I began to earn as much as possible. I earned a lot — and I need not tell you how. Sometimes I remained a whole week hidden from Lutetia and the rest of the world. At such times I mingled with our political refugees. I visited the offices of unimportant little publications and miserable newspapers. I was even shameless enough to accept small loans from the victims I was tracking down; not because I needed the paltry sums of money, but in order to make it seem that I needed the money. In bare little rooms I shared the scanty meals of the hunted, the outcast, the hungry. I was debased enough now and again to attempt the seduction of refugee women who, often happily and sometimes from a sort of tragic sense of duty, gave themselves to a companion in distress. All in all, I was what I had always been, by birth and nature — a scoundrel. To a certain extent, I even proved to myself during those days that I was a scoundrel beyond redemption.
I was lucky. The Devil guided my every footstep. When I visited Solovejczyk on the appointed evenings, I could tell him more than most of my other colleagues. And I perceived from the growing contempt with which he treated me that I was rendering valuable services. “I underestimated your intelligence,” he said to me once. “After hearing of your foolishness in Petersburg, I thought you were a petty rascal. My respects to you, Golubchik! I shall pay you well.”—For the first time he had called me Golubchik, and he knew well enough that for me that name was like a thrust with a dagger. I took my money, a great deal of money, changed, drove back to my hotel, saw the backs and necks of the staff, saw Lutetia again, saw the nightclubs, the common and superior faces of the waiters, and forgot everything, everything. I was a prince. I even forgot the dreadful Lakatos.
I forgot him unjustly.
One mild spring morning I was sitting in the lounge of the hotel, and although the room had no windows it felt as though the sun were streaming in though every pore in the walls. I was bright and cheerful, without a thought in my head, entirely given up to the loathsome contentment with which life filled me. When suddenly Lakatos appeared. He was as gay as the spring itself. He was almost anticipating summer. He came in like a fragment of spring, detached from the rest of nature; wearing a far too light overcoat, a flowered cravat, and a gray top hat; swinging in his right hand the little cane which I knew so well. He addressed me alternately as “Highness” and “Prince,” and sometimes he even said, in the manner of small menials: “Your most gracious Highness!” Suddenly the whole of that bright morning darkened for me. How had I been faring all this long time, Lakatos asked me — so loudly, that everyone in the lounge heard it and even the porter in his office. I was monosyllabic. I scarcely answered — for fear, but also out of pride. “So your dear father recognized you?” he asked me softly, while he bent so close to me that I could smell his lilies-of-the-valley scent and the brilliantine which was wafted in heavy waves from his mustache. And I could see plainly a reddish shimmer in his bright brown eyes.
“Yes,” I said and leaned back.
“Then you will be pleased to hear,” he said, “what I have to tell you.”
He paused. I said nothing.
“Your dear brother arrived here yesterday,” he said calmly. “He is living in his house. He has a permanent residence in Paris. As every year, he intends to remain here for a few months. I believe you are now reconciled with him?”
“Not yet,” I said, and could scarcely conceal my impatience and tenor.
“Well,” said Lakatos, “I hope that will soon come to pass. In any case, I am always at your service.”
“Thank you,” I said. He got up, bowed low and went. I remained seated.
But not for long. I drove straight to Lutetia. She was not at home. I drove to the dressmaker’s shop. With a large bouquet I thrust my way in, as with a couched lance. I was able to speak with her for a few moments. She knew nothing of Krapotkin’s arrival. I left the shop. I sat down in a café and hoped that by concentrated thought I might arrive at some brilliant inspiration. But all my thoughts were contaminated with jealousy, hatred, passion, vengefulness. Soon I persuaded myself that it would be best to go to Solovejczyk and ask him to send me back to Russia. Then, once more, fear overcame me; fear of losing my present life, fear of losing Lutetia, my stolen name, everything that contributed to my existence. I thought for a moment of killing myself, but I had a horror of death. It was much easier, much better, but in no way pleasanter, to kill the Prince. To rid the world of him! Once for all to be free from that ridiculous youth, that really ridiculous and useless fool! But in the same moment, and with the ruthless logic dictated by my conscience, I said to myself that if he were a useless fool I was still worse, being both evil and harmful. But scarcely a minute later it seemed clear to me that the cause of my evilness and harmfulness was he alone, he, that superfluous creature, and that to kill him would be ethically justifiable. For, in destroying him, I should also destroy the cause of my corruption, and then I should be free to become a decent citizen, to atone, to repent, even to become a respectable Golubchik. But even while I was thinking of all this, I realized that I was far from possessing the necessary determination to commit a murder. At that time, my friends, I was not nearly clean enough to be able to kill. Whenever I considered destroying a certain person, it was synonymous to me, to my mentality, with the decision to ruin him in some way or other. We spies are no murderers. We only prepare the circumstances which must inevitably lead to a man’s death. I, too, thought no differently; I was incapable of thinking differently. I was a scoundrel by birth and nature, as I have already told you.…
Among the many people whom, at that time, it was my loathsome duty to betray and deliver up, there was a certain Jewess by the name of Channa Lea Rifkin, from Radzivillov. Never shall I forget her name or her face. Two of her brothers had been arrested in Russia and condemned to Katorga on account of an attempted assassination of the Governor of Odessa. They had already been three years in Siberia, as I knew from the documents of the case. The sister had succeeded in escaping in time and taking with her a third brother, a half-crippled youth who had to sit all day in a wheelchair. He could only move his right arm and right leg. It was said that he was an extremely gifted mathematician and physicist and that he possessed an extraordinary memory. The plans and formula, with the aid of which explosives could be made without using complicated apparatus, had all emanated from him. Brother and sister lived with Swiss friends, French-Swiss from Geneva, a shoemaker and his wife. Russian refugees often met together in the shoemaker’s workshop. I myself had been there several times. This brave Jewish girl was determined to return to Russia and rescue her brothers. She took all the responsibility on herself. Their mother was dead, their father was ill. And she had three young sisters to keep. In numerous petitions to the Russian Embassy she had declared herself ready to return to Russia if only they would give her the assurance that her innocent brothers, who had only been implicated in the plot through her, would be freed. For us, that is, for the Russian police, it was a question of getting hold of her at any price; but, at the same time, we had to prevent the Embassy from giving any official promises. Besides, an embassy could not, dared not, do such a thing. But Channa Lea was “needed” urgently. “We need her” was written in the reports.