp in one hand and putting the other around Ilka’s shoulders, Zwibush strode quickly back toward the avenue.

Chapter II

At the very moment the end of the avenue leading out to the steppe comes into view, one must begin counting the beech trees on the left-hand side. Between the eighth and ninth beech an experienced eye can make out the traces of a path that once existed and is now abandoned. This path winds like a snake to a little chapel, near which water can be found. Zwibush knew of this path’s existence. He counted off eight and turned left. Ilka followed him. They had to push their way through a thick tangle of burdock, wild hemp, hemlock, and nettles. The nettles bit mercilessly at their hands, necks, and faces, and the heavy smell of hemp and hemlock made it hard to breathe. Zwibush’s and Ilka’s shoulders were covered in spiderweb. In the web little spiders scrambled and tangled, along with big flies and grasshoppers. Big spiders performed unaccustomed somersaults from their shoulders down onto the grass. Our travelers had to disturb the peace of a thousand lives.

The chapel stood in a clearing overgrown with tall grass, a quarter of an hour’s walk from the avenue. It was a small church, timidly rising above the grass, its plaster peeling, overgrown with moss, goosefoot, and ivy. On its sun-reddened, cone-shaped smooth roof stood a tall bronze cross. This cross served as Zwibush’s guiding star.

“If the stream has dried up,” said Zwibush, “then fate’s gift will be much crueler than the gift her ladyship gave us. My insides are as dry as parchment.”

But the stream had not dried up. When Zwibush and Ilka came up to the chapel and brushed the spiderweb from their shoulders, freshness wafted over them and a murmuring could be heard. Zwibush smiled broadly, laid the harp and fiddle down on the chapel steps, and strode quickly around the chapel, tracing a spiral with his short legs.

“It’s murmuring... but in which direction, damn it?” he burst out laughing. “Stream, where are you? Which way to you? Oh, my idiot memory! I’ve drunk from you a couple of times, stream, and, ungrateful wretch, I’ve forgotten where you are! I recognize myself in that: we forget nothing so readily as our benefactors! Oh, people! Ha-ha...”

Ilka, who had a finer ear, could have told which direction the stream was babbling in, had it not been for that terrible insult so recently dealt to her old and, in her opinion, ailing father. She followed her striding father mechanically, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, understanding nothing. She had no thought for weariness or thirst. Everything gave way before a strong, young, righteous anger. She walked, looking at the ground, and bit her upper lip.

Deaf in one ear, Zwibush traced his spiral until he came upon a spot where an angry gurgling could clearly be heard and where the ground underfoot felt soft and damp.

“The stream must be under the lindens!” said Zwibush. “Here’s one linden! Where are the other two? There were exactly three when I drank water here ten years ago... They’ve cut them down! Poor little lindens! Someone needed them too. And here it is, the thing we sought... My respects! Let’s drink, Ilka, to your health!”

Zwibush dropped to his knees, tossed his hat aside, and pressed his burning face to the cold, glittering surface... Ilka mechanically lowered herself onto one knee and followed her father’s example. Zwibush drank with his mouth and his eyes. He saw in the water his own bloodied countenance, and, looking at the bruises and scrapes, was preparing a fitting witticism. But the witticism flew clean out of his head, and the water poured back out of his mouth, when on the mirroring surface, beside his own face, he saw Ilka’s face. He stopped drinking and raised his head.

“Ilka!” he said, frowning. “Do you hear, girl? Stop baring your teeth! You’re not a dog! I don’t like it! Don’t be a fool!”

Ilka raised her head and passed a wet palm over her forehead.

“I don’t like it!” Zwibush went on. “Drop that foolish habit of baring your teeth at every trifle! Be sensible! Why be angry? You’re pale as a corpse, and shaking! Look, you fool, you’ll die of spite one day, then you’ll know! Stop it! Now then!..”

“I can’t... No one, papa Zwibush, has the right to strike you in the face. No one!”

“Really? And I didn’t know that? I know it well enough without you. Not in the face, not on the back, not on the belly... But what is it you want?”

Ilka passed her palm over her forehead once more and whispered:

“I want no one ever to dare strike you. I want... I want to pay her back.”

Zwibush let out a whistling sound, bent down to the water, and began washing his face. Having washed, he wiped himself with his sleeves and said:

“Nonsense, Ilka! Drink, if you haven’t had your fill yet, and let’s go back to our instruments. Enough talking foolishness!”

Zwibush pulled Ilka up by the hand and, stroking his stomach, set off toward the chapel.

“Better we look over the chapel than sit and be angry!” Zwibush proposed.

A great many green and gray lizards darted for cracks and into the grass when Zwibush and Ilka came up to the chapel. The chapel door, with its rusted hinges, was boarded up solid. Above the door, on a smooth wooden board, copper letters had been fixed. The letters were, of course, Latin. Zwibush read them and translated them for Ilka thus: “Franz Goldaugen – 1806. Passer-by, pray that the holy angels may keep his soul for paradise!” The glass in two of the windows was broken. Its splinters, sticking up from the half-rotted frames, gleamed with rainbow colors. The third window was stopped up with a sheaf of barley. The windows were a kingdom of cobweb and dust.

“Franz Goldaugen!” Zwibush shouted into the window.

“Goldaugen!” the echo answered.

“Franz Goldaugen – that’s the brother of the present count’s grandfather,” said Zwibush, turning to Ilka. “In 1806 he, returning from a rendezvous, was killed on this very spot by his old valet, who was taking revenge for his daughter. So some say; others say he quarreled with his nephew over some girl and was killed. However it was, the valet was hanged on this spot. ’Thou shalt not kill,’ says the Lord’s commandment, but in the houses, woods, and gardens of the Goldaugens they never knew God’s commandments. Look in the window, Ilka... Do you see St. Francis? A yellow-green face, terrible... Now this image has faded, but once upon a time it was quite clearly visible and struck terror into foolish people and women. Especially frightening was this face when, as I still remember, a blue lamp burned before it... And a cold ran down my spine when I looked at that face. The truth is, my girl, the painter who painted this icon fled before finishing his work. He never finished the left eye, and so the right eye stood out so sharply and cut into our superstitious eyes. The face too was unfinished. There was only the underpainting, as the artists say. The painter fled because he fell in love with the countess. The fool saw in her an impregnable fortress. Idiot! He needed only to give her a hint, and she would have hung on his neck. Women have always been fragile. They never hold out against men where it concerns the thing you shouldn’t know about, my innocent.”

Zwibush fell silent and looked at Ilka. Ilka was not listening to him. She was looking at the ground, whispering something with her lips and moving her fingers, as though arguing with herself. Zwibush let out a whistling sound and fell to thinking.

“Listen, redhead!” he said, knitting his brows. “I don’t like this! You’re baring your teeth again! Come, let’s sit down!”

Zwibush and Ilka sat down on the hot steps of the chapel.

“Where’s your head, girl?” Zwibush went on, looking at his daughter’s pale face. “Why don’t you reason logically? You can’t make steel out of wood, you can’t cast a bell out of rags. A rat can’t give birth to a swan. From that woman, born of that sort of people, one can’t expect angelic conduct. Her grandfathers and fathers are wolves; can she, then, contrary to the laws of nature, be born a lamb? And she is a wolf! A wolf from head to heel! Being a wolf, she couldn’t have acted otherwise... What more do you want? And teaching wolves to eat hay isn’t our business... Reason logically! She is a born Baroness Heilenstrahl; and who are the Heilenstrahls? They’re the same as the Goldaugens. The first Heilenstrahl was the natural son of Arthur Goldaugen. He got his barony during the Thirty Years’ War, only thanks to his kinship with the Goldaugens. Later Goldaugens married Heilenstrahls, the second lot married the first, and so on. The result was two houses no different from each other in any way. So what do you want? Would you have it that while a Goldaugen is beating you, a Heilenstrahl should climb up to kiss you? Hm... No, my dear! Only such little know-nothings as you get angry at wolves for nature giving them sharp teeth.”

Zwibush fell silent a moment and went on:

“And that nature plays the leading part here is beautifully clear from the history of the Goldaugens. The first Goldaugen appeared at the tail end of the Crusades. He was called the Golden-Eyed Vampire. The hair on his head and beard was black as coal, while his brows and lashes were fair. Thanks to this trick of nature he was nicknamed Goldaugen Goldaugen, translated into Russian, means “golden eyes.” – as I should tell you, means golden eyes in the German. In his golden eyes, says the chronicle, alongside a remarkable intelligence, there shone a mixture of the cunning and cleverness of a lynx with the bloodthirstiness of a starving leopard. He was a mad dog in the very worst sense of the word. He devoured human blood as easily as we drink water, he bought and sold people with the shamelessness of Judas. Burning down a village cost him far less than it costs us to light a cigar. He burned, and gazed with delight at the flames. When the conquerors, with Godfrey of Bouillon at their head, prayed for the first time at the Holy Sepulchre, he was roaming the outskirts of Jerusalem, spiking the heads of Saracens on pikes. And in that great hour he did not betray himself! He longed, says the archive, passionately to pray, but the instinct of the mad dog dragged him the other way, toward destruction, toward blood. This is a terrible deformity, my dear! One cannot think the golden-eyed man was to blame for his own deformity. A man cannot on his own arrive at such appalling vileness, any more than he can think his way to a sixth finger on his hand. Nature is to blame. She gave him a wolf’s brain. From the golden-eyed man was born a son, who differed from his father only in not having golden eyes... the deformity passed to him too; the grandson had golden eyes and the same deformity. And so on. The present count does not have golden eyes. Last year his son died, a boy who did have golden eyes. And so, golden eyes are passed down through a generation, while the deformity is every generation’s lot. As you see, my dear, the Goldaugens find it as hard to shake off wolf brains as golden eyes. Now judge for yourself, my dear, whether that beauty was in her power not to lash me across the lips. Nature got the better of reason, and she could not have acted otherwise!”

“That’s all a lie, father!” Ilka shrieked, stamping her foot. “You’re lying! Your lips have nothing to do with her deformity, with her nature! It’s nothing to do with us! You say all this only because it’s bad for me to be angry. But I’ll show her! I won’t... I won’t forgive her! God punish me if I forgive her this insult!”

“Anyone else, maybe, but not you, lamb, ought to play the brave one! For a lamb to act brave against a wolf is only wasting words for nothing... Better we say no more!”

Ilka rose, threw the harp strap over her shoulder, and pointed with her chin at the path.

“Don’t you want to rest a while?” her father asked.

Ilka said nothing. Zwibush stood up, took the fiddle under his arm, grunted, and set off toward the avenue. He was used to obeying Ilka.

An hour later they were walking, barely dragging their weary feet, along the dusty, hot road. Ahead of them, beyond a strip of darkening groves and gardens, the belfries and town hall of a small Hungarian town showed white. On the left the pretty little village of Goldaugen showed bright.

“Where is there a court? Here or there?” asked Ilka, pointing at the town and the village.

“A court? Hm... There’s a court in the town and in the village both. In the town they try the townsfolk, my treasure, and in the village the Goldaugen folk...”

Ilka stopped and, after a moment’s thought, set off down the road leading to the village.

“Where to? What for?” asked Zwibush. “What do you need there? God keep you from going to those peasants!”

“I, papa Zwibush, am going where they try the Goldaugen folk.”

“What for, for God’s sake! You’re out of your mind, my soul! In the town we can dine and drink beer, but what will we do here?”

“What will we do? Very simple! We’ll go to law with that shameless wretch!”

“But you’re a fool, daughter! You’ve lost your mind! You’ve lost all sense, my darling! Or maybe you’re joking?”

“I’m not joking, father! I’m amazed, even, that you, for all your self-regard, can take this insult so coolly! If you like, go on to the town! I’ll go to court myself and demand she be punished!”

Zwibush glanced at Ilka’s face, shrugged, and followed his disobedient daughter, muttering, gesturing with his hands, and letting out whistling sounds.

“You’re a fool, Ilka!” he said, sighing, as they crossed the bridge over the river. “A fool! Call me a bald devil if you don’t come out of this village with nothing to show for it! Forgive me, daughter, but, honest word, you’re being as stupid today as a minnow!”

They crossed the bridge and entered the village. There was not a soul in the streets. Everyone was busy with field and garden work. They had to wander a long time around the village and cast their eyes about before they came upon a little old woman, wrinkled up like a dried melon rind.

“May I ask,” Ilka addressed the old woman, “where the judge lives here?”

“The judge? We have three judges, miss,” the old woman answered. “One of them hasn’t judged anyone in a long while. He’s lying paralyzed, these ten years. The other doesn’t attend to business now, he lives as a landowner. He married a rich woman, took land as her dowry – has he time for court now? But he’s an old man too... He married some fifteen years ago, when my eldest son died, God rest his soul...”

“And the third? Where does the third live?”

“The third? The third still judges... But he’s no good for anything either... An old fellow! He ought to be sleeping in his grave by now, not sorting out brawls... He lives... You see the green porch? See it? Well, that’s where he lives...”

Zwibush and Ilka thanked the old woman and made for the green porch. They found the judge at home. He was standing in his yard, under an old spreading mulberry, knocking down the black, overripe berries with a stick. His lips and chin were painted purple, blue, and crimson. His mouth was full. The judge chewed lazier than oxen sick of chewing their cud.

Zwibush took off his hat and bowed to the judge.

“I make bold to trouble your honor with one single question,” he said. “Would you be so good as to be the judge?”

The judge ran his eyes over his uninvited guests and, swallowing his cud, said:

“I am the judge, but only until dinner.”

“And has your honor already eaten?”

“Well, yes... I dine at half past two... You ought to know that. On holidays I dine at half past one.”

“Plenus venter non studet libenter A full belly is slow to study (Latin)., your honor! Heh-heh-heh... You speak the truth. But, your honor, there is no rule without exception!”

“I have none... I don’t recognize exceptions in this case... I judge people only on an empty stomach, old fellow, when I’m least inclined to be sentimental. Ten years ago I tried judging after dinner... And what came of it? Do you know what came of it, old fellow? I would sentence a man one degree lighter than he deserved... And that’s not always just! But you’re fat as a hundred-bucket barrel. You eat a lot, I suppose? And isn’t it hot for you, carrying around so much extra meat? And who’s this girl?”

“This, your honor, is my daughter... She it is who comes to you as a petitioner.”

“Hm... I see... Come closer, beauty! What do you need?”

Ilka went up to the judge and, in a trembling voice, told him everything that had happened in the courtyard of the Counts Goldaugen. The judge heard her out, looked at Zwibush’s lips, smiled, and asked:

“So what is it you need, beauty?”

“I want you to punish that woman!..”

“I see... Very well... With the greatest pleasure! We’ll clap her in prison this instant... Listen, old fellow,” the judge turned to Zwibush. “Where did you sire this beauty, on the moon or on the earth?”

“On the earth, your honor! There are no women on the moon, your honor, and so it would hardly be possible there to drink a glass of wine to the mother’s health!”

“If on the earth, then why doesn’t she know that... What fools you are, gentlemen! Oh, what fools! You’re fools and eccentrics both!”

“Why is that?” asked Ilka.

“Probably because you’ve no brains... The Goldaugens feed me and give me drink, and I’m to judge them, am I! Ha-ha-ha! The Goldaugens are counts, and she’s the daughter of a Gypsy, a poor fiddler who ought to be whipped for playing the fiddle so badly! Eccentrics! No, you weren’t born on this earth! And will she even want to go to law with you? She’ll draw a face with a big nose on the summons I send her and throw it under the table! And where are your witnesses? The workmen? Don’t count on it! They’re not such millionaires as to give up a crust of bread! Ha-ha-ha! A fine one to go to law with! You eccentric thing! No, don’t be foolish, beauty! It’s an insult, that’s true... but what’s to be done about it? You can’t remake the wide world!”

“But what am I to do?”

“Give your father a rag to tie round his lip. The wound might fester from flies... Buy some lead lotion... That’s all the advice I can give you... Want another piece of advice, beauty? Here it is! Take your fat papa by the arm and go away... I can’t stand the sight of fools! Spare yourselves the presence of an unjust judge, and let me have the pleasure of not talking to you.”

“But what am I to do?” Ilka asked again, wringing her fingers.

“Hm... Want a third piece of advice? Here it is! Become a countess just like her. Then you’ll have every right to go to law with her! Every right! Ha-ha-ha! Become a countess! Honest word! Then you can go to law with her to your heart’s content! Nothing and no one will stop you! However... good day to you! I’ve no time! Leave me. Until you’re a countess I still have the right to chase you, rather indelicately, away from my full stomach and my lazy tongue! March, old fellow! Don’t forget the lead lotion!”

The judge turned away and set upon the berries again. Zwibush and Ilka went out of the yard and made for the bridge. Zwibush would have liked to stay and rest in the village, but he had no wish to act against Ilka’s will... He trudged after her, cursing the hunger gnawing at his stomach. Hunger kept him from thinking clearly...

“Are we for the town, daughter?” he asked.

Ilka did not answer. When they entered a grove belonging to the Goldaugen peasants, Zwibush asked:

“Ilka, are you angry? Why don’t you answer my question?”

Instead of an answer Ilka swayed and clutched at her head.

“What’s the matter, daughter?”

The daughter stopped and turned her face to her father. Her face was twisted with a nasty, wicked smile. Her teeth were bared like a dog’s...

“For God’s sake, what’s the matter?”

