by Anthology
I emptied the goblet at a gulp. The company began to seem charming.
"Well, Captain Morhange," Le Mesge called out to my comrade who had taken a mouthful of fish, "what do you say to this acanthopterygian? It was caught to-day in the lake in the oasis. Do you begin to admit the hypothesis of the Saharan sea?"
"The fish is an argument," my companion replied.
Suddenly he became silent. The door had opened. A white Targa entered. The diners stopped talking.
The veiled man walked slowly toward Morhange and touched his right arm.
"Very well," said Morhange.
He got up and followed the messenger.
The pitcher of Ahaggar, 1879, stood between me and Count Bielowsky. I filled my goblet—a goblet which held a pint, and gulped it down.
The Hetman looked at me sympathetically.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Le Mesge, nudging me with his elbow. "Antinea has respect for the hierarchic order."
The Reverend Spardek smiled modestly.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Le Mesge again.
My glass was empty. For a moment I was tempted to hurl it at the head of the Fellow in History. But what of it? I filled it and emptied it again.
"Morhange will miss this delicious roast of mutton," said the Professor, more and more hilarious, as he awarded himself a thick slice of meat.
"He won't regret it," said the Hetman crossly. "This is not roast; it is ram's horn. Really Koukou is beginning to make fun of us."
"Blame it on the Reverend," the shrill voice of Le Mesge cut in. "I have told him often enough to hunt other proselytes and leave our cook alone."
"Professor," Spardek began with dignity.
"I maintain my contention," cried Le Mesge, who seemed to me to be getting a bit overloaded. "I call the gentleman to witness," he went on, turning to me. "He has just come. He is unbiased. Therefore I ask him: has one the right to spoil a Bambara cook by addling his head with theological discussions for which he has no predisposition?"
"Alas!" the pastor replied sadly. "You are mistaken. He has only too strong a propensity to controversy."
"Koukou is a good-for-nothing who uses Colas' cow as an excuse for doing nothing and letting our scallops burn," declared the Hetman. "Long live the Pope!" he cried, filling the glasses all around.
"I assure you that this Bambara worries me," Spardek went on with great dignity. "Do you know what he has come to? He denies transubstantiation. He is within an inch of the heresy of Zwingli and Oecolampades. Koukou denies transubstantiation."
"Sir," said Le Mesge, very much excited, "cooks should be left in peace. Jesus, whom I consider as good a theologian as you, understood that, and it never occurred to him to call Martha away from her oven to talk nonsense to her."
"Exactly so," said the Hetman approvingly.
He was holding a jar between his knees and trying to draw its cork.
"Oh, Côtes Rôties, wines from the Côte-Rôtie!" he murmured to me as he finally succeeded. "Touch glasses."
"Koukou denies transubstantiation," the pastor continued, sadly emptying his glass.
"Eh!" said the Hetman of Jitomir in my ear, "let them talk on. Don't you see that they are quite drunk?"
His own voice was thick. He had the greatest difficulty in the world in filling my goblet to the brim.
I wanted to push the pitcher away. Then an idea came to me:
"At this very moment, Morhange…. Whatever he may say…. She is so beautiful."
I reached out for the glass and emptied it once more.
Le Mesge and the pastor were now engaged in the most extraordinary religious controversy, throwing at each other's heads the Book of Common Prayer, The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Unigenitus. Little by little, the Hetman began to show that ascendancy over them, which is the characteristic of a man of the world even when he is thoroughly drunk; the superiority of education over instruction.
Count Bielowsky had drunk five times as much as the Professor or the pastor. But he carried his wine ten times better.
"Let us leave these drunken fellows," he said with disgust. "Come on, old man. Our partners are waiting in the gaming room."
"Ladies and gentlemen," said the Hetman as we entered. "Permit me to present a new player to you, my friend, Lieutenant de Saint-Avit."
"Let it go at that," he murmured in my ear. "They are the servants. But I like to fool myself, you see."
I saw that he was very drunk indeed.
The gaming room was very long and narrow. A huge table, almost level with the floor and surrounded with cushions on which a dozen natives were lying, was the chief article of furniture. Two engravings on the wall gave evidence of the happiest broadmindedness in taste; one of da Vinci's St. John the Baptist, and the Maison des Dernières Cartouches of Alphonse de Neuville.
