Prince Zaleski | Page 2

the habit of my friend to
assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet, heavy,
gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
Prince Zaleski to be a consummate _cognoscente_--a profound
amateur--as well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless,
astounded at the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived
to crowd into the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic
implement, a Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of
Graeco-Etruscan work. The general effect was a bizarrerie of
half-weird sheen and gloom. Flemish sepulchral brasses companied
strangely with runic tablets, miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil
scriptures on lacquered leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries
richly gemmed, Brahmin gods. One whole side of the room was
occupied by an organ whose thunder in that circumscribed place must
have set all these relics of dead epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic
dances. As I entered, the vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the
low, liquid tinkling of an invisible musical box. The prince reclined on
a couch from which a draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the
floor. Beside him, stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on
three brazen trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the
upper part of which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent,
leaving the hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to
view.
Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of
Anacreon, Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering
at the same time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the
'unexpectedness' of my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me
a bed in one of the adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of

the night in a delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk
which Prince Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he
repeatedly pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling
hashish, prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a
simple breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which
was partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed
in a Turkish beneesh, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at first,
with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites and
astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
features.
'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.
'I have met him in "the world." His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar. I
noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour--a
strong likeness between father and son.'
I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing
these as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.
'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
eminence in the corps diplomatique, and lately (though, strictly
speaking, _unebenbürtig_) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-üppigen, a lady with a strain of
indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
a very old and distinguished one, though--especially in modern
days--far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago,
almost simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various
positions en bloc. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the
assumption that you have not already read it in the papers.'

'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one thing
insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'
'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness of
his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many years
ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and, with the
implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since exchanged a
word. But some little time after the retirement of the father, a message
was despatched by him to the son, who was then in India. Considered
as the first step in the rapprochement of this proud and selfish pair of
beings, it was an altogether remarkable message, and was subsequently
deposed to in evidence by a telegraph official; it ran:
'"_Return.