At the end of a fortnight Clémentine was obliged to give up some of the nursing, or risk falling ill from so much fatigue. Paz was inexhaustible. At last, about the end of August, Bianchon, the family doctor, answered for the Count’s life:
“Ah, madame,” said he to Clémentine, “you are under not the slightest obligation to me. But for his friend we could not have saved him!”
On the day after the terrible scene in the Chinese pavilion, the Marquis de Ronquerolles had come to see his nephew, for he was setting out for Russia with a secret mission; and Paz, overwhelmed by the previous evening, had spoken a few words to the diplomat.
On the very day when Count Adam and his wife went out for the first time for a drive, at the moment when the carriage was turning from the steps, an orderly came into the courtyard and asked for Count Paz. Thaddeus, who was sitting with his back to the horses, turned round to take a letter bearing the stamp of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and put it into the side-pocket of his coat, with a decision which precluded any questions on the part of Clémentine or Adam. It cannot be denied that persons of good breeding are masters of the language that uses no speech. Nevertheless, as they reached the Porte Maillot, Adam, assuming the privilege of a convalescent whose whims must be indulged, said to Thaddeus:
“There can be no indiscretions between two brothers who love each other as you and I do; you know what is in that letter; tell me, I am in a fever of curiosity.”
Clémentine looked at Thaddeus as an angry woman can, and said to her husband, “He has been so sulky with me these two months, that I shall take good care not to press him.”
“Oh dear me!” replied Thaddeus, “as I cannot hinder the newspapers from publishing it, I may very well reveal the secret. The Emperor Nicholas does me the favor of appointing me Captain on service in a regiment starting with the Kiva Expedition.”
“And you are going?” cried Adam.
“I shall go, my dear fellow. I came as Captain, and as Captain I return. Malaga might lead me to make a fool of myself. We shall dine together tomorrow for the last time. If I did not set out in September for St. Petersburg, I should have to travel overland, and I am not rich. I must leave Malaga her little independence. How can I fail to provide for the future of the only woman who has understood me? Malaga thinks me a great man! Malaga thinks me handsome! Malaga may perhaps be faithless, but she would go through—”
“Through a hoop for you, and fall on her feet on horseback!” said Clémentine, sharply.
“Oh, you do not know Malaga,” said the Captain, with deep bitterness, and an ironical look which made Clémentine uneasy and silent.
“Farewell to the young trees of this lovely Bois de Boulogne, where Parisian ladies drive, and the exiles wander who have found a home here. I know that my eyes will never again see the green trees of the Allée de Mademoiselle, or of the Route des Dames, nor the acacias, nor the cedar at the Ronds-points.
“On the Asiatic frontier, obedient to the schemes of the great Emperor I have chosen to be my master, promoted perhaps to command an army, for sheer courage, for constantly risking my life, I may indeed regret the Champs-Élysées where you, once, made me take a place in the carriage, by your side.—Finally, I shall never cease to regret the severity of Malaga—of the Malaga I am at this moment thinking of.”
This was said in a tone that made Clémentine shiver.
“Then you love Malaga very truly?” she said.
“I have sacrificed for her the honor we never sacrifice—”
“Which?”
“That which we would fain preserve at any cost in the eyes of the idol we worship.”
After this speech Thaddeus kept impenetrable silence; he broke it only when, as they drove down the Champs-Élysées, he pointed to a wooden structure and said, “There is the circus!”
Before their last dinner he went to the Russian Embassy for a few minutes, and from thence to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and he started for le Havre next morning before the Countess and Adam were up.
“I have lofft a friend,” said Adam, with tears in his eyes, as he learned that Count Paz was gone, “a friend in the truest sense of the word, and I cannot think what has made him flee from my house as if it were the plague. We are not the sort of friends to quarrel over a woman,” he went on, looking full at Clémentine, “and yet all he said yesterday about Malaga—But he never laid the tip of his finger on the girl.”
“How do you know?” asked Clémentine.
“Well, I was naturally curious to see Mademoiselle Turquet, and the poor girl cannot account for Thaddeus’ extraordinary reserve—”
“That is enough,” said the Countess, going off to her own room, and saying to herself, “I have surely been the victim of some sublime hoax.”
She had scarcely made the reflection, when Constantino placed in her hands the following letter, which Thaddeus had scrawled in the night:—
“Countess—To go to be killed in the Caucasus, and to bear the burden of your scorn, is too much; a man should die unmutilated. I loved you from the first time I saw you, as a man loves the woman