Ilka threw up her hands, tipped back her head, and opened her mouth wide... A sharp, chest-deep cry went ringing through the grove. Large tears poured in streams from the blue eyes of the insulted father’s daughter... Ilka sobbed and burst out laughing.

“What’s the matter with you? Can one be so angry?”

Zwibush began to cry and set about kissing his daughter.

“Can one be like this? Sit down, Ilka! For God’s sake, sit down! Come now, sit!”

Zwibush laid his big sweaty hands on her heaving shoulders and pressed them down.

“Sit down! We’ll sit a while in the shade, and you’ll calm down! Let’s go under this willow! And here’s the stream! Want some water? Willows always grow by water. Where there are willows, there you should look for water! Let’s sit!”

Zwibush carried Ilka to the willow, bent her knees, and set her down on the grass. The sobbing grew stronger and stronger...

“Enough, my daughter! Have we the right to take offense so? Do we never give offense to anyone? Can you vouch that your father has never insulted anyone unpunished? I have given offense! Today I was only paid back.”

A shot rang out. Catching on the branches, rustling, flapping its wings, a bird fell from the willow and dropped onto Ilka’s apron. It was a young eagle. One piece of shot had struck its eye, another had shattered its beak...

“Look, my dear! In the face of this bird nature herself is gravely insulted... This insult is far greater than ours... Nature endures... She does not punish, does not take revenge...”

The bushes crackled, and Zwibush saw before him a tall, well-built, in the highest degree handsome man, with a large, full beard and a swarthy face. He held a gun in one hand and a broad-brimmed straw hat in the other. Seeing his quarry lying on the knees of a pretty, weeping girl, he stopped as though rooted to the spot.

“This man, however, is already punished!” said Zwibush. “Punished heavily! His sins pale before the punishment he bears! Let me introduce you, Ilka, to Count Vunich, Baron Zainitz. Good day, count and baron! Which do you have more of, countship or barony? In your devilishly handsome figure there is plenty of both... Here is your game! My daughter is singing its requiem.”

Baron Arthur von Zainitz, a man of some twenty-eight years – no more – but who looks past thirty. His face is still handsome, fresh, but on this face, around the eyes and at the corners of the mouth, you will find the little wrinkles found on people who have already lived much and endured much. Across his fine swarthy face youth has plowed a furrow with its failures, its joys, its griefs, its drinking bouts, its debauchery. In his eyes, satiety, boredom... His lips are set in a resigned and at the same time mocking smile that has become habitual... The baron von Zainitz’s black hair is long and curls in ringlets. It calls to mind the hair of a young boarding-school girl who has not yet learned to braid her hair. Arthur rarely bathes, and so his hair and neck are grimy and glisten in the sun. He is dressed plainly and without wealth... His costume is unpretentious and extremely indeterminate... The dirty collar of his shirt betrays that the baron does not follow fashion. Such collars were worn four years ago. His necktie is black, worn, and thin as a ribbon; its knot, tied badly and in haste, has slid to one side and threatens to come undone... His jacket and waistcoat are splendid; they are covered in stains, but they are new. They are cut from expensive gray cloth, made from the finest goat’s down. His worn silk trousers, long past their prime, fit snugly over his muscular thighs and are lost, quite handsomely, above the knee in the folds of tall, gleaming boot-tops. The heels of his boots are crooked and half worn away. On the waistcoat of goat’s down rests a chain of some new metal. Six golden medallions hang from the chain, a golden stork with diamond eyes, and a small, very skillfully made rifle with a golden barrel and a platinum stock. On the stock of this little rifle one may read the following: “To Baron Arthur von Zainitz. The Society of Weisstahl and Solnogorsk Huntsmen.” Don’t ask the baron what time it is: at the pocket end of the chain there hang not a watch, but a key and a tin whistle.

The line of the barons Zainitz cannot boast of any great antiquity. It traces its beginning from the first decade of the present century, only that. Arthur keeps in his possession “A History of the Barons von Zainitz,” a small pamphlet, commissioned once upon a time by Arthur’s father, Karl, from a visiting learned Swedish pastor. The obliging pastor took a large fee and, composing the family tree of the gracious barons, spared neither paper nor the truth. He led the genealogy back to the eleventh century. Many, of course, believed this pamphlet; those especially believed it who had no need to check the pastor’s work. But the Zainitzes had cause to blush for their pamphlet when one very obliging illustrated newspaper, wishing to do them a service, printed their coat of arms and a genealogy rather closer to the truth than the one the pastor had been paid for. The first Baron Zainitz was a simple nobleman, married to the daughter of a banker, a baptized Jew. This was a person insignificant in every respect, servile, forever hungry, and loving money more than anything else in the world. She would have lived out her days unnoticed and vanished forever from people’s memory, had it not been for fortune, which smiled on her graciously and steadily... The first Zainitz had two brothers. One of them was a Jesuit, lectured on physics at some university, and worked his own way up to a cardinalate. The other brother was a court poet and son-in-law of the personal physician. Thanks to the powerful patronage of these two brothers, and the money of his father-in-law the banker, who had substantial financial connections, the patent of barony von Zainitz came somewhat more easily than it had to that first Zainitz the Swedish pastor lied about. The second Zainitz, Arthur’s grandfather, fought at Austerlitz and died a professor at the military academy. This Zainitz was the very image of his cardinal uncle and, like him, was more a man of the study than a soldier or a landowner. Arthur’s father took after the first Zainitz. He too was an insignificant, unremarkable, worthless person. Poorly educated, narrow, weak in body and in character, he set himself the task of squandering utterly everything that smiling fortune had given his grandfather and his father. The task, however, proved no easy one. The barony of Zainitz occupies no small area. A railway crosses it in two places. It is reckoned, thanks to its gardens, vineyards, and soil, one of the richest and most splendid estates. The stud farm and the woolen mill located on it together brought the barons two thousand four hundred francs a day, to say nothing of the rest. Squandering such a fortune is no easy task, but Karl von Zainitz had excellent helpers. He was helped by his voluptuousness, his inability to reason, his good nature, and his... son. To the end of his days he never stopped loving women. He loved desperately, madly, without reasoning and without stopping before any obstacle. Women were his chief expense, without which he would hardly have managed to squander everything. In Vienna he kept a mistress for a time. He would travel to this mistress on a special train with a numerous crowd of voluptuous hangers-on who drank nothing but champagne. With every train gifts were brought to the mistress that dazzled with their luxury and spoke all too eloquently of the baron’s folly. The gifts consisted of family jewels, expensive horses, promissory notes... The maid of his Viennese love received a thousand francs a month and kept her own horses on hand for any occasion. On the arrival and before the departure of the special trains, Lucullan dinners were given. In Prague there was another mistress, in Budapest a third, and so on. The women adored him, and, of course, for his generosity more than for anything else. The mass of anecdotes still told today about Karl von Zainitz characterizes this adoration better than anything else could. Of that mass of anecdotes let us give one.

At one of the best German theaters a young actress made her debut, fresh out of the theatrical school. (Today she is a very well-known actress in the roles of dramatic and tragic old mothers.) She was young, good-looking, and acted magnificently. The theater shook with applause. After the first act alone a bouquet was presented to her, adorned with the most precious necklace of the late baroness von Zainitz, Karl’s mother. The baron gave up this necklace because it lay in his side pocket and its medallion’s sharp end was jabbing him in the ribs. After the second act several highly-placed persons who happened to be in the theater that evening went backstage to express their admiration to the debutante. Among the highly-placed persons was von Zainitz himself. Backstage he felt quite at home. Having drunk a glass of champagne in the dressing room of the leading man, he made for the dressing room of the rising star. The dressing-room door was locked. He knocked.

“What are you doing!?” the highly-placed persons exclaimed in astonishment... “You forget yourself! You forget that this is not a circus, not an operetta house... Not Madame Deleaux’s salon! You are devilishly impudent, baron!”

“You think so? I’m only impatient...” the baron answered.

“But she’ll be out presently! Surely you can find patience for two, for three minutes?”

“I can’t.”

“But this is improper! She may be dressing just now!”

“She may be,” the impatient baron answered, and knocked at the door once more.

“Who’s there?” came a young woman’s voice from the dressing room.

“I!” the baron answered.

“Who are you?”

“One of the admirers of your talent. I don’t, to be quite honest, understand the first thing about your talent, but I’m told you act beautifully, and I’m accustomed to taking things on faith. Open up!”

“Strange... I’m in my dressing room! One can’t come into a dressing room. And who are you, anyway?”

“I am Baron von Zainitz. I have business with you.”

The voice from the dressing room spoke more softly, less boldly:

“Delighted, baron... But I’m not dressed... Wait five minutes.”

“I’ve no time to wait. In two minutes I’m leaving. Now or never!”

“You can’t!”

“That’s your affair... Farewell! Who, the devil take it, is pulling at my sleeve?”

A crowd of the debutante’s admirers had gathered around the baron. The crowd was highly indignant at the baron’s insolent behavior. It demanded that the baron step away from the door. The debutante’s fianc\’e, who happened to be in the crowd, pulled at his sleeve.

“Kindly step away from the door!” the admirers shouted.

“And if I don’t step away, what then?” asked the baron, and now knocked at the door not with a finger but with a fist.

“You, mademoiselle, no doubt want these gentlemen to make a scandal of me!” he said through the door to the debutante. “Open up! In a minute and a half I’m leaving... Now or never! I, Baron von Zainitz, like to do everything now or never! Would you care to speak with Baron Zainitz, who has business with you?”

The debutante evidently hesitated.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Ah, devil take it! What could I possibly want!? I’ve no time to talk! Well, I’ll count to three. If you don’t open when I say ’three,’ I’ll go, and you’ll never see me again... What a great many admirers you have, though! I can tell by the pinches they’re dealing me from behind and from the sides... Well, I’m beginning... one... two... Well... well...”

Light footsteps were heard in the dressing room, near the door.

“Three!” said the baron.

The lock clicked. The door quietly opened. A pretty, smiling maid slipped past the baron’s nose out of the dressing room. The baron took a step forward, and his sense of smell drowned in the delicate scents of the dressing room. She stood by the dark window, wrapped in a shawl. Beside her lay the dress she was to put on... Her cheeks were red. She was burning with shame...

“My God, how innocent she still is!” thought the baron, and, bowing, said:

“I beg your pardon! I’m leaving in a minute, and so...”

The debutante raised her eyes to the baron. Her eyes were full of curiosity. She was seeing him for the first time, but she had heard so much about him, still at the theatrical school! She had long adored him by hearsay.

“What is it you want, baron?” she asked after a heavy, minute-long silence.

“You’ll forgive me, mademoiselle, for being so insistent, but... honest word, I like you!”

The debutante lowered her eyes. Her cheeks flushed still redder.

“I don’t care for compliments,” she said.

“God, how innocent she is!” thought the baron, and said:

“How much salary has your management set for you?”

“It hasn’t been set yet, but it will be... How much, I don’t know... At first, probably, no more than two thousand thalers...”

“Hm... A good price... Sufficient, at first.”

The baron fell silent and fixed his eyes on the debutante. The debutante was ready to sink through the floor from shame and anticipation.

“If you come to me,” said von Zainitz after a silence, “you’ll get a hundred and fifty times more.”

The debutante’s pink cheeks turned white as the linen of the baron’s shirt... The debutante cried out, threw up her hands, and, as though stunned by a shot from a hundred cannon, dropped at once into a velvet-upholstered armchair. She had a fit of hysterics. Von Zainitz bowed and went out. When the maid came into the dressing room, the debutante was sobbing. The sobs were broken, mixed with laughter... The maid took fright, ran out of the dressing room, and in a minute the whole company had split into little knots. The knots whispered, glanced sidelong at the dressing-room door, and did not know what to do: be indignant at the baron’s insolent act, or... envy the sobbing debutante’s good fortune? The fianc\’e, like a madman, burst into the dressing room, fell at her feet, and cried out:

“Don’t cry, my dear! This insult won’t go unanswered! But... why, the devil take it, did you open the door to that demon?”

The debutante laid her tear-stained face on the fianc\’e’s white shirtfront, laid her hands on his shoulders, and whispered:

“Oh, Georges! How happy I am! How happy we are! He promised a hundred and fifty times more, and we were taught at the theatrical school that Baron von Zainitz knows how to keep his word! It’s only a pity he’s not handsome! But... a hundred and fifty times more!! Go, my friend, ask that they announce to the public that I cannot continue the performance owing to illness!”

The next day the debutante received from the “adored” von Zainitz three months’ salary in advance...

This anecdote is plausible, but how true it is I do not know.

The second item of the baron’s expenditure was cards. Zainitz played very rarely. He was bored at cards. But once seated, out of boredom he would lose the most enormous sums. Out of boredom, too, he invented his own card game. His game was extremely simple. It was called “Black and Red.”

“Red or black?” Zainitz would ask his partner, showing him the back of a card. “If you guess right, you win, and if you guess wrong, I win.”

Zainitz could hardly have invented anything more foolish than this game. And yet he managed, playing it, to lose in two evenings the county of Vunich, purchased once by Arthur’s grandfather in Galicia. The county of Vunich was his first painful loss.

The second loss was his wife, the Baroness von Zainitz, whom he killed by his conduct. The third loss was his daughter, a bigot and an idiot, whom, to mend his disordered affairs, he had to marry off to a banker, a Jew worming his way into the nobility. As for the barony of Zainitz, it met the most pitiful fate of all. It was mortgaged for next to nothing to his son-in-law the banker, who at the auction kept it for himself. Karl ended by shooting himself unsuccessfully (the bullet lodged in his shoulder), and died in the arms of his daughter and the priests, leaving the banker, “just in case,” a few promissory notes for a solid sum.

His son Arthur, after his mother’s death, when he was twelve years old, was sent to Vienna, where he was placed in a boarding school. On leaving the school, where he learned to speak three languages, he entered the university, in the philological faculty. Soon Arthur left philology and entered the mathematical faculty. In this faculty he was fortunate. He won a prize for the best student essay on differential calculus. Having finished the course in the mathematical faculty, he took up philological studies again. This wandering from one harbor to another might, perhaps, have ended in something good, had it not been for the thousands he was obliged every month to collect at the post office and from his father’s agents. The thousands turned his head. When he grew tired of building the library on which he had spent great sums since entering the university, he lost his footing and followed in his father’s tracks... He went off to Paris. Thousands of letters flew from Paris to the barony of Zainitz demanding money. Karl was kind-hearted, and so not a single letter went unanswered; each answer consisted of checks. To Arthur’s good fortune, the packets of money he received from home grew smaller every month, and arrived in Paris more and more rarely... Hundreds gradually crowded out thousands. Along with news of his father’s death, Arthur received a thousand francs and a letter from his brother-in-law the banker. The banker wrote that the thousand being sent constituted the whole fortune of Baron Arthur von Zainitz and that he, Arthur, had nothing further to hope for... Arthur read the letter and turned deep red.

He felt terribly ashamed for himself and for his father. He fell into serious thought, and he grew afraid for his future, which he had loved and pitied so, sitting on his university bench. He tore the brother-in-law’s letter to shreds and struck himself in the face with his fist with all his strength... He wanted to throw the thousand out the window, but... he did not throw it. And a good thing too. That thousand proved useful. It was spent fleeing Paris from his debts. His creditors were hotel-keepers, money-lenders, and, most shamefully of all, cocottes... His last days in Paris he had to live at the cocottes’ expense... He fled to his homeland drunk-sodden, worn out, and steeped in lies, but, fortunately, not completely so. His health was not yet broken, and he had not yet once been a knowing scoundrel. Fortunately, Arthur had a resilient nature. In Vienna he took up his studies again, with greater zeal than before. To have a crust of bread and not go begging his relations for money, he became a teacher of algebra at one of the military academies and a correspondent for two large Paris newspapers. He earned a little too by writing verses, which he placed in French journals. (Like Frederick the Great, he could not abide the German language.) Life became quiet, modest, tolerable, diametrically opposite to his Paris life, but it did not remain so for long... It was spoiled at the most interesting point, precisely in that golden year when Arthur became a doctor of philosophy and a master of mathematical sciences. On the broad road fate stuck out its foot and tripped him. He, without noticing it himself, ran up debts. Whoever was once rich and is now poor will understand this “without noticing.” Arthur, besides, married a pretty, poor little noblewoman who had fallen in love with him. He married both for love and out of compassion. The marriage increased his expenses. Willy-nilly he had to turn to his sister. Arthur wrote his sister a letter asking her to tell him what fate had befallen their mother’s estate, and, if it had not been sold for debt, to set aside for him a portion of the income it yielded. In passing, he also asked his sister to send him, in Vienna, his library, which she had once taken to keep safe. In answer to this letter Arthur received a telegram from his brother-in-law, asking Arthur to come to Zainitz at once. Arthur went. When he drove into Zainitz, he was asked to go on foot.

“Madame Peltzer,” he was told, “does not care for the noise of wheels. Be so good as to walk the rest of the way to the house.”

Arthur was met in the drawing room by his brother-in-law and his sister. His sister sat in an armchair, weeping. His brother-in-law, at his entrance, buried his nose in a newspaper...

“It’s me!” Arthur said to them. “Don’t you recognize me?..”

“We see,” the banker answered. “You did well to listen to us and come... We’re very glad, baron, that you haven’t yet lost the capacity for obedience... The word ’obedient’ has a faint whiff of the servile about it, but you’ll excuse me... For gentlemen such as yourself, obedience is necessary...”

