HAPPINESS




THE VIATICUM


"After all," Count d'Avorsy said, stirring his tea with the slow
movements of a prelate, "what truth was there in anything that was said
at Court, almost without any restraint, and did the Empress, whose
beauty has been ruined by some secret grief, who will no longer see
anyone and who soothes her continual mental weariness by some journeys
without an object and without a rest, in foggy and melancholy islands,
and did she really forget Caesar's wife ought not even to be suspected,
did she really give herself to that strange and attractive corrupter,
Ladislas Ferkoz?"

The bright night seemed to be scattering handfuls of stars into the
placid sea, which was as calm as a blue pond, slumbering in the depths
of a forest. Among the tall climbing roses, which hung a mantle of
yellow flowers to the fretted baluster of the terrace, there stood out
in the distance the illuminated fronts of the hotels and villas, and
occasionally women's laughter was heard above the dull, monotonous sound
of surf and the noise of the fog-horns.

Then Captain Sigmund Oroshaz, whose sad and pensive face of a soldier
who has seen too much slaughter and too many charnel houses, was marked
by a large scar, raised his head and said in a grave, haughty voice: