X 
 
 v\
 
 Princess Napraxine 
 I.
 
 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 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1884 
 
 [An rights reserved'^
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/princessnapraxin01ouid
 
 I 
 
 > 
 
 NO 
 I/) 
 
 o 
 
 3X3 
 
 TO 
 
 TWO PERFECTLY WISE AND HAPPY PEOPLE 
 
 MY DEAR FEIENDS 
 
 PIERRE AND ExAlILIE DE TCHIHATCHEFF 
 
 OF PEOPLE NEITHER HAPPY NOR WISE 
 IS 
 
 Affectionately! pe6icatc6 
 
 r 
 
 i
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A BLUE SEA, some palms with their heads 
 bound up, some hedges of cactus and aloes ; 
 some thickets of high rose-laurel, a long marble 
 terrace shining in the sun, huge groups of 
 geraniums not yet frost-bitten, a low white 
 house with green shutters and wooden bal- 
 conies, a chalet roof and a classical colonnade, 
 these all — together with some entangled shrub- 
 beries, an orange orchard, and an olive wood 
 — made up a place which was known on the 
 French Eiviera as La Jacquemerille. 
 
 What the name had meant originally no- 
 body knew or everybody had forgotten. What 
 La Jacquemerille had been in the beginning of 
 time — whether a woman, a plant, a saint, a 
 ship, a game, a shrine, or only a caprice — was 
 not known even to tradition ; but La Jacque- 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 PmNCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 merille the villa was called, as, before it, had 
 been the old windmill which had occupied the 
 site, ere steam and fashion, revolutionising the 
 seashores of Savoy, had caused the present 
 pretty nonsensical, half-rustic, half-classical 
 house to be erected on the tongue of land 
 which ran sharply out into the midst of the 
 blue waves, and commanded a sea view, west 
 and east, as far as the Cape of Antibes on the 
 one side and the Tete du Chien on the other. 
 
 It was one of the most coveted spots on 
 the whole seaboard of our modern Capua, and 
 brought a little fortune annually to its happy 
 possessor, a respectable vendor of hams, cheese, 
 and butter in the Cannebiere at Marseilles, 
 who for the coming season had pocketed now, 
 from Prince Napraxine, the round httle sum 
 of two thousand napoleons. 
 
 And the Princess Nadege Napraxine, who 
 had set her heart, or rather her fancy, upon 
 it, was sitting in a bamboo rocking-chair and 
 looking over the house front, and thinking that 
 decidedly she did not like it. It had been an 
 idiotcy to take it, just the sort of folly which 
 her delegate in the afiair always committed. 
 They would have been a thousand times better
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 3 
 
 off at the hotels in Nice ; you had no kind of 
 trouble at an hotel, and you could always 
 have your own cooks if you insisted. 
 
 For three months it had been the reigning 
 desire of her life to have La Jacquemerille for 
 the winter ; it had beeo let to an American 
 millionnaire, and the apparent impossibility of 
 getting it had naturally increased her anxiety. 
 The American millionnaire had suddenly de- 
 cided to go home ; Jay Gould or Mr. Vander- 
 bilt had done something that had disturbed 
 his digestion, and La Jacquemerille, which she 
 had never seen, but had fallen in love with 
 from photographs, was granted to her wishes 
 for the modest sum of forty thousand francs. 
 She had travelled straight from the Krimea to 
 it without stopping, had arrived by night, and 
 now was looking at it for the first time in 
 broad daylight with a sentiment very near 
 akin to disgust. She did not find it the least 
 like the photographs. 
 
 ' It is so horridly low ! ' she exclaimed, 
 after a long and thoughtful examination of the 
 frontage, where an Ionic colonnade sheltered 
 itself under a chalet roof from tlie Bernese 
 Oberland. ' I am sure it will be most dread- 
 
 b2
 
 4 PRINCESS NAP RAX INK. 
 
 fully cold. And just look at the architecture 
 — every style under heaven ! Was there ever 
 such an extraordinary jumble? ' 
 
 ' If it be a jumble, my dear, it is very suit- 
 able to our generation ; and you are very lucky 
 if, when you buy a pig in a poke, you get 
 nothing worse than a jumble,' said another 
 lady who was sitting opposite to her, with a 
 book held upside down and a litter of news- 
 papers, and who was known in society as Lady 
 Brancepeth. 
 
 ' Pig in a poke ! vrhat is he ? ' said the 
 Princess Napraxine in her pretty English, which 
 she spoke with scarcely any foreign accent. 
 ' The house is shocking ! It is the Parthenon 
 mixed up with a Gasthof. It is a nightmare ; 
 
 and so small ! I don't believe there is room 
 
 for one quarter of the servants. And just look 
 at these palms with their lieads tied up as if 
 they had neuralgia ; and I am sure they may 
 well have it, standing still in tliat hise, day and 
 nio-ht. I think the whole place utterly odious. 
 I will tell the women to unpack nothing ; I am 
 sure I shall not stay a night ; an Itahan villino 
 w^ith a shingle roof and Grin den wald balconies ! 
 Can anything be so absiuxl P '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 5 
 
 ' I suppose you will wait till the Prince 
 comes downstairs ? ' said Lady Brancepeth with 
 a little yawn. 
 
 'Oh, I don't know; why? He can stay if 
 he likes. Oh, dear ! there is a Cairene lattice 
 at that end and these other windows have been 
 copied from the Ca d'Oro, and the roof is as 
 Swiss as if it were a cuckoo clock or a 
 St. Bernard dog. What is one to do .^ ' 
 
 'Stay,' suggested Lady Brancepeth. 'People 
 do not die of a Swiss roof unless it tmnbles in. 
 The house is all wrong, no doubt, but it is pic- 
 turesque ; a horrible word, you will say, but it 
 describes the place. It is picturesque.' 
 
 ' Wrong things usually are,' said the Prin- 
 cess Napraxine with a sigh, as she surveyed 
 the Greek peristyle, the Swiss shingles, and the 
 slender Ionic colonnade. ' Are all these oranges 
 good for one's complexion, I wonder? It is 
 like sitting in a bright yellow room. I don't 
 like bright yellow rooms. Who said that 
 granted wishes are self-sown curses ? Whoever 
 did must have wished to hire La Jacquemerille, 
 and done it. Why do they tie up those palms ? ' 
 
 ' To blanch the leaves for Holy Week. 
 Every blade of grass is turned into money on
 
 6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 this poetic shore. If the gardens have been in- 
 cluded in your agreement you can untie them ; 
 if not, you cannot.' 
 
 ' They will certainly be untied ; as for 
 agreement — your brother took the place for us, 
 I daresay he blundered.' 
 
 ' What were your instructions to him, may 
 I ask?' 
 
 ' Oil, instructions? I do not remember. I 
 sent him the photographs, and wrote under 
 them : " Take me the house at any price." ' 
 
 ' Curt as Cassar ! ' 
 
 With a little yawn the Princess Napraxine 
 looked down the long shining sea-wall of 
 white marble, studded at intervals with vases 
 of white marble filled with aloes ; beyond the 
 marble wall was the sea — blue, bright, quiver- 
 inof and full of shiftino; Ijorhts as diamonds are. 
 Then her gaze came inward, and returned to 
 the outline of the house which was so daring 
 and contradictory a jumble. The creepers 
 which covered it glowed red in the December 
 noon ; its blue and white awnings were gay 
 and fresh ; its vanes were gilded, and pointed 
 merrily to the south ; a late rose was garland- 
 ing the Cairene lattice ; some woodlarks were
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 7 
 
 singing their pretty little roundelay on the 
 boughs of a carob tree ; it was all bright, lively, 
 full of colour and of gaiety. Nevertheless, she 
 hardened her heart to it and condemned it 
 utterly, out of mere waywardness. 
 
 ' I shall go away after breakfast,' she said, 
 as she looked. ' Platon can do as he likes. 
 I shall dine at Nice, and you will come with 
 me.' 
 
 ' I was sure that was what 3^ou would do,' 
 said her friend ; ' so was Ealph.' 
 
 ' Then I shall not do it,' said Princess 
 Napraxine. 
 
 She rocked herself soothingly in her chair. 
 
 ' What a dear little bird that is sino-inc^ ; it 
 cannot be a nightingale in December. The sea 
 looks very much like our Krimean one ; and 
 wdiat a lovely air it is. Like an Enghsh June 
 without the rain-clouds.' 
 
 ' Wait till Madame la Bise comes round.' 
 
 ' Oh, Madame la Bise comes round the 
 corner everywhere. She is like ennui — 
 ubiquitous. You have her in England, only 
 you pretend she is good for your health, and 
 your Kingsley wrote an ode to her ; the rest of 
 the world is not such a lij^pocrite.'
 
 8 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' Kingsley ? He was Tom Brown^ was he 
 not?' 
 
 ' You are Tom Brown ! Eeally, Wilkes, you 
 know nothing of your own hterature.' 
 
 ' Well, I was never educated as you clever 
 Eussians are,' said Lady Brancepeth, good- 
 humouredly ; shewas sometimes called Socrates, 
 and generally Wilkes by her intimates. She 
 was the ugly member of a singidarly handsome 
 family, and the nickname had been given to 
 her in the schoolroom. But her ugliness was a 
 helle laideur ; her face was charming in its 
 own way ; her eyes were brilliant, and her 
 figure was matchless. She was an earl's 
 daughter and an earl's wife, and when she put 
 on the Brancepeth diamonds and showed her- 
 self at a State ball, if ugly she was magnificent, 
 even as, if intellectually ignorant, she was a 
 marvel of tact, humour, and discernment. 
 
 Her friend and hostess was as entirely un- 
 like her as an orchid is unlike an aloe. She was 
 exquisitely lovely, alike in face and form, and 
 as cultured as a hothouse flower. She was just 
 three-and- twenty years old, and was a woman 
 of the world to her finger tips. She was very 
 cosmopolitan, for though a Eussian by birth and
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 9 
 
 marriage her mother had been French, one of 
 her grandmothers English, tlie other German, 
 and she had been educated by a crowd of 
 governesses of many different nationahties. 
 All her people, whether Eussian, English, 
 French, or German, had been very great 
 people, with innumerable and unimpeachable 
 quarterings, for many generations, and to that 
 fact she owed her slender feet, her tiny ears, 
 and her general look of perfect distinction. 
 She had a transparent, colourless skin, like 
 the petals of a narcissus in its perfect mat 
 whiteness ; she had oriental eyes of a blue- 
 black, which looked immensely large in her 
 delicate face, and which could have great 
 inquisitiveness, penetration, and sarcasm in 
 them, but were usually only lustrous and 
 languid ; her mouth was most admirably 
 shaped, and her teeth deserved the trite 
 compliment of the old madrigals, for they were 
 like pearls ; she had a very ethereal and 
 delicate appearance, but that delicacy of mould 
 sheathed nerves of steel as a silken scabbard 
 sheathes a damascene blade. She had an infinite 
 grace and an intricate alternation of vivacity and 
 languor which were irresistible. Men were
 
 lo PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 madly in love with her, which sometimes di- 
 verted and sometimes bored her ; many people 
 were rather afraid of her, and this pleased her 
 much more than anything. She had a capacity 
 for malice. 
 
 She now held a sunshade above her head 
 and surveyed the house, and tried to persuade 
 herself it was charming, as her friend had 
 been so sure she would find it detestable. She 
 had wished for the place with an iiitensity 
 that had almost disturbed her sleep for some 
 weeks, and now she had got it and she hated 
 it. But as they had expected her to do so she 
 was determined to conquer her hatred and to 
 find it much better than its photographs. The 
 task was not difficult, for La Jacquemerille, if 
 full of absurdities and incongruities, was de- 
 cidedly pretty. 
 
 As she swung herself on her rocking-chair 
 and began to see with the eyes of her mind a 
 hundred improvements which she would in- 
 stantly have effected whether the terms of the 
 contract allowed of it or not, she saw coming 
 within the range of her unassisted eyesight a 
 large and stately schooner, with canvas white 
 as snow bellying in the breeze. She drew on
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. ii 
 
 her long loose tan- coloured glove cheerfully, 
 and said aloud : 
 
 ' After all, it is better than an hotel. There 
 is no noise, and nobody to stare at one. I 
 daresay we shall get through three months 
 without cutting each other's throats.' 
 
 Lady Brancepeth turned and looked out to 
 sea, and saw the schooner, and smiled discreetly ; 
 she said as discreetly : 
 
 ' I am so glad, dear, you won't fret your- 
 self too much about the place ; after all, you 
 are not going to live in it for a lifetime ; and 
 though, no doubt, it is utterly wrong, and 
 would give Oscar Wilde a sick headache, yet 
 one must confess it is pretty and suits the sun- 
 shine.' 
 
 The trees had been cut, so that openings 
 in their boughs allowed the sea to be seen 
 from any point of the terrace. Princess Nadine 
 from under her sunshade watched the stately 
 yacht draw nearer and nearer over the shining 
 path of the waters, and drop anchor some half 
 mile off the shore ; then she saw a gig lowered, 
 with red -capped white- shirted sailors to man it, 
 and a figure which she recognised descended 
 over the schooner's side into the stern of the
 
 12 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 boat, wliicli thereupon left tlie vessel, and 
 was pulled straight towards La Jacquemerille. 
 Neither she nor Lady Brancepeth appeared to 
 notice it; they talked chiffons^ and read their 
 newspapers ; but the long boat came nearer 
 and nearer, until the beat of the oars sounded 
 directly under the walls of La Jacquemerille, 
 and the rowers were too close at hand to be seen. 
 But the Princess Nadine heard the rattle of the 
 oars in the rowlocks, the shock of its keel 
 against the sea staks below, which she could 
 not see for the tangle of pyracanthus and 
 mahonia and many another evergreen shrub, 
 covering the space between the terrace and the 
 shore ; she heard a step that she knew very 
 well, the sound of which moved her to a 
 slight sense of anticipated amusement, and a 
 stronger sense of approaching weariness, and 
 she turned her head a little, with a gracious if 
 indifferent welcome in her eyes, as a man ran 
 up the stairs at the end of the terrace, and 
 came along the marble floor in the sunshine 
 — a young man, tall, fair, athletic, with 
 a high-bred look and handsome aquiline 
 features. 
 
 ' You have had a very quick run, surely ? '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 13 
 
 said the Princess Napraxiue, stretching out her 
 tan glove. 
 
 ' Well, we did all we knew, and crammed 
 on every stitch we had,' the new comer 
 answered, as he kissed the tips of the glove, 
 and murmured in a lower tone, ' Were you not 
 here ? ' 
 
 Then he crossed over to where Lady 
 Brancepeth sat, and kissed her cheek with 
 a brother's indifference. 
 
 ' Dear Wilkes, are you all right ? ' he said 
 as he took up a majohca stool and seated 
 hhnself between them. 
 
 ' Take that bamboo chair, Geraldine,' asked 
 the Princess. ' That china stool does not suit 
 your long legs at all. How many hours really 
 have you been coming from Genoa .^ I am 
 fearfully angry with you, by the way ; how 
 could you take this place ? ' 
 
 'Because you told me,' answered Lord 
 Geraldine, staring hard. ' What was the com- 
 mand ? Take it, coide que coide. Not an '• if" ; 
 not a " perhaps " ; not a " but." Wilkes, do 
 you not call that too cruel ? ' 
 
 'My dear Ealph,' said Lady Brancepetli, 
 'any woman's mstructions should always be
 
 14 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 construed so liberally that a margin is left for 
 her at the eleventh hour to change her mind. 
 But do not distress yourself. I do not think 
 Mme. Napraxine really dishkes the place. 
 It is only her way. When she has bought a 
 thing she always finds a flaw in it. It is 
 her habit to condemn everything. She is a 
 pessimist from sheer want of ever having had 
 real disappointment.' 
 
 'Look at the house. It speaks for itself/ 
 said the Princess, contemptuously. 'Why 
 did you not telegraph and say that it was a 
 patchwork of every known order of archi- 
 tecture ? I would liave told you to break off 
 negotiations.' 
 
 ' But you had seen the photographs.' 
 
 ' Photographs ! Would you know your 
 own mother from a photograph if you had not 
 been told beforehand whose it was? ' 
 
 ' I am so sorry,' murmured Geraldine, as 
 he turned round and gazed at the offending 
 building. ' It is a pretty place, surely ? not 
 classical or severe, certainly ; but cheery and 
 picturesque. I looked all over it conscien- 
 tiously, I give you my w^ord, and it is really
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 15 
 
 in very good taste inside ; mucli better than 
 one could have hoped for in a maison meuhlee' 
 
 ' Oh, it is Wilkes, not I, who finds it so irre- 
 trievably bad,' said the Princess JSTapraxine, 
 with tranquil mendacity ; ' but if it be too bad 
 one can always go to an hotel, only in an hotel 
 one can never sleep at night for the omnibuses, 
 and the banging of other people's luggage, and 
 if I do not sleep I can do nothing. Here I 
 should fancy it is perfectly quiet ? ' 
 
 ' Quiet as the grave, unless the sea is howl- 
 ing. But Monte Carlo is just behind that cliff 
 there ; with fast horses you can drive over in 
 twenty-six minutes — 1 timed it by my watch. 
 You can have a score of people to dinner every 
 evening if you like.' 
 
 The Princess raised her eyebrows with a 
 gesture signifying that this prospect was not one 
 of unmitigated happiness ; and Lady Brance- 
 peth, alleging that the sun was rather too warm 
 for her north-country bones, went away into 
 the house, being of opinion that three was no 
 company ; her brother drew his bamboo-chair 
 nearer his hostess, and took the tan glove with 
 the wrist it inclosed in a tender grasp.
 
 1 6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' So you do not like the poor place ? I am 
 truly grieved ! ' 
 
 She drew her hand away so dexterously that 
 she left the loose empty glove in his fingers, 
 and he looked foolish. 
 
 ' No ; I thought of going away to-morrow/ 
 she continued, without any regard to his dejec- 
 tion; ' I do not like palms that have the tooth- 
 ache, and marble pillars that have married 
 wooden balconies. But your sister, who always 
 opposes me, is so certain I shall go that it is 
 very probable I shall stop.' 
 
 ' Admirable feminine logic ! No doubt 
 the poor house is utterly wrong, though it has 
 been the desire of everybody on the Eiviera 
 ever since it was built. I felt sure you would 
 have been more comfortable in a good hotel 
 at Nice, and if I had ventured to volunteer an 
 opinion, I should have said so. Wilkes is quite 
 right ; you will be bored to death here.' 
 
 ' She is quite wrong ; she does not like the 
 place herself,' said Princess Napraxine, with de- 
 cision, while she took back her glove perempt- 
 orily. ' I do — at least in a way. The oranges 
 look jaundiced, and the palms rheumatic, but 
 those are trifles. They do say it hailed yes-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 17 
 
 terday, and the water in the wasliing-basin in 
 the coupe lit was frozen last night as we came 
 into Ventimigha ; but I saw a scorpion on the 
 wall this morning, and lieard a mosquito, so T 
 am convinced it is the south of the poets, and 
 am prepared for any quantity of proper im- 
 pressions, only they are slow in coming to me ; 
 it is so excessively like the Krimea, terrace and 
 all. Should not you go in and see if Pkiton 
 be awake ? ' 
 
 ' I am convinced he is asleep. It is not 
 quite one o'clock, and you arrived in the 
 night, didn't you? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; but he will get up, because he will 
 want to be off to Monte Carlo. He will spend 
 his life there and send over expresses every 
 hour for fresh rouleaux. When he is near a 
 gaming-table he is so happy.' 
 
 ' Enviable faculty ! ' 
 
 * It is my faculty too. But I try against it ; 
 he doesn't. Men never try to resist anything.' 
 
 Geraldine murmured words to the effect 
 that his life was one long compulsory resist- 
 ance, and his eyes completed the uncomplete 
 sentences. 
 
 'Don't talk nonsense,' said his hostess. 
 VOL. I. c
 
 1 8 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' You know I do not like madrigaux ; and an 
 Englishman always looks so clumsy when he is 
 making them. Make me a cigarette instead.' 
 
 ' Always cruel ! ' murmured her companion, 
 obediently rolling up Turkish tobacco. 
 
 ' Always kind,' said the Princess. ' People 
 who are kind to men and children never 
 spoil them. Where will your schooner stay? 
 There is no dock, or quay, or whatever you 
 call it, here. These places always ought to 
 have one of their own.' 
 
 ' How can they when the rocks go sheer 
 down into deep water ? No, I must keep her 
 oflf Villefranche or Monaco. She can be round 
 in half an hour — at your disposition, of course, 
 like her owner.' 
 
 ' If she be not more manageable than her 
 owner ' 
 
 ' Oh, Nadine ! When I only live to obey 
 your orders, and never even receive a smile in 
 return ! ' 
 
 ' Ah, if you want reward there is no longer 
 any merit I And do not call me by my name 
 in that manner ; you will do it some day before 
 Platon.' 
 
 ' He doesn't mind.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 19 
 
 ' No, of course he does not mind ; but I do, 
 which is more to the purpose.' 
 
 ' You are very unkind to-day, princess. 
 This unhappy Jacquemerille ! it is grievous that 
 you don't hke it ; the gardens are really pretty, 
 and the view is superb.' 
 
 ' You talk hke an auctioneer ; go and find 
 the gardener and tell him to untie those 
 palms.' 
 
 ' Pray don't send me away yet.' 
 
 ' Is that what you call your docility .^ ' 
 
 His hand stole towards hers again. 
 
 ' Do tell me, princess,' he murmured timidly. 
 ' You will stay now that you are here, will you 
 not?' 
 
 ' How can I answer for the duration of my 
 fancies ? Perhaps I may, if you amuse me well 
 enough.' 
 
 ' I would rather interest you.' 
 
 ' Ah, my friend, that is quite impossible. 
 Even to be amused is hard enough, when one 
 is not in the humour. When one is in the 
 humour, it is even fun to go out fishing ; when 
 one is not, one is dull even at a masked ball at 
 Petersburg. We are like the cuttle-fish, we 
 
 02
 
 20 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 make our sphere muddy with our own dulness. 
 How would you suggest that I should find any 
 interest here ? There will be no society except 
 some gouty statesmen and some sickly women, 
 a few yachtsmen, a pigeon-shooter or two, and 
 quantities of people one cannot know.' 
 
 ' There will be heaps of people who know 
 you,' said Geraldine, almost with a groan ; ' at 
 least, if you deign to allow them the entree of 
 La Jacquemerille. If I might presume to ad- 
 vise, the place is all to itself, they cannot come 
 if you do not invite them. It is as nearly simple 
 nature here as a mondaine and an elegante 
 hke you can ever bring herself to go. You 
 have the sea at your feet and the mountains at 
 your back ; you can have absolute repose and 
 leisure unless you wilfully bring a horde of men 
 and women from Nice and Monaco. You are 
 so clever ; you might make endless sketches. 
 If I were you, I sliould make it the occasion to 
 get away from the world a little ; if the world 
 you must have, I should take it in the Avenue 
 Josephine instead of at La Jacquemerille. ' 
 
 The Princess laughed languidly, and looked 
 at her cigarette. 
 
 ' You want a solitude a deiLv, I daresay !
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 21 
 
 But you see there are Platon and Wilkes against 
 that, not to mention my own inclinations.' 
 
 ' Pray, be serious.' 
 
 ' Wliy ? When one is in tlie mood to be 
 serious, one does not take a nondescript toy 
 within five miles of Nice. I daresay you are 
 right ; a quiet life for a little while would be 
 very wholesome, it would certainly be a novelty, 
 but it would be beyond me. I am not a stupid 
 woman, I am not a silly woman certainly ; no, 
 I am quite convinced I have a brain, though 
 as for a soul, I don't know, and I am afraid I 
 don't very much care. A brain, however, I 
 have ; Wilkes is even unkind enough to call 
 me learned. But still, my dear Ealph, I am, 
 as you observed, that much-abused animal, a 
 mondaine. When once we belong to the world 
 can we ever get rid of the world? Jamais! 
 au grand jamais I If we try to drink spring 
 water, we put it somehow or other in a liqueur 
 glass. If we smell at a hedge-rose, somehow 
 or other Fiver has got in it before us, and given 
 it the scent of a sachet.' 
 
 ' You are very witty, but ' 
 
 ' I don't care in the least for " buts," and I 
 have no pretensions to wit ; I leave wit and
 
 22 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 whist to the dowagers, ^o ; when we are 
 once of the world worldly, we never get rid of 
 the world again. It is our old man of the sea 
 pickaback with us for ever ? Who can lead a 
 meditative life that dines twice a day, as we 
 all practically do, and eats of twenty services ? 
 When we prattle about nature, and quote 
 Matthew Arnold, we are as artificial as the 
 ribboned shepherdesses of Trianon;" and what 
 we call our high art is only just another sort of 
 jargon. Suppose I followed your recipe and 
 tried living quietly here, which means asking 
 nobody to dinner, what would happen ? Wilkes 
 would go away, Platon would sulk or do worse, 
 and you and I should yawn in each other's 
 faces. It is not that I liave no brain, I have 
 even a soul — if anybody has — but I began the 
 other way, you know. It is like taking chloral ; 
 if once you do it you cannot leave off. Society 
 is entirely like chloral ; it gives you pleasant 
 titillations at first and just the same morne 
 depression afterwards, and yet you cannot do 
 without it.' 
 
 ' I hope you do without chloral ; wait 
 another twenty years at any rate before you 
 poison yourself.'
 
 PR/NCESS NAPRAXINE. 23 
 
 ' Twenty years ! I wonder what we shall 
 be like by then ? I daresay I shall be an in- 
 curable hypochondriac, and you will have 
 several tall boys at Eton. Perhaps your son 
 will be falhng in love with my daughter, and 
 you and I shall be quarrelhng about the settle- 
 ments.' 
 
 ' Nadine ! ' 
 
 He drew his chair very near indeed, and 
 looked straight into her eyes. The Princess 
 looked up at the blue sky, serenely indifferent. 
 
 ' That is all nonsense, you know,' she said, 
 with a little affected asperity, but she smiled 
 even if she felt more inclined to yawn. At 
 that moment there issued from one of the many 
 glass doors of the nondescript house her 
 husband, Platon Nicholaivitch Napraxine. 
 
 ' My dear Ealph, I am very glad to see 
 you,' he said cordially, in the tongue of the 
 boulevards, which every gently born Eussian 
 has taken as his own. ' You came round in 
 your " tub," as you call her .^ You have found 
 the Princess dissatisfied with the house .^ She 
 is always dissatisfied with everything, alas! 
 The house is well enough ; the l^athrooms are 
 small, and there is no billiard-room ; but other-
 
 24 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 wise I see no defect. Breakfast is waiting and 
 Lady Brancepetli also. Will you come P ' 
 
 His wife rose languidly, and taking the arm 
 of Lord Geraldine, drew her skirts of India 
 muslio, Flemish lace, and primrose satin, over 
 the marble pavement of the terrace to the 
 house. Prince Napraxine stood a moment with 
 his cigar in his mouth, looking south and east 
 over the sparkling sea, then, with his hands in 
 his pockets, sauntered also towards the house. 
 
 He was a tall, loosely-built man, Avith an 
 ugly and frankly Kalmuck face, redeemed by 
 an expression of extreme good humour ; he 
 was about thirty years of age, and had the air 
 of u person who had always done what he 
 chose, and had always been obeyed when he 
 spoke ; but this air changed curiously whenever 
 he looked at his wife ; he had then the timid 
 and almost supplicating expression of a big 
 dog, anxious to please, but afraid to offend. 
 
 ' Let us go and eat Milo's red mullets,' she 
 said now. 
 
 'MiloP Is that the cook? Can he do 
 a houillahaisse, I w^onder ? ' he replied. 
 
 Their chef had been taken ill, as the 
 train had touched Bordighera, and their agent
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 25 
 
 had hastily supphed his place so far as it is ever 
 possible to supply that of a great and almost 
 perfect creature experienced in all the peculiari- 
 ties and caprices in taste of those to whom his 
 art is consecrated. 
 
 The Princess took no notice of her lord's 
 blunder ; indeed, she seldom answered his 
 remarks at any time ; she drew her primrose 
 satin and soft muslin over the sill of the 
 French window, and seated herself at an oval 
 table, gay with fine china, with flowers and 
 fruit, and with a Venice point lace border to 
 its table cloth, which was strewn with Parma 
 violets and the petals of orange-blossoms. She 
 had Geraldine on her right hand and her back 
 to the light. She had an ermine bag holding 
 a silver globe of warm water for her feet, and 
 a cliair that was the perfection of ease. The 
 dining-room was small, but very pretty, with 
 game and autumn flowers painted on its panels, 
 and shutters, with hangings of olive velvet and 
 cornices of dead gold, and on the ceiling a 
 hunting scene of Fontainebleau a la Henri IV. 
 
 She began to think seriously that after all 
 La Jacquemerille would do very well for the 
 winter. It was utterly absurd, to be sure, out-
 
 26 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 side, but it was comfortable within ; and, indeed, 
 had considerable taste displayed in it, the 
 American having wisely mistrusted his own 
 tendencies and left the whole arrangement to 
 French artists, who had robbed him ruthlessly, 
 but who had made each of his apartments as 
 perfect in its way as a Karl Theodor plate. 
 
 ' I think I shall buy it,' said the Princess to 
 her companions ; indifferent to her own incon- 
 sistencies. ^ 
 
 ' Wait a little,' said Lady Brancepeth. 
 ' Don't rush from hatred to adoration. There 
 may be all sorts of things the matter with the 
 drains. The caloriferes may be wrong. The 
 cellars may be damp. The windows may 
 rattle. The kitchens may be too far or too 
 near. At the end of the winter you will know 
 all its defects and all its virtues. Houses are 
 like friendships, there is hardly one in a thou- 
 sand worth a long lease.' 
 
 ' Wilkes is always cynical,' said her brother. 
 
 ' And nobody is a stauncher friend,' said 
 the Princess. ' Why will she make herself out 
 a cynic ? ' 
 
 ' A cynic ? Because I am prudent ? ' said 
 Lady Brancepeth ' If you sigh all the winter
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 27 
 
 because the house is not yours you will enjoy 
 it. If you buy it you will discover that it is 
 uninhabitable at once.' 
 
 'JSTadine is never long pleased,' said her 
 husband. 
 
 ' What does Matthew Arnold say?' answered 
 the Princess, ' that the poet is never happy, 
 because in nature he wants the world, and in 
 the world he longs for nature. JS^ow, I am not 
 a poet, but still I am a little like that. What 
 you are pleased to call my discontent is a certain 
 restless sensation that our life — which we think 
 the only life — is a very ridiculous one ; and 
 yet I am quite incapable of leading any other 
 — for more than a week. I remember, Geral- 
 dine, that you remarked once that it was this 
 fool of a world which makes fools of us all. 
 There was a profound truth in the not very 
 elegant speech.' 
 
 ' I don't remember saying it ; but it is cer- 
 tainly true. We grow up in the world as a 
 Chinese child grows up in the jar which is to 
 make a dwarf of him. The jar checks our 
 development malgre nous. We cannot be 
 giants, if we would.' 
 
 ' I am sure it would not suit you to be a
 
 28 PRIA'CESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 giant, Ealph,' said his sister. ' You would never 
 like to release distressed damsels and slay dis- 
 agreeable dragons. The uttermost you would 
 ever do to the very biggest dragon would be 
 to turn an epigram on his odd appearance. 
 Giants are always very busy people, and you 
 are so lazy ' 
 
 ' That is the fault of the jar,' said Geraldine. 
 
 ' Some people break the jar and get out of 
 it,' said his sister. 
 
 ' No, nobody does,' said the Princess 
 Napraxine. ' You mistake there, Wilkes. The 
 world is with us always, and we cannot get rid 
 of it.' 
 
 The frank eyes of Geraldine conveyed to 
 her eloquently his conviction tliat the discontent 
 she spoke of was solely due to her determined 
 banishment of one sentiment out of her life. 
 She ofave him an enigmatical little smile of 
 comprehension and disbelief combined, and 
 continued to unroll her philosophies — or what 
 did duty as such. 
 
 ' Do you not know the kind of feeling I 
 mean ? When we are amonof the orchids in 
 the conservatories we want to go and gather 
 damp primroses. Do you not remember that
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 29 
 
 queen who, when she heard the gipsies singing 
 under her windows, all in a moment longed to 
 go with them? There is something of the 
 gipsy in everybody — in everybody who has a 
 soul. The time comes when one is tired of 
 the trumpery and folly of it all — the wicked 
 expenditure, the dense selfishness and indif- 
 ference, the people that call themselves leaders 
 of good taste, and yet like foie gras and the 
 Concours hippique and Kilimnel and Londres, 
 and the atmosphere of Paris theatres.' 
 
 'Interesting, but discursive,' murmured 
 Lady Brancepeth. ' Primroses — gipsies — a soul 
 — I do not see the connection.' 
 
 ' You know what I mean,' said her hostess, 
 who always expected to be understood. ' Our 
 life is silly, it is tiresome, it is entirely selfish, it 
 is even, in a way, monstrous ; and yet we can- 
 not live any other. We are dominated by 
 the Frankenstein of pleasure which we have 
 been pleased to create. When we Avish to get 
 away we cannot ; we are Hke the queen at the 
 palace windows — we would fain go to the 
 greenwood, and the brook, and the fresh 
 winds, but we cannot, because we are fastened 
 in our gilded chair ; there is always our house-
 
 30 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 hold to shut the window and send the gipsies 
 away. Do w^e ever get rid of the household, 
 of the galerie^ of the routine, of the infinite 
 ennui ? I am only twenty-three years old, as 
 you all know, and I feel as if I had lived 
 fifty years. Why ? Because it is all over- 
 full, tiresome, high-pressure ; and the worst 
 of it is that I could lead no other life if I 
 tried ! ' 
 
 ' I am not sure of that,' said Lady Brance- 
 peth. ' Marie Antoinette would never have 
 believed that she could mend clothes and darn 
 stockings had not the days of darkness come. 
 In those days it was just the dainty per- 
 fumed mignonnes like you, my dear, who were 
 the bravest and handiest in bearing their 
 troubles and earning their bread.' 
 
 ' One never knows till one is tried,' said 
 Princess Nadine. ' If they would begin to 
 guillotine us I daresay we should know how to 
 behave ; dynamite doesn't do much for us. 
 When one goes into the air without warning 
 in little bits, in company with the plaster of the 
 ceiling, or the skin of the carriage horses, or 
 the stuflfing of the railway carriage, there is not 
 much room for heroism.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 31 
 
 ' I am not sure there is no heroism,' said 
 Geraldine. ' The certainty of the guillotine 
 must have been much easier to bear than the 
 uncertainty in which you all dwell in Eussia — 
 the perpetual spectre always behind your chairs, 
 beside your pillows, under the roses in your 
 gardens— — ' 
 
 ' Oh, my dear Geraldine, is not death with 
 us always everywhere ? May we not kill our- 
 selves every moment we walk downstairs, or 
 eat a mullet like this, or start on a journey, or 
 read a book by a night-lamp ? You all wonder 
 how Eussians can exist with assassination 
 always keeping step with them, but in reality 
 is it so much worse than the way in which 
 all humanity loves and laughs, and toils and 
 moils, and makes leases for ninety-nine years, 
 and contracts foreign loans for payment in a 
 century, with death hanging over tlie whole 
 thing ready to swoop down at any minute ? 
 If the world realised it of course it would go 
 mad en masse^ but it doesn't realise it though 
 hundreds of people die every second.' 
 
 ' Did Xadine ever tell you what she did 
 last year ? ' said Prince Napraxine. ' She 
 saw by chance a queer-looking can which had
 
 32 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 been placed by some of those miscreants in a 
 niche of the garden wall of our house in Peters- 
 burg ; the thing looked suspicious to her, and 
 it had a coil of tubing attached to it. She 
 took the whole affair up and dropped it into 
 the fountain. She forgot to mention it till the 
 next morning. Then when we fished it out, 
 and the chemists reported on it, it appeared 
 that the can was really full of nitro-glycerine as 
 she had fancied. I think that was quite as 
 courageous as going to the guillotine.' 
 
 ' Oh, no, my dear Platon ! ' said his wife, 
 with some annoyance. ' Nothing you have no 
 time to think about is really courageous. The 
 can was suspicious and the children were play- 
 intr near it, so I thoudit the fountain was the 
 safest place ; it miglii have been only milk, you 
 know. Pray do not let us attempt to compete 
 with those people of '89. We shall fail dis- 
 mally.' 
 
 Geraldine looked up with a startled appre- 
 hension in his eyes. 
 
 ' Good heavens, do you mean it ? Has she 
 actually been — been — in such awful danger as 
 that, and never told me ? ' 
 
 • ' We were all in the same danger,' said
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 33 
 
 Prince Nnpraxine, a little drily ; ' but the Prin- 
 cess alone bad the heau role out of it.' 
 
 ' Who put the can there ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, how should I know. The police never 
 traced it. I do not suppose it was any special 
 design against us as individuals ; only as items 
 of a detested whole. And two of the Grand 
 Dukes were coming to breakfast with us that 
 day.' 
 
 ' What a fuss about an ugly little tin can ! ' 
 said his wife. ' The really courageous person 
 must have been the person who brought it 
 there ; misguided, perhaps, but certainly cou- 
 rageous. To drive through a city in a droschky 
 embracing certain annihilation, in the form of 
 a little tin pot held on your knee, is a combina- 
 tion of absolute awfulness and grotesque bathos, 
 which must try all one's nerves without any 
 compensating sense of grandeur in it. A jolt 
 of the wheel over a stone and away you fly 
 into the air, a blurred nothing in a stream of 
 blood and dust ! No ; I respect the Nihilists 
 when I think of all they lisk for a purely 
 abstract idea without any sort of personal hope 
 or triumph.' 
 
 ' They have hatred,' said Lady Brancepeth ; 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 PRJiVCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 * I think you forget wliat an iuvigoratiug, self- 
 sustaining, all- compensating sentiment that is. 
 Its ecstasy is its own reward. You underrate, 
 too, the immense fascination of the power to 
 destroy ; on se grise with that sense of holding 
 the annihilation of a whole community in their 
 hands. What made the Eoman Em2:>erors mad, 
 — the unlimited power of destruction, — now in- 
 toxicates the mechanic or the clerk who has 
 the task of planting a can of nitro-glycerine. 
 When statesmen, and even philosophers, theorise 
 about human nature and all its disorders, they 
 never give weight enough to the tremendous 
 attraction which pure destruction alone exer- 
 cises over so many minds.' 
 
 ' But they have love, too ; love of the poor 
 and of a lofty ideal,' said the Pnncess. ' Myself, 
 I forgive their little tin cans, though they are 
 extremely unpleasant, when I think of their 
 impersonal devotion. All I wish is, that their 
 warfare was not conducted by tin cans ; the . 
 thing has a ludicrous, comical, vulgar side; 
 death dropped in a little box labelled " glass, 
 with care " ! There is no dignity in it, no 
 grace. Pallida Mors should not crouch under 
 a cab-cushion ! '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 35 
 
 'How can you make a jest ' began 
 
 Prince Napraxine. She interrupted him : 
 
 ' I am not in the least jesting, I am entirely 
 in earnest. I do not like behig made war on 
 by chemists ; I do not like annihilation left in 
 a paper parcel ; it makes one feel absurd, fate 
 seems trifling with one. A Jacquerie hewing 
 at one with their scythes one would know what 
 to do with, but wlio can extract any Sophoclean 
 tragedy from a Thanatus that looks exactly like 
 a box of sardines or a pot oi foie c/ras? It 
 is not the war that I object to, it is the form 
 it takes; and our great, grim, ghostly Eussia 
 should evolve out of her soul of ice something 
 much more in consonance with her. Beside the 
 burning of Moscow, the little tin cans and the 
 burrowing like moles underground are com- 
 monplace and a little vulgar. Eussia is so 
 awful in herself. One thinks of the frozen 
 world of the Inferno, and Dante and Virgil 
 walking in tlie spectral silence; and then, after 
 all, in hard fact there is nothing but the police, 
 and the drunken moujik, and the man who 
 carries his nitro-giycerine as a baker's boy 
 carries his rolls of bread ! It is bathos.' 
 
 ' One never knows what you mean, Nadine,' 
 
 D 2
 
 36 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 murmured her husband. ' If you talk so at 
 Petersburg they will think you are a Nihilist at 
 heart.' 
 
 ' I imagine half the noblesse are,' said the 
 Princess. ' The noblesse have always dug their 
 own graves before all revolutions everywhere. 
 They call it " going with the times." They did 
 it in France, they are now doing it in England, 
 they are doing it (more secretly) in Eussia. No 
 one should forsake their order ; it is a kind of 
 desertion, like that of a soldier who runs away 
 before the enemy. That is why I like the party 
 obedience of your country, Wilkes ; it is en- 
 tirely unintelhgent and profoundly immoral ; to 
 a generally intellectual nation it would be im- 
 possible, but it is loyal. I think when one has 
 to choose between a crime and a disloyalty one 
 must take the crime as the lesser evil of the two.' 
 
 ' Voting for party is a crime very often,' 
 said Geraldine. ' It is one of the many things 
 as to which I have never made up my mind. 
 Ought one to sacrifice the country to what one 
 believes a bad measure for the sheer sake of 
 keeping one's party in office ? Surely not.' 
 
 ' You solve your doubts by having no 
 party, and never going into the Lords.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. ^y 
 
 ' At least, T can do no misclnetV 
 
 ' Are you certain of that P ' said his sister. 
 ' I tliink you place voting for party on too low 
 a plane. If we believe, generally, that one 
 party — say it is Conservative, say it is Liberal 
 — is necessary to the preservation or the pro- 
 gress of the nation, then I think we are bound 
 to do our best to keep it at the helm of the 
 vessel of the nation, even if in certain minor 
 matters we are not always in accord with the 
 course it takes.' 
 
 ' Admirably reasoned ; but are not politi- 
 cians always as great sophists as priests ? ' 
 
 ' Sopliists ! always that cruel charge,' said a 
 mellow and manly voice, as there entered the 
 dining-room a person of handsome and stately 
 presence, in a picturesque costume, with knee 
 breeches and buckled shoes, whom the servant 
 announced as Monsignore Melville. He was 
 welcomed by all Avith cordiality and delight, 
 and tlie Princess bade him draw his chair beside 
 her, though he alleged that lie liad breakfasted. 
 
 ' I came to see if you had arrived,' he said, 
 as he seated himself. 'Princess, I hope La 
 Jacquemerille is fortunate enough to please 
 
 you?'
 
 38 7'/^LyC£SS XAP/^AX/X£. 
 
 ' I have been abusing it ; it is a very 
 ridiculous house, but it grows upon one ; and 
 
 if vou will come often enouo-h. Monsionore 
 
 No, I never make compliments. You know 
 you are a delightful companion, and of how 
 many people can one say that ? ' 
 
 Monsisfnore Melville bowed low. 
 
 ' You are too enchantingly kind. But all 
 are not so kind. Lord Geraldine was accusinor 
 priests of sophism. What was he saying ? ' 
 
 ' He was saying that politicians are the 
 sophists, and Wilkes the head of them.' 
 
 ' Because I defended " voting straight," ' 
 said Lady Brancepeth. ' Is it not the very root 
 and essence of English constitutional life ? 
 Monsignore Melville, ^vho is an Englishman, 
 Avill, I am sure, say so.' 
 
 ' To serve the Church is onl}^ a superior 
 kind of voting with party,' said Geraldine. 
 
 ' Do not be profane, Ealph,' said his sister. 
 • It does not suit you. You were created 
 with a reverential nature, and you have 
 endeavoured to ruin it, as most men always do 
 try to destroy what is best in them. Mon- 
 signore, answer me, is it not tlie higliest 
 morality to vote straight P '
 
 FRJNCESS NAPRAXINE. 39 
 
 ^ That is a very unlimited laudation, Lady 
 Brancepeth,' returned Melville, with a charming 
 smile. ' I should be scarcely prepared to go so 
 far, though I am aware that there is no salva- 
 tion outside such morality in the political creed 
 of our country.' 
 
 ' Ecclesiastics have no country, my dear 
 Monsignore,' said the Princess Napraxine, ' ex- 
 cept a heavenly one. What a comfort that 
 must be ! Platon is always being worried to 
 return to the mater patria, and his conscience 
 is so peculiarly constituted that it will never 
 allow him to admit how intensely he hates it. 
 As if life were not tiresome enough in itself, 
 without everyone being burdened with the 
 obligation to like, or pretend that they like, 
 their country, their relatives, their children, 
 and their church ! ' 
 
 Napraxine looked distressed : 
 
 'You have liked Eussia,too, sometimes,' 
 he said wistfully ; ' and poor little Sachs and 
 Mitz ! ' 
 
 His Avife cast upon him a glance of sove- 
 reign disdain : ' There are only two things I 
 like in Eussia, they are the steppes and the 
 wolves : tliat limitless expanse, stretching aAvay
 
 40 P/^/AVESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 to the dim grey sky on every side, and the 
 sight of a pack of the gannt grey beasts on the 
 snow as one's sledge flies by ; those two things 
 give one a sensation which one does not get 
 elsewhere. But it is monotonous, it soon ceases 
 to move one ; the Avolves never attack, and the 
 great, awful, white plain never leads to any- 
 thing better than the posting-house, the sama- 
 var, and the vodki, and the group of drunken 
 coachmen.' 
 
 ' The human interest, in a word,' suggested 
 Melville. 
 
 Madame Napraxine smiled : 
 
 ' Ah ! my dear Monsignore, the human in- 
 terest is quite as dull as the steppe and quite 
 as ravenous as the wolf! How delightful it 
 must be to be a priest to see all that raw 
 material throusfh rose-g-lasses ! ' 
 
 ' May not the interest be in subduing the 
 wolf?' murmured Melville. 'And even the 
 steppe, under the fostering touch of May dews 
 and June sunlight, will put forth blossoms. Is 
 there no allegory there that Madame Napraxine 
 will deign to accept P ' 
 
 ' You always say pretty things, in the pulpit 
 or out of it,' she rephed ; ' but you cannot lend
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 41 
 
 me your rose-glasses to see them tlirough, so I 
 fear they do not convince me. The astrono- 
 mers who are now busy seeing canals in tlie 
 planet Mars, would see nothing if they had not 
 their glasses ; no more would you. You see a 
 soul in a drunken dvornik ; that is quite as 
 astonishing, and probably quite as imaginary, 
 as the network of canals in Mars. Will you 
 really eat nothing, Monsignore ? Let us go out 
 and sit under that awning there ; a bath of 
 sunshine always does one good, and you need 
 not grudge yourself a half hour of leisure. I 
 have no doubt you have been passing the fore- 
 noon somewhere with cholera or typhus or 
 some other plague of this sanitary century. 
 You know, Geraldine, that is Monsignore's way. 
 He is S. Francis Xavier all the morning, and 
 then turns himself inside out and becomes an 
 Abbe galant for society.' 
 
 ' I have not been to anything typhoid or 
 choleraic this morning, or I should not be here 
 to endanger your loveliness. Princess,' answered 
 Melville. ' I have been where Poverty is — 
 alas ! where is she not ? — and in our day those 
 who wed with her regard it as a forced mar- 
 riage, wholly joyless ; and we cannot persuade
 
 42 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 them that there may be graciousness where she 
 dwells if only cleanliness and content will sit 
 down with her.' 
 
 ' Oh, Monsignore, it is not only poverty that 
 scares content, I can assure you,' said Madame 
 Napraxine. 
 
 ' If you be not content, who should be ? ' 
 murmured Melville. ' With every possible gift 
 of nature, culture, fate, and fortune showered 
 upon you, why will you always persuade your- 
 self. Princess, that your doubled rose-leaf mars 
 everything ? I do not beheve the rose-leaf 
 even exists ! ' 
 
 ' I am not sure that it does, either,' replied 
 Madame Napraxine ; ' but I never remember 
 to liave felt contented in my life. Is content 
 an intellectual quality? I doubt it. Perhaps 
 it is a virtue ; I dislike virtues.' 
 
 Melville was a sincerely pious Churchman, 
 but even he did not dare to take up the cudgels 
 in honour of poor virtue before this merciless 
 speaker. He was satisfied with replying that 
 content was not a quality which the tendencies 
 of the waning nineteenth century were likely 
 to foster. 
 
 ' No ! ' said the Princess Napraxine. ' The
 
 PRLYCESS NAPRAXINE. 43 
 
 note of our time is restlessness, and its chief 
 attainment the increase of hisanity.' 
 
 ' If it did not sound too much hke moral- 
 ising, I should say that there was never any 
 time in which there was so much self-in- 
 dulgence and so little real rest,' said Melville, 
 who had the sensitive fear of a man of the 
 world of appearing to obtrude his own convic- 
 tions, and to preach out of season and out of 
 church. 
 
 • People require to have their brains and 
 their consciences very clear and very calm to 
 enjoy rest. It is the reward which nature re- 
 serves for her good children,' said Lady Brance- 
 peth. 
 
 ' I must be very good, then,' said Madame 
 Napraxine with her little mysterious smile, ' for 
 I rest absolutely. To know how to do nothing 
 is a great secret of health and of comfort ; but 
 you must not wait till you are fatigued to do 
 nothing, or you cannot enjoy it.' 
 
 ' And I suppose you must occasionally be 
 deaf to duty knocking at the door ? ' 
 
 ' Duty ! She should have her proper moments 
 of audience, like the steward, the piqueur, the 
 secretary, and other necessary and disagree-
 
 44 PT^/XCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 able people ; tliat is to say, if she really exist. 
 Monsignore Melville evidently is in the habit of 
 listening to her.' 
 
 'I may say with Josef IT., " C'est mon 
 metier a moi," ' said Melville, with good 
 hnmour. ' But believe me, Princess, it is not 
 duty which prevents repose ; it is far more 
 often worry, the hateful familiar of all modern 
 life. Worry takes a million forms ; very often 
 it is dressed up as pleasure, and perhaps in tliat 
 shape is more distressing than in any other.' 
 
 ' Yes, the age has invented nothing that 
 does not result in worry. Onl}^ look at the 
 torture to diplomatists from the telegrams,' re- 
 plied Madame Napraxine, wdiile she tendered 
 liim a cigar. ' In other years an ambassador 
 had some pleasure in disentangling a dehcate 
 and intricate embroglio, some chance of making 
 a great name by his skill in negotiation. An 
 able man was let alone to mingle his suaviter 
 and his fortitei\ his honey and his aloes, as he 
 thought fit ; his knowledge of the country to 
 wdiich he was accredited w\as trusted to and 
 appreciated ; nowadays, telegrams rain in on 
 him wath every hour ; he is allowed no initia- 
 tive, no independent action ; he is dictated to
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 45 
 
 and interfered with by his home government, 
 and cypher messages torture him at every step. 
 What is the consequence ? That there is 
 scarcely a diplomatist left in Europe — they 
 are only delegates. Where there is one, he is 
 incessantly controlled, hindered, and annoyed, 
 and all his counsels are disregarded. Mean- 
 while the world's only kind of peace is a per- 
 manent armed truce. But let us go into the 
 garden.'
 
 46 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Whex Nadege Fedorevna, Countess Platoff, 
 known to all her friends by tlie "petit nam of 
 Nadine, had reached her sixteenth year she had 
 the look of a hothouse gardenia, so white was 
 her skin and so spiritual her aspect, whilst her 
 slender form had all the grace of a flower 
 balancing itself on a fragile stalk in a south 
 wind. That ethereality, that exquisite delicacy, 
 as of something far too fair and evanescent for 
 man's rude touch, fascinated into a timid and 
 adoring passion a heavily-built and clumsy 
 cuirassier of the Imperial Guard, Avho was also 
 one of the greatest nobles written in the Velvet 
 Book of Eussia — Platon Mcholaivitch, head 
 of the mighty family of Napraxine. He was 
 eight-and-tw^enty years old, immeasurably rich, 
 popular with his sovereign, a good soldier, and 
 an exceedingly amiable man. He laid his 
 heart and everything he possessed at the feet
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 47 
 
 of this exquisite and disdainful child ^v]len he 
 saw her at her father's embassy in Vienna one 
 fateful April day. 
 
 She refused him without a moment of 
 doubt ; but he was persevering, greatly en- 
 amoured, and had both her parents upon his 
 side. She was neither weak, nor very obedient ; 
 yet in time she allowed lierself to be persuaded 
 that not to accept such an alliance would be 
 to do something supremely ridiculous. She 
 resisted stubbornly for a while ; but she was 
 inquisitive, independent, and a little heartless. 
 
 Her mother, a woman of the world, full of 
 tact and of wisdom, answered her objection 
 that the Prince Napraxine was stupid, had a 
 Kalmuck face, and v/as inclined to be corpu- 
 lent — in a word, displeased her taste in every 
 way — by frankly admitting these objections to 
 be incontestable facts, but added, with persua- 
 sive equanimity, ' All you say is quite true, my 
 child, but that sort of details does not matter, 
 I assure you, in a question of the kind we are 
 discussing. It would matter terribly to him if 
 you were stupid or ugly, or inclined to be fat ; 
 but in a man — in a husband — in three months ' 
 time you will not even observe it. Indeed, in
 
 48 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 a fortnight you will be so used to him that you 
 will not think whether he is handsome or ugly. 
 Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty, 
 but kind to uo^liness. As for beincr inclined to 
 corpulence, he is very tall, he will carry it off 
 very well ; and as to gambling, he Avill never 
 get to the bottom of his salt mines and ruby 
 mines : that is the chief question. And after 
 all, my dear Nadine, a man who will never 
 interfere with you and never quarrel with you 
 is a pearl seldom found amongst the husks ; and 
 
 when the pearl is set in gold I would not 
 
 for worlds persuade you, my dear, to marry 
 merely for certain worldly considerations, such 
 as the great place and the great wealth of 
 Platon Nicholaivitch ; but I would earnestly ad- 
 vise you to marry early and to marry for peace, 
 and when peace and a colossal fortune are to 
 be found united, it seems to me a great mistake 
 to throw them both away. Somebody else 
 will take them. I suppose you dream of love 
 
 as all young girls do ; but ' 
 
 ' Not at all ; I know this is only a question 
 of marriage,' said Nadine, with that terrible 
 sarcasm on her lovely young lips with which 
 many things she had seen in her mother's house
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 49 
 
 liad armed lier for tlie battle of life whilst she 
 was still but a child. 
 
 She did not think about love at all ; she 
 was not romantic ; she already thought it vieux 
 jeu ; but she had a brain above the average, 
 and she fancied that she should like the man 
 to whom she was given to be something great 
 in intellectual power, not merely in the sense of 
 millions and of rank. But a girl of sixteen, 
 born and bred in an embassy, reared in the 
 most brilliant cities of the world, having seen, 
 the great panorama of society pass before her 
 eyes from her babyhood, is, however innocent 
 in other ways, not unsophisticated enough to 
 ignore the vast advantages of such a position 
 and such wealth as the Prince Napraxine offered 
 to her. Besides, her father wished passionately 
 for the acceptance of Xapraxine; he himself 
 was deeply in debt, and knew that his con- 
 stitution had the germs of a mortal disease. 
 
 ' Via, ma petite,' he said to her gravely one 
 morning, 'je suis crible de dettes : je peux 
 mourir domain. C'est mieux que tu le 
 premies enfin, c'est un assez bon garcon.' 
 
 It was not an enthusiastic eulogy of his 
 desired son-in-law, but he never spoke enthu- 
 
 VOL. ]. B
 
 50 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 siastically, and his child knew very well that 
 under the negligent slight phrases there ran a 
 keen and vivid desire, perhaps even a carking 
 and unacknowledged care. By the end of that 
 evening she had allowed herself to be per- 
 suaded, and in three months' time was married 
 to Prince Napraxine, not knowing in the least 
 what marriage was, but only regarding it as 
 an entry into the world ^\'ith unlimited jewels 
 and the power of going to any theatres she 
 chose. When she did know what it was, it 
 filled her with an inexpressible disgust and 
 melancholy. She was very young, and her 
 temperament was composed of that mingled 
 hauteur and spirituality in which the senses 
 sleep silent long, sometimes for ever. 
 
 She bore two sons in the first two years of 
 her marriage, and then considered herself free 
 from further obligations to provide heirs for 
 the vast Napraxine properties. Her husband 
 had been ardently but timidly in love ; when 
 she intimated to him that their union should be 
 restricted to going to Courts together and being 
 seen in the same houses at discreet intervals, he 
 suffered in his affections as well as in his pride, 
 but he did not dare to rebel.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 51 
 
 This lovely young woman, wlio was like 
 a gardenia or a narcissus, who was not 
 nineteen, and declared that all the caresses and 
 obligations of love were odious to her, could 
 strike terror and submission into the soul of 
 the big Platon Napraxine, who stood six feet 
 three inches, and had been no unheroic soldier 
 in the frosty Caucasus and on the banks of 
 Euphrates and Indus. She was unusually 
 clever, clever by nature and culture, by intellect 
 and insight, keenly, delicately clever, with both 
 aptitude and appetite for learning and scholar- 
 ship ; and within the first twenty-four hours of 
 her marriage, she had taken his measurement, 
 moral and mental, with merciless accuracy, and 
 had decided to herself that she would never do 
 but what she chose. He was a big dog, a hon 
 enfant^ a good-natured, good-tempered cipher, 
 but he was a great bore. And she put him 
 aside out of her life altogether, except inasmuch 
 as it was absolutely necessary to sit sometimes 
 at the same table with him, and have his orders 
 blaze beside her diamonds at State balls ; and 
 the friends of the Prince Napraxine envied her, 
 of all her valuable possessions, none so much 
 as that of her husband, whose revenues were 
 
 E 2 
 
 UMiV£RsrryoPff.n«^ye
 
 52 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 inexhaustible, and whose good-nature and 
 patience were equally endless. 
 
 Looking back to her seventeenth year she 
 always admitted that her mother had judged 
 rightly. 
 
 ' Poor Platon ! ' she would say to herself 
 sometimes when she thought so, with a little 
 passing flicker of something like compunction. 
 What had she given him in return for his great 
 name, his enormous wealth, his magnificent 
 gifts of all kinds, his honest devotion, and his 
 infinite docility? Being very honest, when in 
 self-communion of this sort, she was obliged to 
 confess to herself — nothing. Her own money 
 was all settled on herself; their rank had been 
 quite equal ; there were hundreds as pretty as 
 herself, and she could not now recollect that in 
 six years of marriage she had given him one 
 affectionate word. 
 
 ' The fault is not ours ; ' she would say, ' it 
 is the institution that is so stupid. People 
 do not know how else to manage about pro- 
 perty, and so they invented the marriage state. 
 But it is an altogether illogical idea, binding 
 down two strangers side by side for ever, and 
 it cannot be said to work well. It keeps pro-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 53 
 
 perty together, that is all ; so I suppose it is 
 good for the world ; but certainly individuals 
 suffer for it more than perhaps property is 
 worth.' 
 
 Her two little boys were always left in the 
 Krimea with the mother of Napraxme ; they 
 were much better there, she thought, growing 
 up robust and healthy like two young bear cubs 
 (which, to her eyes, they much resembled) in 
 the pure breezes from the Black Sea. When 
 she did see them she was always amiable to 
 them, even thought she felt fond of tliem, as 
 she did of the steppes and the wolves ; but 
 like the steppes and the wolves they were 
 certainly most interesting in theory and at a 
 good long distance. They were too like their 
 father to be welcome to her. ' They have the 
 Tartar face, and they will be just as big and 
 just as stupid,' she thought, whenever she saw 
 them. 
 
 When Melville, who had been long intimate 
 with her family, told her, as he very often did, 
 that it was her duty to have the children near 
 her, and to interest herself in their education, 
 she always replied : ' They are exactly like 
 Platon ; nothing I could do would make them
 
 54 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 different. They are perfectly well cared for by 
 his mother, and brought up much better than I 
 could do it. I was expected to give him an 
 heir : I have given him two heirs. I do not 
 see that anything more is required of me.' 
 
 And when Melville would fain have insisted 
 on the usual arguments as to the obhgations of 
 maternity and education, she invariably in- 
 terrupted him, and once said at full length, ' If 
 the children were mine onlj' and not Platon's, 
 I could make something of them. But they 
 are formed in his image ; exceedingly good, 
 entirely uninteresting. They will be Princes 
 Napraxine, and so the world will adore them, 
 though they be as stupid as mules and as 
 ugly as hedgehogs. They do not interest me. 
 Oh, you are shocked ! Even you, the most 
 original of Churchmen, cannot get over your 
 prejudices. Believe me, la voix de la Nature 
 does not speak to everybody. It does not say 
 anything at all to me.' 
 
 ' I will be an honest woman ; it is much 
 more chic,' she had said to herself in the 
 first year of her marriage in the height 
 of a Paris winter, as she had looked around 
 her on society, with her brilliant indolent eyes,
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXh^E. 55 
 
 which saw so clearly and so far, and surveyed 
 and appraised her contemporaries. 
 
 It would be eccentric, l:)ut distinguished. 
 To her delicate, satirical, fastidious taste, there 
 was a sort of vulgarity in being compromised. 
 She did not go farther than that, or higher than 
 that. The thing was common, was low ; that 
 was quite enough against it. Something that 
 was half spirituality, half hauteur, made the 
 decision easy to her. A certain chillness of 
 temper aiding, her resolve had been kept. 
 She had been as loyal a wife to Prince Na- 
 praxine as though she had loved him. Men 
 did not obtain any hold on her. She flirted 
 desperately sometimes, amused herself always, 
 but that was all. When they tried to pass from 
 courtiers into lovers, they found a barrier, im- 
 palpable but impassable, compounded of lier 
 indifference and her raillery, ever set between 
 her and them. She fancied that it would be 
 quite intolerable to her for any living being to 
 believe himself necessary to her happiness ; 
 besides, she did not much believe in happiness. 
 The world was pleasant enough ; hke a well- 
 cushioned saloon carriage on a well-ordered 
 line of rail ; nothing more. You travelled on-
 
 56 PJ^/XCESS XAPRAXIXE. 
 
 Avard, malf/re vous, and you slept comfortably, 
 and your ultimate destination you could not 
 avoid ; but if you escaped au}^ great disaster by 
 the way, and if nobody woke you with a shock, 
 it was all you w^anted. She did not believe in 
 the possibility of any great beatitude coming 
 to you on that very monotonous route. 
 
 She had that admirable tact coupled witli 
 that refmed but unsparing insolence whicli 
 daunts the world in creneral to silence and 
 respect. The greatest hlagueur on the Boule- 
 vards never dared to hint at a weakness or 
 a concession on the part of the Princess Na- 
 praxine. And v/omen, though they envied her 
 bitterly, reviled her unsparingly, and slnvered 
 luider the sting of her delicate impertinence 
 or her pregnant epigram, yet were perfectly 
 conscious that she had never shared their 
 lollies. Passion had as yet no place in her 
 complex and delicate organism. She could 
 not, or would not, understand why passion 
 should not be content to amuse and worship 
 her, just as a furnace fire may onl}- bake 
 a porcelain cup or call to life a gardenia 
 blossom. 
 
 Now and then this refusal of hers to compre-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 57 
 
 bend what slie inspired ended in dire tragedy. 
 Now and then some one killed himself because 
 she had laughed. Now and then two people 
 were silly enougli to figlit a duel a]30iit a glove 
 she had dropped, or the right to take her down 
 the stairs at the opera. But this was always 
 lamentable and foolish in her sight ; only its 
 consequences, though she regretted them, did 
 not alter her. If she had loved her husband her 
 victims would have been less mortified ; but 
 they all knew very well that Platon Napraxine 
 was no more to her than one of the chairs in 
 her drawing-room. If she had even loved the 
 world she lived in, her coldness would have 
 been more intelligible ; but she did not. Her 
 magnificent jewels, lier marvellous toilettes, her 
 many beautiful houses, her power of gratifying 
 any whim as it formed itself, the way people 
 looked after her postillions in their blue velvet 
 jackets, the perpetual fete of which society was 
 made up for her, all diverted her but moder- 
 ately. She was mondaine to the tips of her 
 fingers, but not enthusiastically so, only so from 
 habit — as she wore silk stockings or had rose- 
 water in her bath. 
 
 ' I have seen the whole thing since I was
 
 58 PRINCESS NAPRAXIiYE. 
 
 sixteen ; liow can it entertain me much ? ' she 
 said to those who marvelled at her indifference. 
 When it was objected to her that there were 
 many who hod seen it from sixteen to sixty, 
 and yet thought nothing else worth seeing, she 
 shrugged her shoulders. On the whole she 
 understood the sect of the Skoptzi better ; they 
 had an ideal. What ideal had her world ? 
 
 She kept her exquisite tint and her lovely 
 eyes unspoiled by the endless late hours and 
 the incessant excitations in which women of the 
 monde oh Ion s amuse lose their youth in a 
 year or two. She ate very simply, drank little 
 but water, rode or drove . no matter what 
 weather, refused forty-nine out of fifty of all 
 the invitations she received, seldom or never 
 made any house visits, and spent many hours 
 in perfect repose. 
 
 ' Why should you go and stay in other 
 people's houses ? ' she always said to her English 
 friends, in whom this mania is more rampant 
 than amongst any other nationality. ' Another 
 person's house is hardly better than an hotel ; 
 indeed, very often it is worse. If you don't like 
 the dinner-hour, you cannot change it ; if you 
 are given slow horses, you cannot complain ;
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 59 
 
 if you dislike your rooms, you cannot alter 
 them ; if you think the clief a bad one, you 
 cannot say so ; if you find all the house party 
 bore you, you cannot get rid of them. You 
 must pretend to eat all day long ; you must 
 pretend to feel amiable from noon to mid- 
 night ; you must have all kinds of plans made 
 for you, and submit to them ; you can never 
 read but in your own room, and, generally 
 speaking, there is nothing in the library — if it 
 be an English library — except Tennyson, Words- 
 worth, and Mr. Darwin. I cannot imagine how 
 any reasonable being subjects herself to such a 
 martyrdom only because somebody else finds 
 thek country place dull without people.' 
 
 She had also ingeniously established a 
 reputation for very delicate health, which she 
 found beyond anything useful to spare her from 
 being bored, and to excuse her absence from 
 any gathering which did not specially attract 
 her. 
 
 ' I have a santi de fer^ she said once to a 
 friend, ' but happily I look very fragile, and 
 physicians, if they think you wish it, will always 
 promise you angina pectoris or tubercles on 
 your lungs. I have an enchanting doctor in
 
 6o PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 Paris — you know him, de Thiviers — lie is very 
 famous ; lie will shake his head over me as if 
 I were doomed to die in ten minutes, and he 
 friofhtens Platon out of his wits — he s^ets a G^reat 
 many rouleaux at the end of the season — and 
 he and I look as grave as the two augurs, 
 though, like the augurs, we are both longing 
 to laugh. It is so useful to be thought very 
 delicate, you have an excuse for everything. 
 If at the last moment you don't wish to go any- 
 where, nobody can say anything if it be your 
 health that gives way. They would never for- 
 give me my continual absence from the Court 
 at Petersburg, and I certainly should not re- 
 ceive my perpetual passport, if they did not 
 sincerely believe in the tubercles which de 
 Thiviers has so obligingly found for me. Do 
 go to de Thiviers if you are quite well and 
 want to be ill ; he understands all that sort of 
 thing so well, and he never betrays you. He 
 has convinced Platon that I am poiirinaire.'' 
 
 And between her reputation for a dangerous 
 disease in her system, and her really intelligent 
 care of her health, she had the paths of life 
 made very smooth to her, and was infinitely 
 freer from any genuine indisposition than might
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 6i 
 
 have been expected from the fragility of her 
 aspect, and her Eussian love of hot rooms and 
 yellow tea. Still, as a great comedian will so 
 identify himself with his part that he at times 
 believes himself the thing which he represents, 
 she did at times almost persuade herself, as she 
 completely persuaded others, that she had some 
 great constitutional dehcacy to contend with, 
 and she would play at medicine with little 
 needles for morphia, or a few glasses of water 
 at Baden-Baden or Ems, as she would play now 
 and then at baccarat or roulette in her draw- 
 ing-rooms. 
 
 ' Nothing is so useful,' she would say in 
 moments of confidence. ' Look at the quantity 
 of weariness that there is in the world from 
 which no other possible plan will set you free. 
 Palace dinners, diplomatic banquets, great mar- 
 riages, country house visits, self-invited princes, 
 imperial coronations, royal baptisms, — you can- 
 not refuse them ; the laws of society forbid ; 
 but if you are known to be in dehcate health, 
 no one can be offended if, at the last moment, 
 quite unexpectedly, you get a chill and must 
 not stir out of your own room. When there 
 is some unutterable social tedium looming on
 
 62 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 the horizon, I always telegraph for de Thiviers, 
 and lie is always equal to the occasion.' 
 
 In this, as in other matters, she arranged 
 her life to lier own satisfaction, without any 
 kind of misgiving that this self- absorption was 
 egotistical. Everything had combined to make 
 her an egotist. An only child, adored by her 
 father, admired and a little feared by her 
 mother, whose most intimate secrets she had 
 divined with all the keen intuition of her natural 
 inteUigence ; surrounded from her earhest years 
 by a court of dependents and servants who 
 seemed only to live to minister to her caprices, 
 flattered from her babyhood by all her father's 
 friends, secretaries, and attaches, she had im- 
 bibed selfishness as inevitably as a young 
 willow sucks in the moisture from the stream 
 by which it grows. There was nothing in a 
 loveless marriage and in the clumsy and irri- 
 tating devotion of a man wdio Avas ardently 
 in love with her, whilst she only viewed him 
 witli contempt and dislike, to counteract the 
 influences of her earlier years. The whole 
 world conspired to induce the Princess Na- 
 praxine to live only for herself. 
 
 That she occasionally had moments of
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 63 
 
 supreme generosity, and a capacity seldom or 
 never called out for heroic courage, did not 
 alter the main fact that her life was essentially 
 selfish. She never did anything that she did 
 not wish to do ; the great want in her exist- 
 ence, to herself, was that she so very seldom 
 felt any wish for anything. When she did, she 
 gratified it without any scruple or hesitation. 
 
 Her mind was too clear and logical for any 
 creed to obtain any hold upon her ; nominally, 
 of course, she was of the Greek Church, and 
 had too much good taste to create any scandal 
 by openly separating herself from it ; but her 
 intelhgence, as critical and as subtle as Voltaire's 
 or Bohngbroke's, would no more have sub- 
 mitted to the bondage of rehgious superstition 
 and tradition than she would have clothed her 
 graceful person in one of the ' Decrochez-moi- 
 9a ' that hung in the windows of Paris clothes- 
 shops. In morality, also, she did not much 
 believe ; she read Stuart Mill's plea for the 
 utility of virtue once, and smiled as she closed 
 the book with a mental verdict of ' non-proven.* 
 
 Pride (that pride which has been happily 
 defined by a French writer is fas d'orgueil^ 
 mais de la Jierte), and tlie delicacy of her
 
 64 PRhYCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 taste, with her profouDcl indifference, supphed 
 the place in lier of moral laws, and probably 
 acted on her much more effectively than they 
 w^ould have done. Principle is but a pali- 
 sade ; temperament is a stone bastion. 
 
 ' Les honnetes gens m'ennuient et les mau- 
 vaises gens me cleplaisent,' she was w^ont to say, 
 with a frank confession of what many others 
 have felt, and have not had the courage to say. 
 She had no more rigidity of principle than 
 any other person who has been reared in the 
 midst of a witty, elegant, and corrupt society ; 
 but her perfect taste supplied the place of moral 
 convictions, the grossness of vice offended her 
 like a bad odour, or a staring colour ; and 
 everything loose or coarse seemed to her an 
 affront to intelligence and to refinement. 
 
 Sometimes she almost envied the women 
 who could plunge themselves into the hot 
 springs of a passion, only it seemed to her 
 vulgar ; the same sort of vulgarity as swimming 
 in public in a rose-coloured maillot. She 
 could swim like an otter, but she never swam 
 in public. The noisy and ungrateful pleasures 
 which delight modern society seemed to her 
 sheer imbecihties, whilst she would as soon
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 65 
 
 have descended to an intrigue with her cook 
 or her coachman as have made an amorous 
 appointment in a private room at a cafe, or 
 have mounted the stairs of a hired house to 
 meet a LoveLace of the chibs. ' Peut-on ctre 
 plus hete ! ' she would say, with supreme disdain, 
 whenever she heard of the vulgarities which 
 usually accompany Apate and Philotes in these 
 the waning years of the nineteenth century. 
 She quite understood the Parisienne in ' Frou- 
 frou ' who, tempted to make an assignation, 
 awakes to a sense of its coarseness and common- 
 ness when she finds that the temple of love 
 is upon the third floor in the Eue du Petit 
 Hurleur, and that the wall-paper lias five- 
 and-twenty Poniatowskys jumping into the 
 Elster repeated on every length of it. 
 
 ' In that sort of affair,' she said once, ' you 
 must have either secrecy or a scandal ; both to 
 me seem in bad taste. And then, with the one 
 you are at the mercy of your maid, and with the 
 other you are at the mercy of the newspapers. 
 To be sure,' she added, ' I cannot, perhaps, 
 measure the force of the temptation, for I have 
 never in my life seen any luunan being to meet 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 whom I should have ever thought it worth while 
 even to order out my coupe.' 
 
 Innumerable lives had done their uttermost 
 to entwine themselves in hers and had only 
 broken themselves helplessly on the rock of 
 her supreme indifference, like so many ships 
 upon icebergs. She was a charmer esse in the 
 uttermost sense of that expressive word, but 
 she was scarcely a coquette, though the most 
 merciless coquetry might have done much less 
 harm than she did. A coquette desires and 
 strives to please ; Nadine Napraxine fascinated 
 other lives to hers without effort if without 
 pity. She had one supreme end — to endea- 
 vour to amuse herself; and she had one un- 
 ending appetite — that of the study of charac- 
 ter. She so seldom succeeded in amusing 
 herself that she came naturally to the conclu- 
 sion that most characters contained no amusing 
 elements. 
 
 ' Vous mennuyez ! ' was her single word of 
 explication to those whose homage she had 
 permitted for a while only to send them adrift 
 without a sign of compassion or contrition. To 
 her the three words seemed entirely compre- 
 hensive. When some one more darinc? than
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 67 
 
 the others had ouce ventured to remind her 
 that he had not been quite so hateful to her 
 only a brief while before, she had said, with 
 some impatience, ' Can one know that a book 
 is dull unless one looks at a few pages ? It is 
 not one's fault if it be ill- written. I cannot say 
 why you all weary me, but if you do, it is 
 not my fault either.' 
 
 When once they wearied her it was of no 
 use for them by any ingenuity, subserviency, or 
 despair, to attempt to regain her favour. Her 
 path, like that of all great victors, was strewn 
 with unregarded victims. Xow and then her 
 composure had been ruffled, when the fate of 
 someone of these had roused the adverse 
 comments of the world, and the issue of some 
 duel or the fact of some suicide had had her 
 name, by common consent, coupled with it. 
 She disliked that kind of notoriety ; sincerely 
 disliked it with all the hauteur and disgust of 
 a very proud and sensitive refinement ; but it 
 never made her change the tenor of her ways. 
 
 ' If you do not like dii iwtin^ would it not 
 be better — to — to— not to give rise to it ? ' 
 Napraxine himself had once humbly ventured 
 to suggest wlien she was excessively angered
 
 68 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 because the journals of the hour had ventured 
 to introduce her name into their narratives of 
 a duel ending in the death of the young Prin- 
 cipe d'lvrea, who had been very popular and 
 beloved in French and Itahan society. 
 
 ' Bii potin I ' she had echoed. ' Why can- 
 not you say scandal ? What sense is there in 
 slang? Give rise to it? Ivrea was a nice 
 boy, but irascible like all Italians, and intensely 
 vain; the least word irritated him. He chose 
 to provoke de Prangins because de Prangins 
 teased liim, and the old man has been too 
 strong for the young one. It is a great pity ! 
 he had a pretty face and a pretty manner, but 
 I have no more to do with his death than tlie 
 gilt arrow on the top of the house. Myself, 
 I would much rather he had killed de Pran- 
 gins.' 
 
 Napraxine had preserved a reverential 
 silence ; he knew that there was another side 
 to the story, but he did not venture to say so. 
 
 When the jealousies, feuds, and quarrels 
 which it amused her to excite and foment 
 arrived at any such tragical conclusion as this 
 with which the Due de Prangins had disem- 
 barrassed her salons of a youth who of late
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 69 
 
 had grown too presuming, she was always 
 entirely innocent of being the cause of it. ' I 
 always tell them to like each other,' she would 
 say placidly ; but therein they did not obey her. 
 
 She valued her power of destruction as the 
 only possible means of her own amusement. It 
 reconciled her to herself when slic was most dis- 
 posed to be discontented. Her delicate lips smiled 
 with ineffable disdain Avhen she saw other women 
 se tordant comme des folks, as she expressed it, 
 in their effort to secure the admiration or retain 
 the passions of men, while she, merely lifting 
 the cloud of her black lashes in the sunshine by 
 the lake, or sitting still as marble in the shadow 
 of her box at the ' Fran^ais,' could anclior 
 down by her for ever the thoughts, the desires, 
 the regrets, the destinies of young and old, of 
 friend and enemy, of stranger and familiar, 
 merely by the passive magnetism of that charm 
 which Xature had i^iven her. 
 
 ' Marie Stuart,' she said once when she 
 closed Chastelard, ' a sorceress ! Pooh ! They 
 make much too much of her. She had a charm, 
 I suppose, but she could not have known liow 
 to use it, or she would never have married 
 either Darnley or Both well, and she would
 
 70 . PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 never have allowed herself to be beaten by 
 Ehzabeth — a grey-haired virgin and a mai- 
 tresse femnie ! ' 
 
 All women seemed to her to have been 
 very weak : Josephine humiliated at Malmaison; 
 Marie Antoinette, on the tumbril of death ; 
 Heloise, in her cell of Paraclete ; Lady Hamil- 
 ton, dying of want in Calais ; Lady Blessing- 
 ton, poor and miserable in Paris : — what was 
 the use of ' charm ' if it ended like that ? 
 
 ' I shall reign as long as I live,' she said to 
 herself. ' And if I live to eighty men will be 
 still eager to hear me talk.'
 
 71 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 ' This room is stifling, it is so small ; and yet 
 there are horrible draughts in it. I daresay the 
 ridiculous walls are not an inch thick,' said the 
 Princess Napraxine now, as she rose from the 
 breakfast-table, and drew her delicate skirts, 
 with their undulating waves and foam of lace, 
 out through the glass doors and over the marble 
 of the terrace to the slieltered nook in which 
 she had been sitting before breakfast, where a 
 square Smyrna carpet was placed under several 
 cushioned lounging-chairs. It was only two 
 o'clock, and the air was warm and full of 
 brilhant sunshine. 
 
 • It is all in dreadful taste,' she said for the 
 hundredth time. 'This sort of mock-Syrian 
 scenery, mixed up with chalets, villas, and 
 hotels, has such a look of the stage. It seems 
 made on purpose for maquilUes beauties, dyed 
 and pampered gamblers, and great ladies who
 
 72 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 are received nowliere else. Places liave all a 
 physiognomy, moral as well as physical. The 
 Eiviera must have been enchanting when there 
 was only a mule-track as wide as a ribbon 
 between the hills and the sea from Marseilles 
 to Genoa, but now that the moral emanations 
 of Monte Carlo and of the cinq heures at all 
 the nondescript houses, and of the baccarat 
 groups in the clubs which are not as exclu- 
 sive as they might be, have spread all along 
 the coast like miasma, the whole thing is only 
 a decor cle scene, the very gardens are mas- 
 querading as Egypt, as Damascus, as Palermo. 
 It is all postiche.' 
 
 ' You are very cruel, madame,' murmured 
 Melville. 
 
 ' That is the only thing you can any of you 
 find to reply when I say anything that is true ! ' 
 said the Princess, with triumph. 
 
 ' The de Yannes are your nearest neigh- 
 bours,' suggested her husband. 
 
 ' Did you mean that Cri-Cri is Men nature ? ' 
 she said, with her little low laugh. 'I fear 
 neither of them will contribute anything to 
 redeem the character of the place for either 
 maquillage or gambling '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 73 
 
 'Why ^volllJ you coine to it?' he asked, 
 with all a man's stupidity. 
 
 ' Why do people ever ask one why one 
 does things? ' she interrupted, irritably. ' One 
 imagines one will like a thing ; one gets it ; 
 and directly, of course, one does not like 
 it. That is a kind of general law. Monsig- 
 nore Melville will tell us, I suppose, tliat it 
 is to prevent us attaching ourselves to the 
 pleasures of this world ; but as it also ope- 
 rates in preventing one's attaching oneself to 
 anybody, as well as anything, I do not know 
 that the result is as admirable as he would 
 imagine.' 
 
 ' I never said ' began Melville. 
 
 ' Oh, no, but you would say if you were in 
 the pulpit,' she replied, before he could finish 
 his sentence. ' You Avould say that even eyinui 
 and satiety and depression have their uses if 
 they lead the soul to heaven; but that is just 
 what they do not do ; they only lead to mor- 
 phia, chloral, dyspepsia, and Karlsbad. It is 
 quite impossible — it must be quite impossible, 
 even for you, Monsignore — to consider Karlsbad 
 as an antechamber to heaven ! ' 
 
 Melville tried to look shocked, but did not
 
 74 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 succeed well, as he was a little Eabelaisian and 
 Montaignist at heart, and not intended by 
 nature for a Churchman. 
 
 ' What are we going to do ? ' said the 
 Prince, as he stretched himself in his chair, and 
 lighted another cigarette. 
 
 ' Stay Avhere we are,' suggested Geraldine, 
 who desired nothing better, as a tete-a-tete 
 was a favour never accorded to him twice in 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 ' Oh, not I, indeed! ' cried Xapraxine, with 
 as much alacrity as was possible beneath his 
 heavy ' envelope of flesh.' ' I shall go to Monte 
 Carlo. I have told them to harness. If you 
 like to come ' 
 
 At that moment a servant brought him a 
 card. He read what was written in pencilled 
 lines upon it ; then raised his head with a 
 pleased exclamation. 
 
 ' Je vous le donne en mille ! ' he cried. 
 ' Nadine, who do you think is here ? ' 
 
 ' A goose with a diseased liver, or a hun- 
 dred green oysters ? ' said his wife, contemp- 
 tuously. ' I can imagine no lesser source for 
 so much radiance.' 
 
 The Prince, regardless of sarcasm, or tem-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 75 
 
 pered to endurance of it by longliabit. answered 
 placidly : 
 
 ' No ; it is Othmar.' 
 
 The face of Nadine Xapraxine changed 
 considerably ; the most astute observer could 
 not have decided whether annoyance or grati- 
 fication was the most visible expression ; her 
 eyes lighted with a look different to the mild 
 amusement with which she had greeted 
 Geraldine. 
 
 ' Where can he have come from ? ' continued 
 her husband. • He was in Asia a little while 
 ago. One is always so glad to see him. He 
 is so unlike other people. It is only you, 
 Nadine, who do not appreciate him.' 
 
 ' He is poseur^' said she with languor. ' But 
 I do not know w^hether that is reason enough 
 to keep him waiting at the gate ? ' 
 
 ' I forgot,' said Napraxine. ' There is no 
 one less poseui\ I assure you. Clever as you 
 are, you sometimes mistake. Gregor, beg Count 
 Othmar to join us here.' 
 
 The servant withdrew. Princess Nadine 
 put a large peacock fan between her and the 
 sun ; she yawned a little. 
 
 ' Seven minutes for Gregor to send down
 
 76 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 to the gate, seven minutes for Otlimar to come 
 up from the gate, a minute and a half more for 
 him to traverse the house ; we have fifteen 
 minutes and a half in which to vilify our 
 coming friend, as modern hospitality binds us 
 to do. Let us begin. We must be stupid 
 indeed if we cannot kill anybody's character 
 in a quarter of an hour.' 
 
 ' There is no cliaracter to kill,' began her 
 husband. 
 
 ' Pardon me ! No one can say he is clia- 
 racterless. He is a very marked character.' 
 
 ' That was not what I meant,' said Na- 
 praxine. ' I meant that no one could say 
 otherwise than good of him. And if there 
 w^ere such a one, he should not say it before 
 me.' 
 
 Nadine Napraxine let her eye rest on her 
 husband with a peculiar expression, half pity, 
 half derision, which might have given him 
 plentiful food for reflection, had he been a man 
 w^ho ever reflected. 
 
 ' Poor Platon ! He has all the antique 
 virtues ! ' she said softly. ' He even thinks it 
 necessary to defend his acquaintances behind 
 their backs, duel type admirable I '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 77 
 
 ' Why do you like Othinar, Prince P ' said 
 Geraldine, abruptly. ' I detest him.' 
 
 ' Indeed ? ' said Xapraxine, in surprise. 
 ' You must be almost alone, then. What do 
 you see to dislike ? ' 
 
 Geraldine glanced at his hostess, but she 
 refused to accept the challenge of his regard. 
 She was looking out to sea with a little dreamy 
 amused smile. 
 
 ' I hate all financiers,' said Geraldine, 
 moodily and lamely. ' La grande Juiverie is 
 one gigantic nest of brigands ; those men get 
 everything, whilst we lose even our old acres.' 
 
 ' Perhaps that is your fault,' said Prince 
 Platon ; ' and Othmar, believe me, has nothing 
 to do with the Juiverie ; the Othmar are pure 
 Croats ; Croats loathe Hebrews.' 
 
 ' He is very fortunate. Prince, to have 
 your admiration and your confidence,' said 
 Geraldine, with a sarcasm, lost on the pachy- 
 dermatous placidity of his host. 
 
 ' I have always liked Othmar since one day, 
 of which I will tell you when we have more 
 time,' answered Xapraxine. 
 
 ' Please tell us now,' said his wife. ' I have 
 always been curious to know the affinity
 
 78 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 between you and Otlimar. It is a walrus 
 gambling with a stag.' 
 
 ' Am I the walrus ? It is an awkward 
 animal,' said her husband good-humouredly. 
 ' No, the tale can wait ; he will be here in a 
 moment.' 
 
 'If he were an Admirable Crichton he 
 would be detestable, if only because he is so 
 hideously rich,' interrupted Geraldine, with 
 sullenness, ' and the Princess has already spoken 
 of another defect, the greatest a man can have, 
 to my thinking ; he is poseur' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! ' said the Prince. ' How ? What 
 do you mean ? Othmar, I should say, never 
 thinks of himself.' 
 
 ' Oh, he is posew\ certainly,' said Geraldine, 
 with an undisguised cruel exultation in the 
 cruel epithet. ' He is a Croesus, and he poses 
 for simphcity; he is a financier, and he poses 
 as a grand-seigneur ; he is gorged with gold, 
 and he poses as a Spartan on black broth. 
 The whole life of the man is afTectation. His 
 humility is as detestable as his pride ; his 
 liberahties are as offensive as his possessions.' 
 
 ' Tiens, tiensl' murmured Napraxine, taking 
 his cigar out of his mouth. 'My dear friend.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 79 
 
 you are under my roof, or at least on my 
 terrace, so I cannot quarrel with you. I can 
 only ask you kindly to remember what I said 
 a little while ago, and to spare me again 
 recalling to you that Othmar also is my friend. 
 You w^ill understand.' 
 
 Geraldine coloured slightly, conscious of 
 having been ill-bred, and muttered sullenly, 
 ' I beg your pardon.' A more tart and stinging 
 retort was on his lips to tlie effect that the new 
 comer was the last man on earth whom his 
 host should welcome, but his awe of the 
 Princess Napraxine repressed it. She herself 
 gave her husband a glance of more appreciation 
 than she had ever cast on him, and said to 
 herself, ' The walrus is the clumsiest and the 
 stupidest of all living creatures, but it is so 
 honest ' and said aloud : 
 
 'Verify your quotations, was the advice 
 given by a dying don to an Oxford student. 
 Geraldine quoted from me, but he did not stay 
 to verify what he quoted. I spoke in haste. 
 Othmar is a tiny trifle of a 'poseur^ but it is 
 quite unconsciously ; it is the consequence of 
 an anomalous position. All his instincts refuse 
 to be the Samuel Bernard of his generation,
 
 8o PR/jVCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 and he is equally horrified at the idea of 
 appearing as a Sidonia. If he had only ten 
 thousand francs a year to-morrow he would be 
 happy and charming. As it is, with his ten 
 millions or his ten hundred millions, there is 
 always the sense of that wall of ingots filling 
 up the background, and keeping, as he thinks, 
 the sunshine out of his life. Occasionally it 
 makes him see everything yellow, like the 
 jaundice, and to everybody else it makes him 
 seem a colossus, which is distressing to him, 
 as he is of ordinary stature.' 
 
 ' He is even taller than I am,' said her 
 husband. 
 
 Princess Napraxine, who had made her 
 little speech languidly, looking at the sea, and 
 extended full length on her Indian cane chair, 
 said with a little smile : 
 
 'My dear, I spoke metaphorically. I did 
 not mean to underrate your friend's centi- 
 metres. I meant merely to explain that if he 
 do look occasionally a poseur it is tlie fault of 
 Europe, Avhicli, ever since lie was born, has 
 persisted in worshipping him as one of the 
 incarnations of Mammon. If he had belonged 
 to la grande Juiverie he would liave been
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 8l 
 
 much happier. Jews can swallow any amount 
 of flattery as they can wear any number of 
 rings. He likes neither.' 
 
 ' Count Othmar,' announced Gregor, ascend- 
 ing the terrace steps from the gardens. 
 
 The person announced was a man of some 
 thirty years old, with delicate and handsome 
 features, and an expression at once gentle and 
 cold ; ]hs height was great, and his bearing 
 that of a grand seigneur. He looked weary 
 and dissatisfied ; vet his life was one of the 
 most envied of Europe. He greeted Napraxine 
 with warmth, the Princess with grace and 
 ceremony ; Geraldine and his sister with a 
 rather cold courtesy. 
 
 Nadine Napraxine had flushed a little as 
 he kissed her hand ; a lovely faint flash which 
 made her cheeks like two pale-pink sea-shells. 
 Geraldine noticed that momentary change of 
 colour, and tliought bitterly, ' She never looked 
 like that for me ! ' 
 
 Napraxine was not so observant ; his hos- 
 pitable soul was filled with the pleasure of 
 welcoming his friend, and he felt angered witli 
 his wife because she said so indifferentl}^ : 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 ' I wonder you did not stay amongst tlie 
 Mongols, 0th mar. They must be much more 
 original than we are. They ride all day long, 
 don't tliey, over deserts of grass ? How en- 
 chanting ! I wonder you could tear yourself 
 away.' 
 
 ' Perhaps it would have been Aviser to stay,' 
 said Othmar, with a meaning wliich she alone 
 understood. ' But I fear " the world holds us " 
 too strongly for us to be long content even with 
 a Tartar mare and a fat sheep's tail. I am 
 fortunate to find you all here. I came from 
 Egypt ; I saw your name in a newspaper, and 
 could not resist driving over to La Jacque- 
 merille.' 
 
 ' You have your " Berenice " ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; she has behaved very well ; we met 
 witli a typhoon in the Indian Ocean, and were 
 nearly lost ; but she has been patched up and 
 ran home bravely. I have left her at Mar- 
 seilles to be thoroughly overhauled.' 
 
 ' You will have to try her in a match with 
 Geraldine's '• Zostera." ' 
 
 ' I could not hope to compete wdth Count 
 Othmar,' said Geraldine, sullenly ; for him the 
 skies were overcast, the sun was clouded, the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. Z2> 
 
 pretty marble terrace witli its gay a^.vnings 
 seemed dark witli the G:loom of iiio-ht. 
 
 He hated La Jacquemerille which lie had 
 been so eager to persuade his friends to inhabit : 
 who could have told that this man would drop 
 on this Mediterranean shore without note of 
 warning, at a moment when he w^as supposed 
 to be safe on the sandy steppes of Mongolia ? 
 ' As Count Othmar never, I believe, shot 
 anythmg in his life, I cannot perceive what pos- 
 sible attraction any wild life can have for him,' 
 he added now, in a tone that was aggressive 
 and impertinent. 
 
 Othmar glanced at him with a regard which 
 said much, as he replied simply : ' I have shot 
 the most noxious animal — man ; I have never, 
 I confess, shot wood doves or tame pheasants.' 
 
 ' Geraldine will shoot doves all the week,' 
 said the Princess, with a sense that La Jacque- 
 merille had become interesting. She loved to 
 see men on the brink of a quarrel : sometimes 
 she restrained them from passing the brink ; 
 sometimes she did not ; sometimes she helped 
 them over it with a little imperceptible touch, 
 light as the touch of a feather, which yet had 
 all the power of electricity. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' That is modern kniglitliood,' said Othmar. 
 ' I prefer my Mongols.' 
 
 ' My brother is English,' said Lady Brance- 
 peth, to avert disagreeable rejoinders ; 'he 
 always reminds me of the old French carica- 
 ture : "It is a beautiful day ; let us go and 
 kill something." ' 
 
 ' Othmar is more English than Croat,' said 
 Napraxine, ' but he does not kill things, he 
 prefers to paint them.' 
 
 ' Cresus double cle Corot^ murmured his 
 wife. ' Othmar, have you sketched any Mongol 
 ladies ? are there such beings ? or are they only 
 as that terrible Dumas has it, la femelle de 
 riiomme? ' 
 
 ' Only la femelle de rhomme, Madame. They 
 cannot be said to be women in any civilised 
 sense of that term ; they only know the duties 
 of maternity, and are ignorant of the victories 
 of coquetry. You will perceive that they are 
 an entirely elementary animal.' 
 
 Princess Nadine heard with a httle smile ; 
 she knew what allusions to herself were con- 
 tained in the words. 
 
 ' You should have married one of them,' 
 she said, slowly moving her big fan. ' It would
 
 FRIA'CESS NAPRAXINE. 85 
 
 have been too picturesque ; the owner of two 
 hundred milhons dwelhng by choice under a 
 pole and a piece of bhie cloth, and ' 
 
 ' Cannot you forbear to quote my millions ? ' 
 said Othmar. ' You would not reproach a 
 hunchback with his hump.' 
 
 ' Though it is the only thing which makes 
 him noticeable,' muttered Geraldine, but the 
 fear of his hostess made him speak too low to 
 be overheard save by Othmar, w^ho did not 
 deign to notice the insolence. 
 
 ' You think money is not interesting,' said 
 the Princess Xadine, 'but you are wTong. 
 It is the Haroun al Easchid of our day. It is 
 the Avand of Mercury. It is the sunshine of 
 life. Only fancy, Othmar, if you chose you 
 could make the desert blossom like the rose ; 
 you could call up a city like Paris in the centre 
 of your Mongolian steppes ; that is very inte- 
 resting indeed. Money itself is not so, but 
 wdien one considers its enormous ii^fluence, its 
 fantastic powers, it is so ; it is even more, it is 
 positively bewitching.' 
 
 ' When it comes out of anything so fairy like 
 and invisible as the Prince's salt-crystals it may 
 be,' replied Othmar, ' but not when it is tainted
 
 86 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 by commerce. Eemember, Princess, your Mer- 
 cmy was the god of the mart and of the 
 thieves.' 
 
 ' That was in the Eoman decadence.' 
 ' And are we not in a decadence ? ' 
 ' It is the fashion to say so, but I am not 
 sure. Have we decayed ? and, if we have, from 
 what ? The last century contained nothing 
 noble.' 
 
 'Even the burning of Moscow belongs to 
 this,' said Othmar, with a bow to Napraxine, 
 whose grandfather had been one of the fore- 
 most generals at the defence of Moscow, and 
 one of the chief counsellors of that heroic 
 sacrifice. 
 
 ' Otlniiar always remembers what is fine in 
 history and in his friends,' said the Prince, well 
 pleased. ' He is not like Kadine there.' 
 
 ' No, indeed,' said Lady Brancepeth ; ' she 
 always likes to see that a great man is a httle 
 one somewhere ; she will always find out the 
 speck on the handsome rosy apple, the yellow 
 stain on the ivory, the rift in the lute — that is 
 lier way. She would never have admired 
 Dr. Johnson, she would have only laughed at 
 his uncouthness and his dishes of tea, and only
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 87 
 
 seen that lie touched all the posts in the 
 streets.' 
 
 ' I cannot help it if I am observant, and 
 Dr. Johnson certainly would have bored me,' 
 said the Princess. 
 
 ' Les delicats sont mallieureux : 
 Rien ne saurait les satisfaire,' 
 
 quoted Othmar. 
 
 ' Then you and I are both profoundly 
 miserable,' said JSTadine Napraxine. ' I believe 
 we have never found anything that satisfied 
 either of us.' 
 
 ' Except, perhaps, each other,' muttered 
 Geraldine, in a smothered voice, his jealousy 
 conquering his prudence. It was a phrase 
 which no one heard except his hostess, who Avas 
 as quick at hearing as Fine Ears. She did not 
 deign to take any notice of it ; it could be 
 punished at her leisure. 
 
 ' What an idiot he is,' she thought ; '" as if 
 that tone could ever succeed with 'tne\ ' 
 
 She had lierself become amused, serene, 
 good-tempered, immediately^ that with the 
 entrance of Othmar the twin masks of tragedy 
 and comedy had appeared to her prescient eyes 
 to He upon the stage of the terrace of La
 
 88 PRJA'CESS XAPRAXINE. 
 
 Jacquemerille. The whole place changed to 
 her : the view was beautiful, the house was 
 quaint and full of colour and variety, the orange 
 wood was a delightful bit of local colour, the 
 marble colonnade and the brow^n wooden bal- 
 conies were absurd certainly, but garlanded 
 about with all those sweet American creepers 
 they had a graceful effect ; nowhere else in 
 December would you get roses and geraniums 
 and white marbles and blue waves, and a 
 tliermometer at 20° Eeaumur. 
 
 Othmar had brought that dramatic element 
 into her life without wdiich, despite her really 
 very high intelligence, ennui was apt to descend 
 upon her. When his eyes encountered that look 
 they became very cold, and had a challenge 
 in them : the challenge of a man who defies a 
 woman to make him again the slave of her 
 caprices. Her husband saw^ nothing of those 
 glances. Geraldine saw more even than there 
 was to see, and became moody and dejected. 
 He only roused himself now and then to say 
 what he thought might be hostile or disagreeable 
 to the new comer. His remarks were ignored 
 by Othmar, which increased his irritation. 
 The Princess was amused, as she was, occasion-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 89 
 
 ally, at a good theatre, by the sullenuess of the 
 one man and by the coldness of the other. 
 Both had elements, perhaps, of tragedy and 
 comedy. She felt a sudden exhilaration and 
 increase of interest, such as a person fond of a 
 theatre feels when the great actor of the hour 
 makes his entry on the scene. Geraldine was 
 very useful, she had known him several years : 
 he was always hopelessly in love with her, 
 timid, devoted, and obedient ; but he had no 
 originality of character to make him very 
 interesting. He was extremely good-looking, 
 very popular, and very amiable, but he was 
 commonplace ; he had not the wit of his sister. 
 She had admitted him into her intimacy because 
 he was humble, handsome, and usually so 
 docile that he seldom irritated her, but he 
 gave no interest to her life whatever ; whereas 
 Othmar — she had scarcely ever confessed it 
 even to herself — but whilst Othmar had been 
 lost to siglit in the wikls of Asia, society 
 had seemed to her even more stupid than 
 usual. 
 
 One had been in love with her for a year ; 
 the other two years before had loved her. 
 There was a considerable difference in the two
 
 90 PRIiYCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 passions, which she, with her analytical mind, 
 could perfectly appraise. 
 
 For the one she was quite sure of her senti- 
 ment in return. He was good-looking, agree- 
 able, useful, submissive ; he diverted her some- 
 times, wearied her occasionally, obeyed her 
 always. She liked him, and liked better still 
 to tease him. The other had brought into her 
 life a sense of a stormier emotion than she 
 cared to raise. He had been more in earnest 
 than she cliose to allow ; he had loved her im- 
 periously, ardently, unreasonably ; Avhen she 
 had made light of it, he had left her with in- 
 dignation and scorn. He had been one of 
 those who had fought a duel about lier, though 
 none but himself and his adversary had ever 
 known that she was the cause of it, a card at 
 ecarU having served as the colourable pretext. 
 She had never been quite sure what she had 
 felt for him ; admiration in a way, perhaps, but 
 more, she thought, dislike. But liis liad been 
 one of the conquests which had most flattered 
 her. When he had left all his habits and 
 friends and possessions to plunge into Asian 
 solitudes, she had feh that her power over liim 
 was illimitable. And now lie had returned 
 and told her, with as much chill assertion as a
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 91 
 
 regard could convey, that her power existed 
 no more for hhn. She did not care, but the 
 change interested her, and piqued her. 
 
 ' Poor Othmar ! ' she had said often to her- 
 self, when remembering the passages which had 
 passed between them, and thinking of him in 
 Asia ; and now he was back from Asia, and 
 sitting on her garden-terrace at La Jacqueme- 
 rille, and was telling her by manner and by 
 glance — perhaps telling her too persistently and 
 insistantly for it to be entirely true — that he 
 had vanquished his madness. 
 
 It had been a strong if short-lived madness, 
 born first in a country-house in the Ardennes, 
 in autumn- woods and tapestried galleries and 
 the stately revelries of a Legitimist party ot 
 pleasure, fanned by her own will into flame in 
 the course of a brilliant, giddy, insensate winter 
 season in Paris. Then with spring had come 
 the decisive moment when he had declined to 
 be content any longer with his position, and he 
 had been lightly laughed at, disdainfully jested 
 with ; and liad revolted, and had gone out of 
 Europe after a duel which had made even her 
 tranquil pulses beat a little quickly in appre- 
 hension of the possible issue. 
 
 With her usual consummate tact she had
 
 93 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 SO borne herself that the six or eight months' 
 devotion, in which Othmar had been the shadow 
 of her every step, had attracted no injurious 
 notice from her husband or her world. It was 
 known that he was passionately attached to her, 
 but so many were so also, that beyond a little 
 more attention than usual, because he was a 
 more conspicuous person than most, the great 
 world of Paris only smiled and watched to see 
 if the snoAvflake melted. It did not melt, and 
 he went to Asia. The duel had only come 
 out of a trivial dispute at a club, so every 
 one believed. Prince Napraxine as innocently 
 as the rest. 
 
 It was after tlie departure of Othmar that 
 her society took to naming her the flocon de 
 neige. It seemed strange, both to men and 
 women, that Othmar should have been so near 
 her so long and have left no impression on her 
 life. He had usually a strong influence on 
 those whom he sought ; in this instance he had 
 been the magnetised, not the magnetiser. 
 
 Men always quoted Princess Nadine to 
 their wives as an example to be followed for 
 the serene indifference with which she flirted 
 all the year through, yet never was compro-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 93 
 
 mised by a breath of calumny. Their wives 
 sometimes retorted that she had no heart, so 
 could not lose it. 
 
 ' I promise you I will never be compro- 
 mised,' she had said to her father a few months 
 after her marriage ; and he, a very easy and 
 philosophic man of the world, had answered : 
 
 • I am sure you mean what you say ; but 
 the test of your resolution will come whenever 
 you shall meet the person w^ho pleases you. 
 At present you laugh at them all.' 
 
 ' I do not think I shall ever care,' she had 
 said, with much accurate knowledge of herself. 
 
 Othmar, momentarily lava, had thrown him- 
 self in vain against this indifference ; the ice 
 of her temperament had not changed under the 
 volcanic fires of his. All those ahy nothings, 
 that capricious friendship, that unrecompensed 
 position of servitude which she offered him, he 
 would have none of, and told her so with pas- 
 sion and force. 
 
 ' And I will have no melodramatic passions 
 to disturb me,' she had said. ' They are absurd. 
 They are out of date. They are tiresome.' 
 
 Wounded and incensed, he had taken her 
 at her word more completely and instantly
 
 94 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 tliaii she had intended ; and slie liad not known 
 whether to feel regret or ^(^id. She had felt 
 a good deal of triumph. And now he had 
 returned, unchanged in appearance, handsomer 
 even for that duskier hue which the desert sun 
 had left on the marble of his features ; and she, 
 and he himself, were silently wondering — w^as 
 she glad ? 
 
 He thought she was annoyed ; iN'apraxine 
 thought so too ; Geraldine alone, with a lover's 
 self-paining penetration, felt that life had 
 grown sweeter and more stimulating to her, 
 that her languid interest in existence had grown 
 quicker of pulse and more content with its 
 own atmosphere since her husband had read 
 aloud the name of Othmar on the pencilled 
 card. 
 
 Perhaps, thought he also, with a lover's self- 
 torture, wdiat he had found in her of indiffer- 
 ence, of disdain, of lack of sympathy, had 
 been due to the absence of the sole person who 
 possessed the power to touch her dormant 
 emotions. 
 
 In reality, Madame Napraxine at that 
 moment felt no more than the vague expecta- 
 tion and gratification of a spectator at a theatre,
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 95 
 
 who sees a drama complicate itself, mingled 
 with a certain sense of curiosity as to why 
 Othmar sought to display to her so conspicu- 
 ously his escape from her sorcery. She w^as 
 not mortified ; she was accustomed to change 
 her adorers into her friends, and she was of a 
 nature too integrally proud to be capable of 
 small things. She only wondered — and doubted 
 a little. 
 
 Could any one who had loved her once fail 
 to love her all his life P 
 
 She thought not. Yet she was not vain.
 
 96 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ' The " Zostera" looks tempting in the sunshine,' 
 said Nadine Napraxine, as she rose and leaned 
 on the marble balustrade to gaze over the sea, 
 where the stately sailing yacht of Geraldine 
 was at anchor outside the little bay of La 
 Jacquemerille, which was too shallow to be 
 entered. ' 1 will go out in her in ten minutes' 
 time. I prefer to watch the sunset from the 
 sea, and the sunset will be very fine to-day, for 
 tliere are a few clouds above ; the sky is usually 
 so terribly monotonous here, it is like an eulogy 
 of your predecessor at the Academy \ il y a 
 tro}} de bleu. Monsignore, I will take you 
 back to Nice by the coast. I dislike coasting 
 usually, but along this shore it is pretty, and 
 besides, it is too late to go far out to sea. Lord 
 Geraldine, go and give your men the order. 
 1 will go and change my clothes. — Wilkes, 
 you will come ? ' 
 
 Geraldine sullenly obeyed, and went down
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 97 
 
 the steps to wliere liis long boat was still in 
 waiting. In a very few moments the Princess 
 Napraxine returned, not clothed in any mari- 
 time fashion, for she thought that sort of thing 
 tlieatrical, foolish, and staring ; but wearing a 
 dark serge gown, fitting with marvellous pre- 
 cision to the perfect contour and lines of her 
 form, and carrying a scarlet parasol large enough 
 to shelter the dignity of any Chinese mandarin. 
 She wore yachting shoes and scarlet stockings ; 
 her feet, like her hands, were such as sculptors 
 dream of but seldom see. 
 
 ' Tell them to put in my furs,' she said to 
 Geraldine. ' Are you ready ? It is always so 
 cold here when the sun has gone dovrn. We 
 will take Count Othmar and Monsignore I\Iel- 
 ville to Nice. It is a beautiful day for a sail, 
 just wind enough and not too much. Platon 
 goes to his adored tripiji ; I wonder he stayed 
 to eat his breakfast.' 
 
 ' The " Zostera," of course, is at your com- 
 mands,' murmured Geraldine, with ill- disguised 
 ill-liumour. 'For myself, if you will excuse 
 me, 1 will accom[)any the Prince ' 
 
 She smiled, understanding his ill-humour 
 well enough. 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 98 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' How immoral they are ! ' she said to Mel- 
 ville. ' The salle de jeu by daylight is mon- 
 strous ; but since it is their form of happi- 
 ness ' 
 
 ' Happiness ! ' muttered Geraldine between 
 his teeth. 
 
 ' All your preaching and mine will not 
 alter them,' she continued. ' It is an ex- 
 traordinary thing ; neither Platon nor Lord 
 Geraldine cares a straw for money ; neither of 
 them would awake a whit merrier if their 
 fortunes were quadrupled to-morrow ; and yet 
 they find absolute intoxication in playing 
 for money I What an inexplicable anomaly ! 
 Othmar is far more consistent. He despises 
 his own fortune and the table of M. Blanc 
 with equal sincerity.' 
 
 ' I do not despise wealth, I dislike it,' said 
 Othmar. 
 
 ' Why should you do either? ' said Melville. 
 • Look at the immense potentialities of great 
 riches.' 
 
 ' That is what I said this morning,' con- 
 tinued Princess Nadine. 
 
 ' Surely great riches help one very nearly 
 to happiness,' continued Melville. ' I do not
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 99 
 
 mean from the bourgeois point of view, but 
 simply because they remove so many material 
 obstacles in the way of happiness. There 
 can be hardly any great difficulties for a very 
 rich man. He goes where he chooses, he can 
 piurchase whatever he desires ; there are swept 
 aside from his path for ever all the thousand 
 and one annoyances and hindrances which 
 beset the man who is not rich. Only imagine 
 a person who cannot reach his dying child 
 because he has not money enough for the 
 journey ; imagine another who has his home- 
 stead made intolerable to him by the erection 
 of a steam-mill, and yet is obliged to end his 
 days in it because he cannot afford to move ; 
 imagine yet another v/ith weak lungs, who 
 would recover his strength if he could take a 
 house in the country, in the south, and yet 
 cannot leave his business, which chains him to 
 a city in the north. Those are the sort of 
 sorrows from which wealth sets free a man or 
 a woman. One may say roughly, I think, 
 that if his health be good, a very rich person is 
 exempt from all other misfortunes than those 
 which come to him from his affections or his 
 
 n 2
 
 loo PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 friendships ; his troubles are, in a word, entirely 
 those of sentiment.' 
 
 ' Precisely,' said Nadine Napraxine. 
 
 ' Uii seul etre est mort et tout est depeuple ! ' 
 
 murmured Othmar ; ' you will not allow, or 
 cannot comprehend that. Princess ? ' 
 
 ' I can imagine that a man might fancy so 
 for twenty-four hours ; but even if the fancy 
 endure, a rich man can enjoy his desolation 
 while a poor man cannot. Part of the advan- 
 tages of the rich man consists in his having 
 the leisure and the luxury to muse upon his 
 own unhappiness. I think you forget what 
 a great happiness that is ! ' 
 
 ' You believe neither in love nor in sorrow,' 
 said Othmar, abruptly. 
 
 ' I am aware they exist, if you mean that,' 
 she replied ; ' but their existence chiefly depends 
 upon the imagination.' 
 
 Othmar gave an impatient gesture. 
 
 ' And, like all pleasures of the imagination,' 
 she added, 'require leisure for their develop- 
 ment. The rich man or woman enjoys that 
 leisure, and if he or she like to raise a gigantic 
 mushroom under glass, in tlie wav of exao--
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. loi 
 
 gerated affections or sentimental regrets, they are 
 at liberty to do so. Besides, surely, no one can 
 deny tliat there is a captivating sense of power 
 in vast riches ; the fancy can take endless flights 
 in that golden sphere ; we do not know that 
 delight, because, though people think us rich, 
 in reality we are no such thing, in reality our 
 expenses keep for ever ahead of our income, 
 as I think they do with most peo23le ; but 
 Othmar, wdio is actually, positively, fabulously 
 rich, who is all alone, who spends nothing on 
 himself — at least, he used to spend nothing — ■ 
 why, he could build you a cathedral, Mon- 
 signore Melville, in every city of the world 
 of jasper and chalcedony, whatever they 
 are, and never be a sou the poorer for doing- 
 it.' 
 
 ' Are you inchned. Count Othmar ? ' said 
 
 Melville. 
 
 ' If it would make all men like 3^ou I 
 should be so,' said Othmar. ' But I regret to 
 see that the Princess Napraxine has apparently 
 retained only one recollection of me, and that 
 one is of my " wall of ingots," as she termed 
 it, which appears to separate me from her 
 sympathies.'
 
 I02 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' Did you hear that ? ' she said, not very 
 well pleased, though it was not in human 
 power to confuse her. ' We will let those 
 people go to Monte Carlo, and we will have a 
 run before the wind and leave you and Mon- 
 signore at Nice.' 
 
 ' But it is not my own yacht.' 
 
 ' But it is mine when I am in it, and I in- 
 vite you both. Come.' 
 
 Othmar hesitated till she gave him a little 
 look, one brief fleeting look. Two years seemed 
 to have fled away ; he was again on the stair- 
 case of the Grand Opera, she gave him her fan 
 to carry, she had on a cloak of soft white 
 feathers, a gardenia dropped out of her bouquet, 
 he picked it up ; in the whole glittering mass of 
 Paris he only saw that one delicate face, pale 
 as a narcissus, with two wonderful liquid eyes 
 like night ; and, with a so^'t of shock, he recol- 
 lected himself, and realised that he was stand- 
 ing on the terrace of La Jacquemerille beside a 
 woman whom he had vowed to put out of his 
 life for ever and aye. 
 
 ' Come ! ' said Princess Nadine, and lie did 
 not resist her. 
 
 He followed in her sliadow down the flight
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 103 
 
 of marble steps leading to the sea ; while 
 Geraldine, with a tempestuous rage stifled in 
 his lieart, drove Napraxiiie (who never drove 
 himself), as furiously as Eussian horses can be 
 driven, along the sunny road, sliaded with 
 olives and caruba trees, which led from La 
 Jacquemerille to the gambler's paradise a few 
 miles westward on the shore. 
 
 ' When boys sulk, they should always be 
 punished,' thought the Princess Nadine with 
 silent diversion, as she heard the plunge and 
 rush of the horses on the other side of the 
 gardens, and divined that their driver was 
 already repenting of the moment of petulance 
 and of jealousy in which he had exiled himself 
 from her presence, and condemned himself to 
 the society of her lord. 
 
 ' Poor Platon is the dullest of companions, 
 and Geraldine thinks it dans son role to detest 
 him ; and yet he goes with him by way of 
 showing his pique against Othmar. How 
 stupid, how intensely stupid ! ' she thought, 
 with exceeding amusement to herself, as she 
 descended the water-stairs and stepped into 
 Geraldine's boat. 
 
 It was droll to her that anybody should
 
 I04 PRIXCESS XAPRAXINE. 
 
 either detest or envy her husband, he was so 
 infinitesimally httle in her own hfe. She readily 
 did justice to his good humour, his loyalty, his 
 courage, and his honesty ; but those qualities 
 were all obscured by his dulness and heaviness, 
 and also by the simple fact that he was her 
 husband, as the good points in a landscape are 
 blotted out by a fog. ' Dogs' virtues ! all of 
 them,' she called them, with a mixture of 
 esteem and impatience, of appreciation and con- 
 tempt. 
 
 The boat glided through a quarter of a mile 
 of blue water, and brought them to the side 
 of Geraldine's yacht, a beautiful racer-like 
 schooner with canvas white as foam, and flying 
 the pennon of Cowes. 
 
 ' My poor '• Berenice " was once as elegant 
 and spotless as this,' said Othmar, ' but she has 
 been through sore stress of weather. Her sails 
 are rags, her sides are battered, her rudder is 
 gone. She made a sorry spectacle wdien we 
 hove to last night, but I am attached to her. 
 I shall not buy another yacht.' 
 
 ' You always take things so seriously,' said 
 Princess Nadine. ' A yacht is a toy like any 
 other ; when one is broken get another. Why
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 105 
 
 should you be attached to a thing of teak and 
 copper ? ' 
 
 ' Slie has served me well,' he said simply. 
 ' You do not understand attachment of any 
 kind. Princess.' 
 
 ' It is only an amiable form of prejudice. 
 Certainly I do not understand why you should 
 be attached to a thini^ made of w^ood and 
 metal.' 
 
 ' Or to a tlhng made of flesh and blood ! I 
 beheve that is equally ridiculous in the eyes of 
 Madame Napraxine,' said Othmar, with some 
 bitterness. ' May I ask, how are your chil- 
 dren ? ' he added after a pause. 
 
 ' My two ugly little boys ? Oh, quite well ; 
 they are never anything else. They are as 
 strong as ponies. They are very ugly ; they 
 have the Tartar face, which is the ugliest in 
 Europe ; they are so like Platon that it is 
 quite absurd.' 
 
 Othmar was silent ; the words did not seem 
 to him in her usual perfectly good taste. They 
 did not accord with the delicate narcissus-like 
 face of their speaker. 
 
 ' I remember that you never cared for your 
 children,' lie said, and added, after a pause,
 
 io6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' Nor for anything that had the misfortune to 
 love you.' 
 
 ' I do not think the children love me at all,' 
 she said, with a smile. ' Why should they ? 
 Their father they adore because he adores 
 them. It is always quid pro quo in any love.' 
 
 ' Not always,' said 0th mar, curtly. 
 
 'Ah, you love me still,' thought Princess 
 Nadine, without astonishment. 
 
 Aloud she said, ' It must be, or the thing 
 is absurd, it dies a natural death, or rather, is 
 starved to death ; nothing one-sided has any 
 strengtJi.' 
 
 ' I think you have seen many living proofs 
 to the contrary,' he answered. ' But pride 
 may strangle a love which is not shared ; it is 
 a violent death, but a sure one.' 
 
 ' Why will men always talk of love ? ' she 
 said, with some impatience. ' After all, how 
 little place it takes up in real life ! ambition, 
 society, amusement, politics, money-making, a 
 hundred things, take up a hundredfold more 
 space.' 
 
 ' It is not to every one the unnecessary 
 molecule that it is to Madame Napraxine,' said 
 Othmar. ' You have seen a glass of water
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 107 
 
 touched by a single drop of quinine ? It is 
 only a drop, but it embitters the whole glassful. 
 So do the attachments of life embitter it.' 
 
 ' If you put the drop in, no doubt,' said 
 Princess Napraxine, drily. 
 
 ' Or if some one else put it in,' muttered 
 Othmar, ' before one knows what one drinks.' 
 
 ' Oh ! one must never let others meddle 
 with one, even in drinking a glass of water,' 
 replied his tormentor. She knew very well 
 that he meant to reproach her, but she bore 
 the reproach lightly. If the remembrance of 
 her embittered any man's existence it was not 
 her fault ; it was the fault of those who would 
 not be content with adoring her as the poor 
 people of this sea-shore adored their Madonna 
 shut away behind a glass case. 
 
 ' By the way, Othmar, have you not a villa 
 here ? ' she said, suddenly remembering the fact. 
 ' 1 beheve you have five hundred and fifty-five 
 houses altogether, have you not ? Is there not 
 some place near Nice that belongs to you ? ' 
 
 ' S. Pharamond ? Yes. It is where I slept 
 last night. My father bought some olive and 
 pine wood and built the house in the midst of 
 them. It has a fine view seaward.'
 
 io8 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' Then we shall be neiglibours ? ' 
 
 ' If I do not go to Paris.' 
 
 ' Of course you will go to Paris, but you 
 will go one day and come back another, like 
 everybody else at this season; though, to be 
 sure, I dare say you are longing for the smell of 
 the asphalte after a cycle of Cathay?' 
 
 ' No ; the asphalte is not necessary to me. 
 It is more monotonous, on the whole, than the 
 desert.' 
 
 ' Ah ! you were never a Parisien ])arisien- 
 nant ; you were always in revolt against some- 
 thing or another, though one never could 
 understand very well what. When you con- 
 descended to our amusements, it was with the 
 air of a man who, to please a child, plays with 
 tin soldiers ; that sort of air of contemptuous 
 condescension has made you many enemies. 
 There is nothing makes the world so angry 
 as indifference to what it thinks delightful.' 
 
 ' You have offended it in that way yourself. 
 Princess.' 
 
 ' Often ; but not quite with your insolence. 
 A man who prefers his library to the clubs 
 is beyond all pardon ; and, besides, I am seen 
 everywhere where it is worth while to be seen ;
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIXE. 109 
 
 you are— or were — generally conspicuous by 
 your absence.' 
 
 ' I imagine the world has grown as indif- 
 ferent to me as I am to it, and having for- 
 gotten has so forgiven me. I have been away 
 eighteen months.' 
 
 ' The world never forgets its rich men, my 
 dear Othmar. It may forget its great ones. 
 Will forget them, indeed, unless they have a 
 drum beaten very loudly before them. You 
 might be gTeat, I think, if you hked ; you have 
 so many talents, so much power.' 
 
 ' I might buy a kingdom the size of Mo- 
 rocco or Montenegro ? Very likely : such sove- 
 reignty does not attract me.' 
 
 ' Of course I do not mean that : you do not 
 want to be a Prince Floristan ; you do not love 
 the race of princes well enough. But were I 
 you I should set some great ambition before 
 me.' 
 
 ' Pardon me ; you would do no such thing if 
 you were in my position. You would feel, as I 
 feel, the numbing influence of what you called 
 just now the " blank wall of ingots." When 
 you can buy men you do not estimate them 
 highly enough either to serve or rule them. I
 
 no PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 have all I can possibly want — materially. I 
 have no reason to seek anything.' 
 
 ' Why do English nobles enter public life ? 
 They want nothing, materially, either. Some of 
 them are of rank, also, so high in place that 
 nothing can be added to their position.' 
 
 ' God knows why they do,' said 0th mar, 
 ' except that I think the Englishman is an 
 animal like the beaver, not happy without work. 
 Besides, I think they imagine that they serve 
 their country, a delusion, but an honourable 
 one, which must make them very happy. As I 
 have no country I cannot be attached to it.' 
 
 ' You could choose one ; you are allied to 
 several.' 
 
 ' That would not be the same thing. To 
 adore the motherland one must have known 
 no arms, no hearts but hers ; no country is more 
 than a stepmother to me.' 
 
 ' You are a very much envied man, Othmar, 
 but you are not a happy man.' 
 
 He looked her straight in the eyes. 
 
 ' I have been unhappy, but I have con- 
 quered my folly. It is ingratitude to fate to 
 be wa-etched while one has health and strength 
 and no material cares to contend with.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. in 
 
 ' All the same, you are not happy now,' 
 she thought, but she said, with her sweetest 
 smile, ' You admit that you have all you want 
 materially ; all the rest is a dream, not worth 
 keeping awake about for one hour. By the 
 way, as you speak of countries — you are French 
 now by law, I think ? ' 
 
 ' My grandfather was naturalised for his 
 own interests, as you know ; but our people 
 were Croat peasants.' 
 
 ' I know I have heard you always say 
 so ; but I believe it is a fable. You do not 
 come from any peasantry ; besides, surely Scla- 
 vonia is old enough and dim enough to give 
 you any mystical heroic ancestry you may 
 prefer.' 
 
 ' They might be robbers,' said Othmar, ' I 
 do not know. There is not much to choose.' 
 
 ' Everybody who is noble comes from rob- 
 bers of some sort,' said Princess Napraxine ; 
 ' what were the Hohenstauffen, the Hohen- 
 zollern, the Habsburg, the Grimaldi, the 
 Montefeltro, the Colonna ? Eobbers all, sitting 
 on high in their fortresses, and swooping down 
 like hawks on the fords, on the highways, on 
 the moorlands, on the forests, on the little
 
 112 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 towns below tliem. You may be quite sure 
 that is what your people did in Croatia/ 
 
 ' You are very kind to try and console me,' 
 said Othmar. ' Nobility, I think, consists in 
 being able to trace the past of your forefathers 
 and to have your charters ; the past of mine is 
 lost in darkness, and my charters are lost with 
 them. Truthfully we can only date from 1767, 
 when Marc Othmar, who dealt in horses, began 
 to lend money in Aoram, It is not a lofty be- 
 ginning ; it is not even a creditable one. But 
 T do not think that to pretend that Marc 
 Othmar, the horse dealer or horse stealer, was 
 a hero and saint would mend matters. I 
 accept him as what he was, but I cannot be 
 proud of him ; even sometimes I am on the 
 eve of cursing him ; at all events, of wishing 
 he had never existed.' 
 
 'My dear Othmar, you are very strange 
 sometimes ' 
 
 'Am IP One is never content witli what 
 one has. There is nothing strange in that. If 
 you will deign to remember me at all, you Aviil 
 remember that I was never pleased with being 
 the head of the house of Othmar ; I would 
 give all its millions for an unblemished descent.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 113 
 
 ' Tliuii you are ungrateful to your fortunes, 
 and do not understand your own times/ 
 
 'Perhaps I understand them too well, and 
 that is why I despise what they over-estimate.' 
 
 ' And over-estimate yourself what they 
 have found worth but little. Look at most of 
 our contemporaries and associates. Have their 
 unblemished names served them in much P 
 How many have remembered that noblesse 
 oblige ? How^ many of them ally themselves 
 with the mud of the earth for the sake of 
 large dowries? how" many mortgage their old 
 lands till they have not a sod left which they 
 can call their own ? how many waste all their 
 energies and all their health in a routine of 
 miserable and stupid follies which are hardly 
 even to be dignified as vice ? ' 
 
 She spoke with animation ; her cheeks had 
 a faint flush, dehcate as that of the waxen 
 bells of the begonia flow^ers, her eyes were full 
 of light, Othmar looked at her with a passion 
 of regret. If only she had loved him, he 
 thought he could have conquered the world, 
 have renewed the impossibilities of Alexander, 
 have done all that visionary boys dream of 
 doing as they read their Euripides or their 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 PRINCESS XAPRAXINE. 
 
 iEscliylus iu a sunniicT noon under blossoming 
 lime trees. 
 
 ' You will take from Eome what you your- 
 self have carried there,' says a German writer, 
 and it is with love the same thing ; you 
 take from it what you carry to it, you get out 
 of it so much spirituality, and no more, than 
 you bear thereto. To others ISTadine Napraxine 
 was a coquette, a mondaine^ a mere elegante of 
 the elegant world ; but to him she was the 
 one woman of the earth ; she could have in- 
 spired him with any heroism, she could have 
 moved him to any sacrifice, she could have 
 compensated him for any loss ; he saw in her 
 a million possibihties which no one ever saw, 
 which might be only the fruits of his imagination, 
 but yet were wholly real to him, unspeakably 
 lovely and attractive. She had offended liim, 
 alienated him, treated his ardour and his 
 earnestness as a baby treats its toys, and his 
 reason condemned her inexorably and often ; 
 yet she Avas the one woman on earth for him, 
 and he had tried to hate her, to drive her out 
 of his memory, and had thought that he suc- 
 ceeded, and had only failed. 
 
 ' If you were like other men of your gene-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 115 
 
 ration,' she pursued, 'you would be much more 
 content. You do not care for any of the 
 things which fill up their time. You have 
 magnificent horses, but you never race with 
 tliem, you never even hunt. You care nothing 
 for cards, or for any games of hazard. You 
 do not shoot except, as you justly observed, a 
 fellow-creature now and then wdien he pro- 
 vokes you. You do not care to have yourself 
 talked about, which is the sup)reme felicity of 
 the age you live in ; your solitary extravagance 
 is to have operas and concerts given in your 
 own houses with closed doors, like Ludwig of 
 Bavaria, and that seems rather an eccentricity 
 than an extravagance to the world at large. 
 You are a great student, but ycju care about 
 the contents of your liooks, not about the 
 binding or the date of their edition, so that 
 you never commit the follies of a bibliophile. 
 You do not care about any of your fine places ; 
 you have an idea that you would like a cottage 
 just because you are tired of palaces. You 
 vex women by your indifference to their attrac- 
 tions, and men by your indifference to their 
 pursuits. Because circumstance has made you 
 a conspicuous person with an electric light 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 P/^LVCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 always upon you, you sigh to be an homyne 
 d'inierieiir, Avith no light on you at all exce[)t 
 that of your own hearth. It is Louis Seize 
 and the locksmith, Domitian and the cabbage- 
 garden, Honorius and the hens, over again. 
 History always repeats itself, and how one 
 wishes that it did not ! ' 
 
 ' I am flattered, Madame, tliat you deign to 
 draw my portrait, since it shows that you have 
 not wholly forgotten my features,' said Othmar, 
 with some bitterness. ' At present I have not 
 discovered the hen, the cabbages, or the keys 
 that will make life worth living to me. No 
 doubt the fault lies with myself.' 
 
 ' I think you have not the dramatic instinct 
 which alone makes life interesting,' replied 
 Nadine Xapraxine. ' You do not divert your- 
 self with the fauhs, the follies, and the mean- 
 nesses of men ; you sigh over them, and your 
 regret is so poignant that it prevents your 
 seeing how^ intinitely droll their blunders are 
 in reality.' 
 