“I don’t understand you,” said the baffled baron. “Sister, what are you crying about? Brother Arthur has come, and you’re crying... Answer my ’hello’ with something! Enough crying!”

“She, my dear sir,” said the banker, “burst into tears the moment we were told you were coming... Sit down... Your sister, thank God, still has chairs enough. Not everything has been squandered by you and your father. She, my wife, is crying because she still loves you...”

Arthur opened his eyes wide and passed a palm over his forehead. He did not understand.

“Yes,” the banker went on, not taking his eyes off the newspaper, “she cannot so quickly put an end to a feeling which, one must admit, is unnatural, because in fact she has already ceased to be your sister... Hm... You are no brother to her. She is immeasurably above you. You are too low to be this woman’s brother... My dear sir! Thank this woman! If not for her, you would not have dared cross the threshold of this house!”

“Explain to me, sister,” said Arthur, turning pale, “what I am to understand by your husband’s... Peltzer’s... words? I understand absolutely nothing! And then, your tears... I don’t understand!”

The banker’s wife took the handkerchief from her face, jumped up, and, rustling her heavy dress, began pacing the drawing room. Tears, quite real, large ones, dropped from her eyes onto the floor.

“You don’t understand?” she cried in a shrieking voice. “Understand, then, at last, that you are killing us with your behavior! Your immorality outrages us! I am outraged, as a sister and a Christian!..”

“Explain yourself, sister!” said Arthur. “I simply cannot understand what it is you want to tell me?”

“Silence! I don’t want to hear your voice! What trash did you marry out there?”

“Yes, baron!” the banker took up in a high, rattling tenor. “In marrying that worthless woman, you have disgraced the name of the barons von Zainitz and all who consider themselves their relations!”

The arm of the chair the baron was gripping cracked. Arthur trembled with rage.

“Sylvia!” he said, turning to his sister. “I never said a word to you when you married that wretch Peltzer. I respected your will, and you? You allow yourself, at Peltzer’s dictation, to deal me grave insults! Don’t forget yourself!”

“I, a wretch?” Peltzer cried. “I forgive you that word, baron! I forgive it!”

Sylvia stamped her foot and took a step toward her brother.

“I know everything about you!” she hissed, swallowing her tears. “Everything! It’s not enough that you married some boulevard trash, some guttersnipe, not enough! You’re a godless man besides! You never go to church! You’ve forgotten God! You’ve forgotten that at any moment your soul is ready to part from your body and give itself into the devil’s hands!”

“God grant everyone were such a wretch as I!” Peltzer shouted meanwhile. “Oh! Then things would be different on this earth! Then there would be no people on earth to whom name and honor mean nothing... There would be none of those women, boulevard trollops, who...”

Peltzer suddenly fell silent. He looked at Arthur’s face, and it made him afraid.

“Not even Lutherans behave as you behave!” Sylvia cried. “We called you here to make you understand how low you have sunk! You must repent! Part from her and... change your way of life! At once! Do you hear? Do you understand?”

“If you cling to the traditions of rank,” said Arthur in a dull voice, “then know that it does not become Baron Arthur von Zainitz to enter into any sort of wrangling with a Jewish upstart out of Russian Poland and his wife! But... I condescend to you, and I ask one question. I ask it and I go. What have you to tell me regarding my late mother’s estate?”

“It belongs to Sylvia,” said Peltzer, “to her alone.”

“By what right?”

“Are you not aware of your mother’s will?”

“Why do you lie? There was no will at all! I know that!”

“There is one!”

“And if there is, it’s a forgery! Where is my library?”

“It was sold for the thousand francs that were sent to you in Paris...”

“It’s worth not a thousand but two hundred thousand francs!”

Peltzer shrugged his shoulders and smirked.

“For all my good will, I could not sell it for more.”

“Who bought it?”

“I did. Boris Peltzer...”

Arthur felt he was suffocating. He seized his own head and ran out of the drawing room.

“Come back, brother! Come back!” Sylvia cried after him.

Arthur did not want to turn back, but could not help it. He still loved his sister.

“Repent, Arthur!” said Sylvia, when her brother had returned. “Repent while there is still time!”

Arthur ran out of the drawing room and, a minute later, choking and trembling with rage, was racing to the railway station.

Locked in a second-class compartment, he lay face down on the couch and rode in that position all the way to Vienna. In Vienna fate tripped him a second time. Arriving home, he did not find his wife at home. His passionately loved wife, during his absence, had run off to a lover... She had left a letter begging forgiveness. Arthur was struck by this betrayal as by a thunderbolt...

A week later his wife, driven out by her lover, came back to him, to poison herself and die at the threshold of his apartment... When Arthur, having buried his wife, returned home from the cemetery, a footman met him with a letter. The letter was from his sister Sylvia and contained the following:

“My dear brother! We know everything... The secret murder you committed, to wipe from the face of the earth the traces of a crime that has disgraced our name, is hateful to God... We asked only for repentance, but she, your wife, could have gone on living. Her death was not necessary. Only her removal was necessary. But do not despair. We pray for you, and, believe me, our prayers are not in vain. Pray, you too.

Your Sylvia.”

Arthur tore this letter into small shreds. His feet trampled the shreds on which, by a sacrilegious hand, God’s name had been written... Arthur burst into sobs and fell to the ground senseless...

Tutoring, philosophy, mathematics, French verses – all were abandoned and forgotten by Arthur. At last, coming to himself, he got terribly drunk, and from that time on, a double-barreled gun slung over his shoulder, went wandering as “the wild Zainitz” through the country round Zainitz, Goldaugen, and other villages, drinking fabulous quantities of wine and destroying game. He took up a strange life... People saw him only in the taverns and drinking houses that adorn crossroads with their gaudy variety. All the foresters and most of the shepherds saw him and knew him.

Where he lived, what he ate, no one knew. He would have been taken for a madman, if he had not spoken so cleverly with the people he happened to meet. No one knew what to think of him. They called him “the wild Zainitz,” a wandering hermit, and “poor Baron Arthur.” The boulevard press took him up – some enormous lawsuit Zainitz meant to bring against the Peltzers, about a sister who had legally robbed her brother; out of nowhere little anecdotes and short romances about the life of Arthur von Zainitz or his father began appearing in print. There was even a little newspaper that regretted the disappearance of the house of Zainitz...

Arthur wandered for the most part through gardens and groves. There was more game in gardens and groves than in field or by the rivers. The owners of the gardens did not forbid him to hunt. They hated his sister and saw in him Peltzer’s bitterest enemy. The housewives were even glad that their gardens and groves were visited by von Zainitz.

“You can’t say,” they used to say, “that he’s a forest king, no! He’s too young for that... He’s more of a forest crown prince!”

Meeting people, the forest crown prince generally bowed to them very politely. But coming upon Zwibush and Ilka, he stood rooted to the spot. As an artist, he was struck by the beauty and the reality of the group formed by Zwibush, Ilka, the harp, the fiddle, and the bird.

Hearing sobbing, Arthur frowned and coughed angrily.

“Why is she crying?” he asked.

Zwibush smirked and shrugged.

“She’s crying,” he said, “probably because she’s a woman. If she were a man, she wouldn’t cry.”

“Was it you who wronged her?”

“I did, baron! I confess...”

The baron looked with indignation at Zwibush’s fat, glistening countenance and clenched his right fist.

“How did you wrong her, you old brute?”

“I wronged her, your excellency, by having a mug that can be whipped with impunity... She’s my daughter, baron, and in a daughter’s presence well-bred people don’t allow themselves to abuse fathers...”

“What did you wrong her for, you scoundrel? Don’t cry, girl! I’ll examine him at once, the wretch! Did you beat her, or what?”

“You’ve guessed right, baron, but only in part... Yes, there was beating, only not of her, and not by me... Your sympathy for my daughter touches me, count! I thank you!”

“Buffoon!” the baron pronounced, waved his hand, and bent down toward Ilka.

“What’s the matter, my dear?” he asked. “What are you crying about? Who wronged you? Tell me who wronged you, and I... will wrong him, wrong him badly!”

The baron drew his large sunburnt hand over Ilka’s hair. His eyes lit with a good little fire.

“We men must stand up for women, because the strong are bound to defend the weak. What are you crying about?”

And peering into the face covered by damp little fingers and loosened hair, von Zainitz went down on his knees and carefully seated himself beside Ilka. He began speaking in a voice he had not used in a long time. Ilka heard a voice, tender, flowing straight from the soul – a voice one could safely trust...

“What are you crying about? Tell me your grief! Beside you now sits not a foolish old buffoon, but a strong man. You can rely on me... I am strong and can do anything... Now what are you crying about? Well?”

Children, when asked the reason for their crying, begin to cry harder. The same happens with women. Ilka cried harder still...

“Judging by how hard you’re crying, you must have a great sorrow... You will tell me... You will tell me, won’t you? You can be frank with me. I’m not asking out of idle curiosity. I want to help you... Word of honor, girl!”

Arthur bent down and kissed Ilka on the crown of her head.

“You won’t cry anymore? Yes? Well, come now, my dear! To ease one’s grief a little, all one has to do is speak it out...”

“She’ll hardly stop crying soon,” said Zwibush. “Her nerves are as weak as the threads of a shirt that’s been worn five years. Let her cry it out, baron... Not good, Ilka! Shed too many tears and you’ll soon want a drink.”

“Ah, yes! We must give her water!” said the baron. “There’s water close by...” The baron rose and disappeared behind the thick foliage; dry branches and twigs cracked under the weight of his heavy body.

“What a baron!” Zwibush tittered. “Tender, courteous, considerate! Ha-ha-ha! One might think he really is such a good soul. Believe him, Ilka, but only a little. He’s a fine fellow, but you can’t put your finger in his mouth. He’ll bite your arm off to the elbow. Don’t tell him about the affair at the Goldaugens’. He’s kin to those flayers the Goldaugens, and he’ll laugh at you like the last fool. Will you be done crying soon?”

The branches cracked again, and Arthur appeared from behind the leaves with a silver hunting cup in his hands. The cup was full of water.

“Drink... What’s your name? Ilka? Drink, Ilka!”

The baron went down on his knees and brought the cold cup to Ilka’s lips. Ilka took her hands from her face and drank half the cup...

“How unhappy I am! Ah, how unhappy I am!” she murmured.

“I believe you, gladly!” said the baron, and wetted her temples with cold water. “I would call you a liar, my dear, if you said you were happy. Drink more!”

“For God’s sake, I beg you, don’t scold my father!” Ilka whispered. “He too is very, very unhappy!”

“I won’t scold him... I scolded him because I lost my temper. At first I thought he had wronged you. I take back my unkind words. But he takes your grief so coldly, as a decent father ought not to.”

“It only remains for you to wet my temples with water too!” Zwibush laughed. “I forgot how to bawl back when I got used to my father’s switch. What a tender soul you are today, baron, though! I don’t recognize in you today that Baron Arthur von Zainitz who, six years ago, knocked out two teeth of the marker at the “Black Horse” restaurant in Prague... Do you remember, your excellency? One tooth you were pleased to knock out with the cue, and the other with your fist...”

“There’s no telling what didn’t happen six years ago!” von Zainitz muttered. “Many things happened, and things it isn’t decent to mention now. Well, Ilka! Speak! You’ve calmed down a little now, and to come fully to yourself, all you need is to speak it out... Well? Who wronged you?”

“It wasn’t me who was wronged, but my father!”

“So that’s it! So you’re crying for your father?”

“He was terribly insulted! You would be horrified if you saw how they insulted him, poor man!”

“So that’s it! Hm... What a good girl you are, though! You have a good daughter, old man! A rarity! Well, all the same, tell me... And I’ll take his part just as readily as yours.”

“You won’t take his part, baron!” said Zwibush.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s impossible... I had the honor of receiving a slap in the face not from a small person, but from a very great one. No cannonball could ever reach that person! And besides, one oughtn’t to take his part! My daughter is being capricious!”

“What nonsense! It’s all the same to me who insulted him! My cannonball, if it’s needed, will reach anyone... Tell me, Ilka. I’ll help you.”

Stammering, sighing deeply, and repeating herself again and again, Ilka told Baron Arthur von Zainitz her grief. When, in her telling, she came to the Countess Goldaugen raising her crop, the baron frowned.

“So it was... a woman?” he asked.

“Yes, the Countess Goldaugen...”

“Hm... Go on...”

The baron turned terribly pale and scratched his forehead.

“Go on, go on... I’m listening... So a woman struck him? Not a man?”

“A woman, baron!”

“Hm... So... Why don’t you go on?”

When Ilka told how her father had fallen under the horse’s feet, how he had then been covered in blood, the baron glanced at Zwibush...

“Was it your lip she split?” he asked.

“Well, is it worth talking about? Let’s talk about politics instead, gentlemen!”

“I’m asking you, you old fool, did she split your lip or didn’t she?” the baron shouted, and struck his fist on the grass. “My daughter suffers on his account, and he jokes! I don’t like buffoons!”

“She did, she did!” said Ilka.

“I clothe the old fool in a young hide and return him where he belongs!” Zwibush growled. “I’m not joking, I’m telling the truth! Politics is much better than talk that will lead to nothing whatever...”

Ilka showed with her hands roughly how much blood her father had shed, how he had limped as he dragged himself to the chapel. When she told about the judge and repeated every last one of his words, the baron smiled contemptuously and spat to one side. The spittle flew a good two fathoms.

“Brutes!” he growled... “Yes, he’s right! The wretch is right! There was nothing he could do. This Goldaugen Aristides is as much a slave of the Goldaugens as that horse which nearly trampled that Shakespearean fool, your father!”

“It never galls me so,” Ilka finished, “when my father is beaten by drunken peasants or policemen. The police, baron, don’t let us perform in the big cities. But it galls me, it’s an outrage, it’s an insult... an insult, when a woman, educated, well-born, with a delicate face... And what right has she to look at us so haughtily, so contemptuously? No one has the right to look at us so!”

Ilka pressed her fingers to her face and began to cry...

“Can it really pass her by, unpunished?.. Ah, my God, my God!! If this insult goes unavenged, then I’ll die... die! Then let father play alone! Let him sell my harp then!”

Ilka buried her face in her apron and went on crying quietly. Zwibush looked at the ground and made whistling sounds. The baron fell to thinking...

“It’s a bad insult,” he said after a long silence. “But... one must first hear what the matter is, and only then promise. I lied, my dear. I’m not as strong as I boasted an hour ago. I can do nothing for you...”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a woman... I can hardly fight a duel with her! It’s a bad business, my dear. One must submit...”

“I can’t submit! Where did you get the idea that I can submit?”

“Your powerlessness will force you to submit. You’re powerless, because you’re the daughter of a beggar musician, and I’m powerless, because she, devil take her, is a woman...”

“What am I to do, then?” asked Ilka. “For God’s sake, don’t believe my father! He himself won’t bear this insult either! He puts on a show of being cool about it, but underneath... I’ll go to Budapest, or to Vienna! I’ll find a court.”

“You won’t find one...”

Ilka jumped up and began pacing around the baron and Zwibush.

“I will find one!” Ilka cried. “Well, after all, you’re a baron, a noble, clever man, you know everyone, all the noble people know you... You’re no ordinary person! Why shouldn’t you write a letter to some judge, so he would condemn her according to the law? You have only to say or write, and it’ll all be done!”

“Stop it, Ilka!” said Zwibush impressively. “It’s tiresome for the baron to listen to your unenlightened nonsense! You’re abusing his attention.”

“You reason that way, Ilka,” said the baron, “only because you don’t know life. Not long ago you were telling me how unhappy you are, and yet your view of life is exactly that of a sybarite who can’t tell copper from iron. How old are you? Seventeen? Time to know life, my beauty! Life is such a repulsive, vile, sticky piece of nonsense, such a vulgar, aimless, inexplicable rubbish, that it won’t bear comparison even with a cesspit dug for the purpose of being filled with every kind of filth. Time to know it! Well, what do you want from life? Do you want it to smile at you, shower you with flowers, with gold pieces? Yes? Is that what you want?”

Von Zainitz flushed and thrust his hand into his big hunting bag.

“If so, then you want the impossible! Life on this earth is only possible as something unbearable... Want an unbearable life – live it, don’t want it – get out to the next world. Poison is always at your service... You’re a child, that’s what! You’re a fool!”

Out of the bag appeared a wicker-covered bottle. The baron quickly brought it to his lips and took several greedy swallows.

“Life is repulsive!” he went on. “Its vileness is its law, unshakable, constant!.. It’s given to man as punishment for his vulgarity... Sweet beauty! If I did not feel my own vulgarity so deeply, I would long ago have gone to the next world. Bullets would have sufficed... Suffer, I tell myself, Arthur! You deserve these torments! Take your due, Arthur! Learn, you too, girl, to philosophize with yourself in that manner... Life is easier with that skill...”

Arthur took two more swallows.

“There is one element in the universe that reconciles a man somewhat to his life. This element, they say, was created by the devil, but... so be it! It lifts the thorns from my soul... for a time, of course. This element – is in my bottle... Drink, Ilka! Take one swallow! This is good vodka...”

Ilka shook her head. Zwibush glanced at the bottle, licked his lips, and dropped his eyes bashfully.

“Come now, drink, you odd little thing!” von Zainitz went on. “You’ll feel lighter. Try it!”

“Drink, Ilka!” Zwibush advised.

Ilka took the bottle in her hands, took a small sip, and made a face.

