Prince Zilah -- Volume 2

trouble, sadness, and love. The Prince then returned to his guests, and the boat, which Marsa watched through the window of the carriage, departed, bearing away the dream, a

the cry which was wrung from her breast

k-when I think t

ld never live through the long, dull hours. She stood at the window, wrapped in thought, gazing mechanically before her, and still hearing the voice of Michel Menko hissing like a s

like forest plumes, their peaks touched by the sun setting in a sky of tender blue, while the shadowy twilight crept over the

h Michel Menko had hurled at her like a threat: "I demand it!" Suddenly she heard in the garden the baying of dogs, and she saw, held in check by a domesti

imed between her clench

efore reaching Paris, a

te in

will not!" Then suddenly her mind changed. It was braver and more worthy of her to meet the danger face t

gana, glancing at the mirror as if to see whether

half Hindoo fashion-a long divan running along the wall, covered with gray silk striped with garnet; Persian rugs cast here and there at random; paintings by Petenkofen-Hungarian farms and battle-scenes, sentinels los

his siesta, and which Marsa abandoned to him, preferring the little room, the windows

ite airs. He remembered it all so well, and, nervously twisting his moustache, he longed for her to make her appearance. He listened

ichel, as he passed through the lar

, then? It was very pretty; but the sun was devilish hot. My head is

it is stifling in here." Marsa, who saw Vogotzine pass out, let him go, only too willing to have him at a distance during her interview with Miche

faced each other, as if measuring the degree of hardihood each possesse

see me. Here I am! Wh

t is true, Marsa, that you ar

laugh broke nervously off. S

r that that y

es

ing which you know well, which all the world knows, which all the world must

chel, coldly; "but I on

ear it from y

of my conduct?" asked Ma

d his hat down upon the little table, and suddenly

hy of you, unworthy of myself. But to atone for my fault-my crime, if you will-I am ready to do anything you order, to be your miserab

igana

h an air more wearied than stern, humiliating, and disdainful. "I on

understand me," said Mich

ledge it, not

Andras, didn't you understand that I asked you also

ried the

" ejaculated with a rapid movement of re

in this word a mass of bitter rancor and st

lt of Marsa's cry and look. "Me, who

s of art. "Don't be vile enough to speak to me of a past of which nothing remains to me but disgust! Let not one wo

ad passion. "I should die by your han

ch trembled with the tension of his feelings: "You must know well, Marsa, that death is not the thing that can frighten a man like me! What does frighten me is that, having lost you once, I may lose you forever; to know th

justice," said Marsa,

loved you; bu

ot love me

was the remorse of her life, was like

u had used to dozens of other women; half by violence, half by ruse, you became my lover. I do not know when-I do not know how. I try to forget that horrible dream; and when, deluded by you, thinking that what I felt for you was love, for I did think so, I imagined that I had given myself for life to a man worthy of the deepest devotion, ready for all sacrifices for me, as I felt myself to be for him; when you had taken me, body and soul, I learn by what? by a tr

d convulsed, had listene

arsa; but I will give my life, my

never effaced. There is no par

sa; I have one! I ha

as it necessary for you to b

u love me, and I did not dare to confess that I was not free. If I lied to you, it was because I trembled at not being able to surround you with my devotion; it was because I was

dle and saved her life? Yes, he had loved her, loved her well; and it was because, possessing her love, he feared, like a second Adam, to see himself driven out of paradise, that he had hidden from Marsa the truth. If she had questioned one of the Hungarians or Viennese, who were living at Pau, she could doubtless have known that Count Menko, the first secretary of the embassy of Austria-Hungary at Paris, had married the heiress of one of the richest families of Prague; a pretty but unintelligent girl, not understanding at all the character of her husband; detesting Vienna and Paris, and gradually exacting from Menko that he should live at Prague, near her family, whose ancient ideas and prejudices and inordinate love of mone

knew hardly any one at Pau, as her physicians had forbidden her any excitement; at the foot of the Pyrenees, she lived, as at Maisons- Lafitte, an almost solitary life; and Michel Menko had been

enty, very ignorant of life, her great Oriental eyes seeing nothing of stern reality; but, with all her gentleness, there was a species of Muscovite firmness which was betrayed in the contour of her red lips. It was in vain that sorrow had early made her a woman; Marsa remained ignorant of the world, without any other guide than Vogotzine; suffering and languid, she was fatally at the mercy of the first lie which should caress her ear and stir her heart. From the first, therefore, she had loved Michel; she had, as she herself said, believed that she loved him with a love which would never end, a very ingenuous love, having neither the silliness of a girl who has just left the convent, nor the knowledge of a Parisi

ere were days when Menko did not value his life at a penny, and when he asked himself seriously if suicide were not the simplest means to reach the end; and again, at the least ray of sunshine, he became

tions and inactive dreams. He was a strange combination of faults and good qualities, without egregious vices, but all his virtues capable of being annihilated by passion, anger, jealousy, or grief. With such a nature, every

ess discouragements, apropos of everything and nothing, nor my childish delights, nor my hesitations, nor my confidence, which at t

at once the pen and the sword, and who in case of war, before drawing up a protocol, would have dictated its terms, sabre in hand. Michel indeed stood high with his chi

an if she had never existed. Perhaps he had forgotten, really forgotten, with that faculty of forgetfulness which belongs to the imaginative, that he was

in a god had deceived her, lied to her! He was married. He had treated her as the lowest of women; perhaps he had never even lov

el was hers, and she was his, and she believed that their love would last forever. She did not think that she had long to live, an

ss she had discovered in the man to whom she had given herself,

is short dialogue, every word of which was like a knife in her heart: "What a charming fellow that Menko is!" "Yes; is his wife ugly or a humpback? or is he

rr

ane, she reached home, she never knew how. The next day Michel Menko presented himself at her apartments in the ho

ied, and you

er knees, and implore

! G

sa? For I love you

it. All is over. Go! And let me never know that there

s-Lafitte lived the life of a recluse, while Michel tried in vain to forget the bitterness of his loss. The Tzigana hoped that she was going to die, and bear away with her forever the secret of her betrayal. But no; science had b

a malady of the heart. This death, which freed him, produced a strange effect upon him, not unmingled with remorse. Poor woman! She had worthily borne his name, after a

ispose of his future as he would, imploring her to pardon him, offering her not his love, since she repelled it, but his name, which was her right-a debt o

tely refused to see him, and, as she did not go into society, he never met her. Then he cast himself, with a sort of frenzy, into the dissipation of Paris, trying to forget, to forget at any cost: failing in this, he resigned his position at the embas