Gloria Victis! Part 15

Truyn doffed his hat and bowed low on his horse's neck.

"Who is it whom you hold worthy of so profound a bow, papa?" Gabrielle asked.

"Rabbi von Selz," Truyn made answer, "in times like these such people should be treated with special respect, if only for the sake of the lower cla.s.ses who always regulate their conduct somewhat by ours."

"Oho, uncle, your bow was a political demonstration, then," Oswald remarked.

"To a certain degree," Truyn replied, "but Stern is, moreover, a very distinguished man."

"He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these families, Nathan and Shylock."

"Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you, comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your Laudamus together."

CHAPTER V.

"There is nothing to be done with the fellow.--I never encountered such weakness of mind," exclaimed Capriani to his wife.

The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg at half-past three, although the whole family, especially those of the second generation, accustomed to late foreign hours, found this earlier hour very inconvenient.

"Of whom are you talking?" Madame Capriani asked in her depressed tone; she was sitting erect upon a small gilt chair, she wore a gray, silk-muslin gown, rather over-trimmed, _gants de Suede_, and an air of constraint.

"Of whom are you talking?" she asked a second time, smoothing her gloves.

"Of whom?--of that blockhead, Malzin," growled Capriani.

"I told you from the first that he would never be able to fill that position," his wife rejoined.

"Fill--!" Capriani shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, "fill--! it takes him two hours to write a business-letter. But I was prepared for that. His office is a sinecure; the salary that I pay him is an alms,--but Alfred Capriani can do as he pleases there,--and at least the fellow understands something about horses. What outrages me is to see how he squanders my money, the money that I give him. He ransacks the country round to buy back from the peasants relics of his parents.

First an old clock, that struck twelve just as he was born, then an old piano, upon which his sisters used to strum the scales. 'Tis enough to drive one mad!"

Frau von Capriani looked distressed. "That is a matter of sentiment,"

she suggested.

"A matter of sentiment--a matter of sentiment," Capriani repeated sarcastically. "It would be a matter of sentiment and conscience to think of saving up something for his children."

"You are right, you are right," the Countess rejoined, in her emphatic yet not unmelodious Russian-German, "but this time you are in some measure to blame for his folly. I begged you a hundred times to ask him what he would like to keep for himself of the furniture which was entirely useless to us. Instead, you had it all put up at auction."

"And the proceeds of the sale are to be devoted to the building of a new school, to be entirely independent of ecclesiastical influence,"

said Capriani, "the old rubbish shall aid, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, in the spread of modern liberal ideas. It is my aim to root out prejudices not to foster them. Would you have me minister directly to Malzin's folly? It would be nonsense. It makes me shudder to see this man, who owns nothing, positively nothing, except what I give him out of sheer kindness, and who ought to look ahead, keeping his eyes fixed upon the past, and sentimentally collecting empty bon-bon boxes, the contents of which his forefathers have devoured to the last crumb. He is the personification of the invincible narrowness of his cla.s.s."

"He is a good honest man," the Contessa said gently.

"Honest,--honest!" Capriani repeated impatiently, "a man whose desires have been antic.i.p.ated from his childhood, upon whose plate the pheasants have always fallen ready trussed and roasted, would naturally not contemplate picking pockets. To be sure, he might be tempted to try it, but he can't do it--he is too unpractical to be dishonest. There is nothing praiseworthy in that, for all the honesty that you ascribe to him he is a thorough selfish egotist; without the smallest scruple he robs his own children of thousands."

"Malzin!" Frau von Capriani exclaimed, "why he would let his ears be cut off for his children, and if he refused to lose his hands too, it would only be because he needed them to work for his family."

"To work!" rejoined Capriani ironically. "If he would only sacrifice for their sakes his miserable pride of rank he could do far more for them than by his work! He--and work! Do you know what reply he made to my splendid offer for his family vault? 'The vault is not for sale, it is the only spot of home that is left me. I will at least lie among my people when I am dead!' Can you conceive of greater insolence?"

"Insolence--poor Malzin--he is as modest....!"

"Modest!" sneered Capriani, interrupting her, "he is fairly bristling with arrogance. A starving pauper, living on my bounty, and all the while thinking himself superior to all of us. Intercourse with us is not at all to his taste."

"He is always exquisitely courteous to me. I like him very much," Frau von Capriani declared. Her husband's constant attacks upon Malzin were beyond measure painful to her.

"Men of his stamp are always gracious to ladies," snarled Capriani.

Meanwhile his two children had entered the room, Arthur and Ad'lin, both in faultless toilettes, and both out of humour. The self-same weariness weighs upon both, the weariness of idlers who do not know how to squander time gracefully. Perhaps Georges Lodrin is not far wrong when he maintains that to idle away life gracefully is an art most difficult to acquire, and rarely learned in a single generation.