 ' I think,' she continued, ' that there are 
 only two ways of looking on life which make 
 it interesting, or even endurable. The one is 
 the way of Corot, which adores Nature, and
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAAINE, 117 
 
 can find an absolute ecstasy in the sound of 
 the wind and the play of the sunshine, and 
 asks nothing more of fate than a mill-stream 
 and a handful of green leaves. Tlie other is 
 the way of Eochefoucauld and of St. Simon, 
 which finds infinite and unending diversion in 
 watching the feebleness and the mistakes of 
 human nature, which regards the world with 
 what I call the dramatic instinct, and amuses 
 itself endlessly with the attitudes and genuflec- 
 tions of its courtiers, the false phrases and the 
 balked calculations. Now, though you are a 
 very clever man, my dear Othmar, you cannot 
 be put in either of these categories. You know 
 too much of the world for the first, and you 
 have too much softness of heart for the second. 
 Now, were you like Baron Fritz ' 
 
 ' My uncle is the one perfectly happy man 
 that I have ever known,' replied Othmar. ' It 
 is because he is the most perfect of egotists. 
 According to him the sun shines only for tlie 
 Othmar, as Joshua fancied it only shone for 
 tlie Israelites.' 
 
 ' It is not only that,' she said, ' it is because 
 lie has the dramatic instinct. He sees the 
 dramatic side to all that he does ; suppliant
 
 Ii8 PRINCESS iXAPRAXLXE. 
 
 monarchs, bankrupt statesmen, intriguing diplo- 
 matists ; men who carry him schemes to tunnel 
 the earth from pole to pole, and great ladies 
 who want him to lend them money on their 
 family diamonds ; they are all so many come- 
 dians in the eyes of Baron Fritz. He pulls 
 their strings and makes them dance at his 
 pleasure. I quite understand how the wliole 
 comedy amuses him so greatly that he can 
 never be conscious of a moment of ennui. It 
 is a great pity that you are not like that. You 
 would leave such witty memoirs ! — for you can 
 be witty, — or you would be if you were not 
 always so melancholy.' 
 
 ' I regret, Madame,' said Othmar, ' that I 
 cannot alter the manner of my life even to have 
 the honour of amusing you after my death ! ' 
 
 Across the bows of the ' Zostera ' at that 
 moment there passed, perilously near, one of the 
 lateen-sailed boats so common on the , coast, 
 with their freights of fruits, of fish, of olives, 
 or of market produce. The boat was full of 
 lemons and of oranges, which gleamed like 
 virgin gold in the bright sunshine of the tran- 
 quil afternoon. A peasant woman was man- 
 aging the sail, a young girl w^as steering.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 119 
 
 ' What a beciutiful face ! ' said Nadine 
 Xapraxiiie, who liad a great love of beauty, 
 and the frank ackoowledi^jaient of it of a 
 woman higli above all possibilities of envy. 
 
 Othmar looked where she pointed. 
 
 'A very lovely face,' he said indiSerently. 
 
 ' She does not look like a peasant,' con- 
 tinued Mme. Napraxine ; ' tliat little grey gown 
 speaks of some convent. She steers well, for 
 they were terribly near. Who is that very 
 pretty child, Monsignore ? I suppose you know 
 all the flock of vrhich you are given the winter 
 shepherding.' 
 
 ' Pray do not make me responsible for 
 all the black sheep of these shores,' said Mel- 
 ville, drawing near and looking at the boat, 
 which was going slowly and heavily against 
 the wind, and labouring under a weighty load. 
 He said as he did so, with a little surprise : 
 
 ' Why, that is Yseulte de Valogne ! ' 
 
 ' Yseulte de Valogne ! What a name of 
 the Eomaunt de la Eose and black-letter 
 Chronicles ! Pray who may she be, may I 
 ask ? ' 
 
 ' They call her here Cendrillon,' said Mel- 
 ville, a little sadly. 'As for her name, the
 
 120 
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 de Valogiie belong to French historj^ ; surely 
 you remember to have heard of some of them ? 
 Aymar, who fell at the combat of the Thirty ; 
 and Adhemar, who was Constable of France 
 under Louis XII. ; and Maximin, who was a 
 general under Conde ; and Gui, who was 
 ruined by his display at Versailles, a Colonel 
 of the Guard and a great officer of State. The 
 flimily is as historic as the Louvre itself, but 
 the poor child is literally sam le sou.' 
 
 ' So that she is reduced to sell oranges ? ' 
 said Nadine. ' How very touching ! Othmar 
 will purchase immediately several bales.' 
 
 'No, she does not sell oranges,' said Mel- 
 ville, ' but perhaps she is more to be pitied than 
 those who do. A great name and no dowser 
 — it is to have silver bells to your shoes but no 
 stockings inside them.' 
 
 ' Surely she must have stockings, I mean 
 relations ? ' 
 
 ' Only very distant ones. She is a far-off 
 cousin of your friend and neighbour the 
 Duchesse de Vannes, who brings her up ; that 
 is, sends her to her convent, pays for her 
 frocks, and allows her to pass her holidays at 
 one of de Vannes' country-houses. I do not
 
 PRINCESS XAPRAXINE, 121 
 
 know that we could reasonably expect the 
 Duchesse to do more, only tliere are two ways 
 of doing a thing, and she does not do this in 
 the best possible manner.' 
 
 ' Cri-Cri cannot love a very pretty girl of 
 sixteen, it would not be in nature, certainly 
 not in her nature,' said the Princess, with one 
 of her moments of frankness. ' I imagine they 
 will make her embrace the religious life ; Avhat 
 else can they do with her ? ' 
 
 ' It is what they will probably end with,' 
 said Melville, with a tinge of sadness. ' It is 
 hard for a girl of noble blood and no dower to 
 end otherwise in France. The men who ought 
 to marry her, her equals, will marry instead 
 some Americans with dollars, whose fathers 
 were stokers or pork-butchers.' 
 
 ' But are there no other de Valogne ? ' 
 
 ' None ; she is the last of a family which 
 was as extravagant as it was distinguished. 
 Othmar may have heard of her father, the last 
 Comte de Valogne ; he was a viveur enrage^ 
 and fmished the little that had been left by 
 Count Gui, the hero of Versailles, and the 
 fortune of his Avife as well, who was a 
 De Creusac. She died in childbed. Her mother
 
 122 P/^nVCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 had the care ot the child, and he went on with 
 his lite of pleasure until he broke his neck 
 riding at La Marche. The old Marquise de 
 Creusac, when she also died, could not leave 
 her granddaughter a farthing. The de Creusac 
 had been ruined in the Eevolution, and the 
 sons of the Marquise, who would never have 
 anything to do with their brother-in-law, were 
 both killed in the war of 70. There Avas no 
 one left but the Duchesse de Vannes, who was 
 a third cousin of de Valogne, to do anything. 
 She took the child in her charge, as I have 
 said, and has behaved admirably, in the letter 
 of charity, if something has been lacking of the 
 spirit. So long as the girl is being educated 
 the thing is easy ; but when the time comes 
 when she must leave her convent, as she will 
 have to do in two years' time, the problem will 
 not be so easy of solution ; they will have 
 to decide on her future ; at present her fate 
 lias been easily settled, but soon the terrible 
 question will arise, — wlio will marry her with- 
 out a dower ? I believe they mean to make 
 her enter the religious life, as you said ; for the 
 men who probably would marry her for sake 
 of alliance with the de Vannes, will be those
 
 PRLXCESS NAPRAXINE. 123 
 
 Avitli whom the de Valines would utterly refuse 
 to ally themselves.' 
 
 ' A convent ! Good heavens, for a child 
 like a Greuze picture ! ' exclaimed Othmar. 
 
 Melville added sadly : 
 
 ' It is a refuge ; but myself, I would never 
 have the religious life embraced only for its 
 safety, I never approve of looking at Deity as 
 a superior sort of chaperon. If all the soul 
 be not aspirant of its own accord to a spiritual 
 sacrifice the vows are a mere shibboleth.' 
 
 ' What soul shrined in a healthy body 
 would aspire to the cloister at sixteen ? ' 
 thought Othmar, as the Princess said, ' All this 
 is very interesting, Monsignore, but it does not 
 explain how a j)''^otegee of my neighbours, the 
 liigh and mighty de Yannes, comes to be row- 
 ing in a boat full of oranges.' 
 
 •Ah, that I cannot tell you,' said ]\Ielville, 
 ' but I believe herfoster-motlierhas aZ/a^^/c/^ near 
 Nice ; it may be she is with her foster-mother 
 now. I knew her well when she was a little 
 child, living with the old Marquise de Creusac 
 in that extreme but refined and reserved 
 poverty of which only the old noblesse has the 
 secret. The Marquise was one of the sweetest
 
 124 PRINCESS NAPRAXJNE. 
 
 and most pious women I have ever had the 
 honour to know ; but she could, if necessary, 
 have withered a king into the earth with a 
 glance. The child promised to be like her, but 
 had something houillante and impetuous, which 
 had come to her from her father, and which, 
 beneath her high-bred manner and her chastened 
 tone, made her, as a baby, intensely inte- 
 resting.' 
 
 ' Dear Monsignore,' said the Princess, with 
 a little impatience, ' surely you have mistaken 
 your vocation, and should have been a writer 
 of novels ; j^ou draw portraits with the skill of 
 Octave Feuillet.' 
 
 ' I have only said what I liave seen,' said 
 Melville, good-humouredly . ' Pi'obably Feuillet 
 only does the same.' 
 
 The boat with the oranges had passed 
 ahead towards the shore, its Venetian red side 
 was dipping in the trough of the waves, its old 
 striped sail Avas swaying in the wind ; there 
 was a speck of gold in the sun where the 
 oranges were. 
 
 'You had better rescue this distressed 
 damsel and marry her, Othmar ! ' said the 
 Princess Napraxine, with an unkind little laugh.
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE, 125 
 
 ' She seems made on purpose for you. She has 
 the unsulhed descent which you are always 
 sighing for, and you certainly can dispense with 
 a dot' 
 
 For answer he only looked at her ; but she 
 understood his answer. 
 
 Melville vaguely understood also that in his 
 innocent praises of liis Cinderella he had un- 
 w^ittingly struck a false chord, and he was too 
 much a man of the w^orld not to be grieved 
 at his involuntary failure in tact. The boat 
 meanwdiile was fast growing to a mere speck 
 of red and yellow colour, soon to be wdiolly 
 lost in the blue radiance of sea and sky. 
 
 . ' You have at times bought some Greuzes, 
 if I remember,' continued the Princess. ' They 
 are pretty, soft, conventional, but I do not 
 know that your gallery is much the richer for 
 them.' 
 
 ' They belong to another time tlian ours,' 
 said Othmar. ' I imagine Talleyrand w^as right 
 wdien he said that no one born since '89 can 
 know how sweet human life can become.' 
 
 ' And how elegant human manners can be,' 
 added Melville. ' Cendrillon has somethini^ of 
 that old grace ; wdien she was two years old
 
 1 26 P/^/XCESS XA PRA XIXE. 
 
 she curtsevcd as llioui>-li she were Seville's 
 self 
 
 ' What a paragon ! ' said Madame JN'a- 
 praxme. * Poverty and all tlie Graces ! An 
 irresistible combination. The time I shonld 
 have liked to live in would have been Louis 
 Treize's ; what perfect costume, what pic- 
 turesque wars, what admirable architecture ! 
 Is this child at Sacre Coeur, did you say, Mon- 
 signore ? ' 
 
 'That would be too extravagant for her 
 place as Cendrillon,' replied Melville. ' No ; I 
 think they were wise not to put her amidst all 
 those great ladies in embryo ; she has been 
 educated b}^ the Dames de Ste. Anne, at a 
 remote village called Faiel in the Morbihan. 
 She has had a pale girlhood there, like the 
 arum-lily that blossoms under the moss-grown 
 oaks.' 
 
 ' How poetic you are ! ' said the Princess 
 Napraxine, with a smile which brought a flush 
 of embarrassment even to the world-bronzed 
 cheek of Melville. ' Men are so much more 
 romantic than women. Here are Clotilde de 
 Vannes and I, who only see that, as this young 
 girl has no dower, the very best ])lace for her
 
 PRLXCESS NAPRAXINK. 127 
 
 ill the world is a convent, ineLmclioly but in- 
 evitable ; whereas yon and Othmar, merely 
 becanse she has pretty hair which the sun 
 shines on as she goes past amongst her oranges, 
 cire already thinking that some one ought to 
 rise out of the sea to marry her, with a duke's 
 couronne in one hand and a veil of old d'Alen- 
 9on lace in the other ! Certainly those things 
 do happen. If she were an impudent ecuyere 
 at Hengler's, or a Californian who never had a 
 grandfather, the duke's couronne would no 
 doubt appear on her horizon. By the way, 
 pending her eternal retreat, does Cri-Cri allow 
 her to be seen at all ? ' 
 
 ' You will probably see her at Millo. I saw 
 her there last week, and made her cry by 
 reminding her of her babyhood on the isle ; 
 and of her grandmother, whom she adored. 
 She is wuth the Duchesse now, because there is 
 typhus fever at the convent, and the pupils are 
 all dispersed ; but Millo is scarcely a congenial 
 air for a poor relation, who is also a proud 
 one.' 
 
 ' Ah ! she is a good advertisement of 
 Cri-Cri's virtues, elle en a hesoin^ said the 
 Princess Napraxine, with her merciless little
 
 128 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 laugh. ' And cle Vaimes, what does he say to 
 so pretty a relative ? ' 
 
 ' A man like de Vannes never sees that a 
 young girl of that type exists.' 
 
 ' Hum — m — mph ! ' she murmured du- 
 biously. ' That depends on a great many cir- 
 cumstances. Propinquity and ennui will make 
 Ste. Scholastique herself sought like the Krauss 
 or Jeanne Granier. Millo is certainly a very 
 odd kind of home for your woodland arum-lily. 
 If she have any intelhgence at all, and relate 
 what she sees when she gets back to Faiel, the 
 good Dames de Ste. Anne will have the mo- 
 nastic enjoyment of scandal gratified to the 
 uttermost.' 
 
 ' I believe she lives entirely in the school- 
 room whilst at Millo,' said Melville, a little 
 impatiently, lie wished he had never spoken 
 the name of Yseulte de Valogne, the name 
 which seemed to belong to le temps quand la 
 Heine Berthe jila. He had one of those in- 
 stincts of having spoken unwisely, one of those 
 presentiments of impending disaster, which 
 come to hnely organised and much- experienced 
 minds, and are called by blunter and slower 
 brains mere nervous nonsense.
 
 PI^INCESS NAPRAXINE. 129 
 
 When tlie other day the tall factory chimney 
 fell at Bradford, the birds which built in it 
 had flown away before the workmen — stupidly 
 eating their breakfasts till the bricks tumbled 
 about their ears — had looked up and seen any 
 danger. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 130 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 As Otlimar leaned against the side of the yacht 
 and let his eyes dwell on her face, unseen by 
 him so lono- his regard let somethino; of the 
 emotion which he felt escape him, and betrayed 
 that the chill indifference with which he had 
 met her again had been but the mere mask of 
 pride, though it might be a mask which he 
 w^ould be strong enough always to wear in her 
 presence. 
 
 'Yonder is S. Pharamond,' he said, con- 
 scious of his momentary loss of self-control, as 
 he pointed to some round towers w^hich rose 
 above w^oods of ilex trees and magnohas. ' If 
 you would allow them to land me there instead 
 of at Nice I should be grateful, and perhaps 
 you would honour me with landing too : the 
 house is somewdiat neglected, as I have been 
 away so long ; but they will be at least able to 
 give you a cup of tea.' 
 
 ' With pleasure, if Wilkes likes it,' said the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 131 
 
 Princess, as she joined her friend. ' I never 
 knew you had a place upon this coast ; surely 
 you never named it when — when I knew you 
 first?' 
 
 'Most likely not,' said Othmar, 'I have 
 been seldom there. It was a favourite house 
 of my father's in his rare moments of leisure, 
 but I have never cared for the air or for the 
 world of Nice. I have lent it sometimes to my 
 friends.' 
 
 ' What do you not lend to your friends ? 
 In that respect you have made yourself honey, 
 and the flies have eaten you without hesitation.' 
 
 ' If the honey be not in the hive it ought 
 to be eaten. There is a landing-place in my 
 grounds, and the house is not more than a 
 quarter of a mile distant, if such a distance do 
 not alarm you. I know that you are no great 
 pedestrian, Princess.' 
 
 ' Wliy should one be when there are so 
 many more agreeable modes of progression? 
 On ne doit jamais se punir jioiir rien.' 
 
 ' I have walked twenty miles for my own 
 pleasure very often,' said Lady Brancepeth, who 
 approached them. 
 
 'Oh, but you are English; we were just 
 
 K 2
 
 133 PRINCESS NAPRAXiNE. 
 
 saying that all English people are like beavers, 
 yoii must be sawing and drilling and building 
 and dragging something or other all through 
 the length of your days. I could walk, I 
 think I could w^alk right across Eussia, if 
 there were any wise object to be obtained by 
 it, but simply to walk, as a mad dog runs, from 
 a sort of blind impulsion ! — no, that is beyond 
 me.' 
 
 ' You are such a curious union, Nadine, of 
 languor and energy, of indifference and of 
 potentialities,' began her friend. 
 
 ' My energy is latent,' slie said, interrupting 
 her. ' I do not waste it on every-day trifles, 
 as you waste yours. You always use forty- 
 horse povv'er to boll an ^gg or make a box 
 of wax matches. That is an English idea of 
 energy.' 
 
 ' Your grandmother, tlie Piincesse dY^ssin- 
 geaux, w^as English by birth.' 
 
 ' So was Othmar's mother. That is why 
 he and I have something of the beaver in us, 
 but calmed, controlled, kept in reserve ; we 
 do not waste our time and timber damming 
 up threads of water, but we shall be ready if 
 an inundation occur.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 133 
 
 ^ Othmar, perhaps,' said Lady Brancepeth. 
 
 ' I have a great deal more energy than he,' 
 said Nadine JSTapraxine, with a smile, as she 
 leaned back in the wicker lounging- chair, 
 looking as indolent as a Turkish woman, and as 
 delicate and useless as a painted butterfly. 
 
 The schooner in twenty minutes' time 
 landed them at a creek, with a little marble 
 quay, shadowed by great pines and euca- 
 lyptus trees ; there was a pavilion on the small 
 pier, a pretty kiosque all white and blue and 
 gold, with twisted pillars and Moorish ara- 
 besques. 
 
 ' Eemember, nothing here is of my taste or 
 choice,' said Othmar ; ' I have not been at the 
 place for ten years. Would you like to rest .^ 
 They can bring your tea to you ; or would 
 you come up to the house at once ? ' 
 
 ' Va pour le chateau^' said Nadine Na- 
 praxine; 'I never care for the preface of a 
 story.' 
 
 ' I fear you will find it a dull story,' 
 said he, as they left the quay and passed up 
 a steep path, always imder tJie shadow of the 
 trees. 
 
 'What a misfortune for him that he in-
 
 134 PRIAXESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 lierited so mucli! It prevents liim enjoying any 
 tiling,' slie said to Melville ; who replied, a 
 Jittle drily : 
 
 ' I do not tliink it is what he inherited 
 which prevents his enjoyment, Princess ; it is 
 more probably what he encountered and sighed 
 for vainly. Life holds many of these ironies.' 
 
 'If I were he,' she continued, ignoring the 
 reply, ' I should care for nothing but that power 
 which he, in common with other great capi- 
 talists, possesses. To be able to make a war 
 possible or impossible by the mere inclining of 
 your wand of gold — that must be the most 
 interesting of all possible kinds of influence.' 
 
 ' Yes, the financier is the modern Merlin, 
 but then there is Vivien ' 
 
 ' In Mr. Tennyson's poem, not out of it,' 
 said Princess Nadine, sceptically ; but she knew 
 very well that Vivien was then walking under 
 the shade of her own great red parasol, with its 
 group of humming-birds embroidered on its 
 left side. 
 
 The pathway ascended steeply through the 
 woods, bordered with datura and geranium, 
 which were still blossoming gaily ; here and 
 there was a wooden bench, a majolica seat, a
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 135 
 
 little statue ; the ground was of sliiniDg shingle ; 
 it had been kept in perfect order, awaiting its 
 owner, for ten years. After about a quarter of 
 a mile it ended on a level space of the red rock 
 up which it had chmbed. Here had been laid 
 out a fairy-like and fantastic garden, lawns, 
 palms, fountains, walls of shrubs, and groves 
 of camellias and azaleas, spreading before a 
 chateau, which was, in architecture, a miniature 
 Maintenon, and in position stood high enough 
 to look over the sea in front of it. 
 
 ' What a delicious place ! ' said Xadine ; 
 ' and in a month or two, when all those 
 azaleas flower — if I had known }'ou had 
 owned such a bijou, I would have told you to 
 lend it to us. It makes La Jacquemerille a 
 mere trumpery toy.' 
 
 ' I would lend you nothing,' said Othmar, 
 in her ear ; ' I would have given you every- 
 thing — once.' 
 
 Then he added aloud, ' This is somewhat 
 trumpery also, I fear ; modern things are so 
 apt to have tliat look. They are like the 
 articles cle Paris, which cost enormously, but 
 are only plush and ormolu after all. How- 
 ever, Viollet le Due built this house ; so it may
 
 136 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 be a little better thau its neighbours. Only I 
 should like statelier and simpler gardens my- 
 self; I should like high box hedges and old- 
 fashioned plants. But I suppose they would 
 not go with the Mediterranean.' 
 
 ' You like anything simple and homely ; 
 you will have to marry Margot, or Phoebe, or 
 Grethcl, off a farm,' said the Princess, with 
 some contempt. She was a hothouse flower 
 herself, and despised thyme and dog-roses. 
 
 ' I might do worse,' said Othmar, as he 
 ushered them into the house, which contained 
 some wonderful china, some admirable modern 
 pictures, some fine statuary, and more French 
 luxury than its master cared to have surround 
 him. 
 
 ' It is exquisite,' said the Princess, after 
 wandering through it, and returning to a room 
 opening on the gardens ; a room hung with 
 tawny plush, embroidered with white roses and 
 blue irises. The chairs and couches matched 
 the walls, a gilt cornice ran round the oval 
 ceiling, which was painted in tempera with the 
 story of Undine. ' How many more houses 
 have you, Othmar, standing like so many open 
 empty caskets waiting for you to put the jewel
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 137 
 
 of life into them ? Eeally, how raany have 
 you ? Come, tell me ! ' 
 
 ' I have too many,' said Othmar. ' But 
 excess always canies its own retribution ; 
 amongst them all I have no home ; none that 
 I feel home-like. I can imagine what it is — 
 a cliez soi that one cares about and desires to 
 return to — but 1 do not possess it.' 
 
 ' Make it,' said Melville ; ' that is always in 
 the power of every man who is not a priest.' 
 
 ' I suppose it is,' said Othmar. ' But it 
 has never seemed very easy to me. The fire of 
 the hearth is Mke the coal from the altar : it 
 comes from heaven, and can scarcely be com- 
 manded.' 
 
 He glanced as he spoke at Nadine Napraxine, 
 who was lying back against the golden gleams 
 of the plush of her couch ; she had a tea-rose 
 in her hand which she had plucked from the 
 gardens. She looked dream-like and ethereal. 
 She had on her lips that little smile which 
 meant so much and yet said nothing, and was 
 half compassion and half disdain, and partially, 
 also, amusement. If she had been mistress 
 here and in all his other houses, he thought, 
 each one of them would have been Eden to
 
 138 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 liiin. But that liad not been Melville's mean - 
 ing. 
 
 At that moment his servants brouo'ht in the 
 tea noiselessly and quickly : little Saxe cups, 
 frosted cakes, forced strawberries, appearing 
 on great old plateaux of gold, — as though he 
 had been served there every day instead of 
 having been absent ten years. 
 
 ' Eeally, Othmar, you liave a little of tlie 
 Haroun Alraschid, though you do not care for 
 your throne,' said Melville : ' who would have 
 imaoined that retnrnino^ from Asia last nio-ht 
 you would ]iave tea all ready made for your 
 friends ? ' 
 
 ' My friends reconcile me to my house,' said 
 Othmar ; ' you will leave almost a perfume of 
 home behind you, these rooms will seem lonely 
 no more.' 
 
 ' The rooms are quite perfect,' said Princess 
 Nadine, ' but still I think we will have our tea 
 out of doors ; the sun is still brilliant. We 
 have now and then little fits of rurality ; when 
 we have those we sit on a terrace and take tea ; 
 that is as near rusticity as we care to go.' 
 
 She walked through one of the doorways 
 into the air as she spoke.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 139 
 
 To Othmar the golden-coloured room with 
 its white roses and blue irises seemed to grow 
 dark as she left it. 
 
 As she passed out to the gardens his people 
 brought him a note ; it was inside a silver-grey 
 envelope, with a silver couronne upon it, and 
 on a silver-grey card was written a very press- 
 ingly worded invitation to dinner the following 
 night with his neighbours the Due and Duchesse 
 de Vannes. They had just heard of his arrival ; 
 they would have a few people ; they begged 
 him not to be formal, &c. &c. The chateau 
 nearest to him was Millo, their favourite winter 
 retreat ; a gorgeous and fantastic place, with 
 many a gilded cupola and shining dome which 
 caught the sunshine from the sea, amidst groves 
 of magnolia and woods of ilex. He had not 
 been to Millo for ten years. When he had 
 been last there the Due had been just married 
 to a famous beauty, and he had known them 
 very well in Paris ever since that time. They 
 were not people for whom he cared much : 
 Alain de Vannes was a sporting man, and his 
 wife was one of the leaders of foshion, with 
 half a hundred lovers given to her, rightly 
 or wrongly, by report. They were, however,
 
 I40 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 legitimist in politics to the backbone. Neither 
 of their famiUes had ever pandered to Emperor 
 or Elysee, and they were, despite their easy 
 morals and their profound indifference to each 
 other, exceedingly exclnsive, and, with all their 
 nonchalance, even arrogant. 
 
 'It must be a strange house for that 
 poor little girl,' he thought as he threw the 
 card aside, and remembered the Greuze face in 
 the Venetian red boat. Millo was not more 
 than a mile off him, at one point their woods 
 and his joined, and looking from his terrace 
 any day he could see the gilded minarets and 
 the varicoloured tiles of their villas shining in 
 the light against billows of dark evergreen 
 foliage. 
 
 ' How soon they know you are here ! ' said 
 Nadine Napraxine, as he spoke of the invitation 
 to her. ' You will go, of course ; you cannot 
 have any engagements .^ ' 
 
 ' Will you be there ? ' 
 
 ' I do not know ; yes, perhaps. I never 
 make up my mind until the last hour. People 
 say it is cruel when they have dinners ; it 
 leaves a place blank ; but how can you be sure 
 what you wish to do until the moment comes ?
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 141 
 
 I detest dinners. When we have really become 
 civilised we shall each of us eat in solitude, or, 
 at the least, each behind his own screen. Why 
 should one of the unloveliest of the operations 
 of nature be performed in public? The 
 flowers, and the plate, and the footmen cannot 
 really embellish it ; indeed, they only make it 
 the more grotesque.' 
 
 ' How droll you are, Nadine ! ' said Lady 
 Brancepeth. ' You liave certainly a monopoly 
 of singular ideas.' 
 
 'I wish my ideas were general,' answered 
 the Princess. 'When the world has really 
 refined itself it will look on our eatins^ in 
 society as we look now on savages eating with 
 their fingers. Some of our friends cannot even 
 have a little love afiair but tliey must go and 
 eat prawns, and quails, and petits fours together 
 in a cafe ; and if a hero comes home from 
 a war anywhere his countrymen at once make 
 him eat and drink in public by way of showing 
 their respect for him. The whole thing is 
 absurd. The only creature that is not offensive 
 when it eats is a bird. Just one httle dive in 
 a rose, or under a vine-leaf, and it has break- 
 fasted. But we ! '
 
 142 
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' Wlien a very pretty woman eats a straw- 
 berry, the bird is not very much her superior,' 
 murmured Melville. 
 
 ' Eeverend father,' said the Princess, ' you 
 have no business to know whether one is pretty 
 or not. Fruit, perhaps, does keep something 
 of the golden age about it ; but our dinners ! — 
 were I a man 1 would never see the woman I 
 admired taking her share of diseased livers, 
 tortured fish, slaughtered songsters. They are 
 fond of writing nowadays about a higher 
 humanity which will succeed to ours ; but my 
 idea of it would be that it should be fed like 
 Fenelon's islanders by only breathing sweet 
 odours. That would be even better than the 
 bird's dip in the rose.' 
 
 ' Then you will not go to Millo ? ' persisted 
 Othmar. 
 
 * Who knows what one may do in twenty- 
 four hours ? ' 
 
 The servants had carried the gold trays 
 out into the garden after her. Melville and 
 Lady Brancepeth, wdio were more comfortable 
 in the embrace of their plush couches, returned 
 within-doors ; Othmar drew his chair nearer to 
 hers, and offered her a cigarette.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 143 
 
 ' Eiirality ahvays wants this consolation, 
 Princess,' he said, as he did so. 
 
 ' Thanks ; not till I have finished my straw- 
 berries. They are delicious. How do you 
 manage your households ? If we go home 
 unexpectedly anywhere we always find the 
 servants away, the major-domo drunk, the 
 house topsy-turvy, and not a thing to eat 
 within twenty miles. How did you keep them 
 at this point of perfection ? ' 
 
 ' They are never sure that I may not 
 arrive at any moment. If servants be not 
 ready at any hour of the day or night they 
 are not worth their salt. Then I have very 
 faithful stewards ' 
 
 ' One marvel does not explain another. 
 The fidelity is perhaps more astonishing than 
 the perpetual readiness.' 
 
 ' I reward fidelity ; most people limit them- 
 selves to accepting it. If you do not pay your 
 servant well he will help himself.' 
 
 ' I am sure we pay — pay endlessly. Platon 
 spends Heaven knows what on the servants, 
 but he gets only a mob of rogues, who rob 
 him right and left.' 
 
 * I have no rigHt to suppose the Prince less
 
 144 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 wise than myself; but perhaps there is other 
 payment as well as money in which he does 
 not deal. I let the humblest man in my 
 service have plenty of hope ; there is no moral 
 tonic so bracing ; each of them knows that he 
 may rise if he only deserve it. Then, again, 
 I am heedful to have my house-stewards men 
 of high character ; a house-steward is one's 
 viceroy — one cannot be too careful in choosing 
 him.' 
 
 ' I should never have supposed you cared 
 about those things, Othmar,' she said, in much 
 surprise, as she stared at him, a strawberry 
 held uneaten against her lips. 
 
 ' One must think about them or be at war 
 with one's conscience,' he answered. ' That 
 is the tedium of life ; its duties are so inexorable 
 and so wearisome.' 
 
 ' Is an easy conscience absolutely necessary 
 to you ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I could easily imagine circumstances 
 under which a guilty one would make me 
 carry it lightly.' 
 
 A gleam of the old passionate emotion 
 which she had once known in him passed for a 
 moment into his eyes with gloom and fire
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 145 
 
 mingled. He repressed it ; he did not wish 
 her to beheve that she had still the power over 
 his life which she actually possessed. He heard 
 her voice saying always, ' I will have no melo- 
 dramatic passions to disturb me; they are 
 absurd, they are out of date, they are tiresome.' 
 
 And she had said it out of no virtue, only 
 out of sheer shallowness and indifference. 
 
 ' That is a very shocking sentiment,' she 
 said demurely now, as she ate another straw- 
 berry. ' At least, one is bound to say so ; 
 Monsignore in there Avould certainly say so. 
 Indeed, from Monsignore's point of view, one 
 would certainly think it so ; but as all we 
 modern people, whatever church we ostensibly 
 belong to, are all so completely of one mind 
 tliat we know we are only automata, made up 
 of nerve-centres and different gases, I do not 
 see why we should necessarily have consciences 
 at all, do you ? Why should w^e have one any 
 more than the zostera from which I named 
 that yacht ? ' 
 
 ' Only because the zosteree have no traditions 
 of a conscience, all men have.' 
 
 ' All men ? Savages have not, primitive 
 races have not ; and how should we know 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 whether the zostera has or has not ? She may 
 have a very perfect system of ethics, sitting on 
 her rocks in reach of the tide — I should think, 
 indeed, she had a sort of Buddhism.' 
 
 ' You named that yacht ? ' he said abruptly. 
 
 ' Yes ; Geraldine had her built last year. 
 He is not like you ; he has not a superstition 
 that one is bound to go on sailing in the same 
 ship all one's life, however old-fashioned she 
 may grow.' 
 
 ' Lord Geraldine has many superiorities over 
 me. He has the patience to play at Platonic 
 cicisbeism as children play for counters,' said 
 Othmar, with a brusque contempt. 
 
 ' That is neither a well-bred speech nor a 
 true one,' said Nadine Napraxine very calmly, 
 as she set down her cup. 
 
 ' Its breeding I cannot defend, its truth I 
 do,' he answered coldly. ' There are men who 
 can spend their lives carrying a woman's fan, 
 and ask for nothing more at her hands ; they 
 have merits, no doubt, but they are not those 
 which I appreciate.' 
 
 ' Poor Ealph ! if he heard you ! ' she said, 
 with a little yawn which she could not control, 
 though she tried to stifle it with a cigarette.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 147 
 
 ' He thinks himself far more manly than you 
 because he shoots fur and feather, and you do 
 not kill anything — except a man no^v and 
 then ! ' 
 
 ' I may yet add to the hst of the latter,' 
 said Othmar. 
 
 ' The Mongolians have made you very 
 savage,' she said, as she lighted the cigarette. 
 ' And you used to be so gentle/ 
 
 ' I used to be many things that I have 
 ceased to be since the twentieth of April a year 
 and eight months ago,' said Othmar. 
 
 She had forgotten the date which he re- 
 membered so accurately, the date of the day 
 on which they had parted in her own room in 
 Paris, with the smell of the lilac of the avenue 
 coming in through the open windows, and the 
 sunset rays, as they came through the rose- 
 coloured blinds, touching her fair face, and the 
 curl of her long dark laslies, and the beautiful 
 mouth with the little cruel languid smile on it 
 as she had said, ' I will have no melodramatic 
 passions to disturb me.' 
 
 She looked at him now with the demure 
 un-selfconsciousness of a child. 
 
 ' Ah ! I never could remember dates/ she 
 
 l2
 
 148 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 murmured. ' I was the despair of all my 
 governesses, I had such a bad memory.' 
 
 ' It is convenient sometimes,' said Othmar, 
 a little bitterly. Why were all those past hours 
 written on his remembrance as the chisel writes 
 on stone, vdiilst she had shaken off their 
 memories as a bird shakes a summer rain off 
 its wings ? 
 
 ' And how,' he added with an effort, ' with 
 such a defective brain as you describe, have 
 you become one of the most cultured women 
 of Europe? Does forgetfulness of — dates — 
 enhance the power of acquiring other know- 
 ledge P ' 
 
 ' I think it leaves the brain freer,' she 
 answered, in that serene way which she had 
 with her when she was intending that a man 
 should never forget her whatever she might 
 choose to forget. 
 
 ' No doubt,' he said impatiently. ' No 
 doubt learned women have never been very 
 tender ones.' 
 
 ' Learned ! what a terrific word. Would 
 you call a mere poor frivolous mondaine like 
 me by the same word that described Lady Jane 
 Grey and Mrs. Somerville ? I know a few
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 149 
 
 languages ; I had honnes of every nation when 
 I was a baby ; and I have read Schopenhauer 
 and Herbert Spencer, and I assure you that one 
 bored me as much as the other. But learned ! 
 would a has bleu eat your strawberries or smoke 
 your cigarettes ? ' 
 
 ' Or take all my heart and my soul out of 
 me ? ' he thought, as he answered, ' Xo ; cer- 
 tainly your one great science, Madame, was 
 never learned either in the nursery, or out of 
 Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer. It is tlie 
 perfection of high art ; and you, like all supreme 
 artists, cannot pause to remember what your 
 studies may cost to your subjects.' 
 
 She did not ask him what art or science 
 he meant ; she lighted a second cigarette and 
 said, in her sweetest voice, ' I do not think vou 
 are quite so even-tempered as joii used to be, 
 Count Othmar. Look, the sun is low ; it is time 
 to be going homew^ard. What are Monsignore 
 and Evelyn doing? Will you call them, 
 please ? ' 
 
 ' Stay yet a little while ; I have not seen 
 you for so long,' he murmured, ashamed and 
 irritated at his ow^n weakness in letting the 
 words escape him.
 
 ISO PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 'Naturally you have not,' she said, with a 
 gay laugh, ' since you have been in Asia and I 
 in Europe. Why did you go to Asia ? People 
 do not do tliat sort of thing nowadays. If they 
 be annoyed they walk down to their club and 
 play hard, or they ride a horse at a steeple- 
 chase, and in a week they think no more about 
 it. And why did you have that duel with de 
 Senelac ? It was very imprudent. I had told 
 you I could not bear that kind of melodrama. 
 Nobody knew certainly, but that was only 
 because they were all stupid ; any one might 
 have known. And Senelac never left his 
 bed for six months ; and have you heard that 
 he will limp, they say, for ever ? ' 
 
 Othmar, with a gesture, intimated that the 
 misfortune of his late adversary was a matter 
 of utter indifference. 
 
 ' If you be sorry that he limps,' he said 
 impatiently, ' be sorry that you gave him your 
 bouquet to carry. Princess, you are very fond 
 of psychological studies, but you do not like 
 to be reminded of what others pay for them. 
 You know well enough what men sufier for 
 you, and through you, but you do not choose 
 ever to blame yourself for making them do so.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 151 
 
 The world has not changed ; the mode of ex- 
 pression may have altered, but men feel as 
 they felt in the days of David or of ^schylus. 
 Love is what it was then, a mere passing 
 pleasure or pain to many, but to some the 
 herald of heaven or of hell, the begetter of 
 heroism or of crime.' 
 
 ' My dear Othmar, pray excuse me,' said 
 Nadine Napraxine, ' you talk beautifully, you 
 always did, but I cannot stay to hear you when 
 the sun is just going down, and we have only 
 a yacht that crawls to take us home to dinner. 
 It is my fault that it crawls : he would have 
 had a steam one if I had not prevented him. I 
 detest smoke and machinery, but still certainly 
 without them one crawls. Monsignore, will you 
 come if you have finished talking about the 
 Little Sisters of the Poor ? ' 
 
 Othmar's face grew cold, a sombre dis- 
 pleasure darkened his eyes, he drew back and 
 let Melville join Madame Napraxine. He him- 
 self walked beside her friend down the path 
 through the woods talking, but not sensible of 
 what he said, watching the red sunshade with 
 its embroidered lunnming-birds pass before 
 him under the boughs.
 
 152 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 As they nearecl the quay he took from the 
 hands of one of his men two bouquets of 
 gardenias and orchids, and offered them to 
 the two ladies ; they were in pretty cornuco- 
 piae of silvered wicker-work. Any one would 
 have thought that there had been the prepara- 
 tion of a week for this afternoon visit. 
 
 ' You are hon prince,' said Madame Na- 
 praxine as she took her orchids, ' why will 
 you pretend to be a barbarian ? The little 
 graceful amenities of the world become you, 
 and you do them so well, though you do them 
 so seldom ; why will you make yourself un 
 horn me de foyer — manque? It is much nicer,' 
 she added in a low murmur, ' to give me a 
 bouquet than to shoot another man for carry- 
 ing one.' 
 
 He did not answer. Her jests jarred on 
 him. 
 
 When they reached the quay the sun was 
 setting, the boat was waiting, the sailors im- 
 movable, their oars held straio-ht in the air. 
 
 ' Adieu, Othmar ! ' said the Princess Nadine 
 gaily. ' Your chateau is marvellous, your or- 
 chids are exquisite, and your tea was enchant- 
 ing ; we will leave you all alone in your poetic
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 153 
 
 solitude, and wlieii you want prose and society 
 you will come to La Jacquemerille.' 
 
 ' Will you not honour me again ? ' he said, 
 angry at his own weakness. ' Would you not 
 dine with me to-morrow night ? Or the day after 
 to-morrow ? I think the Prince would come.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Platon would come certainly,' said 
 Nadine Napraxine, with a smile ; ' you are his 
 especial friend. He shall come to you alone ; 
 then you can talk to him as much as you like 
 about tlie burning of Moscow and — and — all 
 those other dates for which you have so 
 admirable a memory ! ' 
 
 She would say no more than that, and 
 her musical shght laugh tantalised his ear as 
 the boat was pushed off in the deep blue water, 
 and the seamen bent above their oars. 
 
 Otho Othmar leaned ao-ainst the marble 
 balustrade and watched them row away to- 
 wards the schooner, with an anger in which 
 vain regrets and baffled desires were mingled 
 disconsolately. He remained there till the sun 
 was gone down, and the white canvas of the 
 yacht had passed out of sight round a bend of 
 the shore. 
 
 When he retraced his steps to his solitary
 
 154 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 house, he saw a tea-rose lying beside the gilded 
 garden chair which she had occupied as she ate 
 her strawberries. It was the one which she 
 had gathered and dropped. He picked it up 
 and put it in his coat. 
 
 ' Quancl on aime on n'a que vingt aiis,' he 
 thought with scorn for himself. 
 
 He entered the golden drawing-room, wrote 
 a formal note of invitation to the Prince and 
 Princess Napraxine, and said to one of his 
 servants, ' Send a messenger over with this 
 letter the first thing in the morning to the villa 
 that is called La Jacquemerille.' Yet he had 
 come from Asia with the firm resolve to show 
 the Princess Napraxine that he had conquered 
 all passion for her ; and he was not on the 
 whole a weak man.
 
 155 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 He dined alone ; a few telegrams would have 
 filled his rooms, but he did not care for society, 
 which he thought only came to him because 
 he was one of the few owners of milliards in 
 Europe. He sat alone after dinner in the 
 salon which she had admired, with the light 
 of half a hundred wax candles bringing out 
 the golden gleams in the plush, the colours 
 of the embroidered irises, the dead gold of the 
 cornice and panels, while a fire of olive wood 
 glowed under the carvings of the mantelpiece 
 of porphyry. The plush curtains, with the lace 
 beneath them, veiled the shuttered windows ; 
 outside the night was calm, there was no sound 
 anywhere. The words of Melville came back to 
 him as he sat there in the midst of the luxury 
 and of the loneliness : ' To make a home is in 
 the power of any man who is not a priest.' 
 
 It did not seem to him to lie in his. 
 He could have bought a principality, but he
 
 156 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 could not buy a home. Love alone could 
 create that, and the only woman he had loved 
 for years was Nadine Napraxine. 
 
 If she had been what he wished to hnn, 
 would she have made him this ideal home — 
 she, capricious, indifferent, disdainful, mondaine^ 
 as she had said, in every habit, thought, and 
 attitude of her life ? Perhaps not ; probably 
 not, he knew ; yet she alone would have had 
 power to make a melody out of the discords 
 of his desires and his discontent ; she alone 
 seemed to him to fill the vacant places, to 
 smile across the solitary room, to have left the 
 lingering perfume of her presence there, as the 
 orange flowers left their fragrance in the cabinet 
 in which they were laid for a moment. 
 
 Otho Othmar was one of the richest men 
 in Europe ; he was often disposed to regret it, 
 as many persons regret that to which they have 
 been born. He did not think it a thing to be 
 vain of; he was even occasionally ashamed of 
 it. It seemed to him that when you were so 
 much richer than most of your fellows you 
 were required to be very much better than 
 they ; and it is not always agreeable, nor often 
 easy, to be so. When he signed ' Othmar ' it
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 157 
 
 was as when an emperor signs his name, and 
 with a stroke of the pen he could give away 
 miUions with as much ease as lesser mortals 
 can scatter pence. This facility was no pleasure 
 to him. Though he was well aware that riches 
 are the one ruling power of the modern world, 
 and comprise in themselves the wishing cap and 
 the magician's wand, Excalibur and Holy Grail, 
 he did not greatly prize his possession of them ; 
 perhaps because they had been always before 
 him and about him in profusion from his birth. 
 The Othmar fortune had been steadily 
 growing for a century and a half. At the 
 commencement Marc Othmar, a Croat, native 
 of A gram, had been a poor man enough — a 
 horse dealer, some said a horse stealer — what 
 precisely never was known. Agram is not a 
 very greatly frequented place, and records get 
 easily mildewed and dim in it. Whether he 
 began life as pedlar, or peasant, or, as some 
 affirmed, as a robber of wild colts, Marc Othmar 
 at forty years old was a money-lender, com- 
 mission agent, and banker, and at sixty had 
 become a millionaire, known of far beyond 
 Croatia, and had laid the foundations of one of 
 the great financial houses of Eastern Europe.
 
 158 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 His son quadrupled liis possessions and 
 extended his operations Avestward and north- 
 ward. His grandson fell upon the hard times 
 of the Napoleonic wars as on a bed of roses ; 
 and from the misfortunes of Austria and Prussia, 
 and the necessities of Pitt's England, made 
 gold as rapidly as though he had had the 
 philosopher's stone in a crucible. He grew 
 into a very colossus of riches, and his houses 
 did their business in Vienna, Paris, London, 
 and Prankfort. He married the daughter of 
 a French duke, and made his central house 
 of business in Paris. 
 
 His eldest son Stefan, who inherited all 
 his astuteness, succeeded him in due course in 
 the direction of afiairs, ably seconded by his 
 brother Priederich, and in his turn married the 
 daughter of an English nobleman, by whom he 
 had one son, Otho, who was chiefly educated 
 in England, and who had little or nothing of 
 the Othmar type in feature or in character. 
 
 He was a boy of infinite promise, and of 
 no ordinary mind, but, despite his personal and 
 intellectual gifts, he was a bitter disappoint- 
 ment to his father ; and the indifference, which 
 at times deepened into contempt, with which
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 159 
 
 the lad reviewed the origin and the employ- 
 ment of the fortunes of his house seemed 
 to him nothing short of blasphemy. Stefan 
 Othmar himself was a man of excessive arro- 
 gance, but it was a bourgeois arrogance, proud 
 of its own sources and dominion, and capable 
 of infinite self-abasement in the pursuit of self- 
 interest. That his boy should revolt against 
 his descent and despise the future before him 
 was a fact so hideous and so amazing in his 
 sight that, had he not known his dead wife to 
 have been the purest and coldest of women, 
 he would almost have doubted that his own 
 blood ran in the veins of his degenerate heir. 
 
 As Otho grew towards manhood the distance 
 between them widened more and more. That a 
 fastidious fine gentleman, a fantastic and futile 
 dreamer, a mere visionary and dilettante, should 
 be the outcome of a hundred and fifty years 
 of financial success and ambition seemed to 
 Count Stefan so frightful a mockery of fortune, 
 that he cursed his own folly in having wedded 
 a patrician, instead of some woman of a common 
 but ambitious stock who would have given him 
 successors content, and solely content, with 
 the superb position of princes of finance, and
 
 i6o PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 capable of doubling and quadrupling those 
 many millions which were his own ecstasy. The 
 very virtues of his son alarmed him as hardly 
 any vices w^ould have done. The youth was 
 so delicate of mind and taste, so devout and 
 chaste of habit, so meditative and so solitary 
 by choice, that his father grew alarmed lest he 
 should actually do what he at times threatened, 
 and consecrate himself to the Catholic priest- 
 hood. He took a violent remedy. 
 
 He went to one of the most seductive and 
 most venal women of the day, and said to her, 
 ' Win this boy from his dreams or he will 
 become a monk.' 
 
 She undertook the mission, and succeeded 
 in it. She destroyed all that was spiritual and 
 innocent in him with the merciless witchery of 
 the courtesan, which is like the tide of burning 
 lava: no grass will spring where the scoria 
 has spread. He awoke in her arms without a 
 faith. He never again dreamed of the religious 
 life. She earned well the estate in Franche- 
 Comte and the large sum in rouleaux which his 
 father settled on her ; but nothing in after-life 
 could ever give him back those heavenward 
 aspirations, that purity of soul, which she had
 
 PI^INCESS NAPRAXINE. i6i 
 
 swept away as with a wave of fire. Like the 
 young Eeichstadt before him, he had wasted 
 all the splendour and innocence of a first 
 passion on a wanton who had betrayed him 
 for gold. The first passion of a boy colours all 
 his future ; the bitter-sweet flavour of this 
 remained with him through all his later years. 
 Love without it was tasteless ; love with it was 
 worthless. He said once to his father : ' You 
 had better have killed me than have given me 
 to Sara Vernon.' 
 
 ' Who passes by the gates of disillusion has 
 died twice.' His father had pushed him with a 
 hard hand through those gates, believing that 
 they led to the path of self-knowledge and of 
 empire over men. Stefan Othmar had not 
 wanted a poet, a scholar, a philanthropist, or a 
 priest for his successor ; he had w^anted a cold- 
 hearted, clear-headed, unscrupulous, unyield- 
 ing financier to hold, and even to increase, 
 the mighty powers and possessions of which 
 the name of Othmar was a symbol to the 
 world. 
 
 But the crime he had committed did not 
 obtain for him what he desired. The merciless 
 cynicism with which he had destroyed the faith 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 i62 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 and the purity of his son did not ensure its 
 object. The youth remained as aloof in mind 
 from the traditions of his house, and as dis- 
 dainful in spirit of them, as he had been before. 
 He consented, indeed, with apathy, to put his 
 signature to the deeds which made him one of 
 the chiefs of the house, but that was all which 
 Stefan Othmar gained by his son's immeasurable 
 loss. Some four years later, when Otho was 
 two-and- twenty years of age, Stefan Othmar 
 died suddenly on the steps of his great hotel 
 in the Boulevard St, Germain, as he was ascend- 
 ing them after an audience at the Tuileries, in 
 which he had been the master of the situation, 
 and Napoleon Trois the suppliant. He died 
 of fulminant apoplexy without an instant's 
 warning ; but his affairs were left in the most 
 perfect order. His brother Fritz remained, 
 who had been his alter ego all his life, and 
 nothing was altered in the House of Othmar, 
 of which his son became supreme master. 
 
 The young man received the news far away 
 in the forest recesses of Lahore, at the court of 
 an Indian prince, where he was being feasted 
 with royal honours in the course of his travels 
 over the world. There had been no sympathy
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIKE. 163 
 
 between liis father and himself ; their tempera- 
 ments had been as opposite as the poles ; little 
 sentiment of personal affection mingled with his 
 sudden consciousness that he was absolute 
 lord of his own destinies. His first impulse 
 was to use the power into which he had entered 
 to destroy, at a blow,, all that his forefathers 
 had been a century and a half in building up 
 for him. ' It is a mass of corruption ; it shall 
 perish,' he said to himself, with the ruthless 
 integrity, the unsparing fanaticism, of a generous 
 and high-souled youth. But when he returned 
 to England and came face to face with all his 
 responsibihties and powers, he found that which 
 he had thought so easy was quite impossible to 
 accomplish as he desired to accomplish it. His 
 first impulse was to throw the whole into 
 liquidation and efface the House of Othmn* 
 from financial existence for ever, iiui to do so 
 was but a dream ; the financial world would 
 not have released him from his obligations ; 
 his only living relative, his father's brother and 
 partner, Baron Friederich Othmar, stoutly re- 
 fused to suffer that to be done which would, in 
 his sight, have been a greater crime than many 
 murders. 
 
 H 2
 
 i64 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 Against his desires aud against his con- 
 science, lie had, on reacliing his majority, been 
 half persuaded, half coerced, by his father to 
 associate himself in legal form with the house. 
 The act had been one of filial sacrifice, and it 
 hunc^ like a wallet of stones about his neck. 
 He found that his power had its limits ; that he 
 could no more disengage himself from all the 
 operations and engagements of his firm than a 
 young king can emancipate himself from the 
 trammels of court and constitution. He had 
 a right to ruin himself, but he had no right to 
 ruin all those whose fortunes were interwoven 
 with the enterprises of his predecessors. Irri- 
 tated and disappointed he resigned himself to 
 the inevitable, and remained the ' master of 
 milliards,' with as much regret as the young- 
 Francis Joseph accepted the diadem of Austria. 
 The cloth of gold in which they, his fore- 
 fathers, had wrapped him remained upon him, 
 and sometimes he thought it a very shirt of 
 Nessus. 
 
 Sometimes he was almost tempted to take 
 the vow of poverty for the sake of getting rid 
 of it, but he was restrained by two recollections 
 — one that he had no spiritual faith, the other
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIAE. 165 
 
 that mankind in general would have voted him 
 insane. A profound melancholy, without any- 
 definite or special cause, grew upon him ; he 
 felt the sense of an immense responsibility, 
 which he saw no manner of using with propor- 
 tionate usefulness. The sophism that duties 
 unsought may be disregarded did not satisfy 
 his conscience, whilst his knowledge of the 
 world told Jiim that to do harm is as easy as to 
 kiss your hand, whilst to effect any great good 
 is as hard as to move the mountains from their 
 bases. Public charity only fills the pockets of 
 greedy speculators ; private charity too often 
 raises up a festering mass of imposture. The 
 rich man goes through the world as a sheep 
 through briars in spring time. If he be a 
 perfect egotist, he is happy enough ; if he have 
 thought and feeling, he is depressed by the uni- 
 versal greed around him, and by the absolute 
 impotence of all religions to bridle it. 
 
 Otho Othmar remained always sensible of 
 a bitter irritation and degradation whenever 
 he recalled the sources of the wealth he en- 
 joyed : the ruin of prosperous countries, the 
 wholesale slaughter of wars, the distress or 
 disgrace of ancient nobilities, the impoverish-
 
 i66 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 ment of nations. True, there was another 
 side to the throne of Pkitus, on which his 
 fathers had seated themselves ; by their means, 
 no doubt, enterprises had been carried out 
 for which humanity, on the whole, was ma- 
 terially, if not spiritually, the better. Canals, 
 deserts, mines, cities, colonies, ocean ways, had 
 felt the vivifying powers of the great Othmar 
 loans ; but the evil appeared to him. far to out- 
 balance the good, and all the wealth seemed to 
 him tainted. He had considerable pride, in a 
 sliape with which men would not have sympa- 
 thised. He fancied that the inherited nobility 
 of his French and English blood was always at 
 war with the blood of the Croat bankers by 
 whom he had been begotten. Though his posi- 
 tion was one which almost all the world envied, 
 it was one Avhich galled liimself. Titles had 
 been offered him, but he liad contemptuously 
 rejected them. He was Othmar; the name 
 spoke to all the ears of Europe ; he did not 
 consider that the story it tckl could be either 
 changed or buried by smothering it underneath 
 the blaze of some princeship or dukedom. He 
 did not even call himself, as others called him, 
 Count Othmar, and he put neither coronet or
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 167 
 
 escutcheon on his carriages, his plate, or his 
 writing-paper. He wiis far too proud to be 
 proud in that way. 
 
 Ilhistrious alHances had been proposed to 
 him, but he had rejected all ; the world ex- 
 pected him to marry greatly, but he remained 
 the hope and the despair of all the European 
 nobilities, who would have willingly accorded 
 him any one of their fair virgins. Their eager- 
 ness had early given him a cynical disdain for 
 the aristocracies to which his tastes attracted 
 him ; he had no less a disdain for the financial 
 order to which tradition allied him. On the 
 whole, although he had never had any especial 
 sorrow, he was scarcely a happy man, though 
 the whole world was ready to gratify and 
 amuse him. He had been always able to in- 
 dulge his fancies to the uttermost, but all the 
 venal beauty which affected adoration for him 
 left his heart cold. 
 
 Though gentle in manner and chary of 
 speech, he could on provocation say caustic 
 truths whicli cut like surgeons' knives. In 
 general, however, he was indulgent to follies 
 which he did not share. He lived always a 
 little apart from the world, in which he was so
 
 1 68 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 conspicuous a figure, and he judged it with 
 good nature rather than with sympathy. 
 
 Occasionally, as Nadine Napraxine had said, 
 il voyait en jaune ; the bitterness of spirit which 
 comes over all who see themselves sought for 
 what they possess passed over him also, but its 
 pessimism never lasted long. That human 
 nature was trivial but not evil was, on the 
 whole, the result of his experiences. 
 
 By one of the odd caprices in which destiny 
 deliojhts, a lettered ease would have been the 
 utmost he w^ould have cared to command. 
 The incessant demands which a great fortune 
 always brings upon its possessor were to him irk- 
 some ; wherever he went mankind pursued him 
 hat in hand and hand outstretched. He could 
 arrive nowhere without petitions and invitations 
 raining in on him ; obscurity was not to be 
 enjoyed even in Mongolia, where the Foreign 
 Ministers at the Chinese Court and the Celestial 
 Emperor himself sent mounted messengers 
 after him to see that he came to no harm. 
 The interest everywhere excited by his arrival 
 or by his actions irritated him perpetually; the 
 impossibility of securing privacy, to him formed 
 the gravest of annoyances. His intolerance of
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIAE. 169 
 
 publicity made him almost detest the whole 
 human race which combined to refuse it to 
 him. To be compelled to live in a glass-house 
 appeared to him to destroy the very first re- 
 quisite for life's enjoyment. He concealed this 
 sensitiveness under a chilliness of manner which 
 did injustice to the real warmth of his sympa- 
 thies. There was much that was at once 
 attractive and irritating to women in this 
 young man whose fortunes were so immense 
 and power so extended, who yet passed through 
 the world with so unaffected an indifference to 
 his own advantages in it, and who had the 
 melancholy and romantic features of a Euy 
 Bias or of a Eolla. With men, his perfect 
 simplicity of expression, his unpretentious 
 courage, and his unfaihng generosity, com- 
 manded respect, whilst his position excited 
 their envy; but while he compelled their es- 
 teem, he did not, as a rule, possess their attach- 
 ment. ' If we are in a position to serve men 
 greatly, we shall never be greatly loved by 
 them,' said Melville to him once ; ' we shall 
 make too many ingrates, even though we do 
 our best not to make one. Men, as a rule, 
 love most what they can afford a little to
 
 I70 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 despise and have no cause whatever to envy. 
 Do 3'ou remember when the anarchists of '48 
 came to old Eothschild at Ferrieres and de- 
 manded his fortune for the people of France, 
 and he very quietly took up his pen and made 
 aloud his calculation that his fortune divided 
 thus would give everyone just four francs and 
 a half each ? Well, the fault of the very rich 
 man to the world is always Eothschild's to the 
 anarcliists ; everyone expects he can bestow 
 on each of them ten millions, whilst he can 
 only really give four francs and a half. The 
 calculation may be as clear as day, but the fact 
 is one never forgiven.' 
 
 Othmar understood that very well with his 
 reason, but he was not reconciled to it in his 
 heart ; he would have desired something differ- 
 ent. The immense hotel which liis father liad 
 l3uilt, with its ceilings painted by Ingres and 
 Delaroche, its gardens sloping to the Seine, its 
 genuine treasures of art, its double staircase, its 
 cour cVhonnPAu\ its stables built on the model 
 of Chantilly, was no better than a barn to him ; 
 he detested it with a sort of petulance ; he 
 never willingly resided in it. Its network of 
 communication with the banks and the bu-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 171 
 
 reaux, laid with all the facilities which modern 
 science conld invent, had no interest for him. 
 He did not feel the slightest emotion about 
 any public event that could possibly happen, 
 whether wars and rumours of wars, or the 
 betting of a racecourse. He had none of 
 those tastes which may make a rich man 
 popular for a season and ruined in a twelve- 
 month. To his mistresses he was invariably 
 generous, but these extravagances scarcely 
 made more impression on his vast fortune than 
 a few pailsfull taken from the sea make diminu- 
 tion in its volume. His greatest pleasure, on 
 which he spent his money most largely, was 
 music. Wherever he was he gathered great 
 singers and musicians around him. She had 
 likened him to Ludwig of Bavaria. His ca- 
 prices were not quite so eccentric, but his pre- 
 ference was almost as ungrudgingly indulged. 
 He had studied music theoretically and pro- 
 foundly, though he had never touched any in- 
 strument and had never written a bar. It was 
 one of those tastes which to his father had 
 appeared an absolute insanity. He also spent 
 much upon his libraries and his horses, as 
 the Princess Napraxiue had said to him. But
 
 172 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 since he was not a bibliophile, and did not 
 care for rare editions, and never raced or made 
 wagers, liis expenditure even here was moderate 
 as compared with his powers. From the time 
 of his early and bitter passion for Sara Vernon 
 he had avoided those famous sorceresses who 
 can beggar Croesus and discrown Caesar ; they 
 recalled too vividly to him the intense suffer- 
 ing of his boyhood, when he had found himself 
 betrayed by what he adored. To the few 
 women whom he had ever noticed he had been 
 invariably generous even to excess, with a 
 generosity that strove to make amends for the 
 scorn he had for them ; but he had had none 
 of those long-enduring liaisons which cling like 
 the octopus and drain like the vampire. The 
 knowledge that so many women would have 
 drunk the dregs of infamy at his word for the 
 sake of his gold, held him aloof from them ; 
 he was conscious that they pursued him as the 
 sword-fish pursues the fish entangled in a seine. 
 There was no Venusburg which would not have 
 let him enter into its enchantment with his 
 golden key; and this untempted Tannhiluser 
 turned away indifferent. All the rest which 
 attracted other men — gambling, feasting, drink-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 173 
 
 ing, racing, living together in feverish crowds, 
 — appeared to him ridiculous and tiresome. 
 All the popular vices of men of his rank 
 seemed to him dull and vulg-ar, trivial and 
 stupid ; the life of the micscadin, of the mashei*, 
 seemed to him, on the whole, more stupid than 
 the Tartar's. There was a certain similarity 
 between him and Nadine Napraxine. The 
 world appeared to them both very narrow and 
 its resources few. 
 
 For her the result of this impression took 
 the shape of disdain ; in him of regret. 
 
 In her it was a thirst of the mind, in him 
 it was a hunger of the heart, which led them 
 to think that the land around them was barren. 
 
 His friends called him jestingly as Chateau- 
 briand was called, ' le grand ennuye^' but it 
 was precisely his vague discontent with the 
 puerilities and the vulgarities of existence which 
 made his affinity to Nadine Napraxine. She 
 had much the same contempt for all those who 
 surrounded her and who made so much of all 
 their little ambitions, who crowned themselves 
 with straw and thought they reigned, wdio set 
 their souls on a winning horse, a political 
 measure, a policy, a project, or a coup d'etat^
 
 174 PRJNCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 whilst the horse was to her taste as much worth 
 wasting thought on as the statesmanship. 
 
 If he had heard of his own total ruin he 
 would have put a Horace in his pocket and 
 walked out of the great bronze Eenaissance 
 gates of his palace with a serenity which would 
 have had in it nothing either strained or af- 
 fected. He was no ascetic or philosopher, 
 but his great fortunes bored him, and their 
 origin annoyed him. His temperament would 
 probably have led to higher ambitions if he 
 had not been born to so much possession that 
 ambition had no scope. He was wont to cite as 
 the wisest man the world had known the gay 
 physician of the Fronde epoch, Gui Patin, who 
 sat throughout that troublous time, peaceful 
 and amused, beneath his own cherry-trees. But 
 fate had seated him, himself, beneath the gold 
 pagoda-tree, and the tree seemed to him a 
 sterile one ; it had neither fragrance nor shade, 
 yet a million eager hands were always trying 
 to pluck from it, and for him who sat under 
 it there was no quiet. Some one was 
 always wanting him to shake down the fruit 
 into their hands. 
 
 He had had one great misfortune ; he had
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 175 
 
 known satiety almost before lie had known 
 enjoyment ; and men were sobentnpon making 
 use of him that they did not take time to 
 attach him to them before they disgusted him. 
 The world in general did not hke him much ; 
 it followed him endlessly, but it thought his 
 reserve arrogance, his simplicity of taste affect- 
 ation, and his dislike to display avarice. It 
 did not comprehend in the least the simple 
 trutli that Othmar would have shaken his gold 
 off him if he could have done so like so much 
 mud. In the Croat character there are both 
 romance and religion ; he had more of the 
 Croat than the English temper in him; but, 
 like most men of his time, he had no belief at 
 all, though it was a sorrow to him, not a boast ; 
 and the romance of his impulses had been early 
 chilled and silenced by the venal passions 
 offered to his boyhood for sake of his wealth. He 
 learned too early that there is scarcely anything 
 which may not be bought. It is a knowledge 
 which hardens the selfish, but saddens the ge- 
 nerous, nature. The irresistible conviction that 
 money is after all the one great power of the 
 world is not an exliilarating or a consoling fact 
 for thoughtful or visionary minds.
 
 176 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 He knew very well that he might have 
 been the most vicious brute, the most brutal 
 tyrant, the most merciless of men, and mankind 
 would have served, follow^ed, and flattered him 
 none the less ; he could have purchased im- 
 munity for most crimes, condonation for most 
 iniquities. So long as he had remained master 
 of his fortune and of his possessions, he knew 
 that men would have sought him none the less 
 eagerly though he had had the vices of a 
 Heliogabalus ; and that women would have 
 given themselves to him none the less willingly 
 though he had been as hideous as the Veiled 
 Prophet. It did not make him cynical ; but it 
 made him indifferent, and it moved him at 
 times to a vague sadness. It seemed scarcely 
 worth while for his forefathers to have raised 
 that mountain of gold, only that from its summit 
 he might see the nakedness of the world of 
 men.
 
 177 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 At eight o'clock on the followinfy nioht Othmar 
 walked across his gardens, under a starlit sky, 
 towards the adjacent grounds of Millo. A few 
 roods of plantation parted his from theirs ; in 
 the boundary fence there was a small gate, of 
 which his major-domo had reminded him that a 
 key existed. The night was young, but the stars 
 already were many, and a slender moon had 
 risen in the deep serene blue of the heavens. 
 Though it was midwinter the air was sweet 
 with the smell of orange orchards in flower 
 and of the aromatic pine-woods of his own 
 enclosures. 
 
 'Will she be there?' he thought a hundred 
 times. 
 
 He had kept away from her all the clay, had 
 busied himself with his sailors, witli his steward, 
 with the condition of the place ; but he longed 
 to see that smile which even in its malice was 
 sweeter to him than all the kindness of others, 
 
 VOL. I, ]^
 
 178 PAVNCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 to hear again that voice which was music to 
 his ear, even in its chill, indifferent mockeries. 
 
 He had an intuitive belief, which had been 
 shaken but not destroyed by his own failure, 
 that in her nature there were depths to be 
 reached, passions to be awakened, though a 
 bland and cruel indifference at present veiled 
 them. He had been ruthlessly betrayed by 
 her coquetry, profoundly wounded by her cold- 
 ness, but he beheved in her still — even still 
 believed in himself as the man whom ulti- 
 mately she would love. He had returned to 
 Europe with the resolution never to be in her 
 presence except when the hazards of society 
 should bring them perforce in the same atmo- 
 sphere, but at the first charm of her regard 
 he had forgotten all his resolves, lost all his 
 wisdom. Life only seemed worth living if he 
 could hear that one voice, so sweet in its 
 modulations, so chilly in its perfect harmony. 
 It was, perhaps, because he was one of the few 
 men who could gratify all wishes, caprices, and 
 ambitions as fast as such arose, that this one 
 thing wholly denied to him, wholly inaccessi- 
 ble, had such force of attraction for him. Yet 
 he was bitterly angered against himself for his
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINR ly^ 
 
 own submission. She was but a supreme 
 coquette, a ^Novn^n petrie du monde, despite all 
 her charm ; but she could make her careless 
 little nod, or a half-ironical smile, more prized 
 from her than the utmost tenderness of other 
 women ever was. There was about her that 
 air as of one so wholly indifferent to all the 
 vulgarities which others esteem triumphs that, 
 when she ever deigned to notice that a man 
 existed, he was more flattered than by the 
 fondest concessions of his most ardent adorers. 
 She had been assailed by all the powers and 
 vanities of passion, but she had always given 
 it at most that cool little smile — sometimes the 
 smile had been compassionate, more often it 
 had been cruel. Women had succumbed to 
 him as full-blown roses fall before the touch of 
 a careless hand; for this reason the chillness 
 of Nadine Napraxine, which seemed chastity, 
 had had so strong an attraction for him that for 
 awhile it had seemed to him sweeter to wait 
 upon its caprices than to obtain fuller response 
 from them. But no man tarries long at tliis 
 stage of his affections, and the time had come 
 when he had grown impatient of a pursuit 
 without end, of an allegiance witliout recom- 
 
 X 2
 
 i8o PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 pense. It was like an empty cup of exquisite 
 form and transparent beauty, for ever without 
 wine in it ; to the connoisseur the gem is per- 
 fect thus, but to those athirst it brings little 
 delight. 
 
 The unshuttered windows of Millo were 
 glistening with hght, which shone through the 
 thickets of rose-laurel and bay as he approached 
 the house, and a flood of hght was poured 
 out shining on the stone perron, carpeted and 
 screened closely by rose-coloured awnings from 
 the air of night. After a year and a half spent 
 on tropic seas and in desert lands, the return to 
 society has always a half-sweet, half-bitter, 
 flavour. Was it worth while, he thouglit, to 
 leave all the routine and tedium and emptiness 
 of the world only to drift back again into its 
 formalities and follies ? 
 
 He had, however, no choice left in the mat- 
 ter, for the servants in the antechamber were 
 bowing low to him and taking his furred coat 
 from him, and in another moment the Duchesse 
 d(3 Vannes was welcoming him with all the 
 genuine pleasure which a hostess feels in having 
 the first visit from a person long absent, and 
 hif^h enouo-h in the world's favour to make his
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, i8i 
 
 return to the world an event of social interest 
 and of public importance. 
 
 Aurore de Vannes, called Cri-Cri by her 
 friends, was a very pretty woman, as much 
 and as delicately painted as the fan she carried ; 
 she wore a marvellous costume of cream- 
 coloured velvet blent with japonica-coloured 
 satin, and had japonicas in her hair and at her 
 bosom ; she wore also some very fine rubies. 
 
 When he entered the drawing-rooms of 
 Millo there were a dozen persons assembled 
 there, most of whom he knew, but amongst 
 them was not the Princess IvTapraxine. There 
 was lamentation for her absence, but no sur- 
 prise at it, because her caprices were so well 
 known. 
 
 As he entered a little note had entered 
 behind him ; when Mme. de Vannes had said 
 all her pretty greetings to him she glanced at it. 
 
 ' " Desolee — migraine — temps detestable," ' 
 she murmured, as she ran her eyes over it. 
 ' Of course ! ' she said, aloud, ' that is always 
 Nadine's way — she does it on purpose. She 
 loves to disappoint people. She was out riding 
 this afternoon ; I saw her in the distance with 
 Boris Seliedoff. She treated the Empress in
 
 i82 FRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 that fashion last winter at Petersburg' and 
 when the Dames du Palais told her that the 
 Tsarina was so displeased that she woidd ex- 
 clude her from Court, Xadine said to them 
 quite simply : '' Trop de bonte ! Je m'habitue 
 si mal a ces corvees-la." ' 
 
 ' And has she been excluded ? ' asked one 
 of the guests. 
 
 ' Ouf ! ' cried the Duchesse de Vannes, ' I 
 see you do not know her. Xo empress in the 
 world would dare to exclude her. Imagine 
 how she would avenge lierself ! Courts cannot 
 afford to be brave nowadays.' 
 
 Othmar heard every syllable she said as he 
 conversed with De Vannes, a tall man of some 
 eight-and-thirty years old, with a look of ex- 
 treme distinction and of as supreme flxtigue. 
 ' Who is Boris SeliedofF? ' he thought, Avith the 
 restless jealousy of an unsatisfied passion. He 
 regretted his tent in Tartary : the elegant rooms, 
 the perfumed air, the pretty women, the low 
 buzz of conversation, the little breaks of 
 laughter, the artificiahty, the monotony of the 
 whole thing, wearied him akeady. 
 
 The dinner was gay and even brilliant ; to 
 him alone it seemed tedious. Why had she not
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 183 
 
 come? lie thought, and that disappointment 
 alone occupied him. He was angered that she 
 should have so much power to make la jylaie 
 et le beau temps of his time and of his moods. 
 
 ' Is Othmar cured by Central Asia ? ' said 
 one of the guests to the Duchesse de Yannes 
 who looked across the table at him, and 
 answered, ' I should say not. He would hardly 
 be within ^\q leagues of La Jacquemerille if 
 he were so. Besides, JSTadine has a power of 
 making herself remembered which I have seen 
 in no one else. It is because she remembers 
 nothing herself. The law of contrasts is the 
 law of affinity.' 
 
 ' Madame Napraxine is the only woman in 
 whom virtue does not look ridiculous,' said an 
 old gentleman to his neighbour, overhearing 
 her name. - But then, true, this is because it 
 is not virtue at all, but something much more 
 disdainful and unapproachable. Have you 
 seen a peacock ravage a flower-garden?. He 
 does not care for any one of the flowers, but 
 all the same the carnations and roses and 
 geraniums fall in showers as he goes, strewing 
 them right and left, and drawiug his plumes 
 carelessly over the waste he has made behind
 
 1 84 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 him. Her lovers are no more to Madame 
 Napraxine than the flowers to the peacock ; but 
 the result is the same.' 
 
 ' Is that a quality you would rank very 
 highly? ' asked the person next him. 
 
 ' That depends on your standard,' he 
 answered. ' It is a power v/hich is to her just 
 what plumage is to the peacock — something 
 quite beyond imitation, and royal in its disdain- 
 ful beauty. I did not think men were ever 
 hopelessly in love in this century, but with her 
 I perceive that they are so.' 
 
 * Othmar ' began the other. 
 
 ' Othmar ? ' repeated the old diplomat, 
 ' Othmar reminds me of a man I once knew, 
 who was a collector of miniatures ; the col- 
 lection has been dispersed now by unworthy 
 heirs, but some twenty years ago it was a 
 marvel of completeness. Every admirable minia- 
 turist whom the world has possessed was re- 
 presented in it by his finest examples. It had 
 taken him tliirty-five years and more millions 
 to make it what it was. Any one else would 
 have thought it perfect. He did not, because 
 he liad not an example amongst it of Karl 
 Huth. You may never have heard of Karl
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 185 
 
 Huth ; I never had. He was a German minia- 
 turist of the sixteenth century ; he dwelt at 
 Daunenberg, a small place on the Elbe. Tliere 
 is nothing of him in any museum, and there 
 was supposed to be nothing of him anywhere 
 but his tradition. For thirty-five years my 
 friend hunted North and South Germany for 
 a Karl Huth. At length, such was his per- 
 severance that he did find an undeniable Karl 
 Huth, in the family of a tradesman at Grieffen- 
 hagen, in a little portrait of a woman, on ivory, 
 the size of a walnut, and signed and dated. 
 His joy was immense ; but, alas ! it was of short 
 duration. The burgomaster who owned it 
 would not part with it. My friend offered 
 sums untold for this three inches of ivory, 
 would have sold his estates to purchase it, 
 stopped at nothing in his frantic offers ; but 
 the burgomaster was rich, too, and inflexible ; 
 he would not sell the Karl Huth. There was 
 some fable in his family about it. Two ob- 
 stinacies met with a shock like the foreheads of 
 two elephants in combat ; of course the Teuton 
 obstinacy beat the Gaul's. The Karl Huth 
 remained in the burgomaster's possession, and 
 my friend had such an excess of rage and
 
 1 86 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 despair that it brought on gout and killed him 
 in an inn in that obscure Pomeranian town — 
 all because with three thousand five hundred 
 famous miniatures he failed to acquire one 
 obscure example. Now Madame Napraxine is 
 certainly not obscure, nevertheless she is the 
 Karl Huth of Othmar. He is one of those men 
 who can command and enjoy everything ; there- 
 fore, of course, he has set his heart on the only 
 woman, probably, in Europe who will not smile 
 on him. All his grand collection became worth- 
 less to my poor friend when once he failed 
 to include in it that single Karl Huth.' 
 
 Othmar, meanwhile, unconscious that they 
 talked of him, even unconscious that his passion 
 for his friend's wife had been ever suspected by 
 his w^orld, found the dinner tedious, and was 
 not distracted by his neighbours, both of whom 
 w^ere lovely women. 
 
 When they returned to the salons at the 
 further end of the great central drawing-room, 
 which was all white and silver, with satin 
 panels embroidered with silver thread, and 
 doors made of mirrors painted with groups of 
 flowers, there was seated all alone at one of 
 the little tables a very young girl, who w^ore a
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 187 
 
 plain wliite gown, with a plain black sash tied 
 around her waist, a I' enfant^ and a black rib- 
 bon holding up the thick masses of her fair 
 hair. 
 
 'That is Cendrillon,' thought Othmar, 
 moved to a vag;ue interest as he recalled the 
 story which Melville had told ; and he looked 
 on her more attentively. 
 
 As she rose at the entrance of the Duchess 
 he saw that she was very tall for her age ; 
 the slim, straight, unornamented frock became 
 her : she had neither awkwardness nor self-con- 
 sciousness, neither much timidity nor any self- 
 assertion. There was a look about her of 
 spirited but restrained life which was pathetic, 
 the look of any high-couraged young animal 
 which is too early and too rudely tamed. 
 
 ' Poor child ! ' thought Othmar in an in- 
 voluntary pity, as he saw the Duchess go up 
 to her, tap her carelessly on the shoulder with 
 a fan, present her to another lady and with 
 that other lady turn away indifferently after a 
 few words. The girl curtsied lo^v with per- 
 fect grace, and resumed her seat ; she appeared 
 used to be forgotten. She sat quite still, 
 neither embarrassed by neglect or solicitous of
 
 1 88 PRINCESS NAPkAXINE. 
 
 attention. She might have been a statue but 
 for her half-veiled eyes, of a luminous golden 
 brown shaded by long black lashes, and her 
 mouth like a rose, which had made him call 
 her a Greuze picture as she had passed him in 
 the boat. She had looked much happier in 
 the boat than she looked no\7 in the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 Othmar watched her a little while. No one 
 approached her : the men present did not care 
 for ingenues ; the women, it is needless to say, 
 cared still less. The Duchesse did not think it 
 necessary to trouble herself about a child wlio 
 was still in a convent and would soon be in 
 one for the rest of her days. She was not 
 averse to such an evidence of her own charity 
 as her young cousin presented sitting there, 
 carefully dressed, admirably educated, in living 
 testimony of tlie benevolence of Aurore de 
 Vannes ; but there was no need for more than 
 the tap with the fan and the good-natured 
 indifferent Comment va-t-on ce soh% petite ? 
 
 Othmar w^aited some ten or twelve minutes, 
 then approached his hostess. 
 
 ' Duchesse, will you do me the honour to 
 present me to Mdlle. de Valogne ? '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 189 
 
 Slie stared at him in astonishment. 
 
 ' Certainly — yes ; why not ? — But how did 
 you know her name P And she is only a child 
 at Sacre Coeur.' 
 
 ' Melville told me her sad little story and 
 of all your amiability towards her. Surely she 
 will soon be a very beautiful woman : ' 
 
 ' Elle nest pas mal,' said the Duchess, 
 somewhat irritably. ' Melville is always ro- 
 mancing, you know ; there is nothing to be 
 romantic about ; she is destined to the reli- 
 gious life ; it was her grandmother's wish, and 
 is her own. As for presenting you to her, she 
 is only a child ; it would not be well to make 
 her think herself in the world. If you would 
 excuse me ' 
 
 ' Pray present me, Duchesse,' he persisted. 
 ' I assure you I do not eat children ; and if she 
 be doomed to take the veil so soon, the world 
 will lose her anyliow. But will you have the 
 heart to cut off all that hair ? ' 
 
 ' You will always have your own way,' said 
 Madame de Vannes, wlio knew very well that 
 he did not have it where most he cared ; then 
 she took him across to where her young cousin 
 sat, and said, ' Yseulte, Count Othmar wishes
 
 igo PRIiXCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 to know you ; he is a friend of Monsignor 
 Melville's.' 
 
 The girl made him the same grand curtsy, 
 which she had made before, only a little less 
 low than she had given to the lady. Then she 
 seated herself once more, and waited for him to 
 speak first, as we wait for a royal person to 
 do so. 
 
 He spoke to her of Melville, divining that 
 the way to her confidence would be through 
 his regard for the early period of her child- 
 hood. She listened with pleasure to his praises 
 of her grandmother's friend, and answered him 
 in few syllables ; but the restraint seemed to 
 him the result neither of timidity nor of want 
 of intelligence, but of the reserve which had 
 been imposed upon her alike at her convent 
 and here at Millo, where no one heeded her 
 unless the Due threw her a good-natured 
 glance, or the Duchesse a petulant word of 
 censure. It was easy to see that on a nature 
 formed for light and laughter, the sense of 
 being unneeded and undesired in the home of 
 others had early cast shadows too deep for 
 childhood. 
 
 ' How very handsome she is ! ' he thought,
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 191 
 
 as he spoke of Melville and his many noble 
 works. Close to her he could see the exceed- 
 ing regularity of her features, the splendour of 
 her eyes, the purity of her complexion, which 
 was not the narcissus whiteness of Nadine Na- 
 praxine, but that childlike fairness under which 
 the colour mantles at any passing thought, or 
 any effort or exercise. Her form, too, had all 
 the slenderness and indecision of youth, but it 
 had also the certainty of a magnificent woman- 
 hood. Her low dress showed her white shoul- 
 ders, her quickly-breathing childlike breast, her 
 beautiful throat. 
 
 ' All that to be wasted in a cloister ! ' he 
 thought, with repugnance. It seemed a sin 
 against nature's finest work, youth's most 
 gracious grace. To be sixteen years old, and 
 to have a face as fair as a flower, and to be 
 the last of a great race, and yet to be doomed 
 to be joyless, loverless, childless, from birth 
 unto death, because a little gold and silver 
 were lacking to her ! To the master of mil- 
 lions it seemed the crudest irony of fate tliat 
 he had ever encountered. Why should tlie 
 absurd codes and prejudices of the world make 
 him powerless to give tliis unhappy child out
 
 192 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 of his abundance the Httle which she would 
 need to take her place amidst those common 
 human joys which the poorest can attain, but 
 which the selfishness of man and the customs of 
 society forbade to her, merely because she had 
 been nobly born ? He was thinking of her fate 
 all the while that he talked to her of Melville ; 
 he was thinking of that supple slender form 
 disguised under the nun's heavy garb, of that 
 abundant hair shorn and falling to the stone 
 floor. Could those gay, good-natured, idle, 
 spendthrift people who condemned her so 
 lightly to such a sacrifice, not surrender one of 
 their luxuries, one of their folhes, to save her ? 
 Then he pictured to himself, with a smile 
 at his own whimsical conceit, the tailors' bills of 
 Madame de Vannes curtailed, her caprices sacri- 
 ficed, her equipages diminished, her 'parties de 
 chasse discontinued, her superfluous jewels sold, 
 to furnish with the result attained a dower to 
 her portionless cousin ! These good people 
 called themselves Christians ; nevertheless, such 
 generosity would have seemed to them as im- 
 possible as to go out on to the boulevards in the 
 goatskin of John the Baptist. Would there 
 ever be a reliction that should influence the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 193 
 
 lives of its professors ? Christianity had had its 
 own way for nigh two thousand years, and had 
 scarcely left a mark on the world so far as prac- 
 tical renunciation went. 
 
 While he mused thus, he talked lightly and 
 kindly to the girl, but he met with little 
 response. The convent education had taught 
 her silence, and she thought that he had only 
 come to her side because he had pitied her 
 sohtude ; that thouglit made her shy and proud. 
 With all his good will, he failed to make 
 much way into her friendship, or to elicit 
 much more than monosyllabic replies, and he 
 would have felt his benevolence wearisome 
 had it not been that there was so much true 
 loveliness in her features and in her form that 
 he was not glad of his release when she was 
 called by the Duchesse to the piano. 
 
 ' Could you make anything of Yseulte ? ' 
 said the Due de Vannes to him. ' She is the true 
 ingenue of the novelist and dramatist ; she 
 knows nothing beyond the four walls of the 
 convent. It is a type fast disappearing, even 
 with us, under the influence of American women 
 and English romances. I am not sure that it is 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 not to be regretted ; it is sometliing, at least, 
 to have a girlhood like a white rose.' 
 
 ' But you are going to set the rose to wither 
 before the sanctuary of Marie ? ' said Othmar, 
 still moved by his one idea. 
 
 The Due shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' Oh, that is uiy wife's affair. Myself, I 
 think it is a pity. The child will be a mag- 
 nificent woman ; but then, you see, she lias no 
 dower. Where can she go except to the 
 cloisters? Listen! she sings well' 
 
 She was singing then, and her voice rose 
 with singular richness, like the notes of a night- 
 ngale smiting the silence of a golden southern 
 noon. The quality of her voice was pure and 
 strong, with a sound in it as of unshed tears, of 
 restrained, and perhaps unconscious, emotion. 
 
 ' And she will only sing the Laus Deo and 
 the Kyrie Eleison^ thought Othmar, ' and no 
 one will hear her except a few scores of sad- 
 hearted, stuj)id women, who will succeed in 
 making her as sad-hearted and as stupid as 
 themselves ! ' 
 
 What she rendered was the sweetest of 
 all the simple ISToels written by Eoumanille, 
 the song of the blind child who begs her
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 195 
 
 mother to take her to see the Enfant Jesus in 
 the church, and to whom the mother long re- 
 phes, in chiding and hardness of heart : ' What 
 use, since thou canst not see ? ' Saint- Saens 
 had set the naive and pathetic words to music 
 which was penetrated with that esiyrit 'pro- 
 vencal which has in it ' les pleurs du peuple et 
 les fleurs du printemps ; ' and the voice of the 
 girl was pure, tender, and solemn, in unison 
 with what she treated. 
 
 ' Je sais qu'au tombeau seul finit ma voie obscure ; 
 Je sais encor 
 Que je ne verrai pas, divine creature, 
 Ta face d'or. 
 
 * Mais qu'est-il besoin d'yeux pour adorer et croire ? 
 Si mes yeux sont 
 A te voir impuissants, mes mains, 6 Dieu de gloire, 
 Te toucheront ! ' 
 
 L'aveugle a ses genoux pleure si fort, et prie 
 
 Sur un tel ton, 
 D'un air si dechirant, que la mere attendrie 
 
 N'a plus dit non. 
 
 Oh ! comme la pauvrette, en entrant dans la grotte. 
 
 En tressaillait ! 
 De Jesus sur son coeur elle mit la menotte : 
 
 Elle voyait ! 
 
 Of all those who listened to her, the old 
 minister, who had spoken of Karl Iluth, and 
 
 2
 
 196 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 Otbmar himself, were the only persons touched 
 by the Hkeness of the words of the Noel to the 
 destiny which awaited the singer of it. 
 
 ' Je sais qu'au tombeau seul finit ma voie obscure/ 
 
 Othmar repeated to himself. ' Poor child ! 
 there will be no miracle wrought for her.' 
 
 It seemed to him pathetic, and even cruel. 
 
 She had sung with science and accuracy 
 which w^ere in contrast with the very youthful 
 cadence of her voice, and when slie ceased there 
 was a murmur of applause. She blushed a little, 
 and with a composure that was almost dignity 
 accepted the compliments paid her, and w^ent 
 back, without a word, to her seat. 
 
 ' She would make a name for herself as an 
 artist if she were not the last Comtesse de 
 Valogne,' thought Othmar. ' Poor child ! it is 
 hard to bear all the harness and curb of rank 
 and liave none of its gilded oats to eat.' 
 
 A pretty elegante was now singing a song 
 of Judic's with even more suggestion by gesture 
 and of glance than the orioinal version of it 
 gave ; the air of the drawing-room rippled with 
 her silvery notes and their response of subdued 
 laughter ; everyone forgot Mdlle. de Valogne
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. ic,y 
 
 and the Provencal Noel. When Othmar looked 
 again for her, she was gone : the salon saw her 
 no more that night. 
 
 ' You were soon tired, Othmar,' said the 
 Duchesse. ' Naturally : what should you find 
 to say to a child from a convent ? She has not 
 two ideas.' 
 
 ' She speaks little, certainly,' he answered ; 
 ' but I am not sure that it is from want of 
 ideas ; and even if she have no ideas, what 
 does a beautiful woman want with them ? — and 
 she is beautiful.' 
 
 ' I thought you liked clever women.' 
 ' Clever ! Oh, what a comprehensive word. 
 It is like that balloon they advertise, which you 
 can either fold up in your pocket or float as 
 high as the moon. As for Mdlle. de Yalogne, 
 I should think she was very inteUigent, to judge 
 by her brow and her eyes. But convents do 
 not nourish their pupils on Eenan and Huxley.' 
 ' Eenan ? ' said the Duchess, with a charm- 
 ing affectation of ignorance. ' Oh, that is the 
 man who writes so many volumes about him- 
 self to explain why he cannot bring himself 
 to believe some story about an almond bough 
 that swallowed snakes ! When Voltaire began
 
 198 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 that sort of thing, it seemed shocking, but it 
 
 was new ; nowadays it is not new and nobody 
 
 is shocked ; it is only tiresome.' 
 
 ' But you, Madame, who laugh, yet respect 
 
 the Church enough to sacrifice a virgin to it as 
 
 the Greek to the Minotaur ? ' 
 
 ' There is no other retreat possible for girls 
 
 of good family who are portionless,' said the 
 
 Duchess very positively. 
 
 ' But there are many men who do not 
 
 marry for a dower.' 
 
 ' Perhaps, but not with us ; it would be 
 quite impossible, an unheard of thing,' said the 
 Duchesse, scandahsed at such a suggestive vio- 
 lation of all etiquette and family dignity. 
 
 From time immemorial the younger sons 
 or the unmarriageable daughters of the Valogne, 
 of the Creusac, of the d'Authemont, of all the 
 great races whose blood met in this child, had 
 hidden their narrowed fates Avith decorum and 
 statehness in the refuge of the cloisters ; why 
 should she, because she had been born in the 
 latter half of the nineteenth century, rebel 
 against so just a disposal? And she did not 
 rebel at all, would not, unless some man made 
 love to her and put rebelhon in her head.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 199 
 
 That man would not be Otlimar ; he had only 
 one thought — J^adine Napraxine. If she had 
 not been sure of that, she would not even have 
 presented him to her young cousin, for she was 
 a very proud Avoman despite her frivolity, and 
 to seek a rich alhance for a poor relative would 
 have seemed to her the last of deo-radations. 
 Her own people, and her husband's, had always 
 married as sovereigns do, accepting and confer- 
 ring equal advantages. 
 
 ' Poverty has the right to be as proud as it 
 chooses so long as it accepts nothing ; when 
 once it has accepted anything, it has become 
 mendicity,' had said often the old Marquise de 
 Creusac to her granddaughter, and Yseulte 
 would not do dishonour to that lesson. 
 
 ' One can trust her implicitly,' said Madame 
 de Vannes once to her husband, who had 
 answered : 
 
 ' Oh, yes, my dear ; that is the result of 
 an old-fashioned education. When your Blan- 
 chette and Toinon are at her age, they will 
 know everything objectionable under the sun, 
 but they will not let you know that they know 
 it. You are bringing them up move britannico ! '
 
 PRIXCESS AAPRAXINE. 
 
 CHAPTEE YIII. 
 
 YsEULTE DE Valogne, wakiiig the next morning 
 and looking through the little panes of her high 
 window in the roof at the landscape which the 
 red leaves of the Canadian vine framed in 
 crimson, was conscious of a new interest in her 
 life. Some one, she did not know whom, for in 
 her confusion she had not heard his name, had 
 spoken to her with kindness, and that deference 
 to her incipient womanhood which is the 
 sweetest flattery to a very young girl. Othmar, 
 with the grace of his manner, the seriousness 
 and .coldness which made him different to the 
 men of his tune, and his handsome features, to 
 which an habitual reserve had given that 
 expression of self-control and of melancholy 
 which most attracts her sex, had seemed to her 
 imagination like some gracious knight of old 
 bending to pity her loneliness, and to succour 
 that timidity which was in so much due to 
 her pride and her unwillingness to be regarded
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 201 
 
 with compassion and to her dread lest she 
 should seem to seek attention. 
 
 She thought of him with a vague personal 
 interest stronger than any she had felt in her 
 simple and monotonous life, since her cliild- 
 hood on the He St. Louis had become to 
 her like an old book of prayer, shut up 
 unused, with the lavender and southern- wood 
 of long dead summers faded and dried inside 
 it. Though she was only sixteen, that child- 
 hood seemed so far, so very far, away. It 
 would have appeared to Blanchette and Toinon, 
 with their artificial, excited, blase little lives, a 
 dull and austere childhood enough, passed 
 beside the infirmities and incapacities of age, 
 and with no other active pleasure tlian to 
 gather marguerites on the grass islands of the 
 Seine or to hear a Magnificat sung at Notre 
 Dame. 
 
 The rooms they lived in had been narrow 
 and dark, their food had been of the simplest, 
 their days regulated with exact and severe 
 precision. But she had been so happy ! When 
 her grandmother, with the white hair like spun 
 silk and the thin small hands, on which one 
 great diamond sparkled — sole relic of a splendid
 
 202 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 past — said, with a smile, ' C'est bien fait, mon 
 enfant,' all the universe could have added no- 
 thing to her content. 
 
 When the old man servant Benoit had taken 
 her out to the Sainte Chapelle, or the graves 
 at the Abbaye, and had told her tales of how 
 her forefathers had died on the scaffold, in the 
 noyades^ on the battle-fields of Jemappes, or 
 in the slaughter of Quiberon, she had known 
 that purest of all pride, which rejoices in the 
 honour and loyalty of the dead who liave 
 begotten us. All the air about her had been 
 redolent of fidelity, of courage, of dignity. 
 She had breathed in that fine clear atmo- 
 sphere of integrity as the transparent dianthus 
 drinks in the sea-water which the sunbeams 
 pierce with vivifying gold. When the Mar- 
 quise had sometimes taken, out of old sandal- 
 wood coffers, antique brocades, dusky old 
 jewels, faded yellow letters, perhaps a ribbon 
 and a star of some extinct order once worn at 
 Marly or at Amboise, the child had listened 
 with reverent ear and beating heart to the stories 
 which went with the relics and keepsakes, and 
 it had always seemed to her as if some per- 
 fume of the past entered her very veins, as its
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 203 
 
 fragrance is poured upwards from the root 
 into the flower. Nor had it been always melan- 
 choly, tliat innocent, tranquil life ; gentlemen 
 of the old courtly habits had made their bow 
 humbly in those narrow rooms, and the old 
 gaiete gauloise had laughed sometimes beneath 
 the sad serenity of losses nobly borne. There 
 had been merry days when Benoit had taken 
 her in one of the boats which crossed the Seine 
 in summer, and had rowed to one of those 
 quiet nooks of which he had the secret, and 
 had landed with her amidst the tall hay grasses, 
 and had set her noonday meal there — a little 
 fruit and roll of bread — watching the poplars 
 quiver in the light, and the women work upon 
 the shore, and the clumsy brown brigs come 
 and go on the broad breast of the river ; and 
 she had clasped a great sheaf of may and daisies 
 and kingcups in her arms, and had run hither 
 and thither in a very ecstasy of limbs set free 
 and eyes delighted, and had cried her delight 
 aloud to the old man, who had nodded and 
 smiled and said, ' Oui, oui, c'est beau,' but had 
 thought, with a pang at his faithful heart, ' Si 
 
 jeunesse savait .' 
 
 Then, whilst she was still a young child,
 
 204 r/^/NC£SS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 there had fallen across her life the darkness of 
 the ' annee terrible.' The Marquise de Creusac 
 had been at once too brave and too poor to 
 quit Paris when the wall of iron and of fire 
 had closed in around it. Her sons had died, 
 one at the cavalry charge of Fraischweiler, the 
 other during the siege of Strasburg ; she herself 
 never rose from her bed during that ghastly 
 winter, and her last breath left her lips as the 
 Prussians entered Paris. The horror of that 
 time could never wholly pass from the mind of 
 Yseulte. Benoit had travelled with her to the 
 chateau of Bois les Eois, and placed her under 
 the roof of her only living relative, Aurore de 
 Vannes, who herself was momentarily saddened 
 and touched by the misfortunes of the country 
 and the loss of many of her kinsmen, and in 
 that chastened mood was kinder to the little 
 friendless fugitive than she might have been at 
 another and less desperate time. 
 
 All that time seemed very far away to 
 Yseulte now ; to earhest youth, a few years 
 seems like the gap of a century. 
 
 Benoit was dead now, like the mistress he 
 had adored and served, with that loyal service 
 which, in this later time, one class has lost the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 205 
 
 power to inspire and the other class lias lost the 
 capacity to render ; but those happy mid- 
 summer holidays on the islets of the Seine 
 were always in her mind whenever she felt the 
 touch of the fresh air or smelt the scent of 
 growing leaves. They had spread a fragrance 
 like that of summer all over her memories of 
 childhood. She pitied Blanche tte and Toinon, 
 who cared nothing for daisies and kingcups ; 
 who tired so soon of their costly playthings ; 
 who knew their Trouville and Biarritz by 
 heart, who, when they played at their games, 
 were either peevish or bored, and who looked 
 with all the scorn of fashionable eight-year- 
 olders on a toilette which was a season out of 
 date. Blanchette and Toinon would die with- 
 out ever having been young ; their cousin, who 
 at sixteen was still entirely a child, had to die 
 to the world before she had bet^un to live. 
 
 She leaned out of her window in the chill 
 of the early morning, and she watched the 
 sea mists curl up and drift away before the 
 sun, the mountains come forth slowly from the 
 clouds obscuring them, the light touch and 
 reveal one by one the low white bastides, the 
 grey olive yards, the bosquets of orange and
 
 2o6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 lemon, the fields where the young corn already 
 was spreading, the fantastic buildings which 
 diversified and vulgarised the beauty of the 
 scene, and the grey towers of S. Pharamond 
 sober and severe amidst its ilex woods by 
 contrast with the coquetteries and motley 
 phantasies of its neighbours. 
 
 ' I wonder,' she thought for the hundredth 
 time, 'if it were only because he pitied me 
 that he talked to me ? ' 
 
 She went on wondering who he was, what 
 he was ; she did not even know that he owned 
 S. Pharamond, and dared ask no one about 
 him ; all the gay, thoughtless, inquisitive ques- 
 tions which youth loves to put, whilst often too 
 impatient to wait for an answer to them, had 
 been too perpetually frozen on her lips for 
 silence not to have become a second nature 
 to her. 
 
 ' What you can observe is well,' her grand- 
 mother had often said to her ; ' it is the wheat 
 you have gleaned, and you have a right to it. 
 But never gain knowledge by asking ques- 
 tions ; it is the short cut across the fields which 
 only trespassers take.' 
 
 At the convent any interrogations which
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIXE. 207 
 
 slie had been tempted to make had been re- 
 pressed as too apposite to be convenient, and 
 of the Duchesse de Yannes she woidd liave no 
 more have asked a question or a favour than 
 she would have asked one of the lay figures 
 on which the Duchesse's marvellous costumes 
 were built up, bit by bit, as idea succeeded to 
 idea in the brains of great artists of the 
 toilette. 
 
 She had scarcely heard a dozen sentences 
 from Madame Aurore in the half-dozen years 
 through which she had spent her summer 
 vacations at their great castle in the Vosges, 
 a lonely place where she had usually only 
 the house-servants as companions ; but in 
 winter at Millo she had been always happy, 
 for near Millo dwelt her foster-mother, a 
 Savoyarde, who had become w^ell-to-do since 
 the time when, a poor young unwedded mother 
 astray on the mercy of Paris, she had been 
 glad to give her breast to the motherless child 
 of the Comtesse de Yalogne. Through the 
 influence and aid of the Marquise de Creusac 
 the woman Nicole had ultimately married her 
 lover, a sturdy peasant of the environs of Nice, 
 and by thrift and hard work and good luck
 
 2og PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 and good husbandry combined, tbey now owned 
 a bastide and an orange-orchard, and could 
 receive ' la petite Comtesse ' with honey and 
 cream and conserves of their own manufac- 
 tures. They had no children, and Mile, de 
 Valogne still filled in the heart of her foster- 
 mother the place which had been empty and 
 cold when a month-old baby had gasped out 
 its last breath of feeble life in a Paris hospital 
 sixteen years before. 
 
 ' What is the good of it all, the 'pkioi is 
 dead and gone ? ' said Nicole Sandroz many 
 a time, looking over her hives and hen-houses, 
 her rose-beds and her green peas, all bloom- 
 ing for the Paris market. But this mood was 
 transient ; the j)etiot was not to be recalled by 
 regret, and the solid delight of early vegetables 
 and their value remained to her. She was a 
 good woman, though hard in some ways and 
 greedy ; but she was the only creature who 
 gave Yseulte de Valogne anything of the com- 
 fort of human affection and tender, blind, 
 unreasoning admiration. To Nicole ' mon en- 
 fant la Comtesse ' was an object of honest 
 adoration, to be waited on, worshipped, petted, 
 slaved for if need be ; and this wholly sincere,
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 209 
 
 if clumsy, devotion had always been to the 
 starved heart of the girl as the one scrap of 
 moss on the frozen sea and shore is to the 
 lonely and lost voyager. 
 
 When the dark, hard-featured face of the 
 Ni^oise presented itself at the convent gates 
 of Faiel, and with her load of oranges or 
 strawberries, of camellias or roses, she came 
 out of the hot sun into the quietness and dusk 
 of the parloir and stretched out her big sturdy 
 arms to her nursling, the proud eyes of 
 Yseidte filled with tears as no one else ever 
 saw them do. She was a little child once more 
 clinging to her nurse's skirts in the old panelled 
 rooms in the He St. Louis. 
 
 The low white walls of the bastide were 
 set upon a hill-side not half-an-hour's walk 
 from Millo, a fragrant, pleasant, homely place, 
 with violets cultured like corn, and roses grown 
 like currant-bushes, for the flower-shops of 
 Paris and the purchase of the foreigners in 
 Nice. The mere presence of Mcole made her 
 visits to the southern shore longed for and 
 enjoyed, and compensated to her for the fretful 
 teazing of her little cousins, the ill-concealed 
 enmity of their governesses, the perpetual sense 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 2IO PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 of being undesired by any one there, and the 
 many shghts which the indifference of her 
 hosts made them careless of inflicting. Aurore 
 de Vannes would have said, if remonstrated 
 with, that the girl could want for nothing. She 
 had two pretty rooms all to herself, and a 
 piano in one of them ; had as many gowns as 
 she could wear, though, of course, at her age 
 they were the frocks of a pensionnaire ; and 
 could pass her time in the schoolroom or in the 
 gardens very much at her pleasure ; she could 
 even drive out in the basket-carriage if Blanch- 
 ette and Toinon did not want it. The exist- 
 ence must, she would have argued, at any rate 
 be very much livelier than the convent. 
 
 In the first winter she had passed at Millo 
 no one had come there but herself ^ and she 
 had spent her time almost wholly with her 
 foster-mother ; later on, when the house was 
 full — as it was now — she obtained in her holi- 
 days a large amount of liberty, from the fact 
 that it was no one's especial duty to look after 
 her. She used her freedom innocently enough, 
 and always took the path under the olives 
 which led to the flower-farm of the Sandroz. 
 
 Once the Duchesse had said to her irritably.
 
 PRINCESS NAP RAX I NE, 211 
 
 ' What charm do you find in peasants grubbing 
 among peastalks and growing salad?' But she 
 had not waited for an answer, which was fortu- 
 nate, as Yseulte would have been too shy to 
 give the true one, — that they loved her a little. 
 
 The Duchesse concluded that the gover- 
 nesses of her children did their duty in attend- 
 ing on her young cousin. The governesses, how- 
 ever, were willing that one who was only an 
 extra charge to them should do as she chose so 
 long as she brought no trouble on themselves ; 
 few mornings passed without her finding her 
 way to the welcome of her old nurse, to sit at 
 pleasure under the shadow of the orange leaves, 
 or drift through clear water in the big market 
 boat. 
 
 Madame de Vannes was, as the world in 
 general would have said, very generous to her ; 
 her education was of the best, the clothes pro- 
 vided for her were elegant and suitable, her linen 
 was of the finest, her boots and shoes were the 
 prettiest possible ; the Duchesse did everything 
 well that she did at all ; but beyond a remark 
 that her hair was too low or too high on her 
 forehead, or that she did not wear the right 
 gloves with the right frock, Yseulte could 
 
 p 2
 
 212 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 scarcely recall twenty phrases that she had 
 heard from her august cousin. Now and then 
 the heart of the girl had risen in an impulse of 
 ardour towards liberty, towards independence. 
 She was conscious of more talent than the man- 
 ner of her education had developed ; in a vague 
 way she sometimes fancied the world might 
 hold some place for her, some freedom of effort 
 or attainment ; but all the habits of obedience 
 made a cage for her as surely as the laws made 
 one. Her grandmother had written with a 
 hand half paralysed by death to commend her 
 to the care of her relative, and amongst her 
 dying words the command : ' Obey Aurore 
 as you have obeyed me,' had been often re- 
 peated. Any thought of rebellion was stifled 
 by her sense of duty as soon as it arose. 
 
 This morning, as she leaned out of her 
 window she could see the white house of the 
 Sandroz, half a league away, amongst the olive 
 foliage, and what was still more to her, the 
 tiny bell tower of a little whitewashed church, 
 the parish church of S, Pharamond, in whose 
 parish Millo also lay. The one cracked bell 
 sounding feebly for matins recalled her to the 
 present hour, and reminded her that the mor-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 213 
 
 row was the feast day of S. Cecilia to wliom 
 the building was dedicated. 
 
 ' He will be so vexed if the altar be not 
 dressed,' she thought. The old priest of Millo 
 was accustomed to look to her for that service. 
 The Duchesse always gave him two thousand 
 francs in gold for his poor at New Year, but 
 there her heed of her vicar ended. Yseulte, 
 who had no gold to give, brought him flowers 
 and boughs for his little, dusky, lonely place, 
 where only a few fishermen and peasants ever 
 knelt, and she sometimes sang at his Offices. 
 
 When she remembered the day, she wasted 
 no more time at the window ; she drank the 
 cup of milk and ate the roll which the maid 
 appointed to her service brought, and putting 
 on a little hat of fur, went out through the 
 house where even Blanchette and Toinon were 
 still asleep, and only a few of the under servants 
 were stirring. 
 
 It was cold, but already grown blight, with 
 sunshine, and the promise of a warm noonday. 
 
 The gardens of Millo, with their autumn 
 luxuriance still prolonged, were sparkling with 
 sunbeams and dew-drops ; their aloes and cacti 
 pierced with broad sword-blades the blue clear
 
 214 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 air ; the latest roses kissed the earliest camellias ; 
 the pink, the amber, the white, the purple, of 
 groves of chrysanthemums, glowed in the par- 
 terres ; but she did not dare to give them even 
 a glance. No one ever plucked a flower there. 
 She went quickly through the alleys, and 
 avenues, over the lawns, and under the herceaux^ 
 and after walking about a mile came to where 
 the boundary of MiUo was fixed by a high wall 
 of closely-clipped arbutus, and only the small 
 iron gate which Othmar had unlocked the pre- 
 vious night gave access to the lands of S. Phara- 
 mond, which lay beyond. 
 
 ' There will be sure to be something here,' 
 she thought, as she turned the latch of the 
 gate wliich he had unthinkingly left open, and 
 passed through the aperture into the thick ilex 
 wood on the other side of the bearberry wall. 
 She was not surprised to find it open, for the 
 gardeners of the two houses often held com- 
 munication ; and she had been constantly per- 
 mitted by those of S. Pharamond to w^ander 
 about its grounds and pluck its commoner 
 plants. It was a thing she had done a hundred 
 times in the winters she had passed at Millo. 
 There were all kinds of plants growing up
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 215 
 
 at Nicole's bastide ; but as she liad no money 
 to pay, the child had always felt a delicacy 
 in asking, for them. Her foster-m. other would 
 indeed have refused her nothing ; but to take 
 as a gift the late-come quatre-saisons rose, or 
 the early-blooming clochettes, which the San- 
 droz could sell so highly by sending them 
 away in little air-tight tin boxes to Paris, 
 would have appeared to the generous temper 
 of the last of the Valognes a very ungenerous 
 act. 
 
 Othmar, who had slept ill, rose early that 
 day. Wlien he had bathed and dressed, he 
 strolled out on to his terrace, where Nadine 
 Napraxine had eaten her strawberries. Though 
 winter, the morning was mild, the sunrise 
 glorious. Through the great gloom of his ilex 
 groves he could see the sparkle of blue waves. 
 It was not the scenery he cared most for ; 
 he liked the great windy shadowy plains of 
 eastern Europe, the snow of mountains more 
 sombre and severe than these hyacinth-hued 
 maritime Alps, the gigantic grey walls of At- 
 lantic rollers breaking on rugged rocks of Spain, 
 or Britanny, or Scotland ; but he was not in- 
 sensible to the present beauty which surrounded
 
 2i6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 him, if it were brighter and paler of hue, gayer 
 of tone, softer in character, than the scenes he 
 preferred. 
 
 He stood and looked idly, and thinking, 
 ' If I were wise I should go to Paris this morn- 
 ing.' 
 
 What was the use of letting all his years 
 languish and drift aimlessly away for sake of a 
 woman who made sport of his pain ? Yonder, 
 hidden by the curve of a distant cliff, was La 
 Jacquemerille, and its mistress of the moment 
 was, no doubt, sleeping soundly enough amongst 
 the lace and cambric and satin of her bed, and 
 would not have lain awake one moment think- 
 ing of him, though he had thought of her all 
 night. 
 
 ' Were people ever sleepless for love ? ' she 
 had said once, with her pretty cynical smile. 
 'That must have been very long ago, before 
 the chemists had given us chloral ! ' 
 
 As he stood and thus made his picture of 
 her in his mind sleeping, as the narcissus which 
 she resembled sleeps in the moonlight, he saw a 
 figure underneath the ilex boughs which was 
 not hers, but had a grace of its own, though 
 wholly unlike her.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 217 
 
 It was the figure of a girl in a grey close 
 dress which defined the outline of her tall 
 slim limbs. She wore a fur hat, and had some 
 fur about her shoulders ; the sunbeams of the 
 early day touched the gold in her hair and 
 shone in her hazel eyes. She was gathering now 
 one datura, now another, of those spared by the 
 December mistral, and coming up to a bed of 
 camellias, paused doubtfully before their blos- 
 soms ; she came there like one accustomed to 
 the place, and who merely did what she had 
 often done before. Her grey gown, her sunny 
 hair under its crown of sable, her hands filled 
 with flowers, made a picture underneath the 
 palms, amidst the statues, against the ilex dark- 
 ness. 
 
 He recognised the child whom he had last 
 seen in her Avhite gown with the black sash 
 a few hours before in the Duchesse's drawing- 
 rooms. 
 
 For the moment, he put on her appearance 
 there that construction which a man, subject 
 from his boyhood to the advances and solicita- 
 tions of the other sex, was most apt to conceive 
 of such an unsought visit. But as he saw how 
 unconcerned, natural, and childhke her move-
 
 2i8 PRINCESS NAP RAX I NE. 
 
 ments were as she paused, now by this shrub 
 and now by that, or sat down on a bench 
 to arrange some asters in her basket, he as 
 rapidly discarded his suspicions and guessed 
 the truth, that she had been ignorant of who 
 he was the previous evening, and had come to 
 his gardens by chance or by custom. 
 
 As he hesitated whether to descend and 
 make her welcome, or to retreat unseen 
 into the house and tell his servants to say 
 nothing, she looked up and saw him. She 
 dropped her flowers on the grass, and turned 
 to run away like any startled nymph in classic 
 verse, but he was too quick for her ; he had 
 descended the few steps from his terrace and 
 had approached her before she could fly from 
 him. 
 
 ' Do not be so unkind to me,' he said, with 
 deference and courtesy, for he divined how 
 ashamed she was to have been found there. 
 ' There is little in these erardens after beincr 
 swept by the mistral, which is a cruel horticul- 
 turist, but the hothouses, I hope, may give you 
 something worthier your acceptance.' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' she murmured, ' there 
 has been no one here so long '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 219 
 
 He had spoken as though her presence was 
 the most natural thing in the world, but neither 
 his composed acceptance of it or his courteous 
 welcome could reconcile her to the position she 
 occupied. She coloured painflilly, and her 
 breath came and went in an agitation she 
 could not subdue. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' she stammered again ; 
 ' I did not know — last night I did not hear your 
 name — there has been no one here so long. 
 Oh, what can you think of me ! ' 
 
 Her eyes were filled with sudden tears ; her 
 colour faded as suddenly as it had come. She 
 was only a child, and had been reared by stern 
 formahties and by chill precepts. 
 
 ' Think ? ' echoed Othmar ; ' that you are 
 kind enough to treat me as a neighbour. 
 Neighbours are not always friends, but I hope 
 we shall be so. That little gate has no use in 
 it unless it be an open portal for friendship to 
 pass to and fro ; I walked through it to Millo 
 last night.' 
 
 But his good nature and gentleness could 
 not avail to console her for what was in her 
 own eyes, as it would have been in that of her 
 relatives, an unpardonable and infamous mis-
 
 220 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 demeanour. Now that slie recognised in the 
 speaker the same person whom her cousin had 
 presented to her the previous evening, she 
 longed for the lawn she stood on to open and 
 cover her. A piteous dismay took possession 
 of her; would he ever believe that she had 
 not known him as the owner of S. Pharamond ? 
 Would he ever believe that S. Pharamond 
 had been that morning, as far as her knowledge 
 had gone, still unoccupied as it had been for 
 ten mortal years ? 
 
 All the lessons of her convent life made 
 her act appear in her own eyes one of in- 
 excusable audacity, unspeakable horror, — to 
 have come into the gardens of a stranger when 
 he was himself there to take his flowers ! 
 
 The kindness of his gaze and the cordiality 
 of his welcome could do nothing to console 
 her ; she was barely conscious of them ; the 
 colour in her face mounted to the loose curls 
 escaping from her httle fur cap ; she laid her 
 basket down and joined her hands in an un- 
 conscious supplication. 
 
 ' There has been no one here so long,' she 
 said yet again with pathetic appeal in her 
 voice. ' I thought I did no harm ; M. Duvel-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 221 
 
 leroy, the head gardener, has always let me 
 come when there is a feast day. Indeed, I 
 have never taken the rare flowers, only those 
 which he did not want. It is the parish church 
 of S. Pharamond, too ; I did not know I did 
 wrong — pray do not blame the gardeners.' 
 
 ' Blame them, wlien I am so much their 
 debtor ! I wish you would believe that you 
 are the queen of all the gardens here. Why, 
 even still you are hesitating to pluck the 
 camellias ! ' 
 
 ' Because they told me never to touch them ; 
 I only looked at them ; I think M. Duvelleroy 
 sends them to Nice to sell. Indeed — indeed — 
 I have never taken but what he told me I might 
 have.' 
 
 What seemed so very terrible to her was 
 that she must appear to the owner of S. Phara- 
 mond as a thief of his flowers ! A vague 
 idea flashed across her mind, that perhaps she 
 might pay for the value of them — but then 
 she had no money ! The old jewels of her 
 mother were to be hers, indeed ; but when ? 
 She had not even seen them since her grand- 
 mother had died ; perhaps they were to be 
 sold to defray the cost of her entrance into con-
 
 222 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 vent life ; she did not know. The great trouble 
 of her spirit was reflected in her face, which was 
 full of conflicting emotions ; her mouth, which 
 had been too silent the night before, trembled 
 a little ; the tears gleamed under her long 
 lashes. Othmar thought her much more in- 
 teresting with all this expression breaking up 
 from under the mask of white marble which 
 the convent had made her wear. In her 
 bewilderment she became altogether a child ; 
 and the stately quiet of her manner fell away 
 from her like an embroidered ermine-lined 
 robe too heavy for her years. 
 
 ' Do they sell my camellias — ^the rogues ? ' 
 he said with a smile. ' Of course you shall go 
 away if you will, but not empty-handed. There 
 must be something better worth having than 
 those frost-bitten roses.' 
 
 He called a man who was sweeping up 
 leaves on a lawn here. 
 
 ' Go and tell your chief to cut his finest 
 orchids and bring them in a basket to me 
 himself: any other rare thing he may have in 
 the houses he can cut also. Mademoiselle,' 
 he said, turning to the girl, ' you must not go 
 back to Millo with such a poor opinion of my
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 223 
 
 gardens. Is the Duchesse well ? You remem- 
 ber that I had the honour to be presented to 
 you by her last evening ? ' 
 ' You are Count Othmar ? ' 
 ' Men call me so,' he replied, for he never 
 loved that title which seemed to him so con- 
 temptible a thing, given, as it had been, in the 
 beginning of the century by the first Em- 
 peror. ' I am happy to be the owner of 
 S. Pharamond, since you deign to visit it. 
 You are at Millo every winter, I think ? ' 
 
 ' I am ; they are not,' she said, regaining 
 her composure a little. ' I did not hear your 
 name last night. I thought you were some 
 gentleman from Paris.' 
 
 ' I live oftenest in Paris,' he replied, ' but 
 at the present moment I come from Central 
 Asia. I am a friend of Monsignore Melville, as 
 I told you ; and I hope you will believe me 
 when I say that, if only for his regard for you, 
 you would be welcome at S. Pharamond.' 
 
 He spoke without compliment, seeing that 
 any compliment would only scare her more. 
 
 ' You help my parish church, did you say ? ' 
 he continued. ' It is very disgraceful of me 
 never to have kno^vn it ; we will get Melville
 
 224 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 to come and preach there. Does the cure want 
 for anything ? — is there nothing I could do ? ' 
 
 ' He wants a new soutane very much,' she 
 said with hesitation. 
 
 ' Then a new soutane he shall have before 
 tlie world is a week older,' said Othmar. 
 ' Why will you go away ? Are you too afraid 
 of me to venture into the house? Would you 
 not have some cream, some cakes, some straw- 
 berries ? What do young Graces like you live 
 upon? Command anything you will.' 
 
 ' I have had some bread and milk ; I want 
 nothing ; you are very kind.' 
 
 ' If you think me so, you must not treat me 
 so distantly. You must make me a friend of 
 yours. The Duchesse herself presented me 
 last night. You seem determined to forget 
 that ' 
 
 She stood inclined to go away, unwilling 
 to seem ungrateful, yet afraid to remain ; a 
 charming picture of confusion and indecision, 
 mingled with a gravity and a grace beyond her 
 years. The Greuze face which he had seen in 
 the boat bore the full force of the morning 
 light as a Yose bears it, the pure tints only 
 deepened and illumined by it. Under the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 225 
 
 straight simple lines of the grey stuff gown the 
 budding beauties of a still childish form could 
 be divined ; in her embarrassment her colour 
 still came and went ; her large eyes, of a golden 
 hazel, were almost black from the shadow of 
 their lashes. So far as a man whose heart and 
 senses are engrossed by one woman can be 
 alive to the loveliness of another, Othmar was 
 sensible of this youthful and poetic beauty, 
 which seemed to belong to the first fresh hours 
 of the morning, and to be born of it as the 
 rosebuds were. 
 
 ' I hope you will not be angry,' slie said 
 anxiously. ' It was my fault. At Millo no 
 one must touch a single flower, and the cure 
 likes to see the altar pretty, and so one day — • 
 oh, that is quite a long time ago, three winters 
 ago — I happened to see the gate open into 
 these grounds, and I asked M. Henri if I might 
 gather wdiat he did not care to sell, and he said 
 that I was welcome always to the common 
 flowers. You will not blame him, if you please, 
 for it was altogether my fault.' 
 
 She had seldom made a speech so long in 
 her life, and she praised, ashamed of the sound 
 
 VOL. I. ^
 
 226 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 of her voice in the quiet of the morning air. 
 She feared also that she was doing wrong to 
 speak at all to this stranger, all owner of S. 
 Pharamond though he might be. 
 
 ' All that I am inclined to blame him for,' 
 answered Othmar, ' is for having laid any re- 
 strictions upon you ; he has no right to sell 
 even a sprig of mignonette. These gardens 
 are not kept for profit ; they can have no hap- 
 pier use than to contribute to your pleasure 
 and to the altars of the church. Pray, do not 
 go ; wait a moment for this criminal to bring 
 us the orchids.' 
 
 But she only grew more alarmed at her 
 own intrusion there. The easy, kindly gallantry 
 of his manner scarcely reassured her ; she was 
 but a child, and a child reared in formal and 
 severe codes. She doubted that she was guilty 
 of some grave offence in standing under a palm- 
 tree beside a group of camellias with a person 
 whom she had scarcely seen before. She had 
 neither the habits of the world nor the con- 
 ventional badinage which could have met his 
 courtesy on its own ground and replied to it in 
 a few careless phrases. But it seemed to him 
 that her silence was golden, as golden as the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 227 
 
 gleams in her changeful hazel eyes as the sun 
 smote on them. 
 
 ' If you would allow me to go,' she mur- 
 mured, ' I have quite enough flowers here. 
 It is such a small church, and the orchids 
 would be much too rare ' 
 
 ' If the orchids were made of rubies and 
 pearls, what happier fate could they ask than 
 to fall from your hands on to the altars of the 
 Madonna?' said Othmar, cs he broke off the 
 blossoms of his camellias with no sparing hand. 
 
 At that moment the head-gardener, alarmed 
 and disturbed at the message wMch he had 
 received from his master, came in sight with 
 a basket hurriedly filled with some of the 
 choicest treasures of his forcing-houses. 
 
 Othmar took it from him : 
 
 ' You did quite right,' he said in a low 
 tone, ' to make my friends welcome to the 
 gardens in my absence, but another time, M. 
 Duvelleroy, make them welcome to the best ; 
 do not reserve it for the markets and the florist 
 shops of Nice.' 
 
 The man, guilty, and taken at a disadvan- 
 tage, had no time to prepare a lie ; he grew 
 red, and stammered, and was thankful for his 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 master's gesture of dismissal as Othmar turned 
 from him impatiently and offered the orchids 
 to the girl. 
 
 ' You are angry with him.' she said, anxiety 
 conquering her timidity. 
 
 ' Not so ; I am grateful to him,' said Othmar. 
 ' But I shall, perhaps, be angry with my house- 
 stew^ard, whose duty it is to keep these rogues 
 clean-handed. If he had given you his best 
 flowers I would have pensioned him for life, 
 but to limit you to taking what he did not 
 v/ant to sell, was to disgrace S. Pharamond.' 
 
 'Indeed, he has been very kmd all these 
 three winters,' she murmured, in infinite dis- 
 tress at the thought that she had madvertently 
 injured the man in his master's opinion. 
 
 ' He shall wear the order of St. Fiacre if 
 you like, if there be such an order to reward 
 good gardeners,' said Othmar gaily, seeing her 
 genuine anxiety on the man's behalf. ' I may 
 come and see your decorations to-morrow\ 
 tShall I send you a load of flowers.^ That 
 would be better I think.' 
 
 She looked alarmed. 
 
 ' Oh no ; oh pray, do not ! ' she said with 
 earnestness. 'You are very kind to think of it,
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 229 
 
 Monsieur, but it would frighten the cure, and 
 we should not know what to do w^ith so many, 
 the church is so very small ' 
 
 She hesitated a moment, the colour in her 
 cheeks grew warm as she added : 
 
 ' My cousin does not know that I come 
 here. I do not mean that it is any secret, but 
 she might think it wrong, intrusive, imperti- 
 nent ' 
 
 ' She could think nothing of the sort,' said 
 Othmar. ' They are three words which no one 
 could associate with Mdlle. de Valogne ; I 
 am delighted my deserted house could be so 
 honoured. Must you go? I shall not easily 
 forgive myself if I frighten you away. Let me 
 come with you to the gate at least.' 
 
 He walked beside her under the palms and 
 on the shaven grass down an aisle of clipped 
 arbutus, carrying for her the camellias, white 
 and rose, which he had broken off their plants 
 with no care for the appearance of the group 
 to which they belonged. 
 
 She was silent ; she was subdued by an 
 unwonted sense of wrong-doing ; she fancied 
 that she had committed some terrible indis- 
 cretion ; but how was she to have known
 
 230 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 that he was there, when for three winters the 
 camelhas had blossomed unseen in those silent 
 evergreen ways, which no step but a gardener's 
 had ever disturbed, and where she had come 
 to watch the blackbirds trip over the fallen 
 leaves, and the fountains dance in the sun- 
 shine, and the tea-roses shower petals of cream 
 and of gold on the terraces, with no more 
 thought or hesitation than she had gone to the 
 olive-yards of Nicole Sandros ? Her confusion 
 had nothing of awkwardness. It was very 
 graceful, almost stately, in its silence ; it was 
 the grave innocence, the startled hesitation, of 
 the young nymph surprised in the sanctuary of 
 the grove. 
 
 She accepted the orchids with a serious 
 gratitude, which seemed to him quite out of 
 proportion to the slenderness of the gift ; but 
 when he said as much she interrupted him : 
 
 ' They are so beautiful,' she said earnestly. 
 ' It seems cruel to have plucked them. One 
 fancies they will take wing like the butter- 
 flies.' 
 
 ' You are very fond of flowers ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes — and people waste them so. At 
 my cousin's ball last week there were five
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 231 
 
 thousand roses. I saw them in the morning ; 
 they were quite dead.' 
 
 ' Did you not see them at night ? ' 
 
 ' At night, no ; liow could I ? I am not in 
 the world ; I never shall be. Sometimes they 
 tell me to be an hour in the reception-rooms 
 after dinner ; that is all ; I do not care for it.' 
 
 ' But do you not wish for the time of balls 
 to come ? Every young girl does.' 
 
 ' I try never to think about it,' she said 
 simply. ' I know it will never come for me.' 
 
 There was a resignation in her words which 
 was more patlietic than any regrets. 
 
 Then with the colour hot in lier cheeks 
 again, rememberiug that she Avas speaking too 
 much to a stranger, she opened the little gate 
 in the arbutus walk Avhich led into the crrounds 
 of Millo. ' I thank you very mucli,' she mur- 
 mured. ' I assure you I will never come 
 again.' 
 
 'And unless you come again, I assure you 
 that you will tell me tacitly that I have had 
 the misfortune to displease you,' said Othmar, 
 as he held open the gate, and bowed low to 
 her ; he saw tliat it would be only unkindness 
 to detain her or to accompany her. She was
 
 232 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 as uneasy as a bird wliicli has flown by mistake 
 into a conservatory. 
 
 ' I will come to the church to-morrow,* 
 he added . ' Do you not sing there some- 
 times ? ' 
 
 ' Now and then. There is no one else to 
 sing. But my cousin does not approve of it. 
 She thinks there may be people over from 
 Nice ; but there never are. There is no one 
 but the peasants.' 
 
 ' The Duchesse will not mind me,' said 
 Othmar. ' Let us say au revoir ! ' 
 
 He kissed her hand with a careless gallantry 
 which made her colour over her brow and 
 throat, and let her leave him. She sped like a 
 frightened fawn over the turf and was soon 
 lost to sight in the bosquets of MUo. 
 
 Othmar strolled back to the house. 
 
 ' Au tombeau seul finit ma voie obscure,' 
 
 he repeated to himself as he looked after her ; 
 the pathos of her destiny gave her a spirituality 
 and a sanctity in his sight, and the song of 
 the blind child and its young singer for a few 
 moments disputed a place in his memory 
 with the vision of Nadine Napraxine as she
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 233 
 
 had plucked the tea-roses 011 his terrace to let 
 them fall. 
 
 'That young girl would not let a rose fade,' 
 he thought, ' and her own roses are to wither 
 between convent walls ! What arbitrary caprices 
 has Fate ! If they would only let me give her 
 a million ' 
 
 But they would not even have let him give 
 her orchids and camellias had they known it.
 
 234 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 Othmar went into his liouse, but before taking 
 his coffee sent for his steward, and gave him 
 a brief but severe reprimand for having per- 
 mitted Duvelleroy and his underhngs to use 
 the gardens as a nursery-ground. 
 
 ' The grounds may be sacked to please my 
 friends,' lie said, in conckision. ' But if a 
 single carnation be sokl for a single centime, it 
 is not the seUer who will be dismissed, but 
 yoiu'self, who are paid highly only that yon 
 may save your subordinates from those tempta- 
 tions which kill honesty and should be no more 
 left in the path of poor men than poisoned 
 mangolds in a sheep-field.' 
 
 The notion that his hothouses and gardens 
 had furnished the flower-sellers of Nice with 
 materials for their myriads of bouquets, irritated 
 him disproportionately. He would have taken 
 his oath that on none of his estates did his 
 people steal a farthing's worth. They were all
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 235 
 
 highly paid, and those set in authority over 
 them were all men who had been chosen and 
 enriched by his father ; he had often spoken of 
 their probity and affection with pride ; and now 
 they cheated him for sake of selling a bouquet ! 
 
 It was a mere trifle, no doubt. He would 
 have cleared his gardens at a stroke to please 
 anyone he liked ; and he would have given a 
 poor man willingly the value of all his forcing 
 houses ; but the knowledge that his hirelings 
 sold his mignonette and Ms hehotrope to profit 
 themselves irritated him, and even quite 
 embittered life to him for the moment. The 
 most generous minds feel the most acutely 
 betrayal in small things, and resent most 
 vividly the contemptible robberies which take 
 advantage of trust and opportunity. That the 
 rich man is so seldom honestly served goes 
 further, perhaps, to redress the balance between 
 him and the poor man than the latter, in his 
 ignorance, ever supposes. 
 
 ' After all,' he thought, ' perhaps I only 
 feed rogues, like Napraxine.' And the thought 
 was painful to him, for he fed them well. 
 
 It was primarily his own fault for so seldom 
 coming to the place ; perhaps it was natural
 
 236 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 that when years rolled on and they never saw 
 their master they should learn to consider his 
 possessions as almost their own. But he had 
 so many places that he could not live in tliem 
 all. His fathers had bought them, so, out of 
 respect to their memories, he could not get rid of 
 them. He had a great house on the Boulevard 
 St. Germain ; another great house in Piccadilly ; 
 another in the Teresian Platz of Vienna; he 
 had estates in France, England, Germany, and 
 Austria, a Scotch moor, a Flemish forest, a 
 chateau on the shores of the Dalmatian Adriatic, 
 a villa at Biarritz, a castle in dense woods on 
 the Moselle, and whole towns, villages, plains, 
 and hills in Croatia itself. How was he to live at 
 all these places ? He lent them liberally, but he 
 could hardly sell them ; the head of the house 
 of Othmar could not sell what he had inherited. 
 If he had sold them he would only have had 
 more millions with which he would not have 
 known what to do. 
 
 When he had drunk a cup of coffee and a 
 glass of iced water, he went for a long ride, 
 mounting high up into the hills until the sea lay 
 far below, blue as a great bed of mysotis, and 
 the gilded cupolas of La Jacquemerille glittered
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. lyj 
 
 in his sight far beneath the darkening slopes of 
 piue. When he returned to his one o'clock 
 breakfast, he found that his house ^Yas deserted 
 no more. He was told that his uncle, the Baron 
 Friederich, had arrived by the rapide from 
 Paris. He was not greatly pleased, but he pre- 
 pared to do his duties as a host without be- 
 traying his sense tliat the new comer was not 
 precisely in harmony with a romantic retreat 
 amidst myrtles, camelhas, and bromelias. 
 
 But he also foresaw a tedious day and even- 
 ing, and he did not care to have the keen blue 
 eyes of his father's brother fixed on him at a 
 moment when he was sending telegrams in all 
 directions and commanding? all kinds of novel 
 diversions to amuse and receive the Princess 
 Napraxine. 
 
 ' Have your travels tended to convince you 
 that Europeans are wrong not to let the tails 
 of sheep fatten and appear at their tables ? ' 
 said his unbidden guest, coming out of the 
 house as though they had parted the previous 
 night instead of twenty months before. 
 
 There was no figure better known in Pa?*is 
 than that of the Baron Friederich Othmar, 
 familiar to society all over Europe as Baron
 
 238 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 Fritz ; a tall and portly figure carried with the 
 ease and vigour of manhood, though age had 
 whitened the hair, that was still abundant, on 
 the handsome liead above. He never attempted 
 to conceal his age : he despised all inaquillage, 
 as all healthy and all clever men do ; and if his 
 skin was as fair and his hands were as white and 
 soft as a duchess's, it was because nature had 
 made them so, and a life temperate in indul- 
 gence though entirely unscrupulous in morals 
 had preserved his health and his strength un- 
 impaired save by occasional twinges of the 
 gout. With old Gaulois blood in him, Friede- 
 rich Othmar was a thorough Parisian in habit, 
 taste, and manner ; but he was a true Slav in 
 suppleness, sagacity, and profound secretive- 
 ness. Othmar thought that there was not on 
 the face of the earth another man with such a 
 hideous power of dissimulation as his uncle ; 
 whilst the elder man, on the contrary, looked 
 upon such dissimulation as the mere mark 
 which distinguishes the civilised being from 
 the savage. ' Dissimulation lies at the root of 
 all good manners,' he was wont to say in 
 moments of frankness. 'Your friend bores you 
 infinitely ; you smile, and appear charmed !
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 239 
 
 If you do not, you are a boor. Dissimulation 
 is the essence of Christianity ; you are enjoined 
 to turn one cheek after another, and not to 
 show that you smart. Dissimulation is the 
 only thing that makes society possible ; with- 
 out its amenities, the world would be a bear- 
 garden.' 
 
 On the Bourse ' Baron Fritz ' was dreaded 
 as the keenest-witted colossus of finance in all 
 Europe. His acumen was unerring ; his mind 
 was as sensitive to the changes of the political 
 atmosphere as an electric wire to heat. He 
 perceived long before anyone else the little 
 cloud, not so big as a man's hand, which was 
 pregnant with storm whilst yet the sky was 
 clear ; he heard long before anyone else the 
 low tremcr in the bowels of the earth which 
 prefaced the seismic convulsion, as yet un- 
 dreamed of by a sleeping world. Therefore, 
 with supreme tact and matchless instinct, he 
 had made the House of Othmar the envy of all 
 its peers. ' What are statesmen without us ? ' 
 said Friederich Othmar. ' They cannot move, 
 they cannot strike, unless the financiers enable 
 them to do so ; all their combinations crumble 
 like a dropt bird's-nest unless we are willing to
 
 240 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 sustain them. If Germany had had no money, 
 could she have crossed the Ehine ? The finest 
 army in the world is no more than a child's 
 set of metal soldiers if it be not roulant sur Vor. 
 The statesmen are thought to be the chief 
 rulers and prime motors of the fate of the 
 world, but they can but act as we who are 
 behind them permit : they drag the coach ; we 
 drive it.' 
 
 ' That I know,' answered Othmar. ' We 
 have the most gigantic resj^onsibility united 
 with the most utterly corrupt moral code. I 
 grant that we are, in a way, the Caesars of the 
 modern world, but we are bestially selfish ; we 
 are hog-like in our repletion, as all Cassars 
 become, ^o financier ever risked ruin for a 
 noble impulse or for a lost cause. If he did, he 
 would seem mad to his guild, as Ulysses to his 
 companions.' 
 
 All the enjoyment and sense of power 
 vdiich Othmar contemptuously rejected his 
 uncle appreciated to the full ; he was, in his 
 own way, a Wolsoy, a Eichelieu, a Bismarck. 
 Nothing of much importance had been done in 
 Europe for the last forty years without Friede- 
 rich Othmar being beneath it, in more or less
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 241 
 
 degree, for weal or woo. He had those unerr- 
 ing instincts whicli amount in their own way 
 to genius. 
 
 Endowed mth one of those keen, logical, 
 yet imaginative brains, which are as necessary 
 to the great financier as to the great statesman, 
 he had worked unweariedly all his life long 
 for the sake and for the glory of the house 
 of Othmar ; he was in no way of his nephew's 
 opinion ; he considered tliat the world held 
 nothing finer than the fortunes which had 
 been built up out of Marc Othmar's kreutzers 
 till it was solid as so many towers of bullion ; 
 he considered the position of the capitalist who 
 can refuse a king, sustain a nation, fructify 
 great enterprises, and constrain or restrain 
 great wars, was not to be exchanged with any 
 other power under the sun. In finance he was 
 inexorable, unerring ; full of the finest pene- 
 tration, and the most piercing acumen ; stern as 
 granite, piercing as steel ; in private life he Avas 
 an amiable cynic, who cared for very little 
 except the reputation of his dinners and his 
 collection of water-colours. Baron Fritz was 
 never really content out of his little hotel, 
 which was as cosy as a satin-lined bag, and 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 where by stretching out a finger to touch an 
 ivory button he could put himself in commu- 
 nication with all the centres of finance in 
 Europe. Without moving from his velvet chair 
 or taking his foot from its gout-stool he could 
 converse with his brother capitalists at all 
 quarters of the globe, and change the fate of 
 nations, and the surface of events in the course 
 of a winter's forenoon during a pause between 
 two cigarettes. To be able to do so seemed to 
 him the very flower and perfection of life. It 
 was to play chess with the world for your 
 board, and to say checkmate to living and 
 crowned kings. 
 
 Whenever he expatiated on that theme to 
 his nephew, Othmar only replied that he him- 
 self did not care for any games. 
 
 For the rest, his one great social amusement 
 was whist ; he could never see why men forsook 
 their clubs because hay was being mown and 
 corn reaped and grapes gathered. You bought 
 forage, you ate bread — very little of it — and 
 you drank wine, but Vv^hy, because those three 
 things were all in their embryo state every 
 city in Europe should become empty he had 
 not patience to comprehend. Xo place was
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 243 
 
 cooler, shadier, quieter, than your club. The 
 vast green silent country wliich his nephew 
 loved was to him an outer darkness ; he detested 
 le province with all the maliciousness against it 
 of a born and bred Parisian, 
 
 To see a breezy common on a six-inch 
 square of David Cox, or a brook purling 
 amongst rushes by Bonnington, Avas to have as 
 much of the country as he cared to enjoy. The 
 stones of Vienna, the asphalte of Paris, were 
 the only ground he cared to tread. He had 
 educated his cook into perfect excellence, and 
 never travelled anywhere without him and his 
 battery of silver saucepans. ' Because you 
 sleep in a strange bed there is no reason why 
 you should let yourself be poisoned by strange 
 dishes,' he invariably said. 
 
 On the whole he had led a happy and en- 
 viable life; he was a perfectly selfish man, with 
 one great unselfish loyalty set in the midst of 
 his egotism, like a vein of pure marble amongst 
 a mass of sandstone. ' To benefit the House 
 Fritz would let himself be brayed in a mor- 
 tar,' his brother had often said of him ; in 
 private life, on the contrary, he was entirely 
 self-absorbed, as became a man who was oiui of 
 
 R 2
 
 244 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 the most notable persons in Paris ; lie had 
 never been known to lend a five-franc piece, 
 but he gave choice dinners three times a week, 
 which cost twenty napoleons for each guest. 
 
 Sometimes he thought with a pang of terror 
 of what would become of the House of Othmar 
 when he himself should be no more. He was 
 seventy years old ; he would be unable to live 
 for ever; his arsenal of wires contained no 
 ivory button by which he could summon 
 eternal life ; he had gout in his system, and he 
 did not disguise from himself that any day his 
 cook, with the silver saucepans, his pretty 
 aquarelles, his gigantic operations, his intense 
 love of life, might one and all be powerless to 
 keep him in his place, and then ! — all the 
 mag;nitude and mi^^ht of the House of Othmar 
 would depend solely and entirely on one 
 capricious and unstable young man, who only 
 cared for a Greek poet or a German opera ! 
 
 On these melancholy days when he remem- 
 bered this, he voluntarily deprived himself of 
 his burgundy, and ate only of two dishes. 
 
 He was much attached to Othmar, but he 
 was impatient of him. He was annoyed by 
 what he looked upon as his crotchets and
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 245 
 
 caprices ; he was irritated by the unconcealed 
 apathy and even scorn with which his nephew 
 regarded his own superb position in the world. 
 The dissatisfaction with which the origin of 
 their House filled the head of it, was to 
 Baron Fritz almost incomprehensible and whim- 
 sical squeamishness. If he revered anything in 
 life, it was the tradition of old Marc Othmar 
 amassing his florins in the half-barbaric city of 
 Agram. 
 
 ' For aught we know he was a Tchigan, a 
 Eomany,' his nephew had said to him once ; 
 and he had replied angrily, ' And if he were 
 a gipsy? Is there blood more ancient? Is 
 there a people freer ? Is there an intelligence 
 more complex ? What are the European races 
 beside the Oriental ? But you know very well 
 that he was a pure Croat,' he had concluded, 
 with intolerable impatience of such depre- 
 ciation of the founder of their greatness. 
 
 Although it had been the habit of his life 
 to follow and study the minds of men even in 
 their more secret thoughts, he had no patience 
 to attempt to understand the caprices of his 
 nephew's. It was, he thought, that kind of 
 ingratitude to fate which is almost an insanity ;
 
 ^46 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 the same sort of fractious wilfulness which made 
 James of Scotland love to wander disguised in 
 his ow]i towns, and sent Domitian to a plot of 
 cabbages. 
 
 To Baron Fritz the power and might of the 
 House he belonged to had ever been in the 
 stead of any other religion, creed, or attach- 
 ment ; he was not personally an ambitious or 
 an avaricious man ; he had effaced himself for 
 his brother's sake, as he still slaved for his 
 brother's son ; the celebrity of the House of 
 Othmar, their power, heavy as an elephant's 
 tread, subtle as an electric current, the magni- 
 tude of the operations which they either 
 undertook or impeded, the respect with which 
 Europe regarded them, the weight of their own 
 smile or fi'own,— all these things were the 
 very breath of his life to him. He had re- 
 mained, and always willingly remained, a sub- 
 ordinate; he had never resented the superiority 
 of his elder brother in power and position ; all 
 he had cared to do was to give his years to the 
 service and aggrandisement of his race ; he 
 would have been very astonished if he had 
 been told that it was in its way, after all, chiefly 
 a form of sentiment which actuated him.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 247 
 
 Between himself and Othmar there was 
 the affection of consanguinity, but no sym- 
 pathy whatever. To the elder man the 
 younger seemed almost blasphemously mi- 
 worthy of his heritage : the generosities and 
 the scruples of such a raffine seemed to liim 
 the perverseness of a child. Usually, Othmar 
 willingly abandoned to him the guidance of 
 their great argosy, freighted with the gold of 
 the world, but twice or thrice since his majority 
 he had interfered when he had considered a 
 loan immoral or an enterprise corrupt, and had 
 made his veto, as head of the house, obeyed 
 forcibly. Those few times had been unpardon- 
 able to the Baron wdio had not his eccentric 
 and quixotic principles. 
 
 ' Affairs are affairs,' he said. ' If you 
 conduct them accordins^ to the follies and 
 phantasies of the Story of Arthur — adieu.' 
 
 'I would willingly say adieu— an eternal 
 adieu,' had retorted Othmar. ' But you have 
 told me repeatedly that I cannot withdi^aw my 
 House from business without causinc^ ruin on 
 the Bourses of Europe, and dishonouring our 
 name by annulling and repudiating our engage- 
 ments.'
 
 248 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' Of course you cannot,' had said the Baron, 
 to whom the mere idea seemed like a prepara- 
 tion to blow up with dynamite all the mountains 
 of Europe and of Asia. 'Do you suppose 
 you can efface such an institution as our 
 financial existence ? You might as well say 
 that a sovereign, by dying, could will his 
 country into non-existence.' 
 
 ' Then as I cannot touch the engagements 
 of the past, however much I condemn them, I 
 will at least keep pure the obligations of the 
 future,' Othmar had answered ; and those 
 transactions which his more delicate sense of 
 honour did not allow him to approve he refused 
 to permit to be undertaken. 
 
 Baron Fritz, who had the ordinary finan- 
 cier's conscience, that is, who would have done 
 nothing commercially dishonourable, but who 
 cared not a straw how iniquitous might be 
 the results of an operation, so long as it was 
 legal, clever, and lucrative, was beyond measure 
 irritated by this occasional interference of one 
 who was too fine a gentleman, too indolent 
 a dreamer, to bear any of the frets and burden 
 of habitual attention to their gigantic opera- 
 tions. But there was no help for it ; Otho
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 249 
 
 Othmar was the head of the House, and, what 
 was a ofreater o-rief still to his uncle, the 
 only living one of the name besides himself. 
 They, who could have given fortunes and posi- 
 tion to a score of younger branches, who could 
 have had their sons and brothers objects of 
 power and worship in all the capitals of Europe, 
 had been so visited by death and destiny that 
 of them all there only remained the young 
 man who was Othmar to all the world, and the 
 old one who was Baron Fritz to his intimate 
 associates, and Baron Friederich to all the 
 Bourses. 
 
 ' You should marry, Otho,' said the Baron 
 to him now. 
 
 ' I have no inclination to do so,' he an- 
 swered, and thought of Nadine Xapraxine. 
 
 ' Inclination ! ' exclaimed tlie other irritably. 
 ' Wliat has inclination to do with it ? Is in- 
 clination considered or waited for in the mar- 
 riages of princes ? You are a prince in your 
 own way. If you died to-morrow, your race 
 would be extinct.' 
 
 ' That would not much matter,' said Othmar. 
 ' We have never been conspicuous for anything 
 except for amassing gold, as a ship's keel
 
 250 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 collects barnacles. I suppose I had better 
 make a will. You shall have everything for 
 your lifetime, and then it shall all go to the 
 French Eepublic, which is the only national 
 institution I know of that is capable of 
 muddling away two hundred milliards in a 
 year, with nothing whatever to show for it 
 afterwards.' 
 
 Baron Fritz made a gesture of irritated 
 contempt. 
 
 'You ought to have had legitimate heirs 
 ten years ago. You do not belong to yourself. 
 You have no right to live and die without 
 raising up posterity.' 
 
 ' I do not see the obligation,' said Othmar, 
 ' and I do not care enough about the name, 
 which you think so very fine, to greatly grieve 
 over its probable extinction.' 
 
 Baron Fritz had heard this often, but he 
 never heard it freshly without an inward 
 shudder, such as a religious man feels be- 
 fore a blasphemy. Othmar, merely as a man, 
 seemed to him a fanciful dreamer, an unsatis- 
 factory anomaly, an unphilosophic thinker, 
 wdaose theories were always playing the deuce 
 with his interest, and whose sympathies ran away
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 251 
 
 with him hke half-broken horses. But Othmar, 
 as the chief of liis House, could do no wrong, 
 and had to be obeyed, even if he rushed on his 
 own destruction. 
 
 ' You should marry for sake of posterity,' 
 he reiterated. * You are so happily and excep- 
 tionally situated that you can choose wherever 
 you please. No living woman would refuse 
 you. You should seek physical charms for 
 sake of your offspring and high lineage also ; 
 the rest is a mere matter of taste.' 
 
 ' The rest is only a trifle ! Only character, 
 mind, and feeling — the three things which de- 
 termine happiness and influence life more than 
 anything else.* 
 
 Baron Fritz made a little gesture of indif- 
 ference : ' I imagine anyone hien Sieve would 
 not err in any of these points. Happiness one 
 usually finds with the wives of others. Not 
 that I would discourage you if you be in- 
 clined ' 
 
 ' I am not inclined,' said Othmar, brusquely. 
 ' I only say that character is never considered 
 by men and women when they marry ; yet it is 
 what makes or mars a life. When a marriage 
 is announced, what is discussed ? The respec-
 
 252 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 tive fortunes of tliose concerned, then their 
 good looks or their lack of them ; perhaps some- 
 one adds that he is hon garcon, or someone 
 says sa taille est jolie, or, on the other hand, 
 they may say he is a fool, or she has ugly feet; 
 bnt you never hear a word as to their charac- 
 ters, their sympathies, or their principles. It 
 is why all marriages are at best but a compro- 
 mise between two ill-assorted dispositions.' 
 
 ' Make yours well-assorted,' said Baron 
 Fritz. ' If you attach so much to character, 
 let character be your study ; myself, I have 
 always considered that marriage is a means of 
 continuing a race, so that it legally can con- 
 tinue to transmit property ; I have never known 
 why people imported fine sentiments into a 
 legal transaction. It is taking a false view of 
 a social duty to look for personal pleasure out 
 of it ; indeed, if a man be in love with his wife 
 he will probably communicate his passion to 
 her, which is undesirable, because it awakens 
 her senses, and ultimately leads to her taking 
 a lover, or lovers, which again introduces un- 
 certainty into the legal enjoyment and trans- 
 mission of property.' 
 
 Othmar smiled : ' Eeally, Baron, you are
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 253 
 
 the most profoundly immoral man I ever met. 
 You would always, too, subordinate humanity 
 to property. Ail human actions should, ac- 
 cording to you, only tend to the consolidation 
 and concentration of fortune ; now, there is no 
 possible theory of human action more demoral- 
 ising.' 
 
 ' That is a matter of opinion,' said the 
 Baron. ' But unless your forefathers had car- 
 ried that theory into practice, you would now be 
 taming wild horses in Croatia, or probably you 
 — Otho Othmar in your entity as you are — 
 would not exist at all, for certainly your father 
 would not have wedded with an English aristo- 
 crat.' 
 
 ' It is a humiliating reflection,' said Othmar, 
 ' that one's existence depended on the acci- 
 dental union of two persons ; indeed, I decline 
 to believe it. I am convinced that the real ego^ 
 the impersonal entity which has been called 
 the soul for want of knoAvins: what to call it, 
 must have had its own independent existence ; 
 the envelope it is slipped into is the accident; 
 let us think so at all events. It is more con- 
 soling than your notion that the entire life of 
 A. depended on the chance of B. cohabiting
 
 254 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 with C. ; and that if B. had wedded D. instead, 
 A. would never have existed at all, but another 
 and totally different being would have done so 
 —say Z; 
 
 The Baron shrugged his shoulders. Why, 
 he wondered, why on earth should a man care 
 about a pre-existence, or a spiritual existence, at 
 all, who had everything that his heart could 
 desire in his terrestrial life? He could imagine 
 that starving poets or hungry theologians 
 comforted themselves with those fancies, but 
 Othrnar ! 
 
 ' You should have been a Montalembert or 
 a Lamennais,' he answered, which was a polite 
 way of saying that he was an imbecile. 
 
 ' Without being either the one or the other, 
 one may carry into public life the same sort 
 of honour which even you think incumbent on 
 one in public life,' said Othmar. 
 
 ' Not at all,' said his relative. ' The code 
 for one has never been the code for the other. 
 A man in private life may not send another 
 man to be slain because it suits his purpose ; 
 a man in pubhc life, that is, as a war minister 
 or as an officer commanding-in-chief may send 
 ten thousand, fifty thousand, men to certain
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 255. 
 
 slaughter. So has a diplomatist every title to 
 lie as much as he may need to do in tlie public 
 service, but he has no right to deceive his per- 
 sonal friend in a private matter. This is not 
 mere casuistry ; it is common-sense. Indeed, 
 all effective casuistry is based on common- 
 sense.' 
 
 ' The most dangerous casuistry is so, no 
 doubt,' said Othmar. ' Because when it is so 
 based it is irresistible in its aj^peal to egotism.' 
 
 ' I do not know why you use the word 
 dangerous,' replied the Baron. ' Nothing is so 
 wholesome as to teach men to take care of 
 their own interests. If that lesson were uni- 
 versally understood, there would be neither 
 paupers or criminals.' 
 
 ' We should have a world of bankers,' said 
 Othmar. 'With all deference to you, even 
 that would not be a Millennium.' 
 
 The Baron assented with good humour tliat 
 it would certainly not be one, since there 
 would be no investments of any kind pos- 
 sible. 
 
 The day was tedious to Othmar. He had 
 to examine many projects, and append his sig- 
 nature to many documents, lie had not dis-
 
 2S6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 appeared into Central Asi:i for eighteen months 
 without havmg brought upon himself the 
 penalty of inany arrears of affairs. His assent 
 was merely 7:>ro formd^ but the formula was 
 necessary. 
 
 ' He is in love still with Madame Naprax- 
 ine,' thought his uncle, finding his attention 
 hard to fix. He was not sorry for that. At 
 Othmar's age he was sure to be in love w^ith 
 someone, and the more he was in love the 
 less likely was he to meddle with the transac- 
 tions of the House. 
 
 The Baron could be excessively amusing, 
 and was so this day of his arrival at S. Phara- 
 mond; but Othmar would gladly have been 
 free of his presence. He knew that the old 
 man would see at a glance, if he and Nadine 
 JSTapraxine met before him, that time had not 
 cured him of passion ; and the malice and the 
 contempt of his uncle were both disagreeable 
 to him. Moreover, Othmar had been too per- 
 petually agreed with all his life to be pleased 
 by the constant enunciation of opinions and 
 sentiments the reverse of his own. There was 
 that in the tranquil cynicism of Baron Friede- 
 rich which left him with a sense of moral
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 257 
 
 nausea. Men, it is true, were not worth mucli ; 
 but he could never get accustomed to the calm 
 manner in which his uncle was habitually ready 
 to sacrifice all their interests — their bodies, too, 
 had there been any question of them — to what 
 he considered advantageous to himself and to 
 his house in public life and finance. 
 
 He did not care for the new Eussian loan, 
 for the new Turkish loan, for the great naval 
 dockyards to be made by Germany on the 
 Baltic, for the railway that was to be driven 
 along the ancient bed of the Oxus, nor for the 
 necessities of the empire of Brazil, nor for the 
 development of Canadian forests. It did not 
 interest him that such and such a sovereign 
 would be a cripple Avithout his help, or such 
 and such a country as virtually in pawn to 
 him as though it had been a pledged estate ; 
 that the assistance of his gold could enable 
 a Ministry to keep its tenure of office, or 
 the refusal of it could precipitate a State 
 into revolution ; to Baron Fritz it was like 
 holding the reins of the universe, but to 
 Othmar himself it was excessively dull work. 
 The heir of four generations of money-lenders, 
 he was absolutely indifferent to the immense 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 power wliicli lay in the stroke of his pen ; 
 the genius of finance was inherited by him, 
 thousjh dormant in him ; even his imcle did 
 justice to the accuracy of his vision, to the cer- 
 tainty of his instinct ; but it was genius unused ; 
 he had no taste to employ its capacities. 
 Europe was as indifferent to him as a mound 
 of clay. 
 
 'We only do mischief, unmitigated mis- 
 chief,' he asserted very often. ' Look at the 
 Canal of Suez ; it has only bred wars and 
 pretexts for wars, and will probably embroil 
 England and France for the next century, — 
 until indeed India shall have become Eussian, 
 or the African negro have aveni^ed Abd-el- 
 Kadir. Then again take the Panama project : 
 it will set Great Britain and the United States 
 at each other's throats like two bull-dogs.' 
 
 ' You are enough to make your father rise 
 from his grave,' said Baron Fritz. 
 
 * It is only aristocrats who do that,' returned 
 Othmar. * The financier sleeps sound on the 
 remembrance of his own virtues — and loans.' 
 
 The memory of his father was bitter to 
 him ; he could not forget the injury done to 
 him in his earliest youth by subjecting him
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 259 
 
 to the charms and the corruptions of Sara 
 Vernon. 
 
 ' You must marry, and then you Avill see 
 things differently,' his uncle insisted, reverting 
 to the simplicity of reiteration. 
 
 What a cruel thing was destiny ! Thousands 
 of men who had not a crust of bread begat 
 legitimate offsprings in the most reckless and 
 profuse manner ; and the one man for whom 
 lawful heirs were an absolute necessity and 
 duty obstinately neglected his obligations to 
 family and to the world. 
 
 It was possible, even probable, that the last 
 of the Othmars would remain the last of his 
 race. 
 
 ' Marry for me,' said Othmar. ' I will give 
 all we possess to any cousins you may give 
 me, and keep only enough myself to live peace- 
 ably in Arabia Felix. I have always wished 
 to live there ; the climate is divine ; and, 
 after all, there is nothing that is of so much 
 consequence as climate.' 
 
 ' You will always jest ! ' 
 
 ' Most people say I am too serious. I am 
 not jesting at all. We have all a sort of super- 
 stition that we must live in Europe, but it is 
 
 8 2
 
 26o PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 only a superstition. There is a great deal finer 
 weather elsewhere, and without fine weather 
 life is intolerable.' 
 
 ' Have you never seen a woman you would 
 marry ? ' asked Baron Fritz. 
 
 ' Perhaps I have,' said Othmar, who never 
 lied. ' But never one I could marry.' 
 
 'Ah! — someone else's wife! That is just 
 like you. If she were not unattainable she 
 would have no more attraction than anyone 
 else. You are so whimsical.' 
 
 ' I hope not. I dislike whimsical people. 
 They are always asking for the windows to be 
 shut, or imagining that there is a drainpipe 
 open. Oh, some day I may marry. I do not 
 pledge my future. But I have no inclination 
 to marriage, and you will confess that you 
 preach what you do not practise.' 
 
 ' I am seventy-one and you are thirty-two,' 
 said Baron Fritz ; ' I should have married fifty 
 years ago if I had been as you are, the head 
 of the House.' 
 
 ' Curse the House ! ' said Othmar, though he 
 was a man who never used any oaths, great or 
 small. But it seemed to him that the House 
 of Othmar was for ever on his shoulders like
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 261 
 
 Sindbad's burden ; that he could do nothing 
 freely as other men did ; that go where he 
 would he could never wholly escape from the 
 mephitic acid which adulation and importunity 
 exhale, and could never gain that simplicity of 
 existence which, precisely because it was denied 
 to him, seemed to him the chief sood on earth. 
 ' You speak as if the Othmars had been 
 Plantagenets or Comneni ! ' he continued. ' It 
 is not quite two centuries ago that the world 
 did not even know that a Croat horse-dealer 
 bore that name ! The last time I was at 
 Agram, I looked into the archives of the city ; 
 nobody ever did so ; they were crabbed and 
 hard to decipher ; but I passed a day over 
 them when it was raining and blowing so hard 
 that there was not a soul abroad in the streets 
 except the sentries. In the municipal docu- 
 ments for the year 1730 I found an account of 
 a famine which had been the result of floods 
 such as we have seen in our own day, for 
 science, after all, makes little way against 
 natural catastrophes. It was during this fa- 
 mine, when every grain of wheat was worth 
 treble its weight in gold, that your hero Marc 
 Othmar made his first great cowp. He had
 
 26^ PR/jVCESS napraxine. 
 
 amassed money before, but this was the grand 
 conception which first largely enriched him. 
 He had bought enormously in corn, foresee- 
 ing a wet season and bad harvests. He had 
 more than he had hoped for — he had the 
 whole coiuitry under water. He had almost a 
 monopoly of grain. In those days government 
 aid could not come by steam, and besides, 
 Croatia had just then no government. In 
 these records it is stated that upwards of forty- 
 five thousand persons, chiefly women and 
 children, died of starvation ; and all the while 
 they were dying Marc Othmar shut up his 
 grain and only sold it sack by sack, at an average 
 rate of a death a bushel. You find that 
 admirable ; I do not. I confess, ever since I 
 put these facts together out of the fragments of 
 public history, it has seemed to me as if there 
 were an earthy smell about all our money ; 
 you know the lungs of people who die starved 
 always do smell like decaying mould. It is 
 pure fancy — I am quite aware of that. But 
 even, putting fancy out of the question, I do 
 not see anything heroic about the figure of our 
 founder. He is not Hugh Lupus or Godfrey 
 de Bouillon.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 263 
 
 Baron Fritz's patience had scarcely en- 
 dured the strain upon it. 
 
 ' I never heard the story. I beheve you 
 have invented it,' he said irritably. ' If it be 
 true, we have no explanation, so we cannot 
 form a correct judgment. At the most, ac- 
 cepting it as you relate it, no more was done 
 then by Marc Othmar than every farmer or 
 peasant proprietor in Europe and America 
 does whenever he gets a chance. Not so much 
 as was done by Ferdinand de Lesseps when 
 he sacrificed the fellahs to make his Egyptian 
 Canal. You cannot conduct any trade on 
 abstract principles or aesthetic moralities. You 
 must buy cheap and sell dear, or commerce 
 falls to the ground, and the whole superstruc- 
 ture of society falls with it. As the lawyer 
 cannot refuse to conduct a case because he 
 disapproves of the morality of it, so a finan- 
 cier cannot let pass a favourable operation 
 because he may not approve entirely of its 
 scope ; all he has to examine are its wisdom and 
 utihty. When once you enter the region of 
 motives and of principles, all is confusion. No 
 two men have the same views as to what is 
 right ; you must proceed on broader lines than
 
 264 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 those of fanciful ethics. For instance, nothing 
 is more clearly immoral than the marriage of 
 two diseased persons, but the priest or the 
 mayor who should refuse to perform the 
 ceremonies demanded of him because he con- 
 ceived that the bodily health of the people 
 came before him was unsatisfactory would be 
 clearly overpassing the boundaries of his func- 
 tions, which are limited to the consideration of 
 simply legal obstacles. So, a man of business 
 wlio once concerns himself with the vague 
 moralities of his speculations is lost ; all he has 
 to occupy himself with is their solvency, their 
 legality, and their probabilities of success or 
 failure. Marc Othmar, no doubt, regarded his 
 investments in corn in that purely practical 
 light.' 
 
 ' For a very clever man as you are,' returned 
 Othmar, ' you are curiously unconscious of w^hat 
 a satire your theories are on all that you most 
 admire. I am as entirely convinced as you 
 can be that Marc Othmar never gave a thought 
 to the twenty-five thousand people who starved 
 to death while his corn was shut up in granaries 
 and barges ; all the difference between us is, 
 that you think this singleness of eye for his
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 265 
 
 own interest was heroic, and I think it was 
 not so, — tliat it was even as near true heUish 
 wickedness as humanity can go.' 
 
 ' There is neither wickedness nor virtue in 
 questions of finance,' said Baron Friederich, 
 with distress at his nephew's obtuseness. 
 
 ' There is certainly no virtue,' said Othmar. 
 
 'Neither wickedness nor virtue,' repeated 
 the Baron. ' They are pure abstractions, like 
 political economy. To talk of the immorality 
 of a speculation is like talking of the vices of a 
 rock-crystal. There is only one sin in a finan- 
 cial operation ; it sins if it be unsound.' 
 
 ' Financial morality,' then said Othmar, ' has 
 at least this advantage over social morality, 
 that it is very much simplified ! ' 
 
 ' It is simple as your stable's doctrines,' 
 replied the Baron. ' If a horse be sound, he is 
 a good horse ; if he be not sound, he is a 
 screw ; nothing can be simpler. And the 
 moment that a man begins to confuse himself 
 with asking any more complex questions than 
 this one, " Is it sound .^ " — whether he engage in 
 a great operation of finance, or whether he be 
 only buying a roadster, he will be inevitably 
 bewildered with his own multiform require-
 
 266 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ments and will fall into tlie hands of mere per- 
 suasive sharpers.' 
 
 ' I can buy a horse,' said Othmar, ' but I 
 will leave finance to you.' 
 
 ' Not always,' said Baron Fritz, grimly, 
 with vivid recollections of more than one occa- 
 sion on which his nephew had interfered with 
 a peremptory veto to prevent some contem- 
 plated operation of which the morality was 
 more doubtful than the expediency. The occa- 
 sions had been rare indeed ; but they had left 
 an inefiaceable soreness on the mind of the 
 elder man ; nay, he would scarcely have for- 
 given them had it not been that his devotion to 
 Otlio as to the head of the House had some- 
 thing of the irrational and patient loyalty which 
 the Eussian nation renders blindly to its 
 unseen Tzar. 
 
 As for Othmar himself, he was too impa- 
 tient of his uncle's laxity of principle and con- 
 science to do full justice to the fine qualities 
 which accompanied these. 
 
 Those huge stone palaces whose portals 
 bore the magic name of Othmar were sacred to 
 Baron Fritz as his temples to a Greeko His 
 nephew never passed through the great doors of
 
 PRhYCESS NAPRAXINE. 267 
 
 any one of them without a sense of impatience, 
 of distaste, without a remembrance of the twenty- 
 five thousand people who had died of hunger 
 in Croatia whilst Marc Othmar was building 
 up his piles of ducats and florins. The very 
 homage with which he was himself met within 
 their walls irritated him. He thought of all the 
 debasing worship the earth has seen the worship 
 of riches w^as the most corrupt. ' If I were a 
 leper they would kiss my ulcers so long as my 
 hand could sign a cheque,' he thought. After 
 all, when Marc Othmar had used up human 
 lives in the furnace of his speculations he haa 
 used up material which was but of little worth. 
 
 Yet despite the disdain which human nature 
 cannot do otherwise than awaken in those who 
 are the objects of its adulation if they keep 
 their senses clear amidst the incense fumes, his 
 heart w^as empty. 
 
 ' You have people here to-night P ' asked 
 the Baron, a little later, his vigilant eyes per- 
 ceiving the preparations which were being 
 made in the little theatre attached to the 
 chateau. 
 
 ' To-morrow night,' answered Othmar. 'A 
 small dinner ; I hope you will remain for it.
 
 268 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 And as Talazac, k?embrich. and other good 
 singers are at Nice disponibles, we shall have 
 some music afterwards and a few people ; for 
 that you will not care.' 
 
 ' The Napraxines are here ? ' enquired his 
 uncle, with a little smile. 
 
 Othmar was annoyed to feel that he changed 
 colour despite himself, as he answered in the 
 affirmative. 
 
 ' Have you seen her ? ' said Friederich 
 Othmar, carelessly. ' How do you find her ? 
 Maladive as usual ? ' 
 
 ' There is no woman living less maladive^' 
 said Othmar, with some irritation. ' She is glad 
 to make the care of her health a pretext when 
 she is disinclined for the world ; that is all.' 
 
 ' Ah, indeed ? ' said the elder man. ' All 
 great rulers are allowed to be ill at their own 
 convenience. Will she be ill or well to-morrow 
 night ? ' 
 
 ' Time will show,' rephed Othmar, in a tone 
 which closed the subject.
 
 269 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 It was a tiny cliurcli which bore the name of 
 S. Ceciha at S. Pharamond, and was perched 
 on an ohve-covered knoll, with the rolling 
 woods of the chateau d'Othmar at its base 
 and the gardens of Millo on its right. Kicole 
 Sandroz and a few other families of the petite 
 culture gathered there on Sundays and holy 
 days ; but the great people of Millo, with their 
 household, had tlieir own private chapel, and 
 the friends to whom Othmar had lent his house 
 had never troubled themselves to find their 
 way to the little whitewashed, wind-blown sanc- 
 tuary and the lowly presbytery that leaned up 
 against its south wall. 
 
 Othmar himself, who had a score of eccle- 
 siastics in a score of places looking to him 
 for support, had hardly known that this little 
 church and its old purblind peasant-born cure 
 were upon the confines of his estate. He had 
 paid every year a large sum for the mainte-
 
 270 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 nance of S. Pharamoncl, as for that of each of 
 his houses and estates, but he had never ex- 
 amined the details of the expenditure. The 
 advantage of an immense fortune is that you 
 can leave all such matters to your secretaries. 
 He paid them more heed than many would 
 have done because of the views he entertained 
 on the duties of saving other people from 
 temptation ; but S. Pharamond, with all its 
 luxuries, elegancies, gardens, carriages, and 
 conservatories, was only to him as a mere 
 cottage, a mere toy. He had, indeed, almost 
 forgotten that he had owned it, until, beating 
 up the Bay of Genoa in a storm-tossed and 
 almost disabled vessel, he had suddenly remem- 
 bered that somewhere on this coast which slid 
 away in the dusk to the westward he had a 
 harbour and a quay all his own if he chose to 
 go thither. 
 
 The little church was ugly, poor, and had 
 been built since the Ee volution ; all that re- 
 deemed it was a great climbing rose which 
 covered the whole of its front, and was even 
 flinging audacious branches upwards to the 
 cross upon the roof. In summer the rose 
 made the Httle plain square place a glory of
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 271 
 
 pink bloom. Inside, there were a few deal 
 benches, a few bad prints, a humble little altar, 
 and some pewter candlesticks ; the presbytery 
 was equally as bare. 
 
 The old vicar lived with one servant as old 
 as himself ; he toddled out amongst the farms, 
 and was scouted and scowled at by some of the 
 peasants, petted and welcomed by others. He 
 did no harm, and was quite happy if one of his 
 parishioners gave him a basket of figs or a dish 
 of seakale ; he could almost have counted his 
 flock on his fingers. The men about there 
 were very radical and hard-headed ; they were 
 all small proprietors, who cursed Millo and S. 
 Pharamond all the year round, though neither 
 the villa nor the chateau did them the shghtest 
 harm. On the contrary, the stewards of both 
 the Due de Yannes and Othmar had orders to 
 give away any rare seeds, aid in any irrigation- 
 works, or contribute to any need that there 
 might be in the neighbourhood. But the Due 
 was a duke and peer of France, and Othmar 
 was an archimillionake ; the jpetite culture hated 
 the sight of their gilded bronze gates and 
 their glittering high-pitched roofs. 
 
 ' It is for you that we pay taxes ! ' snarled
 
 272 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 one of them once to the Due cle Vannes, who 
 laughed and answered : 
 
 ' Oh, my friend, if we compared notes I 
 think you would find that it is I who pay them 
 for you and yours. I have not the shghtest 
 objection to do so, only do not let us misrepre- 
 sent matters.' 
 
 But they did not want logic, and they 
 hated the steep shining roofs and the gates 
 with the gilded scroll work. What they did 
 not hate w^as Yseulte de Valogne ; all countess 
 though she was, they pardoned her that defect 
 because she had always remained for them la 
 petiote de Nicole. They understood that she 
 was to be sacrificed to the pride of her rela- 
 tives ; that because she was poor, so poor, she 
 was to be refused all the joys of her youth and 
 her sex and surrendered to the Church that 
 she might not offend the grandeur of her family 
 by making a portionless marriage. This, which 
 they had learned, with many exaggerations of 
 its enormity from Nicole and from the servants 
 of Millo, gave her the halo of a martyr in their 
 eyes ; she was sacrificed to the noblesse, and 
 that fact was enough to make her sacred to 
 them even though she belonged to the detested
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 273 
 
 order herself, and had not a httle of its hauteur. 
 Besides, her tenderness to their old people, the 
 little gifts she made at the convent and brought 
 to their little ones and their women, her in- 
 trepidity in cases of sickness in those winters 
 when she was alone at Millo — a mere child, but 
 w^itli the courage of giants, as Nicole loved to 
 tell — all these, joined to her personal elegance, 
 which made her as unhke themselves as the 
 orchids in Othmar hothouses were unlike the 
 sweet peas and the lavender growing under 
 their peach trees, had combined to make of the 
 last Comtesse de Yalogne the idol of t\mt jjetite 
 culture which, with few exceptions, loathed and 
 execrated the brilliant idlers who rode and drove 
 out of the gates of Millo, and carried their 
 light laughter, their painted fans, their blazing 
 jewels, their grace and their luxuries, out on to 
 the illuminated terraces, under the palms and 
 the araucarias, amidst the lamps and the music, 
 regardless of the people in the distant huts and 
 houses on the surrounding hills who, rising to 
 their work, as they went to their beds, swore 
 savagely against them w^ith all the unchanged 
 rancorous class-hatred of the Terror still alive 
 in them and unsatisfied. 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 'But, Nicole,' the girl said often to her 
 foster-mother, ' if there were no rich people, no 
 great people, who would buy your "primeurs^ 
 your December peas, your January aspa- 
 ragus ? ' 
 
 ' We should eat them ourselves,' said Nicole, 
 sternly. 
 
 ' You might do that now ; but I do not think 
 that eating them would pay you for all they 
 cost you,' said Yseulte, not very sure of her 
 ground, and therefore timid in treading it. 
 
