“I had forgotten that thirty years have passed!” thought Varhely, a little saddened.

Count Ladany made his old comrade sit down in one of the armchairs, and questioned him smilingly as to his life, his friendships, Paris, Prince Zilah, and led him gradually and gracefully to confide what he, Varhely, had come to ask of the minister of the Emperor of Austria.

Varhely felt more reassured.  Josef Ladany seemed to him to have remained morally the same.  The moustache had been cut off, the yellow hair had fallen; but the heart was still young and without doubt Hungarian.

“You can,” he said, abruptly, “render me a service, a great service.  I have never before asked anything of anybody; but I have taken this journey expressly to see you, and to ask you, to beg you rather, to—­”

“Go on, my dear Count.  What you desire will be realized, I hope.”

But his tone had already become colder, or perhaps simply more official.

“Well,” continued Varhely, “what I have come to ask of you is; in memory of the time when we were brothers in arms” (the minister started slightly, and stroked his whiskers a little nervously), “the liberty of a certain man, of a man whom you know.”

“Ah! indeed!” said Count Josef.

He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and, through his half-opened eyelids, examined Varhely, who looked him boldly in the face.

The contrast between these two men was striking; the soldier with his hair and moustache whitened in the harness, and the elegant government official with his polished manners; two old-time companions who had heard the whistling of the same balls.

“This is my errand,” said Varhely.  “I have the greatest desire that one of our compatriots, now a prisoner in Warsaw, I think—­at all events, arrested at Warsaw a short time ago—­should be set at liberty.  It is of the utmost importance to me,” he added, his lips turning almost as white as his moustache.

“Oh!” said the minister.  “I fancy I know whom you mean.”

“Count Menko.”

“Exactly!  Menko was arrested by the Russian police on his arrival at the house of a certain Labanoff, or Ladanoff—­almost my name in Russian.  This Labanoff, who had lately arrived from Paris, is suspected of a plot against the Czar.  He is not a nihilist, but simply a malcontent; and, besides that, his brain is not altogether right.  In short, Count Menko is connected in some way, I don’t know how, with this Labanoff.  He went to Poland to join him, and the Russian police seized him.  I think myself that they were quite right in their action.”

“Possibly,” said Varhely; “but I do not care to discuss the right of the Russian police to defend themselves or the Czar.  What I have come for is to ask you to use your influence with the Russian Government to obtain Menko’s release.”

“Are you very much interested in Menko?”