“Yes!” I said.
“Well, what, young man?”
Now I could observe the Prince quite composedly. I was calm enough now, and when our type grows calm it also grows cheeky and impertinent, and so I said: “I don’t care a straw for my brothers. All I’m concerned with is getting my own rights.”
“What rights? You have no rights. Go home. Give your mother my respects. Work hard. And become a useful citizen!”
I showed no signs of going away. I began again, obstinately and rudely: “Once when you were in Woroniaki, you carved me a little man out of wood, and then—” I was about to speak of his hands, which had been so hard and thin and had stroked my head so paternally — when suddenly the door flew open, the dog jumped up and began to bark joyfully, and the face of the Prince cleared suddenly and lit up. A young man, scarcely older than I, sprang into the room. The Prince opened his arms and kissed the boy several times on both cheeks. Then at last there was silence. The dog was still waving his tail. And suddenly the boy noticed me. “Herr Golubchik,” said the Prince, “my son!”
His son smiled at me. He had gleaming teeth, a wide mouth, a yellowish complexion, and a fine, hard nose. He did not look at all like the Prince, less like him than I, I thought at the time.
“Well, good-bye,” said the Prince to me. “Work hard.” He held out his hand. But then he drew it back and said: “Wait!” and walked over to his writing desk. He pulled open a drawer and took out of it a heavy gold snuffbox. “Here,” he said, “take this as a memento. God be with you!”
He forgot to give me his hand. I never even thanked him. I simply took the box, bowed, and left the house.
But scarcely was I outside and past the doorkeeper, to whom I even said “Good-bye,” in a daze of confusion and fear, and who did not even answer me with so much as a glance, than I immediately began to feel that a great wrong had been done me. The sun stood already at noon. I felt hungry — and was curiously ashamed of that feeling; it seemed to me low and vulgar and unworthy of me. I had been wronged, and lo and behold, I only felt hungry. So perhaps I really was a Golubchik, nothing more than a Golubchik.
I walked back over the sunlit, sandy road, along which I had come scarcely two hours before. I literally hung my head, for I had a feeling as if it could never be held up again; it was heavy and swollen, as though it had been beaten — my poor head. The two policemen were still standing at the same spot. Now, too, they stared after me for a long time. Some while after I had passed them, I heard a shrill whistle. It came from the left, from the seashore, and it frightened me, although it roused me somewhat from my stupor. I raised my head and saw my friend Lakatos. Blithely he stood there, his yellow coat glistening gaily in the sun, his little cane waving at me, his smart panama hat lying beside him on the beach. At that moment he picked it up and began walking towards me. Blithely and without any perceptible effort he mounted the steep slope, which at this point separated the road from the sea, and in a few minutes he was standing beside me, offering me his smooth hand.
Only then did I notice that I was still holding the Prince’s snuffbox in my right hand, and I pushed it, as adroitly as I could, into my pocket. But, quickly as I had made the movement, it had not escaped my friend Lakatos; I could see that from his look and his smile. At first he said nothing. He only tripped happily along beside me. Then, when the first houses of the town appeared before us, he asked: “Well, you were successful, I hope?” “Nothing was successful,” I answered, and I was filled with a great rage against Lakatos. “If you had come with me,” I went on, “as you promised yesterday, everything would have been quite different. You lied to me! Why did you write that you had to go away? Why are you still here?” “What!’ shouted Lakatos, “do you think I’ve got nothing better to do than look after you. Do you think I’m going to bother myself with your miserable affairs? I received a telegram last night, calling me away. But it turned out later that there was no need for me to go. So I stayed, and came along here to enquire, as a good friend, how you had got on.” “Well,” I said, “I did not get on — in fact, I am not as far forward as I was.” “So he wouldn’t own you?” “No.” “He gave you his hand?” “Yes,” I lied. “And what else?” I pulled the snuffbox out of my pocket. I held it in the palm of my outstretched hand, stood still, and let Lakatos observe it. He did not touch it, he only ran his eye over it carefully. At the same time he clicked his tongue, pursed his lips, whistled a few notes, hopped a step forward and then back again, and at last said: “A marvelous piece. Worth a fortune. May I hold it?” And already he was stroking the box with the tips of his fingers. We had, by now, reached the town, and a few people were coming towards us. Lakatos whispered hastily: “Put it away!” and I hid the box.
“Well, was he alone, the old fox?” asked Lakatos. “No,” I said, “his son came into the room.” “His son?” said Lakatos. “He hasn’t got one — I’ll tell you something I forgot to warn you about last night. That boy is not his son. He is the son of Count P., a Frenchman. Ever since the boy was born, the Countess has been living in France; exiled so to speak. She had to give up her son. That’s how it is. The old man must have an heir some time. Otherwise, who is to keep his fortune together? You, perhaps? Or I?”
“Do you know that for certain?” I asked, and my heart began to beat madly, with malicious joy, with a thirst for revenge; and suddenly I felt a burning hatred for this youth and a complete indifference towards the old Prince. All my feelings, my desires, my wishes, had suddenly found an object; once more I was filled with a new determination; I forgot that I had just received a bitter rebuff — or rather I thought I knew who alone was responsible for that rebuff. If — so I thought at the time — that youth had not entered the room, I could assuredly have won the Prince over to my cause. But that boy must have been warned, he must have known who I was, and that was why he had burst in so suddenly. The Prince had grown old and foolish, he had been artfully caught by this false son of his, this Frenchman, this child of a worthless mother.
It seemed to me then, while my thoughts ran on these lines, as though everything were growing clearer and brighter; the fire of hate was warming my heart. I believed that I had at last found the meaning of my life, and its object. The tragedy of my life was to be found in the fact that I was the wretched victim of a designing youth. The object of my life consisted, from that hour on, in my duty to destroy that same designing youth. An overwhelming feeling of gratitude to Lakatos filled me and compelled me to grip his hand, fast and firmly. He did not let my hand go. And thus we walked, almost like two children, hand in hand, towards the nearest restaurant. We ate plentifully, with robust appetites. Neither of us spoke much. Lakatos pulled a newspaper out of his coat pocket; it was like a conjuring trick, I had not noticed the paper until then. When we had finished eating, he called for the bill, pushed it towards me, and, still immersed in his paper, said quite casually: “You pay. We’ll reckon up afterwards.”