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Updated: June 24, 2025
It was the eve of the marriage-day of Prince Andras Zilah and Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo, and Marsa sat alone in her chamber, where the white robes she was to wear next day were spread out on the bed; alone for the last time to-morrow she would be another's.
He dragged himself away from the contemplation of the stone threshold, where slept the tired man drunk perhaps, at all events happier than the Prince and proceeded on his way through the woods to the abode of Marsa Laszlo. They had christened it The Vale o f Violets. How many memories were in that sweet name, each one of which stabbed and exasperated Zilah, rising before him like so many spectres.
He could not sleep; fever burned in his blood. He rose, and tried to read; but before the printed page he saw continually Marsa Laszlo, like the spectre of his happiness. "How cowardly human nature is!" he exclaimed, hurling away the book. "Is it possible that I love her still? Shall I love her forever?"
And, in the great halls hung with tapestry and filled with pictures which the conquerors had respected, before those portraits of magnates superb in their robes of red or green velvet edged with fur, curved sabres by their sides and aigrettes upon their heads, all reproducing a common trait of rough frankness, with their long moustaches, their armor and their hussar uniforms Marsa Laszlo, who knew them well, these heroes of her country, these Zilah princes who had fallen upon the field of battle, said to the last of them all, to Andras Zilah, before Ferency Zilah, before Sandor, before the Princesses Zilah who had long slept in "dull, cold marble," and who had been no prouder than she of the great name they bore: "Do you know the reason why, equal to these in devotion and courage, you are superior to them all!
This was worse than all the rest. How could he punish her? Punish her? Why not? Was not Marsa Laszlo his wife? That villa of Maisons-Lafitte, where she thought herself so safe, was his by law. He, the husband, had a right to enter there at any hour and demand of his wife an account of his honor. "She wished this name of Zilah!
There was a certain womanly coquetry, mingled with a profound love of the soil where her martyred mother reposed, in the desire which Marsa Laszlo had to be called the Tzigana, instead of by her own name. The Tzigana! This name, as clear cut, resonant and expressive as the czimbaloms of the Hungarian musicians, lent her an additional, original charm.
And he was decidedly pleased with this Marsa Laszlo, against whom he had instinctively felt some prejudice when Zilah spoke to him for the first time of marrying her. To make of a Tzigana for Marsa was half Tzigana a Princess Zilah, seemed to Count Varhely a slightly bold resolution.
Her dream of happiness ended in this reality Menko saying: "You have been mine; you shall be mine again, or you are lost!" Lost! And how? With cold resolution, Marsa Laszlo asked herself this question, terrible as a question of life or death: "What would the Prince do, if, after I became his wife, he should learn the truth?" "What would he do? He would kill me," thought the Tzigana.
And was not this existence sweet and pleasant, compared with the life led by Tisza in the castle of the suburbs of Moscow? In this solitude, in the villa of Maisons-Lafitte, Andras Zilah was again to see Marsa Laszlo. He came not once, but again and again.
That very evening he was to be in the house of Marsa Laszlo Marsa who bore, in spite of all, the title and name of the Zilahs. Was it possible? After the marriage, after this woman's vows and tears, these two beings, separated for a time, were to be united again. And he, Andras, had almost felt pity for her!
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