Up to the day when I received the visit from Lakatos, it had nevertheless been impossible for me, a scoundrel by birth and nature, to betray these people. These people — I mean the girl and her brother — were the only ones, among all the Russians whom it was my duty to destroy, who still stirred the remnants of my conscience. If, at that time, I could possibly have understood the meaning of a deadly sin, those two people were the only ones who could have brought me that understanding. From that gentle, tender girl — if there are Jewish angels, they must look like her — in whose face the hardness and the sweetness were so compounded that one seemed to see clearly that hardness was a sister of sweetness — from that gentle and yet strong girl there emanated a magical power — a magical power — I cannot express it otherwise. She was not beautiful, in the sense that beauty is understood in this world, where we call seductiveness beauty. No, she was not beautiful, but this small, insignificant Jewess touched the depths of my soul, and she even touched my senses; for when I looked at her it was as though I were hearing a song. Yes, it was as though I did not see her, but only heard something beautiful, strange, unknown, and yet very intimate. Sometimes, during those still hours when the crippled brother sat on the edge of the sofa, reading a book propped up on a high chair, when the canaries in their cage trilled triumphantly, and a narrow strip of sun crept across the bare wooden floor, I would sit opposite the brave girl, watching her silently, studying her pale, broad, innocent face, in which the sufferings of all our Russian Jews lay plain to read, and I would be on the point of telling her everything. I was certainly not the only spy who had been sent to her, and who knows how many of my colleagues I might not have met at her house. (For we seldom knew one another.) But I am convinced, even today, that all or most of them felt like me. That child had weapons against which we were powerless. Our duty was to entice her back to Russia under the pretense that her brothers would be set free; but it was naturally not so easy to deceive her, and she would never have trusted any promise other than that signed by the ambassador of the Czar. Or, failing that, it might perhaps have sufficed to learn from her the names of all her confederates who had stayed behind in Russia. And, my friends, I told you before that I was a scoundrel by birth and nature. Yet in the presence of that young girl my vileness melted away, and I sometimes felt as though my heart were crying, as though, in the most literal sense, it were slowly thawing.
The months passed, and summer came. I thought of traveling away somewhere with Lutetia. But one day there appeared in my hotel a white-haired, soberly clad old man. With his thick, silvery hair, with his imposing and carefully combed white beard, with his black ebony stick, whose gleaming silver handle seemed fashioned out of the same material as his hair, he seemed to me like a high and macabre dignitary at the court of the Czar. So, I imagined to myself, must the officials of the Imperial court look when they perform their functions at the deathbed and the burial of a Czar. But after I had looked at him for some time, he seemed suddenly to recognize me. His face, his thick hair, his beard and his voice rose up from a long-forgotten past. And in a flash, when he said to me: “I am glad to see you again after so many years, Herr Golubchik!” I, too, knew who he was. He might be very old. But once I had heard his voice behind a door, and for a second I had seen his silver and black figure in a dark corridor. It was the secretary of the old Prince. Many, many years before — how long ago that was! — he had come to the owner of my pension and paid for me. He scarcely held out his hand to me. For a fraction of a second I felt three cold, shrunken, almost stony fingertips. I begged him to sit down. As though he were unwilling to do my chair too much honor, he seated himself on the extreme edge, so that he had to support himself with his stick between his knees in order to avoid sliding off. Between two fingers he held his black top hat. He began immediately, as the Latin phrase goes, its media res. “Herr Golubchik,” he said, “the young Prince is here. The old gentleman may also stay here a while on his journey to the South. Unjustifiably and — to use no stronger word — in a dishonorable way, you have caused their Highnesses a great deal of unpleasantness. You call yourself Krapotkin here. You maintain certain relations with a young lady. She, too, has several names. The young Prince has now at last made up his mind no longer to tolerate such behavior. — It is a piece of madness. But that is by the way. — The young Prince is very generous. Consider for a moment and then tell me straight out how much you require to disappear, once and forever, from our sight. Already once, you have had an experience of how great our power is. If you remain obstinate, you will be faced with a far greater danger than any of those poor wretches whom you are pursuing. Of course, I wish to say nothing against your profession. It is, shall we say, scarcely honorable, but extremely necessary, extremely necessary — in the interests of the State. Our country naturally needs people like you. But to the family whom I have had the honor to serve and represent for more than forty years, you are merely obnoxious. The Krapotkin family is prepared to give you a new start in America, or even in Russia if you wish it. So consider, how much do you want?” At these words the silvery-haired old man drew a heavy gold watch from his pocket. He held it in his hand, somewhat like a doctor who is taking his patient’s pulse. I deliberated. I really deliberated. It seemed to me hopeless to make evasions in front of this man, or even in front of myself; and it seemed to me equally hopeless to play for a superfluous and highly ridiculous breathing space. His watch ticked relentlessly. How long would he wait?
I had reached no decision. But the good spirit which never leaves us, not even when we are scoundrels by birth and nature, suddenly brought back the memory of Channa Lea. And I said: “I do not need money. I need a favor from the Prince. If he is as powerful as you say, he can do it for me. Can I see him?”
“Immediately!” said the old man. He returned his watch to his pocket and stood up. “Come with me!”
The private coach of Prince Krapotkin — the genuine one — was standing outside the hotel. We drove off. We drew up in front of the Prince’s private house. It was a villa in the Bois de Boulogne, and in the lackey at the door, who wore a beard like the secretary, I thought I recognized that same servant whom I had seen so many, many years ago in the summer residence of the old Prince at Odessa.
I was announced. The secretary left me. I waited for at least half an hour. I sat, anxious and depressed, downstairs in the anteroom, as I had once sat in the anteroom of the old Prince. But I was far different from the Golubchik of those days. Then, the world had stood open before me; today, I was a Golubchik who had lost the world. I knew it. And yet it mattered little to me. I had only to force myself to think of Channa Lea, and it mattered not at all to me.
At last I was ushered into the Prince’s room. He looked exactly the same as he had that time when I watched him through a crack in the wall and saw him in a chambre separée with Lutetia. Yes, he looked exactly the same. How shall I describe him to you? You know the type: an aristocratic, impotent windbag. He looked not unlike a used-up piece of soap. So pale and insipid was his skin. He looked like a piece of used-up yellow soap with a thin black mustache. I hated him as I had always hated him.
He was pacing backwards and forwards across the room, and when I entered he never stopped for a moment. He paced on, as though the old man had brought, not me, but a doll. Neither did he turn to me, but to the secretary, and asked: “How much?”