The Argonauts | Page 2

U.S.A. September 12, 1901.
CHAPTER I
It was the mansion of a millionaire. On the furniture and the walls of
drawing-rooms, colors and gleams played as on the surface of a pearl
shell. Mirrors reflected pictures, and inlaid floors shone like mirrors.
Here and there dark tapestry and massive curtains seemed to decrease
the effect, but only at first sight, for, in fact, they lent the whole interior
a dignity which was almost churchlike. At some points everything
glistened, gleamed, changed into azure, scarlet, gold, bronze, and the
various tints of white peculiar to plaster-of-Paris, marble, silk,
porcelain. In that house were products of Chinese and Japanese skill;
the styles of remote ages were there, and the most exquisite and elegant
among modern styles, lamps, chandeliers, candlesticks, vases,
ornamental art in its highest development. Withal much taste and skill
was evident, a certain tact in placing things, and a keenness in
disposing them, which indicated infallibly the hand and the mind of a
woman who was far above mediocrity.
The furnishing of this mansion must have cost sums which to the poor
would seem colossal, and very considerable even to the wealthy.
Aloysius Darvid, the owner of this mansion, had not inherited his
millions; he had won them with his own iron labor, and he toiled
continually to increase them. His industry, inventiveness, and energy
were inexhaustible. To him business seemed to be what water is to a
fish: the element which gives delight and freedom. What was his
business? Great and complicated enterprises: the erection of public
edifices, the purchase, sale, and exchange of values of various
descriptions, exchanges in many markets and corporations. To finish all
this business it was necessary to possess qualities of the most opposite
character: the courage of the lion and the caution of the fox, the talons
of the falcon and the elasticity of the cat. His life was passed at a

gaming-table, composed of the whole surface of a gigantic State; that
life was a species of continuous punting at a bank kept by blind chance
rather frequently; for calculation and skill, which meant very much in
his career, could not eliminate chance altogether, that power which
appears independently. Hence, he must not let chance overthrow him;
he might drop to the earth before its thrusts and contract a muscle, but
only to parry, make an elastic spring, and seize new booty. His career
was success rising and falling like a river, it was also a fever,
ceaselessly bathed in cool calculation and reckoning.
As to the rest, post-wagons, railways, bells at railway stations, urging
to haste, glittering snows of the distant North, mountains towering on
the boundary between two parts of the world, rivers cutting through
uninhabited regions, horizons marked with the gloomy lines of Siberian
forests, solitary since the beginning of ages. Then, as a change: noise,
glitter, throngs, the brilliancy of capitals, and in those capitals a
multitude of doors, some of which open with freedom, while others are
closed hermetically; before doors of the second sort the pliancy of the
cat's paw is needed; this finds a hole where the broad way is
impossible.
He was forced to be absent from his family for long months, sometimes
for whole years, and even when living under the same roof with the
members of it he was a rare guest, never a real confiding companion.
For permanence, intimacy, tender feeling in relations, with even those
who were nearest him, Darvid had not the time, just as he had not the
time to concentrate his thoughts on any subject whatever unless it was
connected with his lines, dates, and figures, or with the meshes of that
net in which he enclosed his thoughts and his iron labor.
As to amusements and delights of life, they were at intervals
love-affairs, flashing up on a sudden, transient, fleeting, vanishing with
the smoke of the locomotive which rushed forward, at times luxuries of
the table peculiar to various climates, or majestic scenery which forced
itself on the eye by its grandeur and disappeared quickly, or some hours
of animated card-playing; but, above all, relations with social magnates,
who were on the one hand of use, and on the other an immensely great

honor to his vanity. Money and significance, these were the two poles
around which all Darvid's thoughts, desires, and feelings circled; or, at
least, it might seem all, for who can be certain that nothing exists in a
man save that which is manifest in his actions? Surely no one, not the
man himself even.
After three years' absence, Darvid had returned only a few months
before to his native city, and to his own house, where he was as ever a
rare and inattentive guest. Pie was laboring again. In the first week,