The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [328]
The Prince, whose invitation to offer Baroness Krzeszowska ten thousand roubles Wokulski had declined in December, and in January and February had not given a penny to the poor people he patronised — the Prince had lost his affection for Wokulski. Wokulski had deeply disappointed the Prince. The Prince had thought and believed that a man like Wokulski, once he’d obtained princely favour, ought to renounce all his own taste and interests, and even his fortune and his person into the bargain. He ought to like what the Prince liked, hate what the Prince hated, serve only the Prince’s ends, and humour only his whims. Yet this parvenu (though, no doubt, he was of genteel origin) would not consider being the Prince’s servant, and even dared to be independent; sometimes he argued with the Prince, or — worse still — refused his requests point-blank.
‘A coarse man … a businessman … an egoist,’ thought the Prince — but he was increasingly surprised by the impudence of the parvenu.
Chance had it that Mr Łęcki, unable to cover up the fact that Wokulski was courting Izabela, asked the Prince for his opinion of Wokulski, and for advice. Now, despite his manifold weaknesses, the Prince was basically honest. In stating an opinion about other people, he did not depend on his own views alone, but obtained others. So he asked Mr Łęcki for a few weeks’ delay ‘to form my own opinion’, and, since he had many social contacts and a sort of police force of his own, he found out various things. First, he observed that the gentry, though they sneered at Wokulski as a parvenu and a democrat, boasted of him on the quiet: ‘Plainly he’s one of us, even though he went into trade.’
Moreover, whenever the question arose of putting up someone against the Jewish bankers, the most obdurate gentry chose Wokulski. Tradesmen, and manufacturers above all, hated Wokulski, but the most serious complaints they could make against him were ‘He’s a gentleman … a great gentleman … a diplomat,’ which the Prince could in no way hold against him.
But the most interesting information was supplied to the Prince by nuns. There was a coachman in Warsaw, and his brother, a railroad man on the Warsaw—Vienna line, who both blessed Wokulski. There were students, who announced that Wokulski was paying them stipends; there were craftsman who owed him their workshops, and pedlars whom Wokulski had helped establish stores.
There was also (as the sisters declared, with pious horror and blushes), there was also a fallen woman, whom Wokulski had saved from destitution, handed over to the Magdalenes, and finally made an honest woman of, as far (so the nuns said) as such an individual could ever be an honest woman.
These accounts surprised and also alarmed the Prince. And at once Wokulski grew more powerful in his estimation. Here, after all, was a man with his own programme, who was even practising politics on his own account, and who had a great deal of importance amidst common folk. So, when the Prince came to Mr Łęcki at the appointed time, he did not fail to visit Izabela too. He pressed her hand in a significant manner, and said these enigmatic words: ‘My dear cousin, you have an unusual bird in hand. Hold him, pet him, so he will grow up to be of use to our unhappy country …’
Izabela blushed a great deal: she guessed that this unusual bird was Wokulski.
‘Tyrant … despot …’ she thought, Nevertheless, the first ice had been broken in Wokulski’s relations with Izabela. She was already making up her mind to marry him.
One day, when Mr Łęcki was poorly and Izabela reading in her boudoir, she was told that Mrs Wąsowska was waiting in the drawing-room. Izabela at once hastened thither and found, as well as Mrs Wąsowska, her cousin Ochocki, who was very sullen. Both ladies kissed with demonstrative affection, but Ochocki, who could see without looking, noticed that either one of them or both was vexed with the other, though not very much. ‘Can it be on my account?’ he thought, ‘one should never get too involved.’
‘You here, too, cousin!’ said Izabela, giving him her