“Now you drink,” Arthur said, turning to Zwibush. “Drink too, you old ham.”

Smiling and grimacing, Zwibush beamed as though he had seen a long-lost friend... He took the bottle in both hands and solemnly raised it to his fat lips. Taking two or three careful swallows, he set the bottle down on the grass.

“Drink it to the bottom!” said the baron. “Don’t stand on ceremony. I have another bottle.”

The fat man carried out this order in a single second.

“Somewhere, sometime, I’ve seen you, old man!” said von Zainitz. “Your face seems familiar to me somehow... Where did I see you?..”

“I, baron, am that unfortunate marker whom you, your excellency, were pleased to deprive of two teeth in Prague.”

“Might be, might be... So... I was a master at that sort of thing... I’m sorry I can’t put them back in for you now...”

The baron pulled another bottle and a paper parcel out of his bag. In the parcel were little pies, cheese, and sausage. Von Zainitz cut the sausage in half; one half he gave to Zwibush, and the other he divided into two parts, one of which he gave to Ilka, keeping the other for himself.

“Help yourselves, gentlemen!” he said. “Eat, and don’t stand on ceremony. Eat, girl! The cheese belongs entirely to your stomach. We won’t touch it.”

Hungry Zwibush and Ilka did not need to be asked twice. With the greed of hungry, ill-bred children they fell upon the food and in five minutes had destroyed everything but a small piece of sausage. This piece had been spared by Zwibush, to eat after the vodka.

The vodka he had drunk acted on Arthur instantly. His face reddened and brightened. His eyes darted about like trapped mice and began to shine. He stretched his legs out on the ground, put his fists under his head, and began to smile. The vodka had no effect on Zwibush. His head remained in exactly the same state it had been. On Ilka the vodka acted depressingly. She sat off to one side, propped her head on her palms, and fell to thinking.

“Drink, old man!” Arthur pressed on him. “Better to be drunk and merry than sober and dull. Good vodka is our salvation... Without it, a man would perish! Let’s drink to its existence! What did I knock your teeth out for? Don’t you remember?”

“How could I not remember? I remember... You were a little tipsy and demanded that I catch a thrown billiard ball in my mouth. When I did not show a willingness to carry out your order, you took strict measures...”

“Brute!” Arthur growled.

“Who?”

“Listen, my beauty!” von Zainitz suddenly turned to Ilka. “You remind me terribly of a girl I was in love with as a child. This girl didn’t exist, she never existed, but my nurse used to tell me about her every evening. I imagined her exactly like you. This girl, my nurse said, lived in a certain kingdom, in a certain realm, inside a great tulip. She sat on the pistil and looked out at God’s world from behind the petals of the tulip. Her occupations were most varied. She tended the flowers, bottled dew, which she used for baths and for drinking, and sang songs. This girl, I forgot to tell you, was no taller than your little finger. She ate nothing but honey, which the bees brought her. She dressed in the purple petals of poppy flowers. Her specialty was medicine. She cured toothache by spells, bound up wounds, prepared drops, and so on. For one grasshopper, who had broken his leg in a fight with a spider, she performed an operation with such skill and such knowledge as even Billroth might have envied. Occupied as she was with medicine, she did not disdain other trades besides. She sewed clothes for poor insects, mended the chamberlain’s uniforms of the golden beetles, the little fur jackets of the ladybugs... The insects respected her like their own mother, and loved her more than anything in the world. And no wonder! She had utterly ruined herself on the beggar-worms, who crawled to her from every side for alms; she had lost her voice preaching sermons to the insects. Her sermons were the height of oratory. From reliable sources it is known that ten drones, having listened to her sermon “on idleness,” wept from remorse of conscience and took up gathering honey. She gave the butterflies away in marriage, providing them, as dowry, with the most beautiful gauze dresses. She married off the crickets, sternly ordering them not to disturb their wives at night with their chirping... A real mother she was! One day a tarantula comes to this girl and asks her to cure his toothache by spells. The girl spoke the spell, and the spider’s swollen jaw vanished on the spot. “Good,” said the spider. “Thank you. I’ll send you some fly sauce someday for your trouble... Listen, a brilliant thought has just come into my head! Marry me! Eh? Will you?” The girl laughed and said that in no case could she be a spider’s wife. “I don’t love you,” said the spider, “I don’t like you, but I want to collect tribute from those insects you doctor, and dress, and teach to read... I need money. Won’t you? Very well then! If in three days you don’t give me your consent, I’ll kill you with these very teeth!” The spider showed the girl his terrible teeth and went home. The girl told all her proteges about the spider’s threat. They flew to her, crawled to her from every side, and stood around her in a defensive posture: “We’ll die, but we won’t give her up!” they cried. The spider appeared. “Do you agree?” he asked the girl. – “I do not agree. Don’t stir up trouble, spider! Look how many defenders I have!” The spider looked and saw not defenders but cowards, who were pale and trembling all over. He laughed loudly and, before the eyes of the whole insect world, killed the poor girl with his vile teeth. Having killed her, he went home in peace. The bees made a coffin of wax and laid the girl in it... The ants took it upon themselves to dig the grave. Behind the coffin walked the mosquitoes, who sang beautifully and played on trumpets. The golden beetle read the funeral oration... In a word, the funeral came off splendidly. The wake was even better. All the insects ate and drank until their stomachs ached. After the wake the insects slept it off, entrusted the centipede with collecting for a monument, and flew off home...”

“And that’s the end?” asked Zwibush.

“What more do you want?” asked the baron. “Do you want the spider put in prison? Don’t hold your breath! My nurse was an excellent teacher. She didn’t lie to me even in her fairy tales. Virtue didn’t triumph in hers. The spider is sitting in his hole to this day, eating fly sauce, while the vile insects, sick and torn, are more likely to remember the tasty wake than the girl. Rest her soul, my nurse! You knew nature well! Let’s drink, old man! Well, what, Ilka? Do you like my fairy tale? For some reason you remind me terribly of the girl... Will the tarantula really eat you too? Ha-ha-ha... It’s quite possible... Why shouldn’t he eat you, if he can? He’s got teeth, and he’ll bite... Only you’re not listening to me, Ilka! You’ve got a face as if we weren’t even here!”

Ilka started and looked at Arthur with pleading, questioning eyes.

“I can’t forget her!” she whispered.

“Still on about the same thing? You must submit, child! The wretch of a judge’s advice stands in full force. You won’t think up anything better. Buy your father some lead lotion and make yourself a countess...”

“You’re always joking! Good Lord! A countess... Is that even possible?”

“It’s possible, if you manage to marry some count, and it’s impossible, if you don’t manage it. But you’ll hardly manage it... Now if only your pretty little face had a bit more base metal added to it – well, then there’d be no need to doubt it. And I, devil take it, would marry you. Would you have me, Ilka?”

“You’re a baron? I’d have you... I’d even take a baron...”

“And I’m a count too... Ha-ha-ha... Shouldn’t I play a trick, though? Wait, wait... What a trick it would be!”

The baron fell to thinking for a minute.

“No...” he said. “That would be too much... Not worth it. I love the girl in the tulip, but alas! – marriage must bring me no less than a million francs.”

“It’s an ugly thing, marrying for money, doctor!” said Zwibush, on whom the vodka was already beginning to work. “Marrying for money is considered, doctor, a low act.”

“What’s to be done! I’ll bring myself to commit the baseness. I need a million, whatever it takes. With a million in hand... Still, you needn’t know about that. I’d show them!”

“And you’d marry an old woman too?..”

“Even the devil... For a million, anything! A million – that’s a lever with which I’ll overturn hell, with its devils and its fire. I don’t mean the hell to come, I mean the one I’m in now. If I don’t commit one baseness, I thereby give others the chance to commit a thousand basenesses. Girl in the tulip,” Arthur turned to Ilka, “why don’t you have a million? If you had a million, I’d have a pretty wife, and you’d be a countess, and you’d carry out one of the judge’s pieces of advice...”

“You’re always joking!” Ilka sighed.

“Not joking in the least... Go on, get yourself a million, try it! I’ll make you a baroness for certain! Go on, get it!”

“Shouldn’t we drink, doctor?” Zwibush proposed. “A fantastical element is beginning to creep into our conversation... God be with fantasy! Is it for us to talk of millions? I’d sooner swallow my own head than ever set eyes on a million... Let’s not talk of money! Talk breeds envy...”

“Be quiet, please! Why not dream a little, if there’s nothing else to do? And I repeat to you, old ham, that if you had a million, I’d take the girl away from you and set her in a tulip... Am I drunk? Fine! I like her, upon my word! Look what a little nose she has! Ah, devil take it! Go get a million, Ilka!”

“And how does one get a million?” asked Ilka.

“Oh, innocence! Sancta simplicitas! Holy simplicity! (Latin). How does one get a million? There are various ways to get it. The ways are hard and easy... The hard way consists of endless labor, labor free and rational, in which one goes without sleep at night, goes hungry, and falls ill. By that way the million comes only in old age, when it’s no longer worth getting married. You’re a woman, you don’t have enough sense for that, and you want to be married, so that way won’t suit you. The second way, easy in itself and sometimes hard in its consequences, consists of forgetting one thing that gets in everybody’s way – one’s conscience. Steal and rob. The cleverer and more shameless you are, the sooner you’ll become the Baroness von Zainitz. One can steal and rob not only on the high roads. One can steal and strangle sitting in one’s own study. This way I don’t recommend to you. If you’re not clever enough, it is fraught with consequences: you might land in the devil’s hands. The third way – come into an inheritance... What is the fourth way, then? The fourth way, most often used by women and not always disdained by men, consists of the skill of making use of one’s own body. The better a subject’s body, the closer he is to the million. This way suits you best of all, Ilka!”

“Least of all!” said Zwibush. “It won’t do! Let’s leave it be, baron! That piquant way smells of grease, and Ilka...”

“Is young? Never mind, let her know! Why hide from her what she ought to be on her guard against? Well then, I go on... Learn, Ilka, to dress with taste, to show your pretty little foot from under your dress at the right moment, to be sly, to flirt... For every kiss you’ll take a minimum of a thousand francs... In your present circumstances they’ll hardly give you much; but if you were sitting in a theater box or in a carriage, then...”

“Now, now... enough!” Zwibush muttered. “God knows what you’re stuffing this girl’s head with!.. Let’s drop this conversation! I beg you, doctor! I’ll change the subject... So... Is it true what they say, that last week you converted to Lutheranism?”

“True... The last way is the easiest and not the ugliest. Acquire, Ilka, fine society manners, learn to chatter, and, believe my knowledge, you will have a million. This way is used all too often. Seven-eighths of women would use it, if seven-eighths of them were pretty and had a market price. Had I come across you seven or eight years ago, I would certainly have bought you... A pretty little creature.”

“Quiet, baron, for God’s sake, quiet!” said Zwibush. “Let’s not give the tongue free rein!” – Zwibush glanced anxiously at his daughter: Ilka sat listening attentively to the baron, apparently not in the least embarrassed by the content or the form of his speech.

“I understand,” she said. “But could you really bring yourself to marry a woman who has sold herself?”

“I could. After all, marrying for a dowry, I too am selling myself! And so on and so forth... I have a request for you, Ilka...”

The baron raised himself up and took a gold coin from his waistcoat pocket.

“Take, my dear, this money, and in the first town you come to, have your photographic portrait taken. Understand? You’ll send me the portrait... to this address...”

The baron gave Ilka the gold coin and a card, on which an address was written.

“I want to see the girl in the tulip more often... I want to carry her always in my breast pocket... Will you send it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, splendid. And now, friends, adieu! farewell (French). I want to sleep.”

The baron stretched out on the grass and put his hunting bag under his head.

“Farewell. Very glad of the acquaintance. I’ll wait for the portrait and marry, if you get me a million...”

Zwibush stood up and bowed.

“Thank you, baron,” he said. “You’ve fed us – won’t you let us play for you in return? Our tedious music is excellent for falling asleep!”

“By all means!”

Zwibush tuned his fiddle and struck up something from “Boccaccio” to the accompaniment of Ilka’s harp. The baron nodded his head to show his pleasure and closed his eyes... When the musicians finished playing and were about to move away from him, he opened his eyes and rested his clouded gaze on Ilka.

“So, so... I understand,” he muttered. “Is that you, Ilka? Here, keep this in memory of me!”

The baron unfastened one of the medallions from his watch chain, gave it to Ilka, dropped his head onto his bag, and fell asleep like the dead.

Chapter III

By the time von Zainitz woke up it was already evening. The treetops and the stone buildings of the small town, standing on a rise, bathed in the gold of the setting sun. This gold, tinged faintly with purple, spread like brocade across the sky from the sun toward the east, and covered a good third of the heavens... Around the sun and above it there was not a single cloud; this last circumstance promised a fine night. Far off beyond the woods a returning shepherd’s pipe was playing. It played a simple little tune with no name: a mechanical, disorderly music, but to this artless music every evening the woods of the Counts Goldaugen, and the rye, and the feather-grass, and the river fall into their mighty sleep...

Arthur saw beside him on the grass two bottles lying about and the newspaper that had been left over from the parcel. The fat old man and the pretty fair-haired girl were no longer beside him. He remembered them, his conversation with them – and smiled, even laughed, when, looking down at his chest, he saw a bit of paper pinned to one of his buttons. On this paper the following was written in pencil:

“Dear baron! You are the first man who has treated us humanely. Before you, we knew humane treatment only by hearsay... And so – you are the first man I shall remember not with a bitter feeling, but with delight. Your kindness touched us to the depths of our souls. Farewell! God grant you happiness! I’ll send the portrait.

Your servant – Ilka.”

“Not a single grammatical mistake!” von Zainitz said aloud, having read this letter, written in a pleasant feminine hand, twice over. “That’s astonishing! Well done, Ilka!”

The baron took a little tin pencil from his notebook and wrote: “Received from the girl in the tulip, June 13th.” Folding the letter in two, he put it away in the pocket of his notebook.

“On my way! Time for dinner!” – and, swinging his rifle over his shoulder, the baron walked through the woods, heading toward the little town, from which the gilding, laid on for a short time by the sun, had already begun to fade.

He had to walk a long, narrow clearing strewn with gravel. The clearing stretched almost to the very town. Halfway along it was crossed by the railway. Not far from the crossing formed by the clearing and the railway line stands the house of the forester Blaukher.

Coming up to the crossing, Arthur turned, took off his hat, and bowed: on the terrace of the little house sat old Madame Blaukher, embroidering a tablecloth. On her tiny head sat a large cap with the widest of bows, and from under the cap peered the most ancient, grandmotherly spectacles: they sat perched on a long, blunt nose that recalled a big toe... To Arthur’s bow she answered with a saccharine smile.

“Good evening, Frau Marta!” said the baron. “Any letters for me?”

“There is, but only one. With a crest, baron...”

“The address written in Peltzer’s hand?”

“Yes...”

“Well then, throw it in the stove, Marta. I know its contents. The Jew, at my sister’s dictation, is cursing me for embracing Lutheranism... I know it already, without reading it. Is your husband well? And Fraulein Amalia too, I hope?”

“Thank you... I’ll have to burn the sixth letter now, then... Not a very pleasant occupation, when you know that someone toiled and felt over that letter... How cruel you are! Now where are you off to?”

“To dinner... somewhere or other...”

“And to someone or other?”

“Yes...”

The old woman sighed and shook her head.

“If my Blaukher weren’t so cautious,” she said, “I’d let you have dinner with us. My husband tears his hair out whenever noble gentlemen come calling on us. General Frechtelzak visits us, but he’s an old man – one can’t be afraid of him... My Blaukher isn’t afraid on his account... But for him, you’re a danger. You’d have dinner with us, and the neighbors would say you’re courting our daughter, and God knows what else they’d say. A noble gentleman doesn’t come calling to get married, but for a reason everyone knows... So Blaukher’s afraid... But General Frechtelzak – that’s quite another matter!”

“Don’t worry, Marta! I’ll dine somewhere else.”

“Yes, to tell the truth, our dinner’s no good today anyway. It’s a disaster these days with the servants – there’s no doing anything with them!”

“Farewell, Marta! Give my regards to your people!”

“Farewell, baron!”

The baron bowed and went on toward the clearing. Dark evening shadows were already falling on the ground. The forest air was growing cool. Behind Arthur the evening suburban train rushed by with a roar, carrying townspeople out to the fields and woods... Evening begins earlier in the forest than in the field. In the field one could still have threaded a needle... When the noise of the suburban train had died away, Zainitz heard the tramp of a horse behind him. He looked round and stopped: on a splendid black horse an amazon was riding toward him. She flew past him, glanced at Arthur, and, having ridden a few fathoms farther, reined in her horse.

“Von Zainitz?” the rider called out loudly.

“The very same...”

Arthur went up to the amazon and bowed. It had grown dark in the forest, but not so dark that one could not see how beautiful the rider was. Her whole figure breathed a truly ducal majesty.

Had Zwibush and Ilka been there, they would have recognized in her that same rider whom we, in the first chapter of our story, together with Zwibush, called the Countess Goldaugen, born Heilenstrahl. In her hands was that very crop which, at noon, had split Zwibush’s lip.

“I recognized you at first glance,” she said, giving Arthur her hand. “You’ve changed a little... Still... is it possible to talk with you or not? Your last letter to me was full of hatred, indignation, the most desperate contempt... Do you still hate as fiercely as you hated then?”

The baron pressed her lovely hand and smiled.