On the table were earthenware goblets. A heavy jar held palm liqueur.
I recognized acquaintances among those present; my masseur, the manicure, the barber, and two or three Tuareg who had lowered their veils and were gravely smoking long pipes. While waiting for something better, all were plunged in the delights of a card game that looked like "rams." Two of Antinea's beautiful ladies in waiting, Aguida and Sydya, were among the number. Their smooth bistre skins gleamed beneath veils shot with silver. I was sorry not to see the red silk tunic of Tanit-Zerga. Again, I thought of Morhange, but only for an instant.
"The chips, Koukou," demanded the Hetman, "We are not here to amuse ourselves."
The Zwinglian cook placed a box of many-colored chips in front of him. Count Bielowsky set about counting them and arranging them in little piles with infinite care.
"The white are worth a louis," he explained to me. "The red, a hundred francs. The yellow, five hundred. The green, a thousand. Oh, it's the devil of a game that we play here. You will see."
"I open with ten thousand," said the Zwinglian cook.
"Twelve thousand," said the Hetman.
"Thirteen," said Sydya with a slow smile, as she seated herself on the count's knee and began to arrange her chips lovingly in little piles.
"Fourteen," I said.
"Fifteen," said the sharp voice of Rosita, the old manicure.
"Seventeen," proclaimed the Hetman.
"Twenty thousand," the cook broke in.
He hammered on the table and, casting a defiant look at us, repeated:
"I take it at twenty thousand."
The Hetman made an impatient gesture.
"That devil, Koukou! You can't do anything against the beast. You will have to play carefully, Lieutenant."
Koukou had taken his place at the end of the table. He threw down the cards with an air which abashed me.
"I told you so; the way it was at Anna Deslions'," the Hetman murmured proudly.
"Make your bets, gentlemen," yelped the Negro. "Make your bets."
"Wait, you beast," called Bielowsky. "Don't you see that the glasses are empty? Here, Cacambo."
The goblets were filled immediately by the jolly masseur.
"Cut," said Koukou, addressing Sydya, the beautiful Targa who sat at his right.
The girl cut, like one who knows superstitions, with her left hand. But it must be said that her right was busy lifting a cup to her lips. I watched the curve of her beautiful throat.
"My deal," said Koukou.
We were thus arranged: at the left, the Hetman, Aguida, whose waist he had encircled with the most aristocratic freedom, Cacambo, a Tuareg woman, then two veiled Negroes who were watching the game intently. At the right, Sydya, myself, the old manicure, Rosita, Barouf, the barber, another woman and two white Tuareg, grave and attentive, exactly opposite those on the left.
"Give me one," said the Hetman.
Sydya made a negative gesture.
Koukou drew, passed a four-spot to the Hetman, gave himself a five.
"Eight," announced Bielowsky.
"Six," said pretty Sydya.
"Seven," broke in Koukou. "One card makes up for anoth
er," he added coldly.
"I double," said the Hetman.
Cacambo and Aguida followed his example. On our side, we were more careful. The manicure especially would not risk more than twenty francs at a time.
"I demand that the cards be evened up," said Koukou imperturbably.
"This fellow is unbearable," grumbled the count. "There, are you satisfied?"
Koukou dealt and laid down a nine.
"My country and my honor!" raged Bielowsky. "I had an eight."
I had two kings, and so showed no ill temper. Rosita took the cards out of my hands.
I watched Sydya at my right. Her heavy black hair covered her shoulders. She was really very beautiful, though a bit tipsy, as were all that fantastic company. She looked at me, too, but with lowered eyelids, like a timid little wild animal.
"Oh," I thought. "She may well be afraid. I am labelled 'No trespassing.'"
I touched her foot. She drew it back in fright.
"Who wants cards?" Koukou demanded.
"Not I," said the Hetman.
"Served," said Sydya.
The cook drew a four.
"Nine," he said.
"That card was meant for me," cursed the count. "And five, I had a five. If only I had never promised his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon II never to cut fives! There are times when it is hard, very hard. And look at that beast of a Negro who plays Charlemagne."
