Produced by MWS, Christopher Wright and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) PRINCESS NAPRAXINE III. New Three-volume Novels at all Libraries. DOROTHY FORSTER. By WALTER BESANT. THE NEW ABELARD. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. A REAL QUEEN. By R. E. FRANCILLON. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. By DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY. CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W PRINCESS NAPRAXINE BY OUIDA [Illustration] IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. III. London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1884 [_All rights reserved_] TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 34 1 Chapter 35 62 Chapter 36 92 Chapter 37 115 Chapter 38 136 Chapter 39 163 Chapter 40 179 Chapter 41 197 Chapter 42 226 Chapter 43 243 Chapter 44 257 Chapter 45 267 Chapter 46 270 Chapter 47 276 Chapter 48 284 Chapter 49 292 Chapter 50 315 Chapter 51 325 Chapter 52 327 Chapter 53 342 Chapter 54 354 Chapter 55 363 L'Envoi 375 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. CHAPTER XXXIV. When Yseulte had recovered enough to travel, he took her to the Italian lakes for awhile, to restore her to her usual health and strength, and distract her thoughts from what had befallen her at AmyÃ´t. With the beginning of winter they returned, and made their home for awhile in the great hotel of the Boulevard St. Germain, which he hated, and where he intended to remain for the briefest time that could suffice for the fulfilment of those social duties of which Friederich Othmar never ceased to remind him. There his mother's apartments had been prepared for his wife, and every grace and attraction that the art and the taste of the day could add to them had been added, as though the most solicitous affection had presided over the preparation of them. All the preferences she had shown in the country had been remembered and gratified; whatever she had liked best in colour, in treatment, in art, in flowers, in marble, had been consulted or reproduced in Paris; and even a large dog to which she had taken a fancy at AmyÃ´t had been brought thence from the kennels, and was lying before the fire when she entered. A much older and far wiser woman would have been persuaded to believe, as she believed, that in all this delicate _prÃ©venance_ for her pleasures and her preferences the tenderest love had spoken. She could not divine the self-reproach of her husband's conscience, which made him sensible that he perforce denied her so much that was her due, and made him proportionately eager to atone for that denial by every material enjoyment and outward mark of affection and of homage. All those who surrounded him, all his acquaintances, his household, and his dependents, imagined that he loved his young wife. The person who was in nowise deceived was Friederich Othmar. 'He is like a Sultan,' thought the old man angrily, 'a Sultan who loads the women of his zenana with ropes of pearls and emeralds as big as pigeon's eggs, that they may not perceive that he only visits them twice a year!' By the law of the attraction of contrasts, there had arisen a mutual attachment between her and Baron Fritz: the unscrupulous old man, for whom as for Turcaret the whole world was composed of shareholders, felt more reverence and tenderness for Yseulte than he ever felt in his life for anyone; and she, who only saw his devotion to Othmar, his admirable manners, his shrewd wit, and his paternal kindness to herself, grew fond of, and grateful to, him, and was wholly ignorant of that mercilessness and selfishness which would have immolated all mankind to the service of his personal ambitions, and to which all morality or humanity appeared as absurd as they did to Fouquet or to Talleyrand. Friederich Othmar incessantly strove to inspire her with his own passion for the House he adored, and though he failed because she was too thoroughly patrician in all her instincts to easily welcome such impressions, and was more apt to share her husband's disdain for all such ambitions, he did succeed in persuading her that the future content of Othmar himself would depend on the measure of the interest which he would take in those great fortunes of which he held the key. 'Understand this, my child,' he would say, 'a man in old age never forgives himself for the occasions which he has let slip in youth; and every man who in youth is _dÃ©sÅuvrÃ©_, pays for it heavily when age has come. Otho is a clever man, but he has the sickness of his century; he is indifferent to everything' ('even to you!' he thought impatiently). 'We call it the malady of the time; I do not know that we are right. It existed in Petronius Arbiter's, but it had no existence in our immediate forefathers'. However, you do not care for abstract discussions; you care for Otho. Well, let us confine ourselves to Otho. Nowadays, he is still a young man; he thinks he can afford to despise all things because he has strength, and health, and every form of enjoyment accessible to him--and he is certainly rich enough to play at cynicism all day if it amuse him most.' 'He is no cynic,' said Yseulte, quickly. Baron Fritz smiled. 