He turned away his eyes, partially closing them, and there appeared another form to him--in truth, very different from the first. It was that of a man whom he had known intimately, of a man whom he had deeply loved. In vain the lark sang aloud, in vain the peacock wailed--Abel Larinski no longer heard them. He was thinking of a certain Samuel Brohl; he was reviewing in his mind all the history of this Samuel, a man who never had had a secret from him. This history was quite as sad a one as that of Abel Larinski, but much less brilliant, much less heroic. Samuel Brohl prided himself neither on being a patriot nor a paladin; his mother had not been a noble woman with the smile of an angel, and the thought never had occurred to him of fighting for any cause or any person. He was not a Pole, although born in a Polish province of the Austrian Empire. His father was a Jew, of German extraction, as indicated by his name, which signifies a place where one sinks in the mire, a bog, swamp, or something of that nature; and he kept a tavern in a wretched little market-town near the eastern frontier of Galicia--a forlorn tavern, a forlorn tavern-keeper. Although always on the alert to sell adulterated brandy to his neighbour, and to seize the opportunity to lend him money on usury, he did not thrive: he was a coward of whose timidity every one took advantage to make him disgorge his ill-gotten gains. His creed consisted in three doctrines: he firmly believed that the arts of lying well, of stealing well, and of receiving a blow in the face without apparently noticing it, were the most useful arts to human life; but, of the three, the last was the only one that he practised successfully. His intentions were good, but his intellect deficient. This arrant rogue was only a petty knave that any one could dupe.
Abel Larinski transported himself, in thought, to the tavern in which Samuel Brohl had spent his first youth, and which was as familiar to him as though he had lived there himself. The smoky hovel rose before him: he could smell the odour of garlic and tallow; he could see the drunken guests--some seated round the long table, others lying under it--the damp and dripping walls, and the rough, dirty ceiling. He remembered a panel in the wainscoting against which a bottle had been broken, in the heat of some dispute; it had left a great stain of wine that resembled a human face. He remembered, too, the tavern-keeper, a little man with a dirty, red beard, whose demeanour was at once timid and impudent. He saw him as he went and came, then saw him suddenly turn, lift the end of his caftan and wipe his cheek on it. What had happened? An insolvent debtor had spit in his face; he bore it smilingly. This smile was more repulsive to Count Abel than the great stain that resembled a human face.