“My letter,” he said, “was a crime that may be forgiven me for its age. It was written four years ago. In that letter I hated you for your mercenariness, which did not let you marry a man you loved, who loved you, but was ruined. At present I’m the last person inclined to be angry with you for your mercenariness. Three hours ago I was discussing my own future marriage for money... I’m still living in this world, and don’t send myself out of it, only because I have a purpose in life... This purpose – is marriage to a million...”

“Well, well! In the last four years your convictions have changed a great deal, then. But I’m glad... I met you so unexpectedly! Very pleasant, baron, upon my word, pleasant! Thank you, at least, for the meeting!”

“I could not, under any circumstances, have expected ever to meet you in these parts. How did you come to be here?”

“I... Don’t you know? I’m a resident of these parts... Have been for a long time now...”

“You, baroness? How so?”

“I’m no longer Baroness Heilenstrahl now, but Countess von Goldaugen. Two years ago I married your neighbor, Count Goldaugen...”

“Hadn’t heard... Well, what news! Married a count... I don’t know him. Is he handsome?”

“No...”

“Strange... You’re a lover of handsome men, as far as I know you. You loved me because I was, as they say, devilishly handsome. And is he young, rich?”

“He’s nearly forty... He’s very rich...”

“Happy, of course?”

“Not in the least. I married for a million too. Two years’ experience has shown me that I made a terrible mistake. Happiness is not in a million, it turns out... Now all I do is invent ways to escape from a million!”

The countess laughed, and her gaze rested for a while on the darkening sky. After a short silence, she went on, laughing:

“So we’ve traded roles now, baron. I now hate what I used to love, and you – the opposite... How strangely circumstances change in this dull world!”

“You want to flee a million for happiness, and I seek a million not in order to enroll myself among the lucky... The purposes, as you see, are different...”

“You know absolutely nothing about my new life?”

“Nothing...”

“Then the gossip isn’t traveling especially fast... I’ve started divorce proceedings against my husband...”

“A cheerful undertaking... And you’re living – with him now?”

“Well, yes... It’s a little strange, that’s true... But we, to avoid needless gossip, will only leave each other once our break is sealed with the official wax... I’ll fly away from here once I’m officially free... Still, none of this interests you... I was so glad to meet an old acquaintance and... friend, that I’m ready to blurt out shamelessly all my secrets and non-secrets... Let’s talk about you instead... How do you live?”

“As you see. I live wherever I happen to be...”

“Given up your studies? Completely?”

“Given them up, and in all likelihood completely...”

“And the scholar’s conscience is at peace?”

“Well... science has lost in me a little more than a zero... No great loss...”

The countess shrugged and shook her head.

“You, Zainitz, are making excuses like a schoolboy,” she said. “A little more than a zero... Young scholars have no present, they have a future. Who knows: perhaps if you had gone on with your studies, you would have been, for science, a thousand times more than a zero!”

“You’re expressing it wrong,” von Zainitz laughed. “A zero, multiplied by a thousand, equals zero.”

“Are you completely ruined?” the countess asked, as though not listening to von Zainitz.

“Completely. Do you have money with you?”

“A little. Why?”

“Give it to me.”

The countess quickly took a little purse from her pocket and handed it to Arthur. Arthur poured the money into his fist and handed the purse back to the countess.

“Merci,” he said. “I’m taking it as a loan. I’ll pay it back the day after my wedding. You’re surprised? What surprised eyes you have! I not only ask and take, but I’m even sorry there was so little in your purse.”

The countess looked into his eyes and thought: “He’s lying.”

“I’m not in the least surprised,” she said. “What’s strange or surprising about Arthur von Zainitz borrowing a little money from a friend? It’s an everyday, ordinary thing...”

“And who told you that you’re my friend?”

“You’re strange... Farewell! It’s hard talking with you.”

The countess nodded, raised her crop, and galloped off down the clearing.

Chapter IV

By the time she had ridden the whole length of the clearing and come out into the open field, it was already dark... The town, the hills, were still visible, but had lost their outlines. Wandering people and horses had the look of silhouettes of the vaguest shape. Here and there lights had been lit. The countess stopped by a hut built of reeds and straw in one of the Goldaugen kitchen gardens. The Goldaugens had rented part of the town land for their kitchen gardens from time immemorial. Rented it out of vanity. “The less there is of other people’s land around mine,” one of the Goldaugens once said, “the more reason I have to hold my head high.”

By the hut stood the market gardener and his son. Seeing the countess racing toward them, they took off their caps.

“Good day, old Fritz and young Fritz!” the countess addressed the gardener and his son. “Very glad to find you here. If I’m ever told that you carry out your duties badly, I shall have grounds not to believe it.”

“We’re always at our duties,” said old Fritz, drawing himself up straight. “We don’t step a pace from the garden. But if, your ladyship, the steward or his lackeys should for some reason take a dislike to my mug, they’ll drive me off without your ladyship’s knowledge. We’re small people, and it’s hardly likely anyone would trouble your ladyship on our account...”

“Do you think so, Fritz? No, you’re greatly mistaken... I know all our servants, and, believe me, I know how to tell who is good, who is bad, who’s been let go. I know, for instance, that old Fritz is a decent servant, and I know that young Fritz is lazy and stole gloves and a cane from the pastor in winter... Everything is known to me.”

“It’s known to you that gloves and a cane were stolen from the poor pastor, but it’s not known...”

Old Fritz fell silent and smirked.

“What’s not known?” asked the countess.

“It’s not known to your ladyship that the dogs of his lordship the count’s valet bit my daughter and my wife three weeks ago? It’s not known to your ladyship, despite the fact that the whole village went out of its way to make it known. The valet’s dogs can’t stand plain clothing and tear at anyone dressed like a peasant. It gives the valet pleasure. Of course it does! The dogs knock a woman to the ground, tear her clothes, and... her bare body, your ladyship... The valet is a great lover of woman’s flesh!”

“Good, good... Well, what do you want, then?.. This I don’t know...”

“My wife is ill, and my daughter is ashamed to show herself in the street, because the men, thanks to the dogs, saw her in the costume of Eve.”

“Good, good... I’ll look into it. I need to ask you about one thing. Did you see, today, on the road to town, some musicians, a fat old man and a young girl with a harp? Didn’t they pass by?”

“Didn’t see them, your ladyship!” said old Fritz. “Maybe they passed by, maybe they didn’t. All sorts of people pass by. You can’t see or remember them all...”

The countess fell to thinking and fixed her eyes on the dark distance.

“Isn’t that them?” she asked, pointing with her crop at two human silhouettes turning black in the distance.

“Those are both men,” said young Fritz.

“Very possibly they stopped for the night in the village,” said the countess. “They’ll be passing by here tomorrow, then... If you see them, send them to me at once.”

“Understood,” said old Fritz. “A fat old man and a young girl. I understand. But what do you want with them, your ladyship? They’ve probably stolen something?”

“Why must they necessarily have stolen something?”

“Well, so it is, your ladyship. In the county of Goldaugen the only occupation is looking for thieves. It’s the fashion. In the county of Goldaugen only the chief ones steal, but everyone is considered a thief.”

“Well, there! Hm... Tomorrow you may look for another place. See to it that tomorrow there isn’t a single Fritz left in this county!”

Having said this, the countess turned her horse and galloped back to the clearing.

“How beautiful she is!” said young Fritz. “How lovely!”

“Yes, very beautiful,” said old Fritz. “But what’s that to us?”

“Extremely lovely! I swear to you by the true God, father, that it wasn’t I who stole the gloves and the cane from the pastor! I was never a thief! If I’m lying to you, may I go blind this very second. I was slandered for nothing at all... And she believed that slander! Base people!”

Young Fritz fell silent and went on:

“But let these base people not slander for nothing! Let them not laugh at us for nothing... I will steal. While she was talking to you, and I was looking at her lovely face, I gave myself my word of honor to steal... And I shall steal! I shall steal from Count Goldaugen what not one of his stewards has managed to steal. And I’ll keep my word of honor.”

Young Fritz sat down and fell to thinking. New, exceedingly sweet, not peasant but Balzacian dreams took hold of his mind and heart. A most grandiose castle in the air was built in a few minutes by his inflamed youthful imagination... What an hour ago would have seemed to him mad, unrealizable, and would have been instantly banished from his head as something childishly fantastic – now suddenly took the shape of a problem which he now genuinely wished to solve, whatever it took. The castle in the air suddenly needed to be turned into something more solid...

When young Fritz’s head, heated by his dreams, began to spin, he jumped up, rubbed his eyes with his fingers, and shouted to his father with a laugh:

“I’ll steal for certain! Let them search me then!”

____

The countess was riding home. On the way she met Baron von Seinitz coming toward her, still on his way to dinner.

“I suppose we’ll see each other again?” the countess called out to him.

“If you wish, then yes.”

“We’ll find something to talk about. Given the boredom I’m living through now, you’re a find for me. A little idea has occurred to me. Won’t you celebrate your birthday with me – it falls on Thursday of next week? You see how well I still remember you? I haven’t even forgotten your birthday... Will you?”

“As you wish...”

“We’ll need to meet somewhere... Now then... Do you know the spot where the ‘Bronze Stag’ stands?”

“Yes.”

“No one will disturb us there in recalling old times. Be there at seven in the evening.”

“The wine’s on me.”

“Excellent. Adieu! By the way, baron. Let’s speak French from now on. I haven’t forgotten that you don’t care for German. And as for ‘charlatan’ and clever people – think it over. Adieu!”

The countess struck her horse and in a minute disappeared into the forest air, darkening more and more.

Baroness Theresa von Heilenstrahl had been that “pure, unearthly creature” on whom Arthur’s eyes and feelings had first rested after his loathsome life in Paris. Arthur had made too sharp a turn from dissipation to work owing not to respect for scholarship alone: the baroness had done much to bring that turn about. Without her there would have been no complete renewal.

On arriving in Vienna from Paris, Arthur had lived like a hermit. In solitude he dreamed of soothing labor, cursed this world and its people, and, without wishing to, sighed... for the Parisian cocottes. It is unknown how that solitude would have ended had Arthur not chanced, soon after his arrival, to become one of the regular visitors to the house of the Barons Heilenstrahl. In Arthur’s Vienna days anyone who wished could call at the Heilenstrahls’. Properly speaking, no one was invited at all; rather, all the lovers of visiting the houses of the great of this world without invitation went there, so long as the doors were not locked.

In its last years this house recalled a pious man who, learning of his approaching death, had waved everything aside and thrown himself into every excess, if only to live like a human being for one more day.

The Barons Heilenstrahl, worn out and ruined, seeking salvation and not finding it, sensing their death agony approaching, had waved everything aside and lost every capacity to pay attention to anything. Everything was forgotten except the terrible finale drawing near. The horror before the approaching denouement was successfully drowned in wine, love, and dreams. The Heilenstrahls still dreamed of the possibility of salvation. Salvation, they thought, lay in the hands of Theresa, who might marry a very rich man and mend her family’s poor affairs by the match. But even that hope was only a dream. Theresa was at odds with her father and swore that, marrying a rich man, she would not give her relations a single kopeck.

The Heilenstrahls waved it all aside and set about finishing what had not yet been eaten. They finished it off not simply, but desperately, solemnly, with noise and clatter, as though they had never eaten before. The doors of their house opened of themselves, and through them poured a half-starved crowd of devourers of leftovers. The devourers appeared in the shape of ruined aristocrats, writers, painters, artists, musicians, with their splendid costumes, striking faces, delicate scents, remarkable instruments, and hungry stomachs. The devourers seized the barons’ house in a moment, and the Heilenstrahls, growing poorer and thirsting for salvation, suddenly found themselves at the height of patronage of the arts. Their house was decked with scenery, paintings, rare watercolors. Of an evening the quarter rang with the sounds of symphonies, nocturnes, waltzes, and polkas. The musical-literary evenings, at which people played and read, gained a certain fame, and with the fame a mass of visitors from every layer of society. At all these evenings and spectacles Theresa was present too. Beautiful, as though carved of marble, all in black, she wandered through the motley crowd of devourers, from one artist to another, straining with all her might to shake off her wearisome boredom. The people who made up the crowd were new to her. They interested her. Out of boredom she took up their study. She fixed her eyes on the striking faces, listened, talked, read the compositions in the manuscripts offered to her, and by a long course of study arrived at only one conclusion: among them there were decent fellows, and there were charlatans. That conclusion was the sole result of her study. Not possessed of a finer analysis, she never managed to separate the decent fellows from the charlatans. She drew some of them close to her, but even among these chosen few there were bright souls, and there were charlatans. Among the elect was von Seinitz too.

He had fallen into the Heilenstrahl house by accident. A writer friend of his had dragged him there, wishing to show him his own comedy, which was being given on the barons’ stage. Soon, not content with the spectacles and the literary evenings, he began visiting the Heilenstrahl house by day as well. Theresa, who used to ride of an evening ordinarily accompanied by a groom, soon began to take her evening rides in Arthur’s company. Every evening Arthur told her with enthusiasm what he had done that day, what he had read, what he had written. The account was followed by the inevitable dreams, hopes, conjectures. Theresa listened to him and talked herself. She scattered about the names of famous scholars whom she knew... by hearsay, from Arthur. They became friends. They say it’s but one step from friendship to love. Arthur did not think of love. The company alone of a clever, fresh woman was enough for him. He spoke of love only when Theresa, on one of their evening rides, confessed to him that she loved him... She was the first to speak of love. After that confession there flowed the kind of days that, as they say, come but once in a life. Never at any other time was Arthur so happy and content with life as in those days spent with the woman he loved. That happiness, however, did not last long. It was destroyed by Theresa. When he demanded of the beloved and undoubtedly loving girl that she become his wife, a baroness, and “Doctor” von Seinitz, she refused him flatly.

“I cannot marry you,” she wrote to him. “You are poor, and I am poor. Poverty has already poisoned one half of my life. Should I poison the other half too? You’re a man, and to men all the horrors of destitution are not as plain as they are to women. A destitute woman is the most unhappy creature there is... You were wrong, Arthur, to speak of marriage at all... By that alone you provoke explanations that cannot pass without a trace for our present relations. Let us end these painful explanations and go on living as before.”

Arthur tore this letter to shreds and wrote a reply calling down the thunders of heaven upon Theresa’s head. He grew heated and wrote the “unearthly creature” an enormous letter cursing the “spirit of the age” and upbringing... The touching letters that were later sent to justify her refusal went unread and were thrown into the stove. Arthur came to hate Theresa so much that everything reminding him of her lost all value in his eyes. He came to hate everything majestic, stern, and proud, and attached himself with his whole soul to everything paltry, downtrodden, poor...

Walking to dinner, Arthur recalled all this... His treatise “on the spirit of the age” now seemed laughable to him, but the old hatred stirred in him. He had not yet managed to part with that hatred.

On Thursday, on his birthday, Arthur remembered the promise he had given Theresa, to dine with her: he set off for the “Bronze Stag.” That was the name of a small clearing on which, once, a king had killed a stag with bronze-colored coat. Others say that in olden times a statue of “the Hunt” had stood here – a stag cast in bronze, taking the place of Diana. They say the king by whose order the statue had been raised was chaste and looked on the statues of classical women with disgust.

When Arthur arrived at the clearing, Theresa was already there. She was pacing impatiently over the grass, knocking the heads off flowers with her crop. Her horse was tethered to one side to a tree and lazily eating grass.

“This is how you receive your guests!” said the countess, going to meet Arthur. “A fine host you make! You go strolling while your guest has been waiting more than an hour...”

“I went for wine,” Arthur excused himself. “Please, sit down! It’s not the first time you and I have had to sit on the grass. Remember the old days?”

The countess and Arthur sat down on the grass and set about recalling old times... They recalled them, but touched neither on love nor on their break... The talk turned on their Vienna life, the Heilenstrahl house, the artists, the evening rides... The baron talked and drank. The countess declined wine. Having drunk a bottle, Arthur grew slightly tipsy; he began to laugh loudly, to make wisecracks, to say sharp things.

“What do you live on now?” he asked, among other things.

“On what? Hm... You know very well on what... The Goldaugens aren’t poor...”

“So you eat and drink at the count’s expense?”

“I don’t understand what these questions are for?!”

“But I beg you, answer me, Theresa. Do you eat and drink at the count’s expense?”

“Well, yes!..”

“Strange. You can’t stand the count and at the same time you’re living off his bread... Ha-ha-ha... What do you say to that? What rules, damn it, what rules! Your wise people take me for a charlatan; what must they think of you? Ha-ha-ha!”

A cloud passed over the countess’s face.

“Don’t drink any more, baron,” she said sternly. “You’re getting drunk and beginning to say insolent things. You know that circumstances force me to go on living at Goldaugen’s.”

“What circumstances? Fear of wagging tongues? An old song! But tell me, please, countess, how much does the count undertake to give you each year after the divorce?”

“Nothing...”

“And why do you say what isn’t true? Don’t be angry, though... I ask as a friend. Don’t twist the crop. It’s not to blame. Bah!”

The baron struck himself on the forehead and half rose.

“Allow me... How is it I didn’t notice before?”

“Notice what?”

The baron’s eyes darted about. They ran from the countess’s face to the crop, from the crop back to her face. He fidgeted nervously.

“How is it I didn’t remember before!” he began to mutter. “So it was you who was so good as to treat the fat old man and my girl to a taste of the tulip?”

