Andras

“ He summoned to the castle a physician from Vienna, who battled obstinately and skilfully against the malady from which the Tzigana was suffering. Her weakness and languor kept Marsa, during the cold months, for whole days before the lofty, sculptured chimney-piece, in which burned enormous logs of oak. As the flames gave a rosy tinge to her cheeks and made her beautiful eyes sparkle, Andras said to herself, as he watched her, that she would live, live and be happy with him. ”

“ There was no need for the name of Prince Andras Zilah—or, as they say in Hungary, Zilah Andras—to have been written in characters of blood in the history of his country, for one to divine the hero in him: his erect figure, the carriage of his head, braving life as it had defied the bullets of the enemy, the strange brilliance of his gaze, the sweet inflections of his voice accustomed to command, and the almost caressing gestures of his hand used to the sword—all showed the good man under the brave, and, beneath the indomitable soldier, the true gentleman. ”

“ Andras, how pleased you'll be when the war's ended to say, 'I went over the mountains with Görgei.' Your neighbours will never let you pay for a bottle of silovitz all the rest of your life. 'The cosiest seat in the inn for Andras,' everybody will say. 'He is a warrior, if you like.' Why, the maidens won't dance with another man in the room while you're there. Look at Janko," as a burly fellow shot head foremost into a snowdrift. "I'll warrant he expects to find something good in there. Lucky fellow, Janko!" ”

“ Long after the darkness had covered the plain with gloom, András still lay upon the earth, wrapped in his mantle, his eyes following the swiftly travelling clouds, dwelling dreamily on each twinkling star. ”

“ Does one ever forget? And yet—yes, one does forget, one does forget, I know it. You are the only thing in all my existence, I know only you, I think only of you. I have loved only you!"
Andras shivered, no longer able to fly, moved to the depths of his being by the tones of this adored voice, so long unheard.
"There was no need of bloodshed to destroy that odious past," continued
Marsa. "Ah! I have atoned for it! There is no one on earth who has
suffered as I have. I, who came across your path only to ruin your life! ”

“ And yet breaking off in his pessimism, and with a vision before his eyes of another Andras, young, handsome, leading his hussars to the charge “and yet, it is a pity, Andras, it is a pity.”
The decisions of men are more often dependent upon chance than upon their own will. Prince Andras received an invitation to dinner one day from the little Baroness Dinati, whom he liked very much, and whose husband, Orso Dinati, one of the defenders of Venice in the time of Manin, had been his intimate friend. ”

“ The one whom she worshipped with all her heart, with all the fibres of her being, was Andras! Oh, to be free to love him! Marsa's sole hope and thought were now to win, some day, forgiveness for having said nothing by the most absolute devotion that man had ever encountered. Thinking continually these same thoughts, always putting off taking a decision till the morrow, fearing to break both his heart and hers, the Tzigana let the time slip by until the day came when the fete in celebration of her betrothal was to take place. ”

“ Alone upon the vast plain, away from human eyes, András dared to conjure up this vision, and found mad delight in torturing himself with those Fata Morgana-like dreams of great blue eyes, large and wondering, growing soft and misty, moist and tender with responsive passion, of that exquisite tiny mouth, perfumed and chaste, as the petals of a rosebud, of the soft red lips, parting with a smile, preparing for a kiss, of the warmth of her breath, the tears in her eyes, the quickly drawn breath through her delicate nostrils. ”

“ Every one talks at once, every one wants to see the son of András, their own András, and of the gentle lady, who has been their good angel through sad times, and who has brought the happy laugh to András’ throat once more, and caused his cheering voice to be heard again, from one end of the village to the other. ”

“ I chose Hungary for my bride, and my life must be that of a widower."
In the midst of the austere and thoughtful life he led, Andras preserved, nevertheless, a sort of youthful buoyancy. Many men of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by life, they never wholly lose ”

“ Mechanically, obediently, a tiny white hand was stretched towards him, and András stooped very low, and tremblingly took it in his own. A look of infinite yearning, and tenderness was in his eyes, a look of appeal, infinitely touching and pathetic in the powerful, rugged face; that look but begged for a look, a responsive gaze from those blue eyes, which stared so strangely, so vacantly, as if he, in his humility, his love, his adoration, was far away from her. ”

“ The meal was cleared away, András had asked that the candles might be taken away, he longed to sit quietly in the dark, close to his mother, her fond sympathising hand, resting on his burning forehead, so as to chase away the devils of hatred and revenge, which ran riot in his brain. He longed for peace and darkness too because he wanted to indulge in the nursing of a certain fairy vision, which in broad, prosy light, his own common-sense told him to chase away, but which in the gloom, became akin to a dream, from which the awaking, perhaps, would not be so bitter. ”

“ Marsa Laszlo was cured; she had left Dr. Sims’s institution, and returned to the villa of Maisons-Lafitte.
The poor girl came out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment: To live! To live and think!
And yet—yes, she wished to live to once more see Andras, whose look, fixed upon her, had rekindled the extinct intellectual flame of her being. ”

“ As for András, as he grew up, life seemed indeed a dreary thing. His father, who never spared himself, knew no mercy for him. Every season of the year was one of incessant toil for the fast-growing lad. He became his father’s overseer, his drudge, his slave, not one single groat did he ever get, to spend in merry-making with the young peasants of his own age in the village inn, not one with which to buy a bit of ribbon, for the girl who had looked coquettishly at him, during Mass on Sunday. ”

“ It seemed to her now that she had never had but one name in her heart, and upon her lips—Zilah.
And then this man, this hero, her hero, asked her hand, and said to her, “I love you.”
Andras loved her! With what a terrible contraction of the heart did she put to herself the formidable question: “Have I the right to lie? Shall I have the courage to confess?”
She held in her grasp the most perfect happiness a woman could hope for, the dream of her whole life ”