Both asked fretfully whether the post had come, and then each sank into an arm-chair and fumed. One by one the various guests then staying in the castle appeared. Paul Angelico Orchis, a conceited little versifier, (lauded in the Blanktown Gazette as 'the first lyric poet of modern times') and the possessor of a dyspepsia acquired at the expense of others. A farce by him had been produced in Blanktown, and for ten years he had been promising the public a tragedy. Meanwhile his latest effort was the invention of a picturesque waterproof cloak. Frank, the famous tailor carried out his idea in dark brown tweed, in which the poet draped himself upon every conceivable occasion. After him followed two men of the kind which Georges Lodrin describes as 'gentlemen at reduced prices,' stunted specimens of the aristocracy, who played a very insignificant part in their own circles, and from time to time fled to their inferiors in rank to enjoy a little admiration. One, Baron Kilary, is a sportsman, insolent in bearing, lewd in talk; the other, Count Fermor, is a dilettante composer and pianist, affected and sentimental.

Malzin and his wife also entered; while he bowed silently, and then respectfully kissed the hand of the hostess, Charlotte congratulated the two ladies upon the splendour of their attire, and lavished exaggerated admiration upon a couple of costly pieces of furniture which she had often seen before.

Last of all appeared our old acquaintance, the Baroness Melkweyser, who had been at Schneeburg for a week. What was she doing there? The Caprianis looked to her for their admission into Austrian society, she looked to King Midas for the augmentation of her diminished income,--and something too might be gained from country air and regular meals for her worn and weary digestion.

CHAPTER VI.

It is really melancholy for people who have been accustomed in Paris to entertain crowned heads, to be obliged in Austria to put up with a few sickly sprigs of n.o.bility.

The Menu was very elaborate; the clumsy table service came from _Froment-Munice_ and the china was Sevres of the latest pattern, white, with a coronet and cipher in gilt; the butler looked like a cabinet minister, and the silk stockings of the flunkies were faultless.

Nevertheless the entire dinner produced a sham, masquerading effect, reminding one more or less of a stage banquet when all the viands are of papier-mache.

The hostess, with Baron Kilary on her right, and Fritz Malzin on her left, devoted herself almost exclusively to the latter, asking him kindly questions about his children.

The host, seated between the Baroness Melkweyser, and the Countess Malzin, contented himself with seeing that the actress's plate was kept well supplied, and with exchanging jests with her which were merely silly during soup, but which grew more objectionable at dessert.

The Baroness Melkweyser studied the Menu, Paul Angelico Orchis complained of his dyspepsia and asked advice of his neighbour, Ad'lin Capriani, as to his diet. Moreover he testified his grat.i.tude for Capriani's hospitality by praising everything enthusiastically. He remarked that he had visited Schneeburg formerly, but that he should hardly have recognised the castle again, absolutely hardly have recognised it, it was so wonderfully improved, he could not see how Count Capriani could have effected so much in so short a time.

Whereupon the master of the mansion replied with aristocratic nonchalance: "The place had to be made habitable, but there's not much that can be done with it, it is nothing but an old barracks, an inconvenient old barracks." He then held forth at length upon the improvements which he still contemplated, concluding with, "But I have no room--the Schneeburg domain is so contracted, so insignificant!

Unfortunately all the estates which would serve my purpose are owned by people unwilling to sell."

Madame Capriani tried several times unsuccessfully to check her husband, and Fritz looked gloomily down into his empty plate.

He had always been so proud of his Schneeburg, and that it should not be good enough for this swindler, forsooth!----

Fermor looked discontented, and talked to Adeline about his compositions, betraying at every word the sentimental arrogance of a narrow-minded, lackadaisical, provincial aristocrat, greedy for adulation, and salving his conscience for his new a.s.sociations, by making himself as disagreeable as possible to the people whose bread he eats.

Malzin, albeit in a subordinate position, manifested from habit the instinctive reserve of a true gentleman, fearful of wounding the susceptibilities of his inferiors. The conduct of his fellows was in striking contrast to his own. Fermor ignored him. Kilary on the contrary continually tried to draw him into familiar talk upon subjects of which none of the others knew anything, a course evidently irritating to the host.

Malzin was, moreover, the only one at table towards whom Kilary conducted himself courteously. To the poet he was especially insolent.

At dessert he read aloud with sentimental emphasis a couple of bonbon-mottoes, and then asked, "My dear Orchis, are these immortal lines your own?" at which the poet vainly tried to smile. The rumour ran that when his finances were at a low ebb he did sometimes place his genius at the disposal of a Vienna confectioner.