The countess opened her eyes wide and shrugged her shoulders.

“In the tulip... The fat man... What are you muttering, von Seinitz? You’ve begun to rave. You mustn’t drink!”

“There’s no need to strike people, madam!”

The baron turned pale and struck himself on the chest with his fist.

“There’s no need to strike people, devil take you and your aristocratic airs! Do you hear?”

The countess jumped up. Her eyes widened and flashed with anger.

“Don’t forget yourself, baron!” she said. “Would you kindly take your devil back? I don’t understand you!”

“I would not kindly! To the devil with it! Are you thinking of denying your low act as well?”

The countess’s eyes grew even wider. She did not understand.

“What act? What am I to deny? I don’t understand you, baron!”

“And who was it, in Count Goldaugen’s courtyard, struck the old fiddler across the face with this very crop? Who knocked him down under this very horse’s feet? I was told it was the Countess Goldaugen, and is there more than one Countess Goldaugen?”

A flush, bright as a fire’s glow, rose on the countess’s face. Starting from her temples, it spread all the way to her lace collar. The countess was terribly embarrassed. She began to cough.

“I don’t understand you,” she muttered... “What fiddler? What is it you’re... babbling? Come to your senses, baron!”

“Enough! Why lie? In the old days you knew how to lie, but not over such trifles! Why did you strike him?”

“Whom? Who is it you’re talking about?”

The countess’s voice was faint and trembled. Her eyes darted like caught mice. She was terribly ashamed. And the baron was again lying half back on the grass, staring fixedly into her beautiful eyes and grinning spitefully, drunkenly. His lips twitched with an unpleasant smile.

“Why did you strike him? Did you see how his daughter cried?”

“Whose daughter? Explain yourself, baron!”

“I should think so! You know how to give free rein to your white hands and your long tongue, but you don’t know how to see tears! She’s crying still... A pretty fair-haired little girl, still crying. She’s weak, destitute, she cannot avenge her father on the countess. I sat with them three hours, and for three hours she didn’t take her hands from her eyes... Poor girl! I can’t get her out of my head, with her weeping noble little face. Oh, you cruel, well-fed devils, never beaten, never insulted!”

“Explain yourself, baron! Whom did I strike?”

“Well, yes! You think I don’t recognize, by your face, where the cat is that ate the mouse? Shame on you!”

The baron half rose and reached his hand toward the crop.

“Show it to me!”

The countess submissively handed him the crop.

“Shame on you!” he repeated, and, bending the crop into a spiral, broke it into three pieces and flung it aside.

The countess was thoroughly disconcerted. Shamed, hearing an insolent word for the first time in her life, red and not knowing where to hide her face and hands from the baron’s judging eyes, she found no words. One small circumstance somewhat rescued her from this awkward position. While Arthur was breaking the crop, footsteps sounded off to one side, behind the trees. A minute later the countess caught sight of the Fritzes. They came out from behind the trees and, looking with curiosity at the countess and Arthur, walked across the clearing. In front walked young Fritz with a long fishing rod over his shoulder. Behind him, scarcely dragging his feet, trailed old Fritz. In old Fritz’s right hand a young pike dangled on a string.

“Master Fritz, why aren’t you wearing your gloves?” the countess addressed young Fritz.

Fritz lowered his eyes and, glancing sidelong at the countess, worked his lips.

“Where’s your cane? Why don’t you have your cane?”

Young Fritz turned pale and walked quickly toward the trees. At the trees he glanced back once and vanished. Old Fritz, silent and looking at no one, trudged after him.

“You’ll excuse me,” the baron began, once the Fritzes had disappeared behind the trees, “I don’t want to insult you... But I swear on my honor, I’d have known how to avenge the fiddler, if you weren’t a woman... Shame on you, Theresa! I felt ashamed for you, before that little girl!”

The baron got up and put on his hat.

“You find no words to justify yourself... And very well! Why lie? Your justification would be a lie.”

“I still go on not understanding you, baron!” said the countess.

“Word of honor?”

“Yes... word of honor...”

“Hm... Farewell! Your lovely eyes are full of lies! Thank God you can still blush, at least, when you lie.”

Arthur stretched, nodded, and walked off across the clearing, toward the forest path.

The countess Goldaugen’s brow furrowed with wrinkles. She thought painfully, searched her mind for words and found none... She longed passionately to justify her act to Arthur, an act she was ashamed to confess to. While she thought, biting her pink lips and wringing her fingers, Arthur went in behind the trees.

“Baron!” Theresa called out. “Wait!”

Instead of an answer the countess heard only the sound of Arthur’s retreating footsteps.

“Baron!” the countess called out once more, and her voice trembled with the fear that the baron would leave. The sound of footsteps died away.

The countess stood a little while and sank to the ground in thought. Two empty bottles lay scattered near her. A third, still holding a little wine, stood aslant on the grass, ready to fall. Theresa finished the wine from that bottle, rose, and went to her horse.

When she rode out of the clearing, she saw, two or three paces from the trees surrounding it, a rider mounting his horse. This rider’s horse, catching sight of the countess, neighed cheerfully. The rider was a man of about forty-five, tall, gaunt, pale, with a thin little beard. Having mounted, he set off after the countess.

“Wait!” he said in a quiet voice. By the timbre of this weak, unmanly voice one could tell it came from a sick chest. “Wait! I want to say two words to you! Only two words!”

The countess did not look round...

“Were you spying?” she said. “Watching?”

“But I love you! I cannot live a single minute without seeing you. Only two words!!”

Chapter V

The countess glanced at her husband, Count Goldaugen (it was he), and rode more slowly.

“The doctor forbade you to ride fast,” she said. “Ride slower... What do you want?”

“Only two words.”

“Well?”

“Who is he?”

“Baron von Seinitz.”

“Von Seinitz? Him? So it’s von Seinitz? That’s the man you once... loved?”

“Perhaps... Well, yes, it’s him. What of it?”

“Hm... He’s handsome even now... Why did you let him shout at you? What right does he have?”

The count fell silent, coughed, and asked:

“Might you... love him still now? An old love can return, after all?”

“Give me your crop!” said the countess, and, taking her husband’s crop, pulled hard at the reins and galloped off down the clearing. The count too pulled at the reins with all his strength. The horse broke into a run, and he swung helplessly in the saddle. His hips gave way; he winced with pain and reined the horse in. It slowed. The count followed his wife with his eyes, dropped his head to his chest, and sank into thought.

About three days later Arthur, not far from the house of the forester Blaukher, met Theresa. This time she did not meet him as an amazon. She was walking in peasant dress. The dress had the look of an ordinary, freshly sewn peasant dress, but it cost far more than her black silk riding habit. Instead of many-colored pear-shaped garnets, turquoise, emeralds, coral, and pearls hung about her neck. On each arm was a heavy bracelet. The dress and the Hungarian jacket were sewn of costly material.

“Baron!” she called out, seeing Arthur. “A minute!”

When he came up to her, she said to him:

“By your words and by leaving – remember? – you set me a riddle. I understood you only after long reflection. Now I understand... You were hinting at that old man... whom I struck with my crop! Yes?”

“Well, yes... And what is the riddle?”

“Well, there! Now I understand who you were talking about... There’s no need for me to justify myself to you, baron, but for the sake of...for the sake of satisfying our mutual sense of justice... I struck him for cause. Thanks to him, his horse threw me from the saddle... I nearly broke my leg. And then... he allowed himself to laugh...”

Arthur looked into the countess’s face and laughed cheerfully.

“Enough lying, your ladyship!” he said. “Why should we go on feeding each other lies? I don’t need your justifications... And what are they for, anyway? I’m seeing your pretty little feet for the first time in my life, and for me that’s entirely enough... Your feet are beyond all criticism! Let’s go, take a walk. Forgive me for the insolence I treated you to near the ‘Bronze Stag.’ I was drunk...”

Arthur and Theresa walked for a long while. They talked of the most ordinary things, joked a great deal, laughed a great deal... Of the old musician, his daughter, the wise people, and the “charlatan” there was not a word. The baron did not say a single sharp thing... He was amiable, as in the old days in Vienna, in the Heilenstrahl house. When he saw Theresa to her cabriolet, standing not far from Blaukher’s cottage, it was already quite dark.

“Will you teach me to shoot?” Theresa asked, getting into the cabriolet.

“As much as you like...”

“Please, baron. I’m dreadfully bored. If you lessen my boredom even a little, you’ll be doing me a kindness... Word of honor. Let’s help each other.”

Theresa pressed Arthur’s hand and drove off.

Four days later they met again, and within half a month there was not a single day on which they did not meet. The baron taught Theresa to shoot, and Theresa came out to the hunt every evening, and sometimes early in the morning too. Their relations were of the most indefinite kind. Sober, von Seinitz struck Theresa with his amiability. Sober, he spoke quietly, tenderly, visibly avoiding harsh words, smiled tenderly, obligingly gave her his big hand, and talked not like a “savage” but like a true lady’s cavalier. Drunk, on the other hand, von Seinitz struck her with his coarseness, his cynicism, his unpleasant laughter... When he was drunk, Theresa had to listen from him to the most impossible things. He laughed at her, sent her to the devil, said he despised her, hated her.

“I forgive you, von Seinitz,” Theresa said to him once, “only because you’re drunk. One doesn’t strike the fallen, the mad, and the drunk...”

“A-a-a-a... Is that so! Then know this,” answered von Seinitz with a laugh, “that I tell you the truth only when I’m drunk. When I’m sober, I carry myself toward you like a vile Pharisee. Don’t believe me sober!”

“We oughtn’t to meet...”

“Why oughtn’t we? Let’s meet! You’re bored and I’m bored... In quarrels and in wars time runs faster than in peacetime. Ha-ha! Fate did well to set a black cat loose between us and plant in us a disrespect for each other’s virtues. You don’t respect me, because you see in me a charlatan; I don’t respect you, because I see in you nothing but a piece of good woman’s flesh! Ha-ha!”

Theresa’s eyes flashed lightning, she said not a single word, and drove off. After this conversation Arthur did not see her for a whole week. On the eighth day he met her and apologized.

Arthur was often drunk. Theresa kept driving away from him insulted. She would drive off, giving herself her word of honor never to meet him again, but...

Summer passed, and autumn came on. From the trees, onto the damp, cold ground, there poured yellowed leaves that had outlived their short span... The rains began. Autumn mud is not summer mud: it does not dry, or if it dries, it is not by the hour but by the day and the week... A wind sprang up, reminding one of winter. The forest, blackened by the foul weather, frowned and had ceased to beckon one under its foliage.

Von Seinitz exchanged his goat’s-hair jacket for a short quilted overcoat. His boots lost their shine and grew coated with mud... A flush appeared on his pale face from the fresh, damp wind. His relations with Theresa had still not settled into any definite shape. Their talks were not yet finished... Theresa felt she had not yet “said it all,” and rode out to the forest as before.

They needed to flee the cold, damp, and mud of the forest... Fate gave them a refuge. They took to meeting in a forgotten chapel, overgrown with moss and nettles, in the garden of the Counts Goldaugen. The terrible eyes of the unfinished St. Francis saw Arthur and Theresa every autumn evening. By the faint glimmer of a lantern they sat on a half-rotten bench and talked. He, usually drunk, sat, yawned, and spoke ill of everyone... She, pale as marble, her head held high, having grown used by now to his tongue, listened to him patiently and spoke ill of everyone herself. When he was sober, the spiders that had taken shelter in the corners of the chapel listened to tales of a former, not-so-distant happiness and saw a happy woman. He, like an old man, loved to talk of the past. In his voice sounded an old man’s string: he regretted nothing and was content with memories alone. She, on the other hand, full of strength, youth, and desire, regretted the past, and her voice sounded with hope. She still loved Baron von Seinitz passionately...

On one of the rainiest autumn days Arthur stopped at Madame Blaukher’s to wait out the rain. Madame Blaukher, with a little smile, handed him a packet.

When he unsealed the packet, he laughed like a child shown a new toy. In the packet were a photograph and a letter.

Both were from Ilka. The baron looked at the photograph and opened his eyes wide. In the photograph Ilka was pictured, but not the Ilka he had seen a few months before – no: in the photograph there was no hint of that poor little dress that had once been drenched with the bitter tears of the insulted Ilka. Nor was the cheap velvet ribbon that used to hold back her fair hair to be seen. Arthur saw in the photograph a young aristocrat, dressed in a splendid, fashionable gown. Her hair, done by a skilled hand, was crowned with a straw hat. On the hat were flowers, and, so far as one could tell from a photograph, not cheap ones; the smile on the pretty little face was proud, haughty, but put on.

“Little fool!” said Arthur with a laugh, and kissed Ilka’s portrait. “You little fool! A crow in peacock feathers. You’ve put on a rich dress and look like a conqueror! Wear that dress a little longer! We’ll see what tune you’ll sing then!”

The letter was written in a hand already familiar to him.

“Dear baron!” Ilka wrote. “I’m sending you a photograph and letting you know that Father Zwibush and I are alive and well. I’m also letting you know that I will certainly have a million. I’ll have it very soon. We live very well now. When we meet I’ll tell you what happened to us. You must have forgotten me already. With this letter I remind you of myself and ask you not to forget what you promised me. I love you very much. I see many barons and counts here, but you’re better than all of them. Papa sends his regards. Write to me at the following address (a long address follows). Write: should I hope, or not?

Your I.”

The baron, laughing and not taking his eyes off the photograph, asked Madame Blaukher for paper and wrote the following:

“Good day, Ilka. Thank you. I’m waiting for you and your million. Don’t do anything foolish. Be sensible and well. My regards to your old, hundred- times-beaten fat man; give him two or three gold coins out of your big million to drink to.

Your bridegroom – Baron von Seinitz.”

Having given this letter to Madame Blaukher for posting, Arthur sat down at the table and set about drawing, in pencil, a big tulip on the portrait. The pencil was sharpened at both ends. One end was red, the other blue. Neither color would take on the enamel of the photograph. Ilka could not be made to sit in the tulip, though Arthur sat at his drawing until it grew dark...

Chapter VI

With Ilka and her father something rather special had happened...

A week after their meeting with Baron von Seinitz, on one of the hottest midday hours, they were sitting under the awning of a railway station. Despite the intense heat and closeness there were many people on the station platform: summer folk, men and women, landowners, and the passengers of a train standing on the siding darted back and forth along the platform and filled every station building. The train standing on the siding was a military one, and military trains stand at stations for two or three hours... The first-class hall was full of officers drinking. In the third-class hall a military band thundered, and it was this that had drawn the great crowd of people to the station.

Zwibush and Ilka sat on the platform of the great decimal scales, resting and looking over the crowd: Zwibush at the soldiers drinking beer, Ilka studying the finery. Drunken officers strolled past them and glanced at Ilka. The pretty girl had caught their fancy... At first only the junior officers circled around her, but after their drinking bout Ilka saw the senior ones drawing near as well... Half an hour before the train’s departure the senior and junior officers had crowded together and, casting drunken looks in her direction, fell to whispering.

“They’re talking about you, Ilka!” said Zwibush. “Let’s play them something. They’ll give us money. Handily that wretched band has fallen silent.”

Zwibush and Ilka rose, tuned their instruments, and struck up. Ilka began to sing. The officers broke into smiles... Ilka sang that there was no one in this world handsomer or braver than the Austrian soldiers, who could conquer the whole world in a moment.

“Splendid! Incomparable!” the officers muttered. “Old man, don’t you sing! You only spoil it with your goat’s voice! Incomparable!”

“An idea!” cried an officer with big gray mustaches, and slapped his cap. “I swear on my honor, it’s an idea!”

And, turning to his comrades, he began whispering something to them. His comrades nodded in agreement. Having secured his comrades’ consent, the gray-mustached officer came up, swaying, to Ilka, took her by her sunburned arm, and said:

“Listen, little bird! We want to take you with us on the train... You’ll sing and play for us the whole way. We’ll give you a great deal of money for it. Agreed?” – and, without waiting for an answer, the officer pulled her by the hand and led her toward his comrades.

“Yes, yes...” the drunken officers spoke up. “We’ll give a great deal of money... Well, yes...”

“And where are you going?” asked Ilka.

“To Bosnia, I think... We don’t rightly know ourselves.”

“Impossible!” said Zwibush, smiling.

But the officers did not hear Zwibush. They drew the smiling Ilka aside and set about persuading her, proving their point to her... One took her by the chin.

Zwibush, certain Ilka would not consent, stood to one side and smiled. Ilka would not consent! To all such proposals she had always answered, up to now, with a refusal. She was a girl of morals. But what was his fright and astonishment when Ilka, bursting into ringing laughter, stepped into the first-class carriage; she stepped in and nodded to her father from the window... Her father ran to her.

“I’m going, father!” she said. “Get in...”

“You’re out of your mind!” said the pale Zwibush, not daring to enter the rich carriage.

“Come in!” the officers told him.

Bowing and embarrassed, he entered the carriage and set about persuading Ilka. But the stubborn girl was implacable.

“I want to have a million!” she whispered to him. “If I don’t have a million, I’ll die.”

“You won’t get a million, you madwoman, but you’ll lose your honor! You’ll lose your honor! It’s immoral!..”

“Don’t be afraid, papa Zwibush. The men won’t see or hear from me anything but music... I’ve decided.”

The train started moving, and the old man went on persuading her, begging, pleading. He even wept once.

“This is tiresome, father!” she said, and moved away to the officers.

