“I would like to deal with you myself,” I said.
“I would not,” he answered and never paused for a moment in his pacing. He looked at the secretary. “Deal with him!”
“I do not need money,” I said. “If you are really as powerful as you say, you can have everything you want of me if you will free two men from Katorga and a girl from punishment. Immediately. If you free them within a week!”
“Very well,” said the secretary. “But until then, you will hide yourself as far as possible. Give me the facts.”
I gave him the facts about the brothers Rifkin. In a few days I would be informed of the result.
I waited a few days. I waited, I must say, with the greatest impatience, with a sort of moral impatience. I purposely say “with moral impatience,” because at that time a longing for repentance overcame me, and I believed that the moment had arrived in which I could atone for all my vileness with one so-called “good deed.”
I waited. I waited.
At last I was summoned to the Prince’s private house.
The dignified old secretary received me, sitting. He made a gesture of invitation, but only a very fleeting one, not even inviting me to be seated, but rather as though brushing me away, as one disposes of a fly.
In defiance, I sat down and crossed my legs. In defiance, too, I said: “Where is the Prince?”
“To you, not at home,” answered the old man mildly. “The Prince asked me to tell you that he has no time to bother with political affairs. He will have nothing to do with such sordid matters. Neither will he bargain with you. In addition to that, you would be in a position to denounce him, as you have already done once before, and to represent him as a protector of persons hostile to the State. You understand. We can only offer you money. If you will not accept that, we have other means of removing you from Paris. You can scarcely be as indispensable to our country as all that. There are certainly others who are just as useful, if not more so, than you.”
“I will not take money,” I replied, “and I shall stay in Paris.” At that, I thought of my sympathetic chief, Solovejczyk. I would explain everything to him. But I had completely forgotten the dead stare he had given me on the last occasion I saw him. I imagined that Solovejczyk favored me, was even fond of me.
I determined to go to him immediately.
I got up and said solemnly (today it seems to me ridiculous): “A real Krapotkin”—I emphasised the word: real—“accepts no compensation money. A false one offers it.”
I expected a gesture, a word of indignation from the mouth of the old man. But he never moved. He did not even look at me. He only stared at the black surface of his desk, as though there were papers lying there, as though he were reading in the wood, and as though there stood written there the sentence which he spoke a few seconds later.
“Go,” he said, without lifting his gaze, let alone getting up himself, “and do what seems fitting to you.”
The word “fitting” made me redden.
I went, without a word. It was raining, and I bade the flunkey fetch me a cab. I still felt myself a prince, although I already knew that I was once more a Golubchik; at the most I could only remain a Krapotkin for a few more days.
But I was happy, my friends, in spite of the knowledge that in a little while I should have to return to my old existence and my rightful name. Believe me, I was happy. And if anything grieved me then, it was the fact that I had been unable to help the Jewess Rifkin. For I had indeed thought that I had found an opportunity to atone for all the evil I had done. Well! — I had least saved my own existence, and perhaps even purified it a little.
When I returned to the hotel — it was getting late and solitary lights were already burning in the hall — I was informed that a gentleman was waiting for me in the writing room.
I thought it must be Lakatos, and went, without saying a word, into the writing room. But the figure which rose from the broad sofa behind a table was far from being my friend Lakatos; it was, to my astonishment, the fashionable dressmaker, the creator of “creations.”
There was a sort of twilight in the writing room, which was strengthened rather than weakened by the green-shaded lamps which stood on the various writing tables. The lamps seemed to me like illuminated poison bottles.
In this curious light the broad pale face of the dressmaker looked to me like dough in the oven, dough which is rising. Yes, the nearer he came to me, the greater grew his pulpy face, greater and broader even in comparison to his over-large, flapping, effeminate clothes. He bowed before me, and it was as though a sort of square ball were doing obeisance to me. I was no longer inclined to believe that the dressmaker was a real living being.
“Prince,” he said, as he laboriously raised his angular and yet spherical body, “may I discuss a small detail with you?”
It seemed to me ridiculous that someone should still address me as “Prince,” but nevertheless it flattered me. I begged the man to say what was on his mind.
“A mere detail, Prince,” he reassured me, “an absurd trifle.” And at that he described a complete circle in the air with his fat doughy hand. “It is a question of a small debt. The matter is distressing to me, even repugnant. It concerns Mademoiselle Lutetia’s clothes.”
“What clothes?” I asked.
“Two months have already passed,” said Monsieur Charron. “And Mademoiselle Lutetia is an extraordinary person, girl — lady, I mean. It is sometimes difficult to get on with her. She is, I must say, a real lady, not like the others. And although she is the daughter of one of my ordinary, what am I saying, of one of my greatest colleagues, she has the same tastes (quite rightly) as the most exclusive of our customers. I must confess, Your Highness, I must confess that I have sold her, that is, to Mademoiselle Lutetia, three of my best models, which she herself had displayed. But I would never have come to disturb Your Highness, were I not momentarily suffering from certain acute financial embarrassments.”
“How much?” I asked, like a real prince.
“Eight thousand!” said Charron promptly.
“Good!” I said — like a real prince. And I dismissed him.
After he had gone, I drove straight to Lutetia. Eight thousand francs, my friends — that was no trifle for me, a wretched penniless spy. Of course, I should perhaps have done nothing. But — was I not still in love? Was I not still a prisoner?
I went to Lutetia. She was sitting at a table laid for supper and waiting for me, as usual — as she even did on the evenings when I could not come — as befits a so-called “well-bred” young woman.
I gave her the customary kiss, which a man is in duty bound to give to the woman he keeps. It was a duty kiss, such as the great condescend to give.
I ate, without any appetite, and I must admit that, for all my love, I observed Lutetia’s healthy appetite with some ill-will. I was, at that time, petty enough to think of the eight thousand francs. A great many other things, too, came into my mind. I thought of myself, the real Golubchik. A few hours earlier I had been glad to be a real Golubchik again. Yet now, with Lutetia at the same table, the thought that I was to be a Golubchik once more filled me with bitterness. But at the same time I was still somehow a Krapotkin, and I had eight thousand francs to pay. As a Krapotkin, I had to pay them. Suddenly I felt embittered at the amount of the sum, I who had never counted or calculated. There are, my friends, certain moments in which the money one has to pay for a passion seems almost as important as the passion itself — and its object. I never gave a thought to the fact that I had wooed and won Lutetia, the beloved of my heart, with shameful and villainous lies. On the contrary, I used it as a reproach against her, that she believed my lies and lived on them. A strange, unknown fury rose up within me. I loved Lutetia. But I was angry with her. Soon it seemed to me, while we were still eating, that she alone was responsible for my debt. I searched, I scrutinized, I delved for faults in her. I discovered that it was tantamount to a betrayal to have told me nothing about the clothes.