第21章

This was the beginning of a lawsuit,an abominable marvel of chicane,which by the use of every legal subterfuge was made to last for many years.It was also the occasion for a display of much kindness and sympathy.All the neighbouring houses flew open for the reception of the homeless.Neither legal aid nor material assistance in the prosecution of the suit was ever wanting.X,on his side,went about shedding tears publicly over his stepchildren's ingratitude and his wife's blind infatuation;but as at the same time he displayed great cleverness in the art of concealing material documents (he was even suspected of having burned a lot of historically interesting family papers)this scandalous litigation had to be ended by a compromise lest worse should befall.It was settled finally by a surrender,out of the disputed estate,in full satisfaction of all claims,of two villages with the names of which I do not intend to trouble my readers.After this lame and impotent conclusion neither the wife nor the stepsons had anything to say to the man who had presented the world with such a successful example of self-help based on character,determination,and industry;and my great-grandmother,her health completely broken down,died a couple of years later in Carlsbad.Legally secured by a decree in the possession of his plunder,X regained his wonted serenity,and went on living in the neighbourhood in a comfortable style and in apparent peace of mind.His big shoots were fairly well attended again.He was never tired of assuring people that he bore no grudge for what was past;he protested loudly of his constant affection for his wife and stepchildren.It was true,he said,that they had tried to strip him as naked as a Turkish saint in the decline of his days;and because he had defended himself from spoliation,as anybody else in his place would have done,they had abandoned him now to the horrors of a solitary old age.Nevertheless,his love for them survived these cruel blows.

And there might have been some truth in his protestations.Very soon he began to make overtures of friendship to his eldest stepson,my maternal grandfather;and when these were peremptorily rejected he went on renewing them again and again with characteristic obstinacy.For years he persisted in his efforts at reconciliation,promising my grandfather to execute a will in his favour if he only would be friends again to the extent of calling now and then (it was fairly close neighbourhood for these parts,forty miles or so),or even of putting in an appearance for the great shoot on the name-day.My grandfather was an ardent lover of every sport.His temperament was as free from hardness and animosity as can be imagined.Pupil of the liberal-minded Benedictines who directed the only public school of some standing then in the south,he had also read deeply the authors of the eighteenth century.In him Christian charity was joined to a philosophical indulgence for the failings of human nature.But the memory of those miserably anxious early years,his young man's years robbed of all generous illusions by the cynicism of the sordid lawsuit,stood in the way of forgiveness.

He never succumbed to the fascination of the great shoot;and X,his heart set to the last on reconciliation,with the draft of the will ready for signature kept by his bedside,died intestate.

The fortune thus acquired and augmented by a wise and careful management passed to some distant relatives whom he had never seen and who even did not bear his name.

Meantime the blessing of general peace descended upon Europe.

Mr.Nicholas B.,bidding good-bye to his hospitable relative,the "fearless"Austrian officer,departed from Galicia,and without going near his native place,where the odious lawsuit was still going on,proceeded straight to Warsaw and entered the army of the newly constituted Polish kingdom under the sceptre of Alexander I,Autocrat of all the Russias.

This kingdom,created by the Vienna Congress as an acknowledgment to a nation of its former independent existence,included only the central provinces of the old Polish patrimony.A brother of the Emperor,the Grand Duke Constantine (Pavlovitch),its Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief,married morganatically to a Polish lady to whom he was fiercely attached,extended this affection to what he called "My Poles"in a capricious and savage manner.Sallow in complexion,with a Tartar physiognomy and fierce little eyes,he walked with his fists clenched,his body bent forward,darting suspicious glances from under an enormous cocked hat.His intelligence was limited,and his sanity itself was doubtful.