'A little of Alceste, surely? You read "Le Misanthrope," even at your convent, I imagine? My dear child, people always desire the fate they have not. Alfred de Vigny, with his sixteen quarterings, was always in rebellion against the fate of the poor gentleman; Otho, one of the richest men in Europe, is always rebelling against his riches as a chain and a species of dishonour. Now, it is for you to reconcile him to them; it is for you to persuade him that in the interests of his House lie those occupations and obligations which will not pall upon him as he grows older. I have known men weary of love and pleasure, but I have never known them weary of ambition. Otho scorns vulgar ambitions, but there are those which are not vulgar. In finance, as in life, there is no standing still. In his present mood he would be delighted if ruin were possible to us; it is not possible. Short of a European war that should last thirty years, nothing can harm us much. Still, no great house can long stand without a chief who cares for its welfare and honour. Like Catherine II., "je lis l'avenir dans le passÃ©." A wise statesman has always the past of the world spread out before him like an ordnance map for his guidance. So may we also, in the past history of such houses as our own, see what has led to their ruin, and so guide ourselves to avoid those evils in our own case. Now, nothing has been so commonly the cause of _krach_ in financial establishments as their being afflicted with imprudent or indifferent members. Otho is not very often imprudent, but he is entirely indifferent. Certainly,' continued the Baron, with pardonable pride, 'the Maison d'Othmar is too solidly established, too greatly important to the public life of Europe, to be easily imperilled by a young man's foibles. Still, I cannot disguise from myself the fact that when I am no more there will be no check on his eccentricities, no stimulus to his apathy. He will be ill served because he will at once expect too much virtue from men, and observe them with too little suspicion. The ship is sound and safe, and sure to have fair winds, but if the man at her helm be reading his Horace or his La BruyÃ¨re instead of steering by his chart, the ship may founder in clear weather and calm seas. You understand me?' Metaphor was very unusual to him; he only condescended to use it for sake of making his meaning clearer to the feebleness of a feminine mind. 'Yes, I understand quite well,' she replied, with a little sigh. 'But I have no influence; he would think me impertinent; and I am sure no one will care for the honour of the House more truly than he.' 'Commercially speaking, there are two kinds of honour,' said Friederich Othmar. 'The fantastic and visionary one he will always maintain, but the practical one, which lies in doing your utmost for all the interests centred in yours, he will neglect. If I were to tell him that we must collapse to-morrow, he would give up everything, down to his pet edition of Marcus Aurelius, to satisfy our debts; but if I were to tell him also how many financial schemes and companies would fall with us, he would only reply that the world would be exceedingly well rid of so many scoundrels. The honour is safe with him, doubtless, but the welfare is not. I shall not live for ever; I shall probably only live a very few years more. You must persuade your husband that his true duties and pleasures will lie in those ambitions which his fathers have bequeathed to him. I know that he and you would like to extinguish the House of Othmar financially, and dwell at AmyÃ´t with no remembrance of the world. That is a lover's dream. My dear, simplicity and solitude are impossible in our society; a shepherd's peace is not attainable by a man whom the world claims. If I were to die to-morrow, and Otho to remain as indifferent to his own interests as he is now, all that I have done, all that his predecessors have done, would crumble away in ten or twenty years like so much soft sandstone in a succession of wet winters. He would not resent it now, but when he should be fifty years old he would resent it bitterly; he would never pardon himself. It is from this possibility that your influence must protect him.' She hesitated, with a blush upon her face. 'I have no influence,' she said timidly. 'He knows so much better, so much more than I----' 'Obtain influence over him,' said the old man curtly; 'for if you do not, someone else will. Nay, my dear, pardon me; do not be hurt by my plain speaking. Such men as Otho are always influenced by women; he should be so now by you; he will be so if you will leave off worshipping him timidly, making him your law and your religion, and realise that you are an exquisitely lovely woman, with mind enough not to be the mere toy of any man. You are very young, it is true, but you have grown ten years in a few months. You must remember that to be in love is very agreeable, no doubt, but you are not his mistress; you are his wife. You must not think only of the immediate moment, but of the far future when he will not be in love with you, _ma belle_, nor you with him, but when you may still influence him nobly and wisely, and he may find in you his safest friend.' Yseulte listened, with a little sigh. It seemed to her as if all her happy illusions were taking wing, like the group of amorini which flew away from a weeping nymph on the ceiling of her room, which had been painted by Bourgereau. They were seated in one of her own apartments, a very bower of primroses and white lilac, panelled in the Louis Seize style, with Bourgereau's charming children in groups within each panel above the satin couches. Between the curtains, there were glimpses through the windows of the cedars and wellingtonias of the gardens. Without, it was a chilly winter's day, but within, it was warm as summer, mellow with soft colour, fragrant with innumerable flowers; even to this great hotel of the Boulevard S. Germain, which had always seemed to Othmar the most oppressive and detestable of all his many mansions, the advent of Yseulte had brought a grace and light and sweetness as of young and innocent life, a charm of home to these splendid and desolate suites of rooms. Her dogs lay on the hearth, her voice called the peacocks in the lonely gardens, her scores of Beethoven and Schubert and Berlioz lay open on the grand pianos. Even the look of the great bouquets in the Japanese bowls and the jars of Saxe and SÃ¨vres was different: her hand had added a rose there, a fern here; they were flowers which were there because she loved them, not only because they served for decorations grouped by skilful servants as mere masses of colour. The great house, sombre in its Bourbon stateliness, magnificent in its architecture, but oppressive in its too continual display of wealth, was no longer 'une maison sans musique, une ruche sans abeilles;' it had gained a charm which was none the less perceptible because undefinable and impalpable, as the scent of the tea-roses in the tall SÃ¨vres jars. But Friederich Othmar was more sensible of this than was the possessor of the house and of her. Friederich Othmar, who had lived for fifty years and more without perceiving that he had never had, or wished to have, a home, perceived that his nephew had one and scarcely appreciated it. Friederich Othmar himself became suddenly alive to the pleasure of finding something home-like in that corner of her boudoir where she drew a Japanese screen between him and the draught from the windows, brought him his cup of green tea, and listened with an interest fresh and unfeigned to his anecdotes, his reminiscences, and his counsels: but he found Othmar there less often than he would have wished. 'He will be glad of that _coin du feu_ some day,' he thought angrily; annoyed by a neglect which Yseulte herself did not perceive. She had been used to solitude; she was neither vain nor exacting; she understood that everything could not be in Paris altogether as it had been at AmyÃ´t; and if she gave a sigh to that necessity, she bravely and tranquilly accepted it. The great world was about her with its demands, its solicitations, its tyrannies over time and thought; she had little leisure for meditation; the Countess Othmar could not escape the social obligations of her position or avoid its ceremonies and its courtesies. She remained much graver and simpler than her contemporaries were; she cared for none of the noisy amusements of modern fashion; the world of pleasure seemed to her, on the whole, a little vulgar, a little tiresome, astonishingly monotonous, even in its feverish search for the untried and the startling. But at the same time she could not escape from its demands, and their effects upon her, and the counsels of Friederich Othmar incessantly reminded her that she could best serve the honour of the name she bore by making Europe admire and praise her. It was a counsel which contained the seeds of danger; but he read her character aright. 'VoilÃ une qui ne _cascadera_ jamais,' said the Baron to himself in his tongue of the Boulevards. He was infinitely proud of, and delighted with her; he gave her the most magnificent presents, bought her the rarest of jewels. He accompanied her constantly in her drives and to the opera, and even in the visits which she paid. 'It is Baron Fritz whom Othmar's marriage has reformed!' said a pretty woman, who had long considered the silver-haired financier as her own especial prey. He took a paternal pleasure in the admiration which the rare patrician graces of the girl awoke in that _tout Paris_ which he had long considered the lawgiver of the universe. 'If you had been Marie Antoinette, there might have been no revolution,' he said jestingly to her. 'You would never have flirted with Ferson, nor would you have played at shepherdessing, or worn a mask in the Palais Royal.' 'I think I should only have thought of France,' she answered. 'Which would not have prevented you from going to the guillotine, I dare say,' said the Baron. 'Nations are the concentrated distillation of the ingratitude of men. There is only one thing which one can always count on with absolute certainty, and that is, the general and individual thanklessness.' Nothing was further from his thoughts than to cloud over the trust, confidence, and faith of her innocent optimism. He spoke as he thought and felt, and as a long experience of mankind had taught him to do, without reflecting that he dropped the bitterness of gall into a fair and limpid spring, which had seen nothing above its waters save the white lily-cups and the blue heavens. 'She will be robbed right and left endlessly if she be not taught a little mistrust,' he said to Othmar himself, who replied: 'Let her be robbed of everything rather than of her illusions. This is the only loss from which we never recover.' 'What an absurd idea!' thought the Baron, who had never cherished any illusions at all, and had found life exceedingly entertaining and enjoyable without them. The practical mind can no more understand the regrets of the meditative one than a manufacturer, spending his days by choice amidst the roar of steam wheels and the ledgers of a counting-house, can understand the artist's anguish when he is shut up in a city garret whence he cannot see a sunset or a sunrise. 'The woes of the body, I grant, may be too much for one's philosophy,' the Baron was wont to say. 'With the gout, or neuralgia, or sciatica, Seneca's self might fail to retain serenity. But the sorrows of the emotions or of the imagination are so entirely fictitious that anyone, by the exercise of a little self-control, may put them aside completely.' 'What! Even the losses of death?' objected some one once. The Baron smiled: 'Death cannot affect you very greatly unless you have already committed an act of unwisdom--that is, have already attached yourself to some other life than your own.' 'Then where is love?' said his interlocutor. 'Where it has always been,' said Friederich Othmar, 'chiefly in the senses partially in the imagination. When we have both the senses and the imagination under the control of our temperate judgment, it cannot disturb us seriously. In my youth, and even in my maturity,' he continued, with complacence, 'I have dallied with love as well as other men, but the moment that I felt that any one passion was likely to exercise undue influence upon me, I withdrew myself from it. To break a chain is difficult, but never to let it be forged is easy.' He thought it his duty to put his young favourite on her guard against all the deceptions and delusions which the world prepares for its novices; he told her much more than her husband would have done of all the intricacies and meanings of the varied life which was about her, gave her the key to many of its secrets, and the hidden biographies of many of its personages. 'You are in the world, you must understand the world,' he said to her; 'if not, it will be a mere labyrinth to you, and you will be lost in it. You need not become a _mondaine_ with your heart, but you must become one with your head, or the _mondaines_ will devour you. It is not necessary that you should gamble or swear or get into debts for your petticoats, as they do; but it is necessary that you should understand the society of your time. At AmyÃ´t you may be a young saint, as heaven meant you to be, but in Paris you must be able to hold your own against those who are the reverse of saints. Otho ought to teach you all this himself, but he will not, so you must listen to me. I have not been so engrossed in the gold market all my days that I do not know _la haute gomme_ down to the ground. In my leisure I have always gone into the world: the boudoir of a pretty woman is always much more amusing than a card-table or a pistol-gallery. _L'Ecole des Femmes_ is the one to which every wise man goes.' He paused, with a consciousness that he had better not pursue that theme. 'My child,' he resumed, as the carriage rolled down the Bois, 'you are not seventeen; you are in love with your husband; you sweep your conscience every morning with a palm-leaf to make sure there is no little film of a cobweb left in it; you think life is such a simple and beautiful thing that you have only to get up and go to bed as the sun does. You hear quantities of compliments, but you pay no attention to them; you are altogether as innocent as a flower, and you are quite exquisite like that--it suits you; but, all the same, you cannot go on like that for ever. Men might let you, for we are not as black as we are painted, but women will not. It is from women that your sorrows will come, that your perception of evil will come, that your enemies will come. Satan, pardon me the word, would take off his hat to you and pass by on the other side, for he, too, is not as black as he has been painted. But women will not feel what Satan would feel; they are much more hard to touch. It is women whom you must try to understand; you can analyse without imbibing, as chemists do poisons.' 'Must one analyse at all?' said Yseulte, a little wistfully. Such abrupt and familiar allusions to Satan disturbed the awe in which she had been reared at FaÃ¯el; but she was growing used to the perception that all the things which she held most sacred were mere Mother Goose's tales to the world in general, and to understand why her cousin Clothilde, who had her emblazoned chair at S. Philippe du Roule and occupied it so regularly, and was so heedful all Lent to wear the strictest mourning costume without a shred of lace, had yet not a grain of real religion in her. She began to comprehend what Blanchette had meant by all her rapturous felicitations, and sometimes the proud and austere young soul of her was humiliated to think that these mere material pleasures should have any attraction for her: she felt that her grandmother's ascetic and haughty teachings would have condemned such joys as mundane and vulgar. But the pleasure of them was there, nevertheless, and she was too honest in her self-analysis to dissimulate before her conscience. Unworldly as temperament and education alike made her, Yseulte was feminine enough and accessible enough to such vanities for all the possessions into which she entered to amuse and please her with their novelty and the sense of power which they gave. She was but a child in years, and the large households deferential to her slightest word, the grand equipages ready for her whim and fancy, the beautiful horses which bore her with the fleetness of the wind, the vast houses through which she could wander, conscious that she was the mistress of them all, the innumerable beauties of art which they contained, the caskets and coffers full of jewels and baubles, all these things beguiled her time and gratified that pride which a very young girl always feels in the sudden assumption of womanhood. She began to understand why all her companions at FaÃ¯el had thought her so fortunate. Her serious and spiritual nature made her feel a little ashamed at finding so much interest in such earthly treasures; in her self-examination she reproved herself, and almost contemned herself. But she was too young not to take such irresistible delight in all these things as a child takes in butterflies or poppies; it was delightful to say 'I wish,' and see her wishes accomplished as by magic; it was charming to give away right and left, as out of a bottomless purse; it was amusing to command, to confer, to be regarded as the source of all favours and all fortune, as the people of AmyÃ´t and the household of Paris regarded her. In time, the delicacy of her taste, the seriousness of her intelligence, might probably make these possessions and privileges pall on her; in time she would see sycophancy where she now saw only devotion, and grow weary of a loyalty only rooted in self-interest; but, at the onset, life was to her like a fairy story, her empire was one on which the sun never set and in which the spring-time never waned. Othmar never said one word which could have served to disenchant her. Conscious that he could not give her all the singleness of love which was her due, he strove to atone for any wrong he did her so by multiplying around her every physical gratification, and giving her an unlimited power of self-indulgence. In this new life she was like a child who stands amidst the bewilderment of its crowd of New Year presents; sometimes she thought of herself as she had been six months before, sitting in the shadow of the stone cloisters at FaÃ¯el, in her dust-coloured convent frock, with the blue ribbon of merit crossing her breast and some holy book open on her hands, with a kind of wondering pity and strangeness, and a sense of being herself far, very far, away from any kinship with that sad grey figure. That so little of egotism was aroused in her in this hot-house existence which she led, was due to the generosity and simplicity of her instincts, on which the contagion of worldly influences had little power. To send a silver crucifix to FaÃ¯el, or a piece of fine lace to Nicole, still gave her greater pleasure than to wear her own great diamonds or see the crowds in the Champs ElysÃ©es look after her carriage with its liveries of black velvet and white satin. Meanwhile she had the natural feeling of every unselfish and generous nature, that her life was not full enough of thought for others. It was difficult for her at her age to know what to do, so as to carry out those theories of self-sacrifice which training and temperament alike made a religion to her. Friederich Othmar, when he discovered this, told her, with some impatience, that the House of Othmar always did what was expected of it in this respect, and that its women had no occasion to trouble their heads with such matters. 'Wherever we have been located we have always been good citizens,' he said, with truth. 'We have always borne our due share of public expenditure or public almsgiving; perhaps more than our due share. Myself, I believe that all that sort of charity is a vast mistake. It is intended as a sop to the wolves, but you cannot feed wolves on sops. They will always want your blood, however they may lick up your mess.' Yseulte remembered that S. Francis had proved that even wolves may be tamed into affection and usefulness; but though she believed firmly in that legend, she hesitated to put it forward, even as an allegory, as evidence against the arguments of the Baron. She did not lack courage, nor even that truest courage, the courage of opinion, but she had been reared in the old traditions of high breeding, which make contradiction a vulgarity, and, from the young to the old, an offence. 'I hope you will not make yourself into a sort of Judith Montefiore,' continued the Baron irritably. 'We are not Jews. Jews must do that kind of thing to get themselves tolerated. We could forgive them the Crucifixion, but we cannot forgive them their percentage. Though we are not Jews, Otho has already done some Quixotic things in the Montefiore fashion. I hope you will not encourage him to continue them.' 'Tell me what they were,' she said, with the light in her eyes and the colour in her face. 'Not I,' said the Baron; 'I much prefer to see him smoking Ã LondrÃ¨s at the Jockey.' 'Had he ever any very great sorrow?' she ventured to ask. 'None, my dear, but what he chose to make for himself,' replied Friederich Othmar, with contempt. 'Do you remember Joubert's regret that he could not write his thoughts on the bark of trees by merely looking at them?--well, Otho's griefs are much as baseless. As if,' he added, 'as if there were any real grief in the world,--except the gout!' 'He is like Obermann, like Amiel,' she said timidly. She had read passages in the volumes of those dreamy and isolated thinkers in the library of AmyÃ´t. Friederich Othmar shrugged his shoulders; those names signified to him the very lowest deeps of human ineptitude and folly. 'Men who were so afraid of disappointment and disillusion that they would allow themselves to enjoy nothing! It would be as reasonable to let oneself die of starvation as a preventive of dyspepsia! Such men do not think; they only moon. The cattle that lie and graze under the trees have meditations quite as useful. My child,' he added, 'would you be wise or foolish if you threw all your diamonds into the river in anger because they were not stars? That is what your husband does with his life. You must learn to persuade him that the stars are unattainable, and that the diamonds represent a very fair and fruitful kingdom if not the powers of the air.' Yseulte sighed wistfully. She vaguely felt that it was not within her means to reconcile him with the world and fate; she had not the magic wand. 'I am always in dread,' continued the Baron, 'that you, with your religious ideas, and he, with his impatience of his position, will do something extraordinary and Quixotic; will turn S. Pharamond into a _maison de santÃ©_, or this hotel into a lazar-house for cancer. I shall never be surprised at any madness of that sort.' Yseulte sighed a little. 'But, there is the misery of the world all around us,' she ventured to say; 'if we could alleviate it, would it not be worth any sacrifice?' 