PAGE 7
Paz
by
Clementine jumped up and went and seated herself on Adam’s knee, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him. “Dear treasure!” she said, “how handsome he is! Well, what did Paz do?”
“Thaddeus turned pale,” said the count, “but he didn’t say a word.”
“Oh! his name is Thaddeus, is it?”
“Yes; Thaddeus folded the paper and gave it back to me, and then he said: ‘I thought, Adam, that we were one for life or death, and that we should never part. Do you want to be rid of me?’ ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘if you take it that way, Thaddeus, don’t let us say another word about it. If I ruin myself you shall be ruined too.’ ‘You haven’t fortune enough to live as a Laginski should,’ he said, ‘and you need a friend who will take care of your affairs, and be a father and a brother and a trusty confidant.’ My dear child, as Paz said that he had in his look and voice, calm as they were, a maternal emotion, and also the gratitude of an Arab, the fidelity of a dog, the friendship of a savage,–not displayed, but ever ready. Faith! I seized him, as we Poles do, with a hand on each shoulder, and I kissed him on the lips. ‘For life and death, then! all that I have is yours–do what you will with it.’ It was he who found me this house and bought it for next to nothing. He sold my Funds high and bought in low, and we have paid for this barrack with the profits. He knows horses, and he manages to buy and sell at such advantage that my stable really costs very little; and yet I have the finest horses and the most elegant equipages in all Paris. Our servants, brave Polish soldiers chosen by him, would go through fire and water for us. I seem, as you say, to be ruining myself; and yet Paz keeps the house with such method and economy that he has even repaired some of my foolish losses at play,–the thoughtless folly of a young man. My dear, Thaddeus is as shrewd as two Genoese, as eager for gain as a Polish Jew, and provident as a good housekeeper. I never could force him to live as I did when I was a bachelor. Sometimes I had to use a sort of friendly coercion to make him go to the theatre with me when I was alone, or to the jovial little dinners I used to give at a tavern. He doesn’t like social life.”
“What does he like, then?” asked Clementine.
“Poland; he loves Poland and pines for it. His only spendings are sums he gives, more in my name than in his own, to some of our poor brother-exiles.”
“Well, I shall love him, the fine fellow!” said the countess, “he looks to me as simple-hearted as he is grand.”
“All these pretty things you have about you,” continued Adam, who praised his friend in the noblest sincerity, “he picked up; he bought them at auction, or as bargains from the dealers. Oh! he’s keener than they are themselves. If you see him rubbing his hands in the courtyard, you may be sure he has traded away one good horse for a better. He lives for me; his happiness is to see me elegant, in a perfectly appointed equipage. The duties he takes upon himself are all accomplished without fuss or emphasis. One evening I lost twenty thousand francs at whist. ‘What will Paz say?’ thought I as I walked home. Paz paid them to me, not without a sigh; but he never reproached me, even by a look. But that sigh of his restrained me more than the remonstrances of uncles, mothers, or wives could have done. ‘Do you regret the money?’ I said to him. ‘Not for you or me, no,’ he replied; ‘but I was thinking that twenty poor Poles could have lived a year on that sum.’ You must understand that the Pazzi are fully the equal of the Laginski, so I couldn’t regard my dear Paz as an inferior. I never went out or came in without going first to Paz, as I would to my father. My fortune is his; and Thaddeus knows that if danger threatened him I would fling myself into it and drag him out, as I have done before.”