Her father, pale, sweating, with trembling fingers and lips, huddled into a far corner of the carriage and, closing his eyes, prayed to God. He did not recognize, in this cheerful girl listening to officers’ vulgarities, his meek, often weeping Ilka. He did not believe his own eyes and ears... Incomprehensible, mysterious, these foolish girls!

Ilka was given a separate compartment. She and her father were offered a sumptuous breakfast, but they did not touch it. In the nearest town, where the train stood for two hours, one of the officers went out to the shops and bought Ilka a new dress, a bracelet, and boots...

“To the health of the daughter of the regiment!” the officers cried when she came out of the compartment in her new finery. “Hurrah!”

The officers drank and made Ilka sing. She sang, and went on singing, until the regiment reached the border...

Such was the first step on the new career from which foolish Ilka expected a million. That step was a success. When Ilka, a month later, ran off from the regiment with Zwibush, she was dressed in a gown that had cost the officers fifteen hundred francs. She fled in a first-class carriage in the company of five young women, an old woman with a large hooked nose, and a fat German with a great bald patch. Along the way the German handed out his calling cards, on which was written: “Josef Kelter, proprietor of an orchestra and a Hungarian choir in Trieste.” The old woman with the hooked nose was his companion.

Chapter VII

The stubborn girl ran off once more, and this “once” was the last time.

It was a warm April night... Midnight had long since struck, and in the summer premises of Madame Blanchard’s theater the performance had still not ended. On the stage Mademoiselle Turie, professor of black magic, was showing off her tricks. She released a flock of doves from a woman’s boot and drew out, to a burst of applause, a large woman’s gown... From under the gown, once it was lowered to the ground and lifted again, out stepped a little boy in a Mephistopheles costume. The tricks were all old ones, but they could be watched “in the meantime.” At Madame Blanchard’s theater performances are given only so that the establishment may keep the name of a theater attached to what is a restaurant. The public eats and drinks more than it watches the stage. Behind the columns and in the boxes stand little tables. The public in the first row sits with its back to the stage, because it is training its opera glasses on the cocottes, who fill the whole of the second row. The whole public moves about more than it sits still... It is too restless, and no hissing is able to stop it even for a second... It moves from the stalls into the restaurant hall, from the hall into the garden... Madame Blanchard keeps the stage also so as to show the public the “new girls.” After Mademoiselle Turie’s tricks these “new girls” were to sing. The public, waiting for the tricks to end, took its seats, grew restless, and out of boredom applauded the woman conjurer. In one of the boxes sat fat Madame Blanchard herself, smiling, playing with a bouquet. She was assuring “certain members of the public,” who hovered near her, that the awaited “new girls” were delightful... Her fat husband, sitting vis-à-vis, read a newspaper, smiled, and nodded in agreement.

“Oh yes!” he muttered. “Small wonder this choir costs us so dear! There’s something to listen to and someone to look at...”

“Tell me,” a stout gray-haired gentleman said to fat Madame Blanchard, “why is it there are no Hungarian songs on today’s bill?”

Fat Madame Blanchard coquettishly shook her finger at the questioner.

“I know, viscount, what you want those Hungarian songs for,” she said. “The one you want to see is ill today and cannot sing...”

“Poor thing!” sighed the viscount. “What is Mademoiselle Ilka ill with?”

Madame Blanchard shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know... How lovely my Ilka is, though! You’re the hundredth person who’s asked me about her tonight. She’s ill, viscount! Illness spares not even beauties...”

“Our Hungarian beauty suffers from a most noble ailment!” said a young man in a dragoon’s uniform, standing there in the box too. “Yesterday she told that fool, d’Homarain, that she’s sick with homesickness. Fie! Look, viscount Sézy! What a... what a... what a marvel!”

And the dragoon pointed the viscount Sézy toward the stage, where at that moment the chorus of “new girls” was taking its place. Sézy glanced at it for a second, turned his eyes from the stage, and went on talking to Madame Blanchard about Ilka...

“She’s laughing at us!” he was whispering to her a quarter of an hour later. “She’s foolish! Do you know what she demands from every man for one instant of love? You know? A hundred thousand francs! Ha-ha-ha! Let’s see what madman gives her that money! For a hundred thousand I could have ten such girls! Hm... Your cousin’s daughter, madame, was a thousand times more beautiful than this one, and she cost me a hundred thousand too, but spread over three years! And this one? A capricious little girl! A hundred thousand... It’s your business, madame, to explain to her that this is dreadfully foolish of her... She’s joking, but... one can’t always be joking.”

“And what will handsome Alfred Desiré say?” fat Madame Blanchard turned, laughing, to the dragoon.

“The girl’s teasing us,” said Desiré. “She wants to sell herself as dearly as possible... She’ll wear our nerves down and, instead of a thousand, she’ll take two thousand francs. The girl knows nothing strains and unsettles these wretched nerves like waiting... A hundred thousand – that’s a fine little joke.”

A fourth person joined the conversation, then a fifth, and soon the whole box was talking about Ilka. There were about ten people in the box...

During this conversation, in one of the many little rooms into which the backstage space was divided, sat Ilka. The room, saturated with the smells of perfume, powder, and gaslight, bore three names at once: dressing room, drawing room, and the room of Mademoiselle So-and-So... Ilka had the best room of all. She sat on a divan upholstered in fresh, eye-cutting crimson velvet. Under her feet was spread a splendid, gaily patterned carpet. The whole room was flooded with rosy light coming from a lamp with a rose-colored shade...

Before Ilka stood a young man of about twenty-five, a handsome dark-haired fellow, in a neat black suit. This was Andre d’Homarain, reporter for the newspaper Figaro. By virtue of his office he was a regular visitor to places like Madame Blanchard’s theater. His calling card gave him free entry to every such place that wished its scandals reported. A scandal described in Figaro was the best advertisement there was.

Andre d’Homarain stood before Ilka, biting his little mustache and beard, and did not take his eyes off the pretty girl.

“No, Andre,” Ilka was saying in broken French, “I cannot be yours... Not for anything! Don’t swear, don’t follow me, don’t humiliate yourself... It’s all in vain!”

“Why is that?”

“Why? Ha-ha-ha! You’re naive, Andre... There must be a reason, then, if you’re refused... In the first place, you’re poor, and I’ve told you a thousand times already that I’m worth a hundred thousand... Do you have a hundred thousand?”

“At this moment I don’t even have a hundred francs... Listen, Ilka... You know you’re lying about all this... Why do you slander yourself so mercilessly?”

“And what if I love another?”

“And does this other one know that you love him, and does he love you?”

“He knows, and he loves me...”

“Hm... What a brute he must be, then, to allow you to end up at fat Madame Blanchard’s theater!”

“He doesn’t know I’m in Paris. Don’t scold me, Andre...”

Ilka got up and began pacing the room.

“You, Andre,” she said, “have said more than once that you’re ready to do anything at all for me... You did say that? Well, then do this... Arrange things so that my admirers stop pestering me... They give me no peace... There are a hundred of them, and I’m one. Judge for yourself... And I have to refuse each of them... And is it pleasant for me to see people distressed by my refusal? Arrange it, please... All these courtings, requests, and declarations have worn me out dreadfully.”

“I’ll arrange it so,” said d’Homarain, “that no one troubles you except me... Except me?”

Ilka shook her head in refusal.

Andre turned pale and, following Ilka’s pacing with his eyes, went down on one knee.

“But I do love you,” he said in a pleading voice, “I love you, Ilka!”

Ilka suddenly cried out. The medallion which she had been (toying) with suddenly, in some fashion, came open. Before this, despite all her efforts, it could not be opened. Von Seinitz, giving her the medallion, had forgotten to mention that it had a secret catch.

“At last!” Ilka cried, and her face lit up with joy.

Now she could find out what was in it! Perhaps this golden trinket was adorned with his portrait? And, hoping to see the noble face with the great black beard, she darted to the lamp, glanced into the medallion, and turned pale: instead of a bearded face she saw a woman’s, haughty, with a majestic smile. Ilka recognized this face! On the golden frame in which the portrait was set was engraved: “Theresa Heilenstrahl loves you.”

“So that’s how it is!?”

Ilka flushed and flung the medallion aside.

“So that’s how it is!? She loves him? Hm... Very well...”

Ilka fell onto the divan and moved restlessly.

“She dares to love him?” she began to mutter. “Well then, no! Andre! For God’s sake!”

The reporter rose, patted his knees, and came up to her.

“Andre... Very well, I’ll love you, only carry out one request of mine...”

“Whatever you like! A thousand requests, my dear!”

“I haven’t wanted to do this till now, but... now I’m forced to... I choose you as my avenger... Have you ever once been to my homeland?”

And Ilka, leaning her elbow on the reporter’s shoulder, began whispering in his ear. She whispered for a very long while, with fervor, gesturing with her hands. He jotted something down in his reporter’s notebook.

“You’ll do it?” she asked.

“Yes... I hate her, after what I’ve heard from you...”

“Go at once...”

“But how will you know whether I’ve carried out the commission or not?”

“I’ll trust your word of honor,” said Ilka.

“In turn, Ilka, give me your word of honor that you... won’t deceive me...”

Ilka thought for a second. And no wonder! She would have to tell a low lie, lie to a devoted, honest man, and... for the first time in her life.

“Word of honor,” she said.

The reporter kissed her hand and went out. An hour later he was already sitting in a train carriage, and the next day he was out of France.

Having seen the reporter off, Ilka came out of the dressing room into the foyer, set with little tables. Pale, agitated, forgetting that she had been announced ill that evening, she wandered through all the rooms. She did not want to think, but the most terrible, restless thoughts followed one another in her feverish little head. The thought that her baron loved, or had loved, t h a t woman tormented her. When she entered the stalls, the eyes of the public turned to her and to the box of Madame Blanchard, who had just now been maintaining that Ilka was ill and lying in bed. The “new girls,” performing at that moment on the stage, suddenly heard hissing, whistling, applause, and set about bowing... but it was not to them that the public was hissing and applauding...

“To the stage! Hungarian songs!” the raging public cried out. “March onto the stage! Ilka! Bravo!”

Ilka smiled, pointed to her throat, and went out, leaving fat Madame Blanchard to deal with the deceived public herself. She went into one of the restaurant’s private rooms, where she usually supped with her “friends.” Her admirers followed her.

Supper this time turned out gloomy. Ilka was silent and ate nothing. Instead of merry laughter and broken French, the “friends” had to listen to nothing but deep sighs. Sézy, the chief organizer of these suppers, was sullen too.

“Devil take these innocent creatures with their innocent little faces!” he muttered, devouring Ilka with his eyes. Desiré drank and was silent. Of late the unhappy dragoon had taken to brooding... To Ilka, who demanded a hundred thousand, he could not offer even two. His father had died recently, and the estate had passed into the creditors’ hands. He counted on no disinterested love: he knew he was not handsome, and that these girls were mercenary...

The banker Bach’s son, Adolphe, whose duty it was to ply everyone with champagne, sat beside Ilka and took liberties. As the richest, he had a right to it... He drank from Ilka’s glass, whispered in Ilka’s ear, and so on. This familiarity brought on still greater dejection among the supper-goers, who could not stand Adolphe Bach for his wealth.

A few steps from the table where they were drinking, by the window, sat two old men. One of them was the manufacturer from Lyon, Marc Louvrier; the other... In the other you would not recognize our old acquaintance, the fiddler Zwibush, though it is indeed he. He had changed greatly. He had grown thin, pale, and his brow no longer glistened with sweat. In his eyes was apathy, resignation to fate... Old Zwibush had waved everything aside... Everything was lost for him along with his Ilka. He no longer wears his rags. A white shirt with gold cufflinks and a black tailcoat clothe his ever-thinner body... With Louvrier, one of the most ardent of Ilka’s admirers, he was talking... about literature.

By three o’clock everyone, except Zwibush, his daughter, and Louvrier, was already drunk. The wine had somewhat stirred the joyless, sullen revelers. Hopeless love had heated their drunken heads. Tongues loosened...

At four Ilka was going home with her father. Before she left, each man tried to say a few words to her alone in parting...

“I love you!” each one told her, and each promised her paradise.

“A hundred thousand!” she said curtly.

In May, on one of the quiet evenings, there was found, at last, a man who gave her the hundred thousand and put an end to the whole comedy. That man was the dragoon Desiré.

At three in the morning, when everyone was already drunk, the dragoon came into the private room. He was pale and agitated. Greeting no one, he went up to Ilka, took her by the hand, and led her aside.

“I’ve brought it,” he said in a muffled voice. “Take it... Do you know what I’ve done? I robbed my uncle... Tomorrow I’ll be brought up for trial... Take it! I agree!”

A cry of joy broke from Ilka’s breast. She had a hundred thousand at last! And at the same moment her face was covered with a deathly pallor: the time had come to pay for the hundred thousand...

Adolphe Bach, who had been watching Desiré’s movements, came up to Ilka and, hearing the word “agreed,” turned pale.

“And I agree too!” he said quickly, and reached for his pocket... “And I’ll give a hundred thousand!”

Desiré smiled mockingly. In the boy Bach he no longer saw a worthy rival.

“I agreed first... You’d do well, Bach, to go to bed. Your nurse is waiting for you.”

“I don’t sleep with nurses. I don’t much care for your face, Desiré. It practically begs for a slap! I’ll give a hundred and ten thousand!”

“I’ll give a hundred and twenty!..”

Desiré had stolen exactly a hundred and twenty thousand from his uncle.

Sézy, drunk, devouring Ilka with his eyes as a snake devours a rabbit, suddenly rose and went up to Bach and Desiré.

“You... you... agree?” he began to mutter. “You’ve lost your minds! You... you’ve lost your minds, boys! A hundred thousand! Ha-ha-ha! Pardon, mademoiselle, but all the same... judge for yourselves...”

“I’ll give a hundred and twenty!” Desiré repeated.

“I’ll give a hundred and twenty!” said the boy Bach, and burst out laughing. “I’ll give it this instant, in cash!”

Sézy swayed. He did not want to believe his ears. Could there really be such fools who would buy, for a hundred thousand, a woman he himself could buy at any time for five thousand? And could it really be that... not he would buy her?

“It’s impossible!” he cried.

“I’ll give a hundred and twenty too!” said a fourth man who had come up. This was a tall, robust landowner, Arco, from the neighborhood of Marseille, a very rich man. It cost him nothing to throw a hundred thousand at the girl’s feet. He had recently lost his wife and only son, and now he was drowning his grief in wine and bought love.

“And I agree too!” said the Serb Botich, who passed himself off as secretary of some embassy or other and squandered vast sums of money daily.

Sézy set about leafing through his notebook, jotting something down, calculating. His pencil raced over the paper.

“Why on earth, gentlemen?” he muttered. “Is money really so cheap for you? Why exactly a hundred and twenty, and not an even hundred? Thirty... six hundred... Why not an even hundred?”

“A hundred and twenty-five!” cried Bach, looking triumphantly at his rivals.

“Agreed!” cried Sézy. “Agreed! I agree too, I tell you!”

“I don’t want your extra money,” Ilka said to Bach. “Take your five thousand back. I’ll agree to a hundred and twenty too... Only, gentlemen, not all of you... One of you, and one only... And which one is it to be?”

“I,” said the dragoon. “I was the first to give my consent...”

“That’s nothing!” the others spoke up. “Nothing at all! What does it matter, first or second?”

“That’s nothing,” said Ilka. “How are we to settle it, gentlemen? I like all of you equally... You’re all kind, all amiable... You all love me equally... How to settle it?”

“Draw lots!” proposed a young man, who had taken no part in the purchase and was watching the buyers with envy...

“Very well, let’s draw lots,” Ilka agreed. “Do you agree, gentlemen?”

“Agreed!” they all said, except the dragoon, who sat on the windowsill mercilessly gnawing his large lower lip.

“So then, gentlemen, let’s write out the little tickets... Whoever draws the ticket with my name on it, gets me. Papa Zwibush, write the tickets!”

Obedient as always, papa Zwibush reached into the pocket of his new tailcoat and took out a sheet of paper. The paper was cut into little squares, and on one of the squares was written “Ilka.”

“Put your money on the table, gentlemen!” Ilka proposed. “The tickets are ready!”

“How much are we each to put down?” asked Bach. “How many of us are there? Eight? A hundred and twenty divided by eight comes to... comes to...”

“Each of you put down a hundred and twenty thousand!” said Ilka.

“How much?”

“A hundred and twenty thousand!”

“You’re bad at arithmetic, my dear!” said the Serb. “Or are you joking?”

“A hundred and twenty thousand... I can’t do otherwise,” said Ilka.

The men moved away from Ilka in silence and sat down at the table. They were indignant. Sézy began to swear and look for his hat.

“This is nothing but a swindle!” he said. “This is called sharping! Taking advantage of the fact that our blood, we fools, we drunken asses, is up!?”

“I’m not giving a single centime!” said Bach.

“I’m not asking for one,” said Ilka. “But it’s time to go home, though... Are you ready, papa Zwibush? Let’s go! Keep the tickets as a memento.”

“Farewell!” said the men. “Go off to your Hungary and look there for fools who’ll give you a million! It’s a million you want, isn’t it? Understand this, you madcap! For a million you could buy the whole of Paris! Farewell!..”

But an all-powerful passion won out... When Ilka gave each of them her warm hand, when she found a few tender words to say to each of them in parting and sang her “last” song, passion reached its height...