'My dear,' said Baron Fritz, 'when NapolÃ©on gave the opium at Jaffa, he did more to alleviate suffering than all the philanthropists have ever done. Yet it has been always brought against him as his worst action. I went once, out of curiosity, to see the Incurables at the hospital of la SalpÃªtriÃ¨re. Well, if false sentiment did not prevent the treatment Ã la Jaffa taking place there, an infinitude of hideous suffering and of hideous deformity would be mercifully nded. But the world is so sentimental that it will send several hundred thousand of young and healthy men to endure all kinds of tortures in war for a question of frontier, or a matter of national etiquette, but it esteems it unlawful to kill idiots or drug to death incurables cursed with elephantiasis or leprosy.' Yseulte's clear eyes grew troubled; these views of life were perplexing to her. At FaÃ¯el all such contradictions had been simply accepted as ordained under one unquestioned and divine law; the conversation of Friederich Othmar depressed and bewildered her, but she could perceive its reason. It made her reflect; it made her more of a woman, less of a child. He thought that was for the best. If she were not educated in some worldly knowledge, the world would make an easy prey of her. 'Otho treats her as if she were an ivory madonnina who would remain aloof on an altar all her days,' he said to a woman he knew. 'On the contrary, she is a beautiful creature, about whom all the world will buzz and sting like bees about a lily. She must be taught not to throw away her honey. She is just now in the clouds; she is very much in love with a man who is not in love with her; she is full of ideals and impossible sentiments. She is half a child, half an angel; but to hold her own in the world she must be something else--not so angelic and not so childish,--and she must learn to esteem people at their value, which is for the most part very small. It would be even well if she could see Otho as he is; she would take life more easily. She would not be so likely to fall headlong from a heaven of adoration into a stone well of disillusion. Truths live at the bottom of these wells, no doubt, but they are not agreeable, and they give a shock to sensitive people. A woman is prettier when she is sensitive. It is like piety or charity--it is an essentially feminine ornament, but it is not a quality which wears well.' His friend laughed. 'Do you think Othmar will thank you for so educating his wife?' 'He has never thanked me for anything that I have done,' he replied. 'But that does not prevent me from doing what I consider is my duty, or is most wise.' 'Say wisdom,' returned the lady. 'That suits you better than duty. Duty is ridiculous if you do not let _le bon Dieu_ pose behind it.' 'I know people say so,' answered the Baron; 'but it is only an idea. In practical life agnostics and disbelievers of every sort make just as good citizens as the pietists.' With the second week of December there was a great social event in Paris. The HÃ´tel Othmar was opened to the world. 'The gates of Janus unclose,' said one who deemed himself a wit in allusion to a war, then in embryo, into whose conception and gestation the gold of the Othmar was considered to enter largely. The Boulevard S. Germain and all its approaches were like rivers of light, and the sound of carriage wheels was like the roll of artillery. 'Tout Paris' flocked there, and even the Faubourg disdained not to pass through those immense gates of gilded bronze, which were nicknamed of Janus, since the mistress of the salons within was by birth incontestibly a Comtesse de Valogne. 'Tiens, tiens, tiens!' murmured Aurore de Vannes. 'Is it possible for twelve months to have so changed a _fillette_ into a goddess! Really, we were all wrong, and Othmar was right. We all thought her a _pauvrette_, to be put away in a holy house; he had the sense to see that she would become superb, and would set him right with all the Faubourg. The Faubourg was always well inclined to him, because his grandmother was a de Soissons-Valette, but his marriage has made him one of them: he is definitely placed for ever. Really, I never gave him credit for so much foresight when he sent that ivory casket. I thought it was only a caprice.' 'Othmar cares not a straw for the Faubourg,' said her husband, out of the pure spirit of contradiction. 'He will never give his millions to carry on a Holy War or restore the throne. He is more likely to dream of a great Western empire with its capital at the Golden Horn. He is a Slavophile.' 'He is wholly indifferent to politics; it is Baron Fritz who is the political conspirator,' returned the Duchesse. 'Otho is a mere dreamer, and he used to be a discontented one. Perhaps he is not so now.' 'He does not look especially happy; she does. I confess I should be sorry for him to become contented; the contemplation of his discontent has always reconciled me with having nothing myself,' said a great diplomatist, whose debts were as considerable as his talents. 'If he be not contented----' began the Duc, and paused, conscious that for him to say anything except a jest of any marriage under the sun would appear supremely ridiculous to his companions. Yet his admiration for Yseulte was not dormant, and took a still warmer character as he saw her in the _grande tenue_ of a woman of the world, with the Othmar diamonds, long famous and long unseen, on her fair hair and her white breast. 'She has too many jewels for such a child,' he said irritably. 'She is covered with them like an Indian idol. That is so like a financier's love of display!' 