Moths by Ouida — page 366: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

S68 MOTHS. worda calumny. Once he took up a public print which spoke of himself and of his retreat at Marly, and which, with a hint and a veiled jest, quoted that line which Jeanne de Sonnaz had by 2 laugh wafted through Paris after his name: «Pur amant sur terre egare!”’ Gorreze crushed the paper in his hand and threw it from him, and went out: he longed todo something, to act in some way; all the impetuosity and ardor of his temper were panting to break from this thraldom of silence and inaction. He would have struck Sergius Zouroff on the cheek in the sight of all Paris, but he had no title to defend her. a He would only harm her more. She was the wife of Zouroff; and she accepted her exile at her fusband’s hands; he had no title to resent for her what she would not resent for herself. ‘¢T am not her lover,” he thought, bitterly; ‘‘I am nothing but a man who loves her hopelessly, uselessly, vainly.” It was late in autumn, and ghastly fancies seized him; vague terrors for her, that left him no sleep and no rest, began to visit him. Was she really at Szarisla? Was she indeed living? He could not tell. There were disturbances and bloodshed in the disaffected provinces; winter had begun there in Poland, the long, black silence of winter, which could cover so many nameless graves. He could bear absence, ignorance, apprehension, no longer; he went to sing twenty nights in Vienna and ten in Moscow. ** There I shall breathe the same air,” he thought. He went over the Alps, by way of the Jura and Dauphine; he thought, as he passed the peaceful valleys and the snow-covered summits that had been so familiar in childhood to him— ‘¢Tf I could only dwell in the mountains with her, and let the world and fame go by!” Ther. he reproached himself for even such dishonor to her ag lay in such a thought. ‘What am IJ, that she should be mine?” he mused. ‘‘I have ~ been the lover of many women, I am not worthy to touch her hand. The world could not harm her: would I?” In Vienna he had brilliant successes. He thought the people mad. ‘To himself he seemed forever useless and powerless for art; his voice sounded in his ears like a bell muffled and out of tune. The citiesrejoiced over him and feasted and honored him; but it seemed to him alllike a dream; he seemed only to: hear the beating of his own heart, that he wished would break and be at peace forever. From Moscow he passed away, under public plea that he was — bound for Germany, toward those obscure, dull, unvisited lands that lie toward the borders of East Prussia and the Baltic Sea, and have scarce a traveler to visit them, and never a poet or his- torian to save them from the nations’ oblivion, but lie in the teeth of the north wind, vast, ill populated, melancholy with the gvotound unchangeable wretchedness of a captive people, i comicbooks.co