At five o’clock the first waiter who came along drew the paper squares out of Bach’s hat... When all the squares were taken and unfolded, laughter burst from every man’s chest. This laughter was the laughter of despair, the laughter of madness and of fate’s insanity.

The ticket with the name “Ilka” fell to the Lyon manufacturer, old Marc Louvrier. Marc Louvrier had put down his hundred and twenty thousand “as a joke,” and could have contented himself with a single kiss!

Chapter VIII

It was a frosty December evening. In the sky the first little stars glimmered and a cold moon floated. The air was still – not a movement, not a sound.

Arthur von Seinitz was walking down the great clearing to “dinner.” He was coming from the chapel of St. Francis, where half an hour before he had parted, until the next day, from Theresa Goldaugen. Stopping as usual at the forester’s cottage, he asked for his letters. Blaukher gave him two envelopes: one very large, the other very small. The small one was from Paris, from Ilka. Seinitz did not begin to read this letter and stuffed it into his pocket. He knew its contents: “I love you!” Ilka could have thought up nothing newer or wiser than that. The address on the large one was written in Peltzer’s hand. Seinitz would have stuffed this letter away too, had the inscription “Valuable papers” not caught his eye. Arthur thought a moment and opened the envelope. In it he found his mother’s will. He began to read this will. The further he went into reading the document at the bottom of which the dear hand that had once cherished the baron had signed, the more astonished his face grew. The mother had bequeathed everything to his benefit, and nothing to his sister’s... But why on earth had the Peltzers sent him this will?

“Aha!” he thought. “Repented! High time too...”

His mother’s estate was not large. It brought in no more than ten thousand thalers a year in income. But even that sum made Arthur glad. And it was pleasant for him to wrest even that sum from the claws of the miser Peltzer, who was ready to commit any baseness for the sake of a thaler.

Arthur asked Blaukher for paper and, sitting down at the table, wrote Peltzer a letter. He wrote that the will had been received, and that he would like to know what fate had befallen the money that had, up to now, been drawn from the estate bequeathed him by his mother. The letter was given to Frau Blaukher, who the next day sent it off to the post station. A week later an answer came from Peltzer. The answer was rather strange and mysterious: “I know nothing,” Peltzer wrote. “I know nothing of any will, nor of any money. Leave us in peace...”

“What does that mean?” Arthur asked himself, having read the reply. “Rather strange! Or is he sorry he sent me the will? Hm... Wait, then, if that’s how it is!”

And the day after receiving the answer Arthur set off for town and contested the will there. A lawsuit was set in motion.

Arthur began to absent himself often, going into town. He would go first to the court, and then to his lawyer. Theresa was often left to sit alone in the chapel of St. Francis, languishing in waiting and boredom. She would sit in the chapel, looking into the terrible eyes of St. Francis and listening to the noise of the wind... What happiness would begin to shine in her eyes when, in the noise outside the chapel, she could make out the baron’s footsteps, and how deathly pale she would be when, late in the evening, she left the chapel without having seen him! He came to the chapel only to tease her, to talk foully, to laugh at her... Theresa waited impatiently for spring, when it would again be possible to meet under the open sky.

But spring brought her misfortune along with it...

It was a still, warm, spring “afternoon.”

Theresa sat by the “Bronze Stag” waiting for Arthur. She sat on the young grass that had only just appeared, listening to the murmur of a brook rippling not far from her... The sun warmed her lovely shoulders pleasantly.

“Will he come or not?” she thought. Arthur had given himself over entirely to the lawsuit and went unwillingly to the “Bronze Stag.” But this “afternoon” he came. He came, as usual, slightly drunk, scowling, displeased.

“You’re here?” he asked Theresa, who had brightened at the sight of him. “My compliments! It’s good to have no business at all! Word of honor, it’s good! Idlers always get to stroll about and sit on the green grass...”

Sitting down beside Theresa, he set about spitting furiously off to one side.

“Are you angry?” asked the countess.

“At those scoundrels the Peltzers. Do you know what they’ve done to me? That will they sent me is as false as a woman. It’s forged. I contested it, and now I’m to be tried for forgery... The Peltzers have cooked up a vicious little trick! They shrug their shoulders at the sight of this will and want nothing to do with it. They committed the forgery, and I’m the one who’ll stand trial! Damn it! They’ve taken a bond from me not to leave, and soon the examining magistrate will start pestering me. What do you say to that? Ha-ha! Baron von Seinitz forged a will! One has to be a scoundrel like Peltzer to invent such a trap! Well, your ladyship – and you? I heard yesterday you’re divorced from the count. Everything between you two is already over. Why, then, do you go on sitting here? Why don’t you leave your husband and these places that remind you of that hateful man?”

“I don’t want to leave here,” said Theresa.

“Hm... May I ask why?”

“You don’t know?”

“How should I know!”

A minute’s silence fell. Both knew why she was still here, why she did not leave these places, but Arthur wanted to torment her a little...

“I... You don’t know?.. I love you,” said the countess, and a flush spread over her proud, stern face. “I love you, Arthur... Were it not for this love, I would be far from the ‘Bronze Stag’ by now.”

The countess raised her eyes to Arthur’s face. That face, drunken, mocking, told her the truth. The silence confirmed the same truth. He did not love her.

“Then why did you come here?” she asked quietly, wringing her fingers. “Why didn’t you leave me even then, when these meetings began?”

“You were bored,” said Arthur. “I still haven’t stopped being a lady’s cavalier, and I do whatever the dear ladies please. Ha-ha!”

“How stupid that is!”

“I’m very sorry I can’t answer love with love. I love another...”

Arthur reached, laughing, into his side pocket, took out Ilka’s photograph, and held it right up to Theresa’s eyes.

“There she is, my love. Do you recognize her?”

“Is this that old man’s daughter? But why is she dressed like this?”

“Dressed very decently... A charming little face!”

“Where is she now?”

Arthur said nothing. The effect he had counted on did not come off. The countess, at the sight of the photograph, did not turn pale and did not blush... She only sighed, and – strangely! – in her eyes there lit a kindly feeling at the sight of the pretty, almost childish little face.

“Farewell!” said Arthur. “Adieu! I’m off to study law. Oh, Peltzer, Peltzer! Let me say in court that I got the will from him, and they’ll laugh me out of the room!”

Arthur turned his back on Theresa and, gesturing with his hands, strode off into the thick of the forest.

Theresa went to her horse, which stood to one side, lazily nibbling the young grass.

“Let’s go, and let’s not come here anymore,” said Theresa, stroking the horse’s forehead. “We’re not loved here. Let’s not go begging for alms.”

And, leaping onto her horse, Theresa galloped off to the edge of the forest. In her eyes shone resolve. When she rode through the gate leading to the long avenue we spoke of in the first chapter of our story, she heard footsteps behind her. She looked round. Running after her horse was some unfamiliar young man with a riding crop in his hand.

“One moment!” he cried out to her in French.

The countess reined in her horse and nodded to the young man.

“A petitioner, no doubt,” she thought.

The reporter d’Homarain, smiling and beaming, ran up to her and, admiring her beauty, raised the crop.

“You’re as cruel as you are beautiful!” he said... “Nothing should go unpunished. Remember the old musician and his daughter!”

And the countess felt a burning pain on her face...

“So be it!” she said, and pulled at the reins.

D’Homarain gazed a long while after the beautiful countess. The Frenchman wanted desperately to talk with the woman he had struck, and who had answered the blow with the phrase “So be it”; but when she vanished from his sight, he turned back and strode quickly toward the railway station. He had carried out the commission given him and was now on his way to collect his reward...

Chapter IX

“Some lady is looking for you!” Frau Blaukher said one evening to Arthur, who had come by for his letters. “She left a little note!”

“I have put up at the ‘Grand Anchor’ hotel,” Arthur read in the note. “Come quickly. Ilka.”

Arthur set off for the town and at exactly midnight saw Ilka. He burst out laughing when he saw her. How elegantly she was dressed, and how unlike that weeping songstress he had once met in the forest!

“Have you got the million?” he asked, laughing.

“I have. Here it is!”

Arthur suddenly stopped laughing. Before him on the table lay spread a million, a real million.

“The devil!” he said, not believing his eyes. “Are you counting in francs, my child? I forgot to tell you to count in thalers... But no matter... This money’s good too! Where did you get it?”

Ilka sat down beside him and told him everything that had happened to her since they had parted.

“Well? And what did you do with the old man?” asked Arthur.

“I gave him morphine to drink, and that same night I ran without looking back.”

“Honest work!” said Arthur. “Ha-ha-ha! At any other time I’d have thrashed you, but now – be Baroness von Seinitz! Here’s my hand on it! Tomorrow we go to the mayor!”

The next day von Seinitz and Ilka were at the mayor’s. Ilka became Baroness von Seinitz on the second of June at half past nine in the morning.

At two o’clock that same day Baron Arthur von Seinitz was stripped of his baronial dignity: the jury found him guilty of forging a will... The Peltzers had achieved their aim.

At the trial Ilka saw Countess Goldaugen.

The countess sat in one of the rear chairs, apart from the spectators, and did not take her eyes off the defendant. A dark veil hung down from her black hat. She evidently wished to keep her incognito. And only when, having heard the prosecutor’s speech, she said aloud, “How stupid that is!” – did Ilka recognize her by her melodious voice.

“What right has she to look at my husband?” thought Ilka, going pale with hatred and at the same time exulting in her victory. She believed in that victory now: the countess had been robbed of the man she loved.

The defendant conducted himself very strangely at the trial. He was slightly drunk – malicious witticisms poured from his tongue one after another. Ignoring the judges and the jury, he was silent when he ought to have spoken, and spoke when he ought to have been silent. The prosecutor had been his university comrade, but he did not spare him in his speech. He rummaged shamelessly through his past, which he knew as a comrade would, described his Parisian life, his bankruptcy, his lack of money, the burden Baron von Seinitz had suffered on account of that lack of money, and ended with a hymn of praise to Madame Peltzer, who had sacrificed the feeling of sisterly love to the feeling of justice, of retribution for the offense...

“She acted as an exemplary citizen!” he said.

“Shame on you,” said Arthur. “Back when you were smoking my cigars at the university, you didn’t know how to lie like that!”

This alone was said seriously and sincerely; everything else Arthur said provoked laughter and the presiding judge’s bell.

The public met the guilty verdict with applause. It consisted almost entirely of Peltzer’s lackeys. Those who sympathized with Arthur found no room in the courtroom. All the seats had been taken by the banker’s adherents since early morning. Arthur heard the sentence with indifference.

“I know the way to the emperor,” he said, “and when I again have need of a barony, I’ll pay him a visit. Vienna, which knows me, will laugh at this verdict!”

A bitter feeling, a feeling of shame for mankind and of disgust filled the countess’s soul as she left the courtroom and got into her carriage. In her presence they had accused an innocent man of fraud and convicted him. How easy it is to deceive these simple, fat jurors, and how little it takes to ruin a man!

“I will restore his name to him!” she resolved, indignant. “He told them he knows the way to Vienna, but he won’t trouble himself over such a trifle, in his opinion, as a good name... And besides he’s lazy, slow to bestir himself... I will trouble myself on his behalf...”

“I will give him alms,” she added to herself, “and he, against his will, will have to accept them!”

The next day she was already at the town club at a charity ball, selling tickets. In the garden, under an awning made of flags, climbing vines, and live flowers, stood several little tables. On the tables stood wheels with lottery tickets... Eight very beautiful and very elegantly dressed aristocratic ladies sat at these tables selling tickets. Countess Goldaugen sold better than any of them. Without resting, she spun the wheel and made change. Peltzer, who was at the ball, bought two thousand tickets from her.

“How is your wife’s brother getting on?” the countess asked Peltzer, taking his money.

Peltzer sighed.

“Two misfortunes have befallen the poor fellow,” he said. “He married, and... today he is no longer a baron...”

“I had heard... Where is his wife now?”

“She’s here. Haven’t you seen her? Amusing! Ha-ha... She’s a baroness... Had they married a few hours later, she’d now be nothing more than Burgheress Seinitz...”

The countess, scanning the faces of everyone passing by, began searching with her eyes for Ilka.

Ilka was at the ball. Head held high, with a proud, haughty smile, she had already walked past the countess once. The countess was busy selling and did not notice her. She passed a second time, surrounded by a crowd of the curious, who peered straight into her pretty face. The countess raised her eyes to her and evidently did not recognize her. When she passed a third time, their eyes met.

The countess grew flustered and, to Ilka’s great satisfaction, dropped her money on the floor. Several coins slipped from her trembling hands and rolled ringing across the floor.

Ilka went up to the countess’s table and, looking her straight in the face, took several tickets.

“I wish to donate one small item for the benefit of the school,” she said, and without waiting for an answer, thrust a gold medallion into the countess’s hands. The countess took the familiar medallion in her hands, opened it, and smiled. Her face had been scratched by a pin.

“Take this item to the club’s administration,” she said, holding the medallion out to Ilka. “Our business here is only to sell tickets...”

And, smiling sweetly, the countess added:

“Pardon, I have no time!”

The countess’s smile and composure flustered Ilka. Unaccustomed to skirmishes of this kind, she grew embarrassed and stepped away from the table. She felt vexed and ashamed: those standing near the countess’s table had noticed her confusion, exchanged glances, and smiled. Those puzzled smiles stung Ilka to the very heart.

“Let me pass,” she said to the young men who had stopped in a knot before her and were looking at her with curiosity.

The young men, for some reason, suddenly burst out laughing. The same laughter was heard from behind her as well. Ilka looked round and saw the same sort of crowd of young people.

“Let me pass!” Ilka repeated.

Laughter was heard again, and a large beer-bottle cork struck Ilka’s pink forehead. Another cork struck her right shoulder...

“Ha-ha... Hurrah! Baroness von Seinitz, wife of the cashiered swindler!” someone shouted, and hissing was heard...

A third and a fourth cork, both together, struck her in the face. She, humiliated and insulted, on the point of fainting, looked at the countess, and it seemed to her that the countess was laughing... Ilka’s sight clouded over. Her whirling head was pulled sharply downward.

“Arthur!” she cried.

No one answered this call. The cashiered baron was far away. Drunk, he lay under a bush not far from the Blaukher cottage, dreaming of his million...

The countess, whom the insulted girl’s clouded eyes failed to recognize, came up to Ilka and, putting her arms about her shoulders, led her out of the crowd.

“Let me go! I want to kill her!” Ilka cried, and fainted.

When she came to, she saw herself in a small room upholstered in crimson velvet. She was lying on a divan. Beside her sat a girl with a little flask in her hands...

“Where are we?” asked Ilka.

“At the club, madam,” answered the girl.

The strains of a mazurka, reaching Ilka’s ears, confirmed the girl’s words. Ilka raised her heavy head and, after a little thought, remembered everything that had happened.

“Bring me a small glass of Rhine wine,” she said to the girl.

The girl went out. Ilka quickly took her purse from her pocket. From the purse she took a small flask containing morphine. With this very morphine she had, not so long ago, treated old Louvrer! Now she would treat herself with it, for taking so much to heart the insults people dealt her... All the morphine there was in the flask, she took. Awaiting an eternal sleep, Ilka sank back onto the velvet cushion and set about thinking... She was not sorry for her colorless life. She was sorry to leave papa Zwibush – him alone! Arthur, who loved wine more than his young wife, she was not sorry for.

“How are you feeling?” she heard a melodious voice ask.

The countess, who had come in, bent over her – her deadliest enemy... Ilka saw before her face bright eyes and two pink patches on the cheeks.

“D’Homarain!” she whispered, seeing on the left cheek a faint red streak.

“Those who wronged you will be punished,” said the countess. “Peltzer hired them, he who hates Arthur... I will punish the scoundrel Peltzer... I am strong... Are you still angry with me?”

Ilka turned her face away.

“Are you still angry, Ilka? Well... forgive me... I am guilty... I wronged both your father and you... I repent of it and beg your forgiveness.”

And Ilka felt a kiss upon her head.

“I searched for you a long time... I knew no peace by day or by night, after meeting your gaze on that unhappy day... Your eyes burned me in my sleep...”

Ilka suddenly began to weep.

“I am dying,” she whispered, falling asleep to the sound of her repentant rival’s tender voice.

“Forgive me then, Ilka, as I have forgiven you...”

Ilka stretched out her hand and touched the countess’s neck... The countess bent down to her and kissed her on the lips.

“I am dying,” Ilka whispered. “I have taken... mor... On the carpet...”

The countess bent down and saw the flask on the carpet. She understood everything. A minute later a doctor was found in the club and brought to Ilka. Thanks to the presence of the flask, the doctor managed only to establish that poison had been taken; he did not manage to rouse the sleeping Ilka back to her feet...

* * *

The reporter d’Homarain arrived from Hungary in Paris on the very night Ilka’s fate was played out. Finding no one in the singer’s room save Louvrer, who was fast asleep in an armchair, he ran to Bach. Bach told him everything that had happened during his absence.

“She’s run off!” the reporter decided, and the next day went once more to Hungary, where he hoped to receive payment for his services.

In Hungary he learned of the beloved woman’s death. Word of that death was a cruel wage that laid him low on his sickbed. Having lain some time in fever, he settled in the Goldaugen forest and, gathering information from every quarter, wrote a tale about the beautiful Ilka. Passing last year through the Goldaugen forest, I made d’Homarain’s acquaintance and read his tale.

Translated into Russian, it is now offered to our readers.