'I dare say he has given them to her as you give toys to a child,' replied the diplomatist. 'Othmar has no faults of display. What has been almost ridiculous in him has been a simplicity of taste not in accord with his millions. But his wife is so very handsome that she may well betray him into some vanities.' Twelve months had truly made in her that almost magical transformation which passion can cause in a very young and innocent girl who, from entire seclusion and absolute ignorance, is suddenly thrown into the arms of a man whom she has scarcely seen, yet timidly adores. She had lost her extreme spirituality of expression, but she had gained a thousand-fold in other ways. Her form had developed, her whole person had become that of a woman instead of a child; she was many years older than she had been one short year before, when, in her little quiet chamber under the woods of FaÃ¯el, she had only thought of love as a mystical religious emotion, and of herself as the betrothed of Christ. She filled her place, and did the honours of her house with a calm grace which had nothing of the hesitation or the awkwardness of youth. He had told her what to do, and she did it with perfect ease, and that dignity which had so become her when she had curtsied to Melville as a little child in the old, dusky house in the Ile Saint-Louis. In manner she might have been a Queen of France for five-and-twenty years. It was only in the unworn transparency of the fair skin, beneath which the blood came and went so warmly, the slenderness of the lines of her form, the childlike naÃ¯vetÃ© of her smile, that her exceeding youthfulness was still revealed. She made no single error; she said little, but she said always what was needful and becoming; she received each one of her guests with the phrase that pleased them, with the observances that were due to them; there was no hesitation or awkwardness in her. Even women who watched her, as her cousin did, with a malicious wish to find her at fault somewhere, were forced to confess to themselves that she bore herself admirably. If she had a defect, it was that she appeared a little cold. She was always exquisitely courteous; she was never familiar. 'She has the manner of the last century,' said Madame de Vannes, 'of the last century, before the women of Marie Antoinette rode donkeys and milked cows.' To see that baby who six months ago had never spoken to any man except her confessor, and never worn any ornament except her convent medal, receiving sovereigns and princes and ambassadors, _de puissance Ã puissance_, and wearing diamonds which were ten times bigger, finer, and in greater profusion than her own, made her very angry, and yet made her laugh. She had seen many transformations of _fillettes_ into great ladies, but none quite so rapid, so striking, or so complete as that of her young cousin into the mistress of the HÃ´tel Othmar. 'I wish Nadine Napraxine were here this evening,' she thought with that good-humoured malice which enjoys a friend's annoyance without meaning any real unkindness. 'All Paris will talk of your ball and much more of you to-morrow,' said de Vannes during the evening to his wife's cousin. 'Does that please you as much as it pleases most of them?' 'I shall not think about it,' replied Yseulte, simply. 'But I imagine you read the journals?' 'No, never.' 'Never!' he echoed, incredulously. 'Why is that?' She hesitated, then answered with a little blush: 'He has told me not; he thinks they are foolish.' 'Othmar?' asked the Duc, with a laugh. 'Do you obey him as you did the Mother Superior?' 'Why not?' said Yseulte gently, but coldly. 'Why not!' he said irritably. 'Well, because you should begin as you wish to go on; you will not care for that state of servitude long; it would be better never to accustom him to it.' 'Excuse me, my cousin, I see Madame de Tavernes is looking for me,' said Yseulte, as she went to speak with a Duchesse whose genealogical tree mounted to the remote ages before the long-haired kings; a stately and powdered person who had issued from the retirement in which she usually lived to honour the first great entertainment of the daughter of Gui de Valogne. The Duc was rebuffed and annoyed. 'She has learned her _riposte_ already,' he thought, 'and she has not forgotten the locket. I wonder if he care? If he want to be free himself, he had better put her on a course of _petits journaux_ at once. There is no recipe like that for corrupting the mind and debasing the taste. How handsome she is! What a lovely face--what a lovely form!--and only seventeen even now! She will be in perfect beauty for the next ten years. If he be not a very ardent or a very assiduous husband, he will not be able to keep all that to himself; he will have many rivals, and he will be sure to be unfaithful himself:--then she will read the journals and learn how women console themselves.' At five o'clock that morning her rooms were empty, her guests were gone, and her woman had undressed her, and put on her a _nÃ©gligÃ©e_ of white silk; her hair was unloosened and fell behind her like a cascade of gold; all the great jewels were strewn on the table near; she was looking at her own reflection in the large oval silver-framed mirror before her; she smiled a little as she did so; her eyes were luminous, her cheeks were flushed; she was sensible of no fatigue, she was only elated with her own triumphs. She had had a girlish pleasure in receiving her cousins in that magnificent house; she had had an innocent triumph in showing how well she could fill the part of a woman of the world; she felt like a child who has played a queen's part in some pageant, and played it well; something of the insidious charm of the world had begun to steal on her; something of its vanity and of its rivalry had begun to attract her;--very little, for her nature was too proud, too pure, and too serious to yield easily to these temptations, but something nevertheless. Only as yet her one dominant thought was of him in it all. Had he also been content; had there been nothing that he could have desired otherwise? She turned with a smile, half timid still, as he knocked at the door and entered her chamber. Her attendants withdrew at a sign from him; he took her in his arms and kissed her. 