It was true. Koukou swept in three-quarters of the chips, rose with dignity, and bowed to the company.
"Till to-morrow, gentlemen."
"Get along, the whole pack of you," howled the Hetman of Jitomir. "Stay with me, Lieutenant de Saint-Avit."
When we were alone, he poured out another huge cupfull of liqueur. The ceiling of the room was lost in the gray smoke.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"After midnight. But you are not going to leave me like this, my dear boy? I am heavy-hearted."
He wept bitterly. The tail of his coat spread out on the divan behind him like the apple-green wings of a beetle.
"Isn't Aguida a beauty?" he went on, still weeping. "She makes me think of the Countess de Teruel, though she is a little darker. You know the Countess de Teruel, Mercedes, who went in bathing nude at Biarritz, in front of the rock of the Virgin, one day when Prince Bismarck was standing on the foot-bridge. You do not remember her? Mercedes de Teruel."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"I forget; you must have been too young. Two, perhaps three years old. A child. Yes, a child. Oh, my child, to have been of that generation and to be reduced to playing cards with savages … I must tell you…."
I stood up and pushed him off.
"Stay, stay," he implored. "I will tell you everything you want to know, how I came here, things I have never told anyone. Stay, I must unbosom myself to a true friend. I will tell you everything, I repeat. I trust you. You are a Frenchman, a gentleman. I know that you will repeat nothing to her."
"That I will repeat nothing to her?… To whom?"
His voice stuck in his throat. I thought I saw a shudder of fear pass over him.
"To her … to Antinea," he murmured.
I sat down again.
XIII
THE HETMAN OF JITOMIR'S STORY
Count Casimir had reached that stage where drunkenness takes on a kind of gravity, of regretfulness.
He thought a little, then began his story. I regret that I cannot reproduce more perfectly its archaic flavor.
"When the grapes begin to color in Antinea's garden, I shall be sixty-eight. It is very sad, my dear boy, to have sowed all your wild oats. It isn't true that life is always beginning over again. How bitter, to have known the Tuileries in 1860, and to have reached the point where I am now!
"One evening, just before the war (I remember that Victor Black was still living), some charming women whose names I need not disclose (I read the names of their sons from time to time in the society news of the Gaulois) expressed to me their desire to rub elbows with some real demi-mondaines of the artist quarter. I took them to a ball at the Grande Chaumière. There was a crowd of young painters, models, students. In the midst of the uproar, several couples danced the cancan till the chandeliers shook with it. We noticed especially a little, dark man, dressed in a miserable top-coat and checked trousers which assuredly knew the support of no suspenders. He was cross-eyed, with a wretched beard and hair as greasy as could be. He bounded and kicked extravagantly. The ladies called him Léon Gambetta.
"What an annoyance, when I realize that I need only have felled this wretched lawyer with one pistol shot to have guaranteed perfect happiness to myself and to my adopted country, for, my dear fellow, I am French at heart, if not by birth.
"I was born in 1829, at Warsaw, of a Polish father and a Russian mother. It is from her that I hold my title of Hetman of Jitomir. It was restored to me by Czar Alexander II on a request made to him on his visit to Paris, by my august master, the Emperor Napoleon III.
"For political reasons, which I cannot describe without retelling the history of unfortunate Poland, my father, Count Bielowsky, left Warsaw in 1830, and went to live in London. After the death of my mother, he began to squander his immense fortune—from sorrow, he said. When, in his time, he died at the period of the Prichard affair, he left me barely a thousand pounds sterling of income, plus two or three systems of gaming, the impracticability of which I learned later.
"I will never be able to think of my nineteenth and twentieth years without emotion, for I then completely liquidated this small inheritance. London was indeed an adorable spot in those days. I had a jolly bachelor's apartment in Piccadilly.
"'Picadilly! Shops, palaces, bustle and breeze, The whirling of wheels and the murmur of trees.'
"Fox hunting in a briska, driving a buggy in Hyde Park, the rout, not to mention the delightful little parties with the light Venuses of Drury Lane, this took all my time. All? I am unjust. There was also gaming, and a sentiment of filial piety forced me to verify the systems of the late Count, my father. It was gaming which was the cause of the event I must describe to you, by which my life was to be so strangely changed.
