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Varhely and Valla waited at the hotel until one of Balla's friends, who lived at Pistoja, should inform him of the arrival of the Hungarian count. And Menko did, in fact, come there three days after Varhely reached Florence. "To-morrow, my dear Valla," said Yanski, "you will accompany me to see Menko?" "With pleasure," responded the Italian.
Upon my word of honor, I believe that, if you should refuse him, he would commit some folly, some madness, something fatal. Do you understand?" "Ah!" ejaculated Marsa, with an icy chill in her veins. "That is my opinion," continued Yanski, harshly. "He is wounded. It remains with you to decide whether the bullet be mortal or not."
"What remains to you if she dies?" said old Yanski, slowly. "There remains to you what you had at twenty years, that which never dies. There remains to you what was the love and the passion of all the Zilah princes who lie yonder, and who experienced the same suffering, the same torture, the same despair, as you. There remains to you our first love, my dear Andras, the fatherland!"
We shall both end old bachelors, my good Varhely, and spend our evenings playing checkers, that mimic warfare of old men." "Yes, that is all very well for me, who have no very famous name to perpetuate; but the Zilahs should not end with you. I want some sturdy little hussar whom I can teach to sit a horse, and who also will call me his good old Yanski."
Marsa recoiled in fear at hearing this cry and the sudden appearance of the Prince; and, trembling like a leaf, with her face still turned toward that threshold where Andras stood, she murmured, in a voice choked with emotion: "Who is there? Who is it?" Yanski Varhely, unable to believe his eyes, advanced, as if to make sure. "Zilah!" he exclaimed, in his turn.
"What does the doctor say?" replied Yanski. "Does he hope to save her?" Zilah made no response. Varhely's question was the most terrible of answers. Ensconced in an armchair, the Prince then laid bare his heart to old Varhely, sitting near him. She was about to die, then! Solitude! Was that to be the end of his life?
He often repeated this to Yanski Varhely, who had never forsaken him Yanski Varhely, the impoverished old hussar, the ruined gentleman, now professor of Latin and mathematics at Paris, and living near the Prince off the product of his lessons and a small remnant he had managed to save from the wreck of his property. "Hungary will spring up again, Yanski; Hungary is immortal!" Andras would exclaim.
Michel Menko was evidently intending to approach her, and he had made a few steps toward her, when he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder. He turned, thinking it was the Prince; but it was Yanski Varhely, who said to the young man: "Well, my dear Count, you did right to come from London to this fete.
Yanski, on the whole, had not greatly troubled himself to demonstrate mathematically or philosophically that a "hussar pupil" was an absolute necessity to him. People can not be forced, against their will, to marry; and the Prince, after all, was free, if he chose, to let the name of Zilah die with him.
Meanwhile, the Prince led the life of a man wounded to the heart; seeking solitude, and shutting himself in his hotel, in the Rue Balzac, like a wolf in his den; receiving no one but Varhely, and sometimes treating even old Yanski coldly; then, suddenly emerging from his retirement, and trying to take up his life again; appearing at the meetings of the Hungarian aid society, of which he was president; showing himself at the races, at the theatre, or even at Baroness Dinati's; longing to break the dull monotony of his now ruined life; and, with a sort of bravado, looking society and opinion full in the face, as if to surprise a smile or a sneer at his expense, and punish it.
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