'I thank you for all your triumphs, dear,' he said kindly. 'They are mine.' 'Did I really do well?' she said doubtfully, but joyfully. 'Perfectly, perhaps almost too well; Paris will talk too much of you.' 'I forgot nothing?' she asked, still anxiously. 'You forgot nothing, and you looked--much too beautiful for men quickly to forgive me! No, dear, I do not flatter you; flattery would be absurd from me to you; I tell you the simple truth.' 'I am glad,' she said simply, 'for I have nothing else to reward you with for all you have given to me.' She spoke shyly, for she was always in awe of him a little. Her arm, uncovered to the shoulder as the loose folds of the sleeve fell away from it, stole timidly about his throat; in all her caresses there was the hesitation of a proud and delicate nature blent with the longing of an ardent love. Habit had not familiarised her with the relation in which he stood to her; the brutalising intimacy of marriage had not dwarfed or dulled her ideal and adoration of him. He was still much less her lover than her lord. Othmar took the bright gold of her heavy hair in his hand, and drew it through his fingers. 'On chasse de race,' he said, with a smile. 'You receive a great crowd as if you had been reared in a court from your babyhood.' 'You told me what to do,' she answered simply. 'It seems very easy; besides, every one was so extremely kind.' 'The kindness of society,' thought Othmar, 'the kiss of Judas!' But he did not say so. Let her learn for herself what it was worth, he thought; the knowledge would come soon enough of itself. Yseulte's face grew grave as she sat lost in thought. 'I do not think it is right to care for this sort of thing,' she said, with hesitation. 'It is only a sort of vanity. And then all these diamonds and these great pearls--they say they are worth millions--I do not like to wear them whilst there are so many without clothes or food of any kind; one knows that there is so much misery all about us here in Paris. Is it right, do you think, to enjoy oneself in this kind of way? I seem to remember nothing but myself all the day long----' Othmar smiled and sighed. 'Enjoy, my child, while you can; leave all those grave thoughts for your older years. If you like to sell your jewels, and give them all to the poor, you can do it, but wait a few years first; wait to see more of the world. There is a cruel science, called political economy, which they certainly did not teach you at FaÃ¯el; you must learn something of that before you try to decide these questions, which have vainly perplexed every thoughtful man since rich and poor were together on earth. And now, shut your pretty eyes, and sleep and dream of your triumphs; they have been very innocent ones, you need not repent them.' He kissed her again, and left her to her daybreak slumber in the warm orange-flower-scented air of her bed-chamber; and himself went out into the chill half-frozen streets of Paris on one of those errands of mercy of which he never spoke to any human being, and which were the result of his pity for men rather than of any belief or faith or sympathy that he had with them. He was one of the few men whom the lawless classes of Paris have ever respected. Othmar himself could go unharmed where the police would not have ventured to go save in force; and in the days of the Commune the worst leaders of it had put a white cross on the great houses of which he was master, and spared them from torch and shell for sake of the young man who was wont to pass through the vilest quarters of Paris, with his hand ever open and his compassion never denied. They knew that if their _couches sociales_ could have been an accomplished fact, Othmar himself would never have wished the old state of things maintained, but would have accepted the new with indifference and perfect courage, himself glad to be rid of a burden. They forgave him his riches for sake of his own contempt for them; his courage, even his coldness, attracted them. He had no _blague_; he was entirely sincere; he never attempted to convert them to anything; he aided them without putting any price on his aid, either of gratitude or doctrine. They knew that he had neither fear of them nor love for them, but that he had a profound sense of a common humanity with them, which was in his eyes as in theirs another name for a common misfortune. The times were out of joint for him. If he had been created with the capacity of religious faith, he would have been willingly what FranÃ§ois Xavier or PÃ¨re Lacordaire were. But he had the clear and critical intelligence of a man of the world; the fables of faith could not give him any mental pabulum. He took refuge in pity; it seemed to him that men were bound to do for one another at least as much as buffaloes do, which in trouble gather around the wounded ones of the herd. Melville alone had found out something of what he did; Melville, who although the sweetest-voiced, softest-handed, of churchmen and courtiers
{'title': 'Princess Napraxine, Volume 3 (of 3) by Ouida', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}