"My friend, Lord Malmesbury, had said to me a hundred times, 'I must take you to see an exquisite creature who lives in Oxford Street, number 277, Miss Howard.' One evening I went with him. It was the twenty-second of February, 1848. The mistress of the house was really marvelously beautiful, and the guests were charming. Besides Malmesbury, I observed several acquaintances: Lord Clebden, Lord Chesterfield, Sir Francis Mountjoye, Major in the Second Life Guards, and Count d'Orsay. They played cards and then began to talk politics. Events in France played the main part in the conversation and they discussed endlessly the consequences of the revolt that had broken out in Paris that same morning, in consequence of the interdiction of the banquet in the 12th arrondissement, of which word had just been received by telegram. Up to that time, I had never bothered myself with public affairs. So I don't know what moved me to affirm with the impetuosity of my nineteen years that the news from France meant the Republic next day and the Empire the day after….
"The company received my sally with a discreet laugh, and their looks were centered on a guest who made the fifth at a bouillotte table where they had just stopped playing.
"The guest smiled, too. He rose and came towards me. I observed that he was of middle height, perhaps even shorter, buttoned tightly into a blue frock coat, and that his eye had a far-off, dreamy look.
"All the players watched this scene with delighted amusement.
"'Whom have I the honor of addressing?' he asked in a very gentle voice.
"'Count Bielowsky,' I answered coolly to show him that the difference in our ages was not sufficient to justify the interrogation.
"Well, my dear Count, may your prediction indeed be realized; and I hope that you will not neglect the Tuileries,' said the guest in the blue coat, with a smile.
"And he added, finally consenting to present himself:
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br /> "'Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.'
"I played no active rôle in the coup d'état, and I do not regret it. It is a principle with me that a stranger should not meddle with the internal affairs of a country. The prince understood this discretion, and did not forget the young man who had been of such good omen to him.
"I was one of the first whom he called to the Elysée. My fortune was definitely established by a defamatory note on 'Napoleon the little.' The next year, when Mgr. Sibour was out of the way, I was made Gentleman of the Chamber, and the Emperor was even so kind as to have me marry the daughter of the Marshal Repeto, Duke of Mondovi.
"I have no scruple in announcing that this union was not what it should have been. The Countess, who was ten years older than I, was crabbed and not particularly pretty. Moreover, her family had insisted resolutely on a marriage portion. Now I had nothing at this time except the twenty-five thousand pounds for my appointment as Gentleman of the Chamber. A sad lot for anyone on intimate terms with the Count d'Orsay and the Duke of Gramont-Caderousse! Without the kindness of the Emperor, where would I have been?
"One morning in the spring of 1852, I was in my study opening my mail. There was a letter from His Majesty, calling me to the Tuileries at four o'clock; a letter from Clémentine, informing me that she expected me at five o'clock at her house. Clémentine was the beautiful one for whom, just then, I was ready to commit any folly. I was so proud of her that, one evening at the Maison Dorée, I flaunted her before Prince Metternich, who was tremendously taken with her. All the court envied me that conquest; and I was morally obliged to continue to assume its expenses. And then Clémentine was so pretty! The Emperor himself…. The other letters, good lord, the other letters were the bills of the dressmakers of that young person, who, in spite of my discreet remonstrances, insisted on having them sent to my conjugal dwelling.
"There were bills for something over forty thousand francs: gowns and ball dresses from Gagelin-Opigez, 23 Rue de Richelieu; hats and bonnets from Madame Alexandrine, 14 Rue d'Antin; lingerie and many petticoats from Madame Pauline, 100 Rue de Clery; dress trimmings and gloves from the Ville de Lyon, 6 Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin; foulards from the Malle des Indes; handkerchiefs from the Compagnie Irlandaise; laces from Ferguson; cosmetics from Candès…. This whitening cream of Candès, in particular, overwhelmed me with stupefaction. The bill showed fifty-one flasks. Six hundred and twenty-seven francs and fifty centimes' worth of whitening cream from Candès…. Enough to soften the skin of a squadron of a hundred guards!