Slippery Pole

A GREAT LORD -- Paul Frischauer -- Random House ($2.50).

Except for minor disguises, says Austrian Author Frischauer, A Great Lord tells the true story of a Polish aristocrat in Napoleonic times. In theme, it is almost a first-class historical novel in the tradition of Tolstoy or Stendhal. With twice his imagination and half his unconscious Polish bias, Author Frischauer might have lived up to this tradition, instead of merely recalling it to his book's detriment. But by comparison with most recent historical romances, A Great Lord is a solidly written, serious work.

Redheaded, unscrupulous Prince Andreas Rasonski was so ugly that even peasant girls could not abide him except in the dark. His political ambitions he kept hidden for much the same reason. His model was Napoleon; his goal, to trade Polish military support for Polish independence, with himself as king. To this end he had spent ten years ingratiating himself with a powerful Polish Count, whose beautiful only daughter Dzjunka he schemed to marry in order to get working capital. It was a long shot. Dzjunka made no secret of the fact that he gave her the creeps. And Polish noblemen disliked still more the prospect of being freed by Napoleon at the expense of his freeing their serfs. But neither of these obstacles ruffled Rasonski's cool-headed obsequiousness toward the old Count nor his heavy gallantry toward Dzjunka. Only one thing disturbed his calculations: he had really fallen in love with Dzjunka.

When the uneasy Polish nobility finally gave Rasonski his chance to see what kind of a deal he could make with Napoleon, he got the old Count's permission to marry Dzjunka. She was unexpectedly docile, having decided with equal desperation to accompany him to Paris and there make her getaway.

In Paris, Rasonski's conference with Napoleon was as brief as it was fruitless. Dzjunka's one interview with the Emperor lasted slightly longer. As a souvenir she carried away a jeweled smelling-salts bottle and a future son. Although Rasonski got a vast Polish estate out of it and married Dzjunka, the knowledge of her infidelity turned him into a Napoleon hater, a valued Russian spy; inspired him with the cunning strategy of tormenting his wife by keeping a close watch over her, repaying her rebuffs and infidelities with perfect gallantry (meanwhile sublimating his venom by torturing his serfs).

Shortly before her death "by accident" in Vilna, Dzjunka betrayed Rasonski to Napoleon as a Russian spy. When her confession of this brought from Rasonski only an affectionate squeeze of the arm, even Dzjunka had to admit that her husband's masochistic gallantry had attained heroic pitch.

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