This was said in a light, careless, humorously sceptical tone.

“On the whole,” concluded the minister, “Armand Bitto, who is no longer in this world, is perhaps the most fortunate of all.”

Then, turning to Yanski with his pleasant smile, and holding out his delicate, well-kept hand, which had once brandished the sabre, he said: 

“My dear Varhely, you will dine with me to-morrow, will you not?  It is a great pleasure to see you again!  Tomorrow I shall most probably give you an answer to your request—­a request which I am happy, very happy, to take into consideration.  I wish also to present you to the Countess.  But no allusions to the past before her!  She is a Spaniard, and she would not understand the old ideas very well.  Kossuth, Bem, and Georgei would astonish her, astonish her!  I trust to your tact, Varhely.  And then it is so long ago, so very long ago, all that.  Let the dead past bury its dead!  Is it understood?”

Yanski Varhely departed, a little stunned by this interview.  He had never felt so old, so out of the fashion, before.  Prince Zilah and he now seemed to him like two ancestors of the present generation—­Don Quixotes, romanticists, imbeciles.  The minister was, as Jacquemin would have said, a sly dog, who took the times as he found them, and left spectres in peace.  Well, perhaps he was right!

“Ah, well,” thought the old hussar, with an odd smile, “there is the age of moustaches and the age of whiskers, that is all.  Ladany has even found a way to become bald:  he was born to be a minister!”

It little mattered to him, however, this souvenir of his youth found with new characteristics.  If Count Josef Ladany rescued Menko from the police of the Czar, and, by setting him free, delivered him to him, Varhely, all was well.  By entering the ministry, Ladany would thus be at least useful for something.

CHAPTER XXX

“To seek forgetfulness”

The negotiations with Warsaw, however, detained Yanski Varhely at Vienna longer than he wished.  Count Josef evidently went zealously to work to obtain from the Russian Government Menko’s release.  He had promised Varhely, the evening he received his old comrade at dinner, that he would put all the machinery at work to obtain the fulfilment of his request.  “I only ask you, if I attain the desired result, that you will do something to cool off that hotheaded Menko.  A second time he would not escape Siberia.”

Varhely had made no reply; but the very idea that Michel Menko might be free made his head swim.  There was, in the Count’s eagerness to obtain Menko’s liberty, something of the excitement of a hunter tracking his prey.  He awaited Michel’s departure from the fortress as if he were a rabbit in its burrow.

“If he is set at liberty, I suppose that we shall know where he goes,” he said to the minister.