"Yes, poets are corrupters," thought Count Abel Larinski."If Samuel Brohl never had read /The Merchant of Venice/, or /Egmont/, a tragedy in five acts, or Schiller's ballads, he would have been resigned to his new position; he would have seen its good sides, and would have eaten and drunk his shame in peace, without experiencing any uncomfortable sensations; but he had read the poets, and he grew disgusted, nauseated.He was dying with desire to get away, and the princess suspected it.She kept him always in sight, she held him close, she paid him quarterly, shilling by shilling, his meagre allowance.She said to herself: 'So long as he has nothing, he cannot escape.' She mistook; he did escape, and he was so afraid of being retaken that for some time he hid like a criminal, pursued by the police.He fancied that this woman was always on his track.It was then, for the first time, that he felt hunger, for they eat in the land of Egypt.He lived by all sorts of expedients, and cursed the poets.One day he learned that his father was dead; he hastened to the old tavern in order to succeed to the inheritance.He was not aware that for two years old Jeremiah Brohl had been in his dotage, and that his debtors mocked him while devouring his substance.A fine inheritance! it was diminished to two or three rickety chairs, four cracked walls that scarcely could stand upright, and some jewellery concealed in a hiding-place that Samuel knew of.Old Jeremiah never had been able to dispose of it for the price he required, and he preferred to keep it rather than lower his charge.He had principles, which was well for Samuel, as the jewellery was useful to him.He sold a necklace, and set out for Bucharest, some one having told him that he certainly would make his fortune there.He gave music-lessons; this wearisome profession did not suit him, he could not endure the constraint and the regular hours.The boys plagued him--he would willingly have wrung their necks; the girls treated him like a dog--they never thought of his being handsome, because they suspected him of being a Jew.Why had he gone to Bucharest--a city where all Germans are Jews, and where Jews are not considered men? Although he had earned a little money, he grew melancholy, and he began to think seriously of killing himself."Count Abel Larinski leaned forward, plucked a spray of heather, tickled his lips with it, and began to laugh; then, striking his breast, he said, in an undertone, "Thank God, Samuel Brohl is not dead, for he is here!"He spoke the truth: Samuel Brohl was not dead, and life was of value to him, since he had met Mlle.Antoinette Moriaz in the cathedral in Chur.It was Samuel Brohl who had come to Cormeilles, and who was seated, at this moment, in the midst of a grove of oaks.Perhaps the lark that he had heard singing a quarter of an hour before had recognised him, for it had ceased singing.The peacock continued its screaming, and its doleful cries sounded like a warning.Yes, the man seated among the heather, employed in narrating his own history to himself, was indeed Samuel Brohl, and the proof of this was that he had laughed, while Count Abel Larinski never laughed; moreover, for four years the latter had been out of the world.The second reason is, perhaps, the better.
He whom, with or without his consent, we shall call henceforth Samuel Brohl, reproached himself for this access of levity, as he would have reproached himself for a false note that had escaped him in executing a Mozart sonata.He resumed his grave, dignified air, in order to salute with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him.It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock, and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious reception.He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under essential obligations to him, and Samuel Brohl was no ingrate.