“ Yanski made special efforts to rouse in Andras the old memories of his fatherland, and to inspire in him again his love for Hungary.
"Ah! I used to have so many hopes and dreams for her future," said Andras; "but idealists have no chance in the world of to-day; so now I am a man who expects nothing of life except its ending. And yet I would like to see once again that old stone castle where I grew up, full of hopes! Hopes? Bah! pretty bubbles, that is all!"
One morning they walked along the cliffs, past the low shanties of the fishermen, as far as Havre ”

“ After her return to Maisons-Lafitte from Vaugirard, she would have killed herself if she had not so desired another interview where she could lay bare her heart. Not daring to appear before Andras, not even thinking of such a thing as seeking him, she resolved to wait some opportunity, some chance, she knew not what. Suddenly, she thought of Yanski Varhely. Through Varhely, she might be able to say to Andras all that she wished her husband—her husband! the very word made her shudder with shame—to know of the reason of her crime. She wrote to the old Hungarian ”

“ Andras’s father, Prince Sandor, educated by a French tutor who had been driven from Paris by the Revolution, was the first of all his family to form any perception of a civilization based upon justice and law, and not upon the almighty power of the sabre. ”

“ The Count departed, thinking it would be done; and, indeed, he had a right to think so. I am very careful, Monseigneur, very careful; and if Monseigneur should some day have need of a—”
The Prince stopped the valet with a gesture. It was repugnant to Andras to have this man mixed up in a secret of his life; and such a secret! But the domestic was evidently ignorant what a commission Menko had confided to him: in his eyes, the package, containing such letters, was like any other package. Andras was persuaded of this by the attitude of the man, humiliated at having failed in his duty. ”

“ Next, Andras put all the gold and jewels which he found in the boat into his pockets, and bidding the boy get in, pushed it off from the shore, leaving the little craft to drift as it would, while he himself ran home. With the treasure he possessed he was able to buy a great herd of reindeer; and he soon married a rich wife, whose parents would not have him as a son-in-law when he was poor, and the two lived happy for ever after. ”

“ Nothing he could see, but to his ears the notes of a pipe floated over the plain, and ever, as he listened, it drew nearer.
A cold shiver shook Andras, and this time he wished himself the feet of a reindeer calf. For when a reindeer calf has reached the age at which he begins first to lose his hair he is so swift that neither beast nor bird can come near him. A reindeer calf is the swiftest of all things living. Yes; but not so swift as a Stalo, as Andras found out when he stopped to rest, and heard the pipe playing! ”

“ Count Yanski Varhely, the oldest, strongest, and most devoted friend of all those who surrounded the Prince, knew very well why this fanciful idea had come to Andras. At forty-four, the Prince was bidding farewell to his bachelor life: it was no folly, and Yanski saw with delight that the ancient race of the Zilahs, from time immemorial servants of patriotism and the right, was not to be extinct with Prince Andras. Hungary, whose future seemed brightening ”

“ There was no chance for doubt; the indistinct nationality of the great lord spoken of thinly veiled the Magyar characteristics of Andras, and the paragraph which preceded the "Little Parisian Romance" was very skilfully arranged to let the public guess the name of the hero of the adventure, while giving to the anecdote related the piquancy of the anonymous, that velvet mask of scandal-mongers.
Then Varhely had only one idea.
"Andras must not know of this article. He scarcely ever reads the journals; but some one may have sent this paper to him." ”

“ It is you who make of a girl of the steppes a proud and honored wife, who asks herself why all this happiness has come to her.” Then, nestling close to Andras, and resting her dark head upon his shoulder, she continued: “We have a proverb, you remember, which says, Life is a tempest. I have repeated it very often with bitter sadness. But now, that wicked proverb is effaced by the refrain of our old song, Life is a chalet of pearls.” ”

“ The days drag—they drag—yes, they do. No one speaks. Most of the time I dine alone. Shall I tell you?—no—yes, I will. Marsa, yes, well! Marsa, she is good, very good—thinks only of the poor-the poor, you know! But whatever Doctor Fargeas may say about it, she is mad! You can’t deceive me! She is insane!—still insane!”
“Insane?” said Andras, striving to control his emotion.
The General, who was now staggering violently, clung desperately to the Prince. They had reached the boulevard, and Andras, hailing a cab, made Vogotzine get in, and instructed the coachman to drive to the Bois. ”

“ They wait, and some day, catching a glimpse of themselves in a glass, they are amazed to find wrinkles and gray hairs.”
No longer having a home in his own country, Prince Andras had never dreamed of making another abroad. He hired the sumptuous hotel he inhabited at the top of the Champs Elysees, when houses were rather scattered there. Fashion, and the ascensional movement of Paris toward the Arc de Triomphe, had come to seek him. ”

“ The other did not seem to understand; but he smiled, thanked the reporter, and strolled away from the parapet, telling all the people he met: “It is a fete! Prince Andras, a Hungarian, is about to be married. Prince Andras Zilah! A fete on board a steamer! ”

“ It is all very well, András, but you cannot employ every able-bodied man this side of the Tarna. I wish you could, for then my brother would not have to work for the lord of Bideskút, which he does, in fear and trembling, lest the devil should make a pick-a-back of him, every time he stoops down to mow. ”

“ Why should he curse, he would think, other beings than Marsa and Menko? He had no right to hate any one else; he had no enemy that he knew of, and he was honored in Paris, his new country.
No enemy? No, not one. And yet, one morning, with his letters, his valet brought him a journal addressed to "Prince Zilah," and, on unfolding it, Andras's attention was attracted to two paragraphs in the column headed "Echoes of Paris," which were marked with a red-lead pencil. ”