Clémentine rose, seated herself on Adam’s knees, and putting her arm round his neck, kissed him on the brow, saying:
“Dear heart, how noble I think you! And what did Paz say?”
“Thaddeus?” said the Count; “he turned pale and said nothing.”
“Thaddeus—is that his name?”
“Yes.—Thaddeus folded up the paper and returned it to me, saying, ‘I thought, Adam, that we were as one in life and death, and that we should never part; do you wish to see no more of me?’—‘Oh,’ said I, ‘is that the way you take it? Well, then, say no more about it. If I am ruined, you will be ruined.’—Said he, ‘You are not rich enough to live as a Laginski should; and do you not need a friend to take care of your concerns, who will be father and brother to you, and a trusted confidant?’ My dear girl, Paz, as he uttered the words, spoke with a calmness of tone and look which covered a motherly feeling, but which betrayed the gratitude of an Arab, the devotion of a dog, and the friendship of a savage, always ready and always unassuming. On my honor! I took him in our Polish fashion, laying my hand on his shoulder, and I kissed him on the lips. ‘For life and death, then,’ said I. ‘All I have is yours, do just as you will.’
“It was he who found me this house for almost nothing. He sold my shares when they were high, and bought when they were low, and we purchased this hovel out of the difference. He is a connoisseur in horses, and deals in them so well that my stable has cost me very little, and yet I have the finest beasts and the prettiest turnout in Paris. Our servants, old Polish soldiers whom he found, would pass through the fire for us. While I seem to be ruining myself, Paz keeps my house with such perfect order and economy that he has even made good some losses at play, the follies of a young man. My Thaddeus is as cunning as two Genoese, as keen for profit as a Polish Jew, as cautious as a good housekeeper. I have never been able to persuade him to live as I did when I was a bachelor. Sometimes it has needed the gentle violence of friendship to induce him to come to the play when I was going alone, or to one of the dinners I was giving at an eating house to a party of congenial companions. He does not like the life of drawing-rooms.”
“Then what does he like?” asked Clémentine.
“He loves Poland, and weeps over her. His only extravagance has been money sent, more in my name than his own, to some of our poor exiles.”
“Dear, how fond I shall be of that good fellow,” said the Countess. “He seems to me as simple as everything that is truly great.”
“All the pretty things you see here,” said Adam, praising his friend with the most generous security, “have been found by Paz; he has bought them at sales, or by some chance. Oh! he is keener at a bargain than a trader. If you see him rubbing his hands in the courtyard, it is because he has exchanged a good horse for a better. He lives in me; his delight is to see me well dressed in a dazzlingly smart carriage. He performs all the duties he imposes on himself without fuss or display. One night I had lost twenty thousand francs at whist. ‘What will Paz say?’ thought I to myself as I reached home. Paz gave me the sum, not without a sigh; but he did not blame me even by a look. This sigh checked me more than all the remonstrances of uncles, wives, or mothers in similar circumstances. ‘You regret the money?’ I asked him.—‘Oh, not for you, nor for myself; no, I was only thinking that twenty poor relations of mine could have lived on it for a year.’
“The family of Paz, you understand, is quite equal to that of Laginski, and I have never regarded my dear Paz as an inferior. I have tried to be as magnanimous in my degree as he in his. I never go out or come in without going to Paz, as if he were my father. My fortune is his. In short, Thaddeus knows that at this day I would rush into danger to rescue him, as I have done twice before.”
“That is not a small thing to say, my dear,” remarked the Countess. “Devotion is a lightning-flash. Men devote themselves in war, but they no longer devote themselves in Paris.”
“Well, then,” said Adam, “for Paz I am always in war. Our two natures have preserved their asperities and their faults, but the mutual intimacy of our souls has tightened the bonds, already so close, of our friendship. A man may save his comrade’s life, and kill him afterwards if he finds him a bad companion; but we have gone through what makes friendship indissoluble. There is between us that constant exchange of pleasing impressions on both sides which makes friendship, from that point of view, a richer joy, perhaps, than love.”
A pretty little hand shut the Count’s mouth so suddenly that the movement was almost a blow.
“Yes, indeed, my darling,” said he. “Friendship knows nothing of the bankruptcy of sentiment, the insolvency of pleasures. Love, after giving more than it has, ends by giving less than it receives.”
“On both sides alike then,” said Clémentine, smiling.
“Yes,” said Adam. “While friendship can but increase. You need not pout. We, my angel, are as much friends as lovers; we, at least, I hope, have combined the two feelings in our happy marriage.”
“I will explain to you what has made you two such good friends,” said Clémentine. “The difference in your love arises
