Edited by Julian Hawthorne
Victor Cherbuliez
Count Kostia
Paul Bourget
Andre Cornelis
Anonymous
The Last of the Costellos
Lady Betty's Indiscretion
Victor Cherbuliez
Count Kostia
At the beginning of the summer of 1850, a Russian nobleman, CountKostia Petrovitch Leminof, had the misfortune to lose his wifesuddenly, and in the flower of her beauty. She was his junior bytwelve years. This cruel loss, for which he was totallyunprepared, threw him into a state of profound melancholy; and somemonths later, seeking to mitigate his grief by the distractions oftravel, he left his domains near Moscow, never intending to return.Accompanied by his twin children, ten years of age, a priest whohad served them as tutor, and a serf named Ivan, he repaired toOdessa, and then took passage on a merchant ship for Martinique.Disembarking at St. Pierre, he took lodgings in a remote part ofthe suburbs. The profound solitude which reigned there did not atfirst bring the consolation he had sought. It was not enough thathe had left his native country, he would have changed the planetitself; and he complained that nature everywhere was too muchalike. No locality seemed to him sufficiently a stranger to hisexperience, and in the deserted places, where the desperaterestlessness of his heart impelled him, he imagined thereappearance of the obtrusive witnesses of his past joys, and ofthe misfortune by which they were suddenly terminated.
He had lived a year in Martinique when the yellow fever carried offone of his children. By a singular reaction in his vigoroustemperament, it was about this time that his somber melancholy gaveway to a bitter and sarcastic gayety, more in harmony with hisnature. From his early youth he had had a taste for jocularity, amocking turn of spirit, seasoned by that ironical grace of mannerpeculiar to the great Moscovite nobleman, and resulting from theconstant habit of trifling with men and events. His recovery didnot, however, restore the agreeable manners which in former timeshad distinguished him in his intercourse with the world. Sufferinghad brought him a leaven of misanthropy, which he did not take thetrouble of disguising; his voice had lost its caressing notes andhad become rude and abrupt; his actions were brusque, and his smilescornful. Sometimes his bearing gave evidence of a haughty willwhich, tyrannized over by events, sought to avenge itself uponmankind.
Terrible, however, as he sometimes was to those who surrounded him,Count Kostia was yet a civilized devil. So, after a stay of threeyears under tropical skies, he began to sigh for old Europe, andone fine day saw him disembark upon the quays of Lisbon. Hecrossed Portugal, Spain, the south of France and Switzerland. AtBasle, he learned that on the borders of the Rhine, between Coblenzand Bonn, in a situation quite isolated, an old castle was forsale. To this place he hurried and bought the antique walls andthe lands which belonged to them, without discussing the price andwithout making a detailed examination of the property. The bargainconcluded, he made some hasty and indispensable repairs on one ofthe building