 ' We should not grow them ; there would 
 be no need to grow them,' said Nicole, ob- 
 stinately. ' Everybody would have his cabbage 
 in his pot if there were not those pestilent 
 aristocrats and rich folks.' 
 
 ' But you might plant cabbages now,' in- 
 sisted her petiote. ' Why should you not plant 
 cabbages everywhere now if you like ? Only 
 you always say it is only the primeurs that pay 
 well.' 
 
 ' Oh, 7na mie, you belong to them, so you 
 defend them ! ' grumbled her foster-mother, 
 finding the argument go against her. ' And 
 what are they going to do with you ? Cut off 
 all your beautiful hair, and cram you between
 
 ■ PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 275 
 
 four stone walls all your life, because it suits 
 their pride to get rid of you ! ' 
 
 ' One cannot live better than in God's 
 service,' said Yseulte, with a passing blush. 
 
 ' Oh, yes, one can,' muttered Nicole, ' when 
 one is sixteen years old and has a face like 
 yours ; one could have a gallant lover, and a 
 loyal lord, a home of one's own, and children 
 one after another at one's breast.' 
 
 A colour like that^ of the red winter roses 
 which she was binding up for the Nice markets 
 came into the girl's cheeks. 
 
 ' I am quite happy to dedicate my life to 
 our Mother and her poor,' she said, in that tone 
 which always awed and silenced Nicole. ' All 
 that I fear is, not to be worthy. There have 
 been holy women of my race. I may never 
 content them as they watch me from their 
 places at God's right hand.' 
 
 The coarse blunt fashion of speech of her 
 foster-mother, and the crude class-hatreds and 
 political animosities which Nicole had imbibed 
 from her husband often pained and offended 
 the dehcacy and the pride of the girl ; but the 
 rough woman loved her, w^as almost the only 
 creature that did love her, save some of the 
 
 T 2
 
 276 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 younger children in the convent ; and Yseuhe 
 bore with her fauUs with that indulgent affec- 
 tion which is not bhnd, but patient and ever 
 forgiving. 
 
 She spoke in simplicity and sincerity ; she 
 had been so drilled to behold her only future 
 in the religious life, that she prayed night and 
 day to be worthy of such election ; and if a 
 thrill of longing for unknown freedom, for un- 
 imaginable joys, sometimes came over her she 
 loyally stifled it ere it could grow to any 
 strength. From her babyhood she had been 
 taught to consider herself consecrated to the 
 Church, and that knowledge had always kept 
 her a little apart from others, made her more 
 serious, more sensitive, more meditative, than 
 her age usually is. 
 
 ' And, to be sure, if there be any up there 
 who do know, it is a crying shame that they do 
 not interfere,' muttered her foster-mother, only 
 half abashed. But Yseulte did not hear her ; 
 she had let the roses lie on her lap, her hands 
 were motionless, her eyes were looking far 
 away, farther than the snow which crowned the 
 distant mountains ; she was thinking of that 
 saint by whom her childhood had been shel-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 277 
 
 tered ; could it indeed be that so great a love 
 as her grandmother's had been had perished 
 utterly, had gone whither it knew nothing, saw 
 nothing, had no power to warn or save ? If 
 it were so, she was alone indeed. But 
 
 ' Nay, do not think of them,' said Nicole, 
 roughly ; ' what is dead is dead, my sweet ; be 
 it a pig or be it a princess, when the life is out 
 the sense is out with it ; it rots, but it does 
 not wake.' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' said the girl, with a little frown 
 and a sense of pain, as if she had heard some 
 foul irreverence. The dead were all she had 
 to care for ; half her young life was passed in 
 thinking of them, in praying for them, in 
 wondering if they approved that which she did. 
 ' Christ will give you your dower,' her grand- 
 mother had said often to her, a little seven- 
 year-old child, who had vaguely understood 
 that her future was pledged to heaven ; and 
 that she must never be fractious, or noisy, or 
 sullen, or give way to appetite or mischief as 
 other children did who were less honoiu*ed. It 
 had made her neither affected nor hypocritical ; 
 only pathetically doubtful of herself and capable 
 of repressing her naturally buoyant spirits with
 
 278 PJ^LYCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 an incredible patience wliicliwas almost heroism, 
 but went always unrewarded. 
 
 Faiel was a part of the old world of Bretagne, 
 where the land is green and deeply wooded, 
 and the days are misty and soft and still; it 
 hes inland, and has no sight of the sea; it is 
 traversed by narrow roads sunk down low be- 
 tween moss-grown walls of verdure ; it seems all 
 covered up with moss and ferns and boughs; 
 there is always moisture in the air and there are 
 almost always clouds in the sky, but it is a 
 sweet, tender, if mournful country, and in the 
 late-arriving spring becomes a very bower of 
 flowers. _. 
 
 In the heart of this green country the 
 ancient village of Faiel held the equally ancient 
 convent of the Holy Ladies of St. Anne, 
 with its long grey stone walls, its steep shining 
 metal roofs, and its high belfry with its cross 
 of gilded brass towering above the low quaint 
 cottages which crept humbly up beneath it 
 many centuries ago. The foundation owed 
 its origin to Anne of Bretagne herself, and year 
 after year, century after century, undisturbed 
 by wars or revolutions, and unreached by any 
 change of thought or manners the pious ladies
 
 P/^LYCESS NAPRAXINE. 279 
 
 of Faiel, in their habits of black and white, 
 had reared the young daughters of the Breton 
 nobility and gentry in the ways of God and in 
 such secular learning as seemed not too pro- 
 fane. The community was severe in its rules 
 and austerely simple in all its customs ; but 
 the children were happy if not gay ; the green, 
 leafy, silent country was betw^een them and the 
 world, the sisters were kind and gentle, the 
 young girls murmured together, joyously, unre- 
 proved, like young swallows chirping under the 
 eaves in midsummer. This holy house in pious 
 Morbihan was wholly unlike those fashionable 
 convents of Paris, and near it, where all the 
 pomps and vanities of the world find their 
 way, and its jealousies and its rivahdes fret and 
 fume in miniature mimicry. The Dames de Ste. 
 Anne had all the primitive faiths, the unblem- 
 ished loyalties, the devout beliefs in tradition 
 of the Middle Ages ; they taught the history of 
 France from rehgious instead of secular records, 
 and the history of the saints from the Golden 
 Legend ; they worked silver lilies on wliite 
 banners, and in their chapel every day a Mass 
 was said for Henri Cinq. Their little maidens 
 became under their hands simple, earnest.
 
 28o PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 grave, and most innocent and truthful creatures, 
 ignorant, no doubt, in many things, but possess- 
 ing a perfect courage and a beautiful candour ; 
 such maidens as in the old days, from the 
 Combat des Trente to Quiberon, had be- 
 come the wives and mothers of the Breton 
 seigneurie, and had, if need were, defended 
 a castle and headed a sally of men-at-arms in 
 the holy cause of their duke or of their king ; 
 w^omen like the arum lihes that covered the 
 damp green earth in their native woods ; women 
 whose eyes look at us still, serious and serene, 
 from the gold blazonries of illuminated missals, 
 where their miniatures have been painted 
 beneath their scutcheons and their crowns. 
 
 Of these children, when they had passed 
 from the gates of Faiel for the last time, some 
 went to pass all their years in the small se- 
 cluded chateaux or the dull stone-buik towns 
 of the seashore or the interior ; some, finding a 
 wider flight, a bolder fate, went into the life of 
 the world and lived that life. But wherever 
 they went, whatever they became, none of them 
 ever wholly forgot Faiel; all of them when 
 they bore children said, as they looked on their 
 little daughters, ' They shall go to the Dames
 
 PJ^LYCESS NAPRAXINE, 281 
 
 de Ste. Anne ; ' so that generation after genera- 
 tion came to the great Gothic gateway, and 
 passed within and dwelt there for eight or ten 
 peaceful years ; and tlie sisters, though death 
 made changes amidst them, yet seemed always 
 the same. 
 
 Yseulte, who was a fanciful child like most 
 of those who have a lonely childhood, used 
 to believe that they were like that woman of 
 the time of Clovis who learned the secret of 
 eternal life from listening to the singing of the 
 forest birds. 
 
 She used to look throui^h the fjratino- down 
 the deep green shade of the woods without, 
 and think, ' That is why they hve so long, why 
 they are always content.' 
 
 One day an old peasant, who was called a 
 witch in Faiel, saw her looking so and heard 
 her say something of her thoughts to her com- 
 panion, and the old crone shook her head 
 wisely, ' Do not wish to live long ; wish to live 
 so that you have all heaven in one hour ; it is 
 not the birds, nor is it the woods, nor is it the 
 saints, that will give you that.' 
 
 ' What does she mean ? ' said Yseulte. 
 
 'In the village they say she has been a
 
 283 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 wicked woman,' said the girl who was beside 
 her. 
 
 Yseulte pondered often on the mysterious 
 words, but she could never understand them. 
 
 At Faiel her days and years went by with- 
 out any sorrow, if without any pleasure save 
 such as youth and perfect health and willingness 
 to accomplish all allotted tasks can bring with 
 them. She always wore grey or black or 
 white ; no colours were ever seen, no ornaments 
 were ever allowed within the sacred walls. She 
 was regarded as certain to enter the religious 
 life. ' Til seras des notres^ said the nuns so 
 often to her that before she was ten years old 
 she had s^rown so imbued with the idea that 
 she had never dreamed of resisting such a des- 
 tination. Her life was so entirely simple, in a 
 way so barren, that the spmtual world assumed 
 a proportion in it which would have been 
 morbid had not the high courage and bodily 
 healthfulness of her resisted the gloom which 
 those who had to do with her deemed most 
 fitting to the loneliness of her lot. She came of 
 a race of gay nobles, of reckless soldiers, of 
 high-handed seigneurs, and some instincts of 
 their courage, of their temper, of their impru-
 
 PRLXCESS NAPRAXINE. 283 
 
 tlence, stirred in her now and then beneath the 
 cahii of cloistral habit and the spirituality of 
 her natural temperament. 
 
 ' Do you think the daughter of Gui de 
 Valogne will ever be a saint ? ' the Due de 
 Yannes often said to his wife. He thought 
 that blood would out even beneath the coif 
 of a Carmelite. His Avife replied that the 
 Valogne had always kept their women pure, 
 if at the sword's point, and that amongst them 
 there had been more than one canonised ; 
 besides, she added, Yseulte was a child both 
 grave and good ; she would never know the 
 world or its temptations; she would live and 
 die as a lily did in a convent garden. 
 
 The Due shrugged his shoulders : 
 
 ' She has her father's blood in her,' lie said, 
 ' and he would have suited no cloister but 
 Eoissy or Medmenham.' 
 
 He believed in very few things, but his one 
 belief was his conviction that the bias of a 
 race goes with it as do its diseases or its excel- 
 lences. Most racing men are implicit believers 
 in hereditary influence, and the Due, who had 
 bred winners at Chantilly and at Ascot, did 
 not credit that the daughter of Gui de Valogne
 
 284 F/^IATESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 would contentedly become a Ste. Catherine or 
 a Soeur Eose. 
 
 ' Of course you may shut her perforce m 
 a rehgious house ; so might you shut her in a 
 coffin. To be sure, the one murder is legal and 
 the other would not be so,' he said, with some 
 ill-humour, the night after Othmar noticed his 
 young cousin with her long black gloves, her 
 stately curtsy, her sash a Venfant, and her 
 beautiful figure, which had the slimness of a 
 child and the promise of a goddess. 
 
 ^ I believe you are almost in love with her 
 yourself,' said the Duchess. 
 
 ' I wonder no one else is wholly,' he an- 
 swered, with petulance ; and he wrote to his 
 jeweller in the Eue de la Paix for a locket, a 
 girl's locket ; something with pearls. He thought 
 even a Mother Superior could hardly object to 
 pearls. 
 
 Yseulte, all unconscious of the perilous 
 honour projected for her by her cousin's lord, 
 passed the whole day up at the little church, 
 arranging the flowers which Othmar had given 
 her in the morning, and others which his men, 
 by his orders, had brought thither in the fore- 
 noon. She was happier than she had been since
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 285 
 
 her grandmother had died. A warm human 
 interest had come suddenly into the monotony 
 and sohtude of her existence. She worked at 
 the decoration of the httle place with ardour 
 and delight. She had never before possessed 
 such flowers as these ; the woods had yielded 
 all those which had ever decked the altar of 
 the chapel at Faiel. She had only seen such 
 gorgeous blossoms as these in the glass-house 
 at Millo, where she would no more have 
 dreamed of gathering them than of wearing her 
 cousin's diamonds. 
 
 'He shall see how beautiful it looks to- 
 morrow,' she thought with each blossom that 
 she added, each leaf she touched. That he 
 would come she never doubted ; a promise, 
 ever such a little one, was so sacred to herself 
 that for any pledge to be forgotten would have 
 seemed to her quite impossible. 
 
 The old vicar came and went, the sacristan 
 and the housekeeper stood and chattered and 
 told her for the hundredth time all their house- 
 hold troubles ; the gay sunshine streamed in 
 past the open door and through the dulled grey 
 glass of the small Avindows, a goat trotted up 
 the aisle and nibbled at the bay boughs which
 
 286 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 she had tied together. The morning passed hke 
 a pleasant dream ; it seemed not December to 
 her but May. She was but a child, and for 
 once the weight of her future fell off her young 
 shoulders. She laughed, — softly, because she 
 sat on the altar steps, — but she laughed. ' God 
 is so good,' she thought, in the simple sincerity 
 of her glad gratitude. 
 
 ' You wall let me sing, my reverend, at all 
 the offices ? ' she said to the old man when she 
 had finished her welcome labours and stood 
 wdth him within the stone porch whilst the sun 
 was setting. 
 
 ' Surely, my child,' he said willingly. ' It 
 does me good to hear your voice, and I think 
 it must even be pleasant to the angels too.' 
 
 She went happily along the uneven little 
 path wdiich led down the hill mider great olive 
 trees and warm evening sunset skies to Millo. 
 Her feet went so rapidly that the maid whose 
 duty it was to attend her out of doors could ill 
 keep pace with her. Her heart was so liglit ; 
 she had the vision of the beautiful flowers 
 always before her eyes, of tlie altar which she 
 had made like a garden. It mattered nothing 
 to her that when she entered the house she w^as
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIXE. 287 
 
 met by a reprimand, that she found her simple 
 supper cold, that her little cousins were 
 malicious, quarrelsome, unkind ; all those were 
 trifles. She bore them with perfect patience, 
 and with never a word of harsh reply ; and she 
 went to her bed and slept soundly, dreaming of 
 roses and lilies, and S. Cecilia, and of a world 
 of angels who leaned on the sunbeams as on 
 golden spears, and looked doAvn on her and 
 smiled. 
 
 She was up long before the first gleam of 
 coming day lightened the eastward seas. No 
 one ever forbade her going to the church as 
 often as she chose ; they deemed it in unison 
 with her future vocation. She had attached her- 
 self to this rude, lonely, little place inthe winters 
 which she had passed there under the charge 
 of Kicole Sandroz. Her cousin had said once 
 that it would be better if she attended instead 
 the offices of the house chapel, but she had 
 not insisted, and the child, who had a certam 
 obstinacy in her affections, had persevered in 
 her loyalty to the parish church under its 
 silvery mist of olives. 
 
 This morning her foster-motlier was in 
 waiting to accompany her. The cold was
 
 288 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 keen in the greyness of tlie dawn ; the sun, 
 which at noon would vivify the winter land- 
 scape to summer-like warmth, was still hidden 
 in the nether world, the earth and the sea were 
 dark, the stars still lingered in the shadowy 
 skies. 
 
 ' What folly, petiote ! ' muttered Nicole, 
 who had her lanthorn, ' to get up out of your 
 bed to go and sing an ave ! If it were to pack 
 a crate of oranges there would be some sense ! ' 
 
 ' Hush, please,' said Yseulte gently. ' Per- 
 haps grandmere hears.' 
 
 The memory of the old Marquise always 
 touched and silenced the irreligious grumbling 
 of Nicole. She said nothing more, but toiled 
 on stoutly, her lanthorn twinkling amongst the 
 rough grass, white with passing frost. 
 
 ' The child would be best in her bed,' she 
 thought ; ' but there is one thing, — she never 
 takes cold. One would like to think the saints 
 had a care of her, but that is all rubbish ; even 
 our mayor says so now, and he is such a 
 dunderhead, Avhat he cannot stomach nobody 
 can.' 
 
 Still Nicole, who came to Mass for her sake, 
 though the good woman in lier soul hated the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 289 
 
 bigots, the black beetles, of the church, held 
 on her way up the hill, stumbling over the 
 roots of the old olives ; it pleased the petiote 
 that she should come, and after all it could do 
 no harm. 
 
 Eager, proud, joyous — more joyous she 
 feared than was meet for the sanctity of the hour 
 and the errand — Yseulte led her into the church 
 as the first pale light of daybreak spread itself 
 over the earth. 
 
 ' Now you will see how beautiful it is ! ' 
 she murmured to Xicole. 
 
 Alas, the fair garden she had made and left 
 at twilight was a ruin now ! Where she had 
 caused the metal and the wood and the stone 
 to bloom as with the blossoms of Paradise, 
 there were only poor pale yellow withered 
 things colourless as ashes ! 
 
 The frost of the night had stolen the glory 
 from the flowers as the hand of the Church 
 would strike the youth from her life and leave 
 it hard and dumb as a stone. The blossoms 
 had died of cold like little children lost in the 
 snow, like bright butterflies beaten down and 
 drowned in a storm of hail. 
 
 A low pathetic cry of grief escaped her as 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 slie saw tlie lovely things, wliicli she so ignor- 
 antly and innocently had slain, hanging their 
 folded petals in the chill glimmer of the early 
 day as the limbs of infants hang in death. 
 
 Her 'eyes filled with hot quick tears that 
 ran down her cheeks. 
 
 ' Oh, look ! Oh, look ! ' she cried piteously. 
 
 ' What could you expect, fkiote^ said Nicole 
 with rough sympathy, ' if you bring hot- 
 house flowers from under their glass .^ Our 
 nights are cold— my man said last night it was 
 two below zero by the mercury tube in our 
 wall. Do not cry, mignonne ; you could not 
 help it ; you did not think of it ; children 
 never do think. But bay and laurel a^d all 
 those common shrubs are best fit to stand the 
 cold of the church. These things are only 
 aristocrats.' 
 
 Nicole checked herself; she remembered 
 the Marquise de Creusac, Avith the frost of 
 poverty and cruel loss upon her, meeting mis- 
 fortune with serene courage and unchanging 
 dignity ; her comparison, she saw, halted and 
 failed. 
 
 Yseulte did not hear ; she was thinking 
 piteously, * And I did so want him to see
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 291 
 
 how beautiful it all looked through his kind- 
 ness ! ' 
 
 She was quite sure that Othmar would come 
 to one office or another during the day. She 
 was ashamed to be so occupied with this one 
 thought when the drone of the acolyte was 
 chanting in monotonous sing-song the opening 
 words of the Mass ; but it was stronger than 
 herself. She thought of nothing else, to lier 
 own surprise and confusion ; she was wholly 
 unable to keep her mind to the holy offices of 
 the hour ; for the first time, the sonorous Latin 
 words failed to carry her soul with them ; she 
 was glancing while she knelt at the closed 
 rickety door, she was wondering whilst she 
 sang the 'Agnus Dei,' would he come? She 
 had taken such infinite pains with the flowers, 
 and now all their beauty was gone ! — they 
 were only faded, helpless-looking melancholy 
 wrecks of themselves, disfiguring the altar 
 rather than lending it grace and glory. 
 
 ' Pauvre petiote ! ' thought Nicole, fingering 
 her beads, and bending her stifi' knees from 
 habit. ' The frost will come just hke that to 
 her, and nobody will care. Often have I a 
 mind to go up to Millo and tell them it is a 
 
 , tj2
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ne, a vile shame ; but they would not care, 
 they would have me turned out for an old mad 
 woman.' 
 
 The church was very dark ; the few lights 
 there were did not dissipate the shadows of the 
 dawn ; the clear melodious voice of Yseulte rose 
 in the gloom as a nightingale's does in the 
 lovelier dusk of a midsummer daybreak. 
 
 All her heart thrilled out in it, and when 
 the last notes sank to silence there was a 
 tremor as of tears in them. 
 
 Mcole's heart swelled too as she heard, half 
 with pain, half with rage. 
 
 ' I would sooner she were singing '' do', 
 do', I'enfant dor' ! " by her baby's cradle,' 
 thought this heathen. 
 
 She attended every oflPice of the church 
 during the next twelve hours, but Othmar 
 came not to one of them. With Vespers all hope 
 of seeing him there — such a vague, innocent, 
 half-conscious hope as it was — had perished 
 quite, like the orchids on the altar. 
 
 The day was over : the church had once 
 more no light except that of its twinkling 
 candles ; the peasants shuffled to their feet and 
 clattered out over the stones ; Nicole began to
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 293 
 
 chatter to the maid ; the old vicar had tottered 
 into the sacristy and was pulHng off his vest- 
 ments ; the last office was done ; the butterfly 
 orchids were dying in the stench of the sput- 
 tering candle wicks ; the acolyte — a ploughboy 
 in a short linen tunic wliich showed his hob- 
 nailed boots — began to put the wicks out with 
 a brass extinguisher fixed at the end of a long 
 stick ; she thought she would never bring 
 flowers there any more — it was cruel — they 
 withered and faded, and who could tell what 
 they might suffer ? She had never remembered 
 that before. 
 
 The flowers had died in the service of the 
 church ; so would she. It had seldom seemed 
 hard before. 
 
 While the two women chattered in low 
 tones of the doings of Millo, she turned quickly 
 back to the altar-steps and knelt down there 
 and said one last prayer confusedly, conscious 
 that she had been at fault all through the Mass 
 in thinking of other thiugs than the holy 
 services in which she had taken part. 
 
 She rose, with the tears in her eyes, and 
 went out through the little dark aisle between 
 the two women, leaving the poor lost flowers
 
 294 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 in a confused and shadowy mass upon the altar 
 until dawn, to be tossed away and thrust out 
 under the sacristan's broom to the dust-heap. 
 Othmar had not come. 
 
 He was sittino- at his own table, with the 
 Princess JSTapraxine at his right hand. 
 
 The girl could see the lighted windows of 
 his chateau as she walked down under the 
 olives through the dusky furrows, already 
 dotted witli blades of corn, the women still 
 chattering as they came behind her, the woods 
 of Millo black under the moon, the stars shining, 
 a distant watchdoo- criving tons^ue. 
 
 ' You are late, ])etiote^ said her foster- 
 mother, kissing her hand at the door of the 
 house. ' But it will not matter ; they are 
 all dining at Count Othmar's ; if no one of 
 those cats of gouvernantes tell the Duchesse, she 
 will be none the wiser.' 
 
 ' There is nothing to conceal,' cried Yseulte 
 a little coldly. ' My cousin knows that I go 
 out to Vespers as well as Mass. Good night.' 
 
 She kissed her nurse on the cheek, and 
 went up the staircase of Millo. Her heart 
 had contracted with a sort of pang as she 
 heard the idle words, 'They are all dining at
 
 PRIXCESS NAPRAXINE. 295 
 
 Count Othmar's.' She did not wonder that 
 he had not invited her ; no one invited her 
 anywhere ; she was a schoolgirl now, and 
 would be a nun later on ; she had nothing 
 to do with the world, and yet her heart ached 
 a little. 
 
 She did not touch the coffee and the cakes 
 that her maid brought her. She sat at the 
 window of her own little room, and looked 
 every now and then out into the chilly night 
 and across the moonlit landscape to the towers 
 of S. Pharamond. There were points of light 
 of all colours sparkling in the darkness round 
 the chateau. They were the lamps of his 
 gardens, which were illuminated down to the 
 very edge of the sea. She felt a great longing 
 to cry like a little child ; but she would not 
 yield to it. Only two great tears rolled slowly 
 down her cheeks. She knew that she had 
 been very foolish to expect him at the church ; 
 only he had said that he would come !
 
 296 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A FEW mornings later, after his noonday break- 
 fast, Alain de Vannes sauntered out into the 
 rose gardens of his wife, having seen there the 
 figure of his wife's young cousin in her demiu-e 
 grey dress with the cape of sable, which he 
 was just then in the mood to think the prettiest 
 female garb in the world. He went up to 
 her with easy and good-humoured courtesy, as 
 became her kinsman and her host. 
 
 'My cousin,' he said tenderly, 'you have 
 no trinkets and pretty things, as a little lady of 
 your years should have. I believe there are 
 all that are left of the Valogne jewels waiting 
 for you in strong coffers, but meantime here 
 is a little bird that will whisper to you pretty 
 things if you will listen to him. You may 
 wear a dove, you know, at the convent itself. 
 It is the bird of the Holy Spirit.' 
 
 And with that he gave her what he had 
 telegraphed for from Paris, a locket of blue
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 297 
 
 enamel rimmed with pearls, and a dove, made 
 of pearls, flying on it ; it hung from a thick 
 gold chain. 
 
 She was so astonished that she could not 
 speak. 
 
 The Due watched her with amusement. 
 ' Pardieu ! ' he thought, ' it is much more 
 entertaining to give to the ingenue than to the 
 belle petite. What wonder, what delight, wdiat 
 innocent gratitude I — and the others only box 
 your ears if the diamonds be not big enough or 
 the emeralds do not please them. Eeally we 
 are fools.' 
 
 Yseulte meanwhile had not spoken yet ; 
 what moved her so intensely was not the gift 
 of the medallion itself, splendid though it was, 
 but the idea that anyone had had so much 
 remembrance of her. She liad scarcely had 
 more notice than a careless bow or a brief 
 ' honjour ' from her cousin's husband in all her 
 life, and now, he brought her this magnificent 
 present ! And yet, how much sooner she w^ould 
 have had Othmar remember to go and hear 
 her sing ! 
 
 ' Well, migno7ine,' said the Due gaily. 
 ' You look as if you were not sure whether you
 
 298 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 were in earth or in lieaven. We are not, when 
 we look at you.' 
 
 ' It is most good of you ; it is most beautiful,' 
 she said, with hesitation. ' That you should 
 have thouc^ht of me is so kind ; but I fear 
 I ought not to wear it ; you know in two years' 
 time I am to enter the Carmelite communion.' 
 
 ' Nonsense ! It is the bird of the Holy 
 Spirit,' said de Yannes, with an ambiguous 
 smile. ' I think you may wear it when you 
 are an abbess — if ever you be an abbess. Ah, 
 my child, it is a cruel thing to doom you 
 to the religious life ; only ugly women should 
 go there, and you are so handsome, Jillette^ — 
 you will be so handsome ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, no ! ' she said, quickly ; she blushed 
 very much ; she had been always told that 
 it was a sin to think of any physical charms, 
 and yet she had enough of the instincts of a 
 beautiful woman in her to take an unconscious 
 delight in the whiteness of her limbs, the 
 thickness of her Iiair, the smile of her own eyes 
 from a mirror. 
 
 ' Oh, yes ! ' said de Vannes, still with that 
 smile which vaguely hurt lier. ' You will be 
 marvellously handsome, Yseulte ; I think that
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIXE. 299 
 
 is the chief reason why the ladies wish you in 
 the cloister ! It was certainly the reason why 
 they would not take you to Othmar's last night. 
 To be sure you are not in the world, but in the 
 country they might have made an exception ; 
 you are seen in our drawing-rooms.' 
 
 She lifted her eyes with eager appeal. 
 ' Did he ask me ? Did he think of me ? ' 
 she said, under her breath. 
 
 The keen glance of the Due flashed over 
 her face, and grew harsh and suspicious. 
 
 ' Because he spoke to you once,' he thought, 
 ' I suppose, though you be a young saint in 
 embryo, you are not proof against his millions ! 
 You are all alike after all, you women, even in 
 the bud.' 
 
 Aloud he said : ' Yes ; I believe Othmar 
 bade my wife bring you. Perhaps she thought 
 it was too much like the great world for you ; 
 it was a brilliant affair — all done for the Prin- 
 cess Napraxine.' 
 
 ' Who is the Princess Napraxine ? ' she 
 asked, surprised at her own temerity. 
 
 ' She is the lady of Othmar's dreams,' said 
 de Vannes, with an unkind satisfaction. ' You 
 are sure to see her here sometime. What did
 
 300 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 you think of liim the other night ? You know, 
 I suppose, that he could buy up all France if 
 he chose.' 
 
 ' I did not know,' she murmured. ' Nicole, 
 I think, said that he was rich.' 
 
 ' Eich ! ' echoed the Due, with derision. 
 ' That is not a word to describe Othmar. He 
 has about a million millions, and he would 
 probably be happier if he were the blind 
 beggar of the Pont JSTeuf. His millions do not 
 do anything for him with Nadine Napraxine, 
 and it is only for Nadine Napraxine that he 
 exists.' 
 
 Then he paused ; the respect for la jeune 
 Jille, by which the most dissolute of his country- 
 men is restrained from long habit, making him 
 repress the sentence he had on his lips ; that 
 momentary flush and light of happiness at being 
 remembered by Othmar which he had seen on 
 his young cousin's face had made him bitter 
 against his neisjhbour and friend, and he would 
 
 DO ^ 
 
 willingly have continued his sarcasms on a 
 man who, with all the world at his feet, cared 
 only for another man's wife, who laughed at 
 him. 
 
 Yseulte listened with serious and wistful
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 301 
 
 eyes ; she did not know enough of his mean- 
 ing, nor enough of the sympathy which had 
 attracted her towards Othmar, to understand 
 why she feU a vague pain at hearing these 
 things said of him mingled with a dehghted 
 gratitude that he had remembered her. It 
 was not to have gone to his party that she 
 cared for, but to be remembered by him. 
 
 The children and their governesses ap- 
 proached her at that moment, and the Due 
 somewhat hurriedly turned away. 
 
 ' Do not let these fools see your locket,' he 
 said quickly, meaning by that epithet the wise 
 women who educated his daugliters. ' If Cri- 
 Cri notice it, tell her, of course.' 
 
 Yseulte, surprised at the injunction, looked 
 at him in wonder ; but slie saw so much irrita- 
 tion in his expression that, being accustomed 
 to obey the orders of others without comment, 
 and to be taught that silence was one of the 
 first of duties, she put liis gift in her pocket as 
 the children approached, and their father, with 
 a petulant word or two, turned away, lighting a 
 cigar. 
 
 ' What was 'petit papa saying to you ? ' 
 cried the little sisters in a breath.
 
 302 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 They were pretty cliildren, with clouds of 
 hau' and saucy peevish httle faces. They wore 
 sailor dresses, made very short at the knee 
 and showing legs very shapely though too 
 thin. Blanch ette was blonde ; Toinon was a 
 little darker and rosier. Blanchette was the 
 more elegant and the more witty by far ; Toinon 
 was the sturdier and the nausrhtier. But 
 Toinon had still something of childhood left in 
 her ; Blanchette had lost every atom of hers 
 years before, though she was only ten years 
 old now. Toinon loved horses, dogs, boats, 
 and le sport generally ; Blanchette only cared 
 for smart frocks, things which cost a great deal 
 of money, scandal which she overheard, and 
 which fascinated her in proportion as it was 
 unintelligible to her, and the sense that she 
 was looked at admiringly as she drove behind 
 the ponies in the Bois or walked, with a court 
 of small boys behind her, down the planks at 
 Trouville. 
 
 Between her two cousins and Yseulte de 
 Valogne there was a great gulf fixed, that gulf 
 into which there has fallen so much of the 
 innocence of youth, of the grace of good man- 
 ners, of the charm of girlhood, and of the obli-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 303 
 
 gation of nobility ; that gulf over whicli modern 
 society dances so lightly, blind and indifferent 
 to all it has lost. 
 
 ' What was jpetit pci'pa saying ? ' cried 
 Blanchette and Toinon in one breath, their 
 eyes wide open with curiosity and sparkling 
 with suspicion. 
 
 Yseulte hesitated ; she scarcely knew what 
 to say, and a kind of oppression came upon her 
 with the sense of the gift and the secret which 
 she had to keep and conceal. 
 
 ' He was telling me that I was invited — 
 there — last night,' she said, as she looked 
 across at the trees of S. Pharamond ; ' but they 
 thought me not old enough,' she added, with 
 an unconscious sigh. 
 
 Blanchette tmnied up her little dehcate nose 
 in the air. 
 
 ' Grande nigaude, va I ' she said contemp- 
 tuously. ' You will never be anything but a 
 big baby, you! When I am as old as you, 
 I shall have been married a whole year 
 to a crown prince, and have gone to all the 
 theatres, and read all the newspapers — every 
 one ! ' 
 
 'But she will never see a newspaper, and
 
 304 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 never go to a theatre ; never, never, never, — a 
 big never 1 ' cried Toinon, v^lio was two years 
 younger tlian Blancliette, as she clapped her 
 hands and capered. 
 
 'She does not care, she is such a stupid,' 
 said Blanchette, with all the superiority of 
 measureless scorn. 
 
 ' Papa was giving you something : what 
 did he give you ? ' said Toinon. ' He said you 
 were handsome the other night to mamma, I 
 heard him. Mamma was angry.' 
 
 ' Mamma did not care,' said Blanchette. ' If 
 it had been the Marquis Eaymond ! ' 
 
 Then the little sisters laughed. 
 
 Yseulte with difficulty escaped from her 
 little tormentors, and wandered alone through 
 the pretty grounds ; while the closed shutters 
 of the villa of Millo showed that her cousin 
 and her house-party were still sleeping after 
 the cotillon with which Othmar's party had 
 closed; an improvised and unexpected cotillon, 
 for which, nevertheless, there had been all 
 manner of admirable surprises, marvellous 
 novelties, and costly presents. 
 
 AVhen she was quite alone she took out 
 her pearl medallion and looked at it with all
 
 PJ^LVCESS NAPRAXINE. 305 
 
 a child's rapture at a toy and something of a 
 woman's pleasure in a jewel. The kindness of 
 her cousin de Vannes overwhelmed her. She 
 had known him now and then, as she passed 
 the doors of the billiard-room, or watched 
 the drag roll out of the courtyard, give her a 
 careless, good-tempered nod and a lazy word 
 or two, but never any more notice than that, 
 which was as much as Blanchette and Toinon 
 ever received from him. At such times as he 
 had come down to Bois le Eoy or Millo, when 
 she was there, she had heard of him as a man 
 only devoted to horses and dogs, to sport of 
 all sorts, to his stag-hounds and boar-hounds 
 and otter-hounds, to his coach and his stud and 
 his great chasses ; she knew that he was a very 
 grand gentleman in Paris, and at Bois le Eoy 
 — despite all revolutions — was a kind of king. 
 And he had thought about her so much that 
 he had bought her a locket! She could 
 scarcely believe it. 
 
 She sat in a little nook made by magnolias 
 that overhung the sea, and saw the sun shine 
 on her dove of pearls, and wondered if she 
 would dare to wear it ; would the Duchess 
 approve of it? There was only one thing 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 3o6 PT^IA'CESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 which disturbed her, it was his recommendation 
 to silence ; there had been a look in his eyes, 
 too, when he had said, 'You are very hand- 
 some, yz7/^^^^,' which haunted her with a vague 
 uneasiness. She was too utterly innocent to 
 be alarmed by it, but a certain instinct in her 
 shrank from the remembrance of that regard. 
 It was the first look of sensual admiration 
 which had been ever given her, and though he 
 had added ' Of course you must tell Cri-Cri,' 
 he had said it grudgingly, as though he would 
 willingly, if he could have ventured to do so, 
 have bidden her keep his gift a secret from 
 his wife. 
 
 ' Are you counting your jewels, Mademoi- 
 selle de Valogne ? ' said the voice of Othmar. 
 'Leave that until you are thirty years older 
 and need their aid.' 
 
 Without any thought of her he had been 
 strolling on the rocks above the little harbour 
 which belonged equally to S. Pharamond and 
 to Millo. He had been bathing and swimming, 
 and was returning to his house, when he caught 
 sio-ht of her seated beneath the magnolias. 
 
 Yseulte coloured, and rose to her feet, drop- 
 ping the medallion in her surprise as his voice
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 307 
 
 startled her from her meditation. Othmar 
 picked it up aud returned it to her. 
 
 ' What a happy trinket to hokl your 
 thoughts so long,' he said as he did so. ' I 
 have been watching you for a quarter of an 
 hour, and you have never ceased to look at 
 that most fortunate jewel.' 
 
 ' My cousin, the Due de Vannes, gave it to 
 me a moment ago,' she answered him, vexed 
 that he should suppose she could care so much 
 for any trifle. 
 
 ' De Vannes ! ' echoed Othmar in some sur- 
 prise ; ' I did not know he had so much good 
 taste in the selection either of his gifts or their 
 recipients. It is a very pretty medallion,' he 
 added, noticing her look of distress and of 
 bewilderment. ' The dove is admirably done ; 
 I hope it will be an emblem of the j)eace which 
 will always remain with you.' 
 
 She did not speak ; the quick sensitiveness 
 of her instincts made her feel the satire of his 
 felicitations, and become conscious that for 
 some reason or another he disapproved the 
 gift which she had received. 
 
 ' I have never had any present before from 
 anyone,' she said simply, ' so it is a great 
 
 x3
 
 3o8 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 pleasure to me. I do not mean only because 
 
 it is pretty ' 
 
 ' But because of the affection it represents ? 
 I understand,' said Otlimar, while he thought 
 to himself, ' That goailleur de Vannes ! — must 
 he even bring his indecencies to Millo and try 
 and corrupt a poor helpless child ? The man 
 would not spend twenty francs out of mere 
 good nature, nor look at her twice out of mere 
 compassion.' 
 
 He looked at her himself now where she 
 sat under the magnolia branches ; and it 
 seemed to him as if she were the dove and 
 he saw the hawk descending. Alain de 
 Yannes could be seductive when he chose ; he 
 was good-looking and extremely distinguished, 
 was accustomed to conquest, and had that 
 charm of manner which the habit of the world 
 and the society of women make second nature. 
 If his fancy had lighted on his wife's cousin he 
 would not be likely to pause because she was 
 penniless, lonely, and consecrated to a spiritual 
 hfe. 
 
 ' One ought to put her on her guard, 
 and yet, who could venture to do that,' he 
 thought ; he, at all events, had no title to do
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 309 
 
 SO, and if he had, he could not wilhngly have 
 been the first to tell her that under the roses 
 there were vipers, that behind the dew and the 
 sunrise there were evil fires burning. 
 
 ' Will you stay long at Millo ? ' he asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 ' I came here for two months,' she said. 
 ' We were all sent away, — there was fever ; I 
 have been here often before. I am very fond 
 of Millo.' 
 
 ' Why would they not let you honour me 
 last night? ' 
 
 ' I do not go into the world at all. I never 
 shall.' She hesitated a moment, then added 
 timidly, ' It was very kind to think of me.' 
 
 ' It would not be easy to forget you,' said 
 Othraar with a sincerity Avhich surprised him- 
 self. ' I wish you had been with us ; yours is 
 the age for sauteries and enjoyment. I should 
 like to see you at your first ball.' 
 
 ' I shall never go to a ball. It would not 
 be thought right.' 
 
 ' And do you never rebel against so harsh 
 a destiny ? ' 
 
 She coloured to her eyes as she answered 
 almost inaudibly, * Sometimes — yes — but then
 
 3IO PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 I know that it is I who am wrong and they 
 who are right.' 
 
 * Wlio are they ? ' 
 
 ' The Mother Superior ; my uncle, de 
 Creusac, by his will ; my cousin Aurore ; 
 everyone that I belong to at all : my grand- 
 mother especially desired it.' 
 
 ' It makes one wish all the world were 
 agnostic ! ' 
 
 ' What did you say ? ' 
 
 Agnostic was not a word she had been 
 allowed to hear. 
 
 ' I say that it is a cruel thing to force on 
 you such a choice. At least you should be 
 allowed to know what you do, ere you do it. 
 You should see what the world is like before 
 you renounce it. I can fancy that women 
 tired, sorrow-laden, unlovely, unloved, feeble of 
 health, may be glad of the refuge of religious 
 life ; but you ! ' 
 
 ' Do you think one should only give God 
 what is weary and worn out ? ' she said softly. 
 * Surely one should give one's best ? ' 
 
 Othmar was touched by the words and the 
 tone. To him, whose boyhood had been filled 
 with spiritual faiths and hopes, and whose man-
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXn 
 
 hood had the pain of knowledge that all these 
 gracious myths and wistful desires were but 
 mere dreams, there was the echo of remembered 
 adorations, of exquisite unreasoning beliefs, in 
 the simple answer which bespoke that faith in 
 heaven which a child has in its mother, unques- 
 tioning, undoubting, implicit in obedience and 
 in trust. 
 
 Beside the cultured mind of the woman he 
 loved, with its fine scepticism, its delicate 
 ironies, its contemptuous rejections, its intel- 
 lectual scorn, no doubt this simple, narrow, un- 
 intelligent faith was foolish and childish, and 
 out of date ; yet it touched him ; in Yseulte 
 de Yalogne it had an unconscious heroism, a 
 beautiful repose, which lifted it out of the 
 cramped rigidity of creeds and the apathy of 
 ignorance. 
 
 There were beneath her gravity and spiritu- 
 ality a Avarmth, a vitality, a latent force, which 
 seemed to him to cry aloud for enjoyment and 
 expansion. Sooner or later all that teeming life 
 slumbering in her would awake and demand its 
 common rights ; no creature perfectly organ- 
 ised and full of health and stren^^th can forego 
 the natural joys of human existence without
 
 312 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 suffering a tliousand deaths. As yet, no doubt, 
 she was as innocent, as ignorant, of the tyranny 
 of the senses, as any shell that lay at the bottom 
 of the blue waters yonder. She might have 
 fallen from heaven that day for aught she knew 
 of all which, in her unconsciousness, she was 
 ready to renounce. But any hour that divine 
 innocence might be destroyed by a word, 
 banished at a touch. Alain de Vannes, or any 
 other, might choose to find sport in waking and 
 in slaying it ; and then, how unhappy she 
 would be ! How like a bird freshly captured, 
 and beating itself to death against the bars ! 
 
 It was only in France that a high-born 
 and beautiful girl could be sacrificed thus be- 
 cause she had no dower. Everywhere else 
 women without dowers were sought and taken 
 in marriage every day. As if a few hundred 
 thousand francs were needful to make youth, 
 and loveliness, and purity, and high lineage, 
 acceptable to men! 
 
 ' You know my cousin the Due very well ?' 
 she said timidly after a long silence. 
 
 ' We have lived in the same world ; I have 
 not been intimate with him.' 
 
 ' Do you think he would be very vexed if
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 313 
 
 I asked Nicole — that is, my foster-mother — to 
 sell this locket for me ? ' 
 
 ' I fear he would not be best pleased. Why 
 should you wish to sell it ? ' 
 
 She hesitated, then answered : ' I want to 
 buy the vicar that new gown he wants so much. 
 He will never spend a centime on himself, and 
 his gown has been mended and mended and 
 mended ; it is all a patchwork, and even that 
 is dropping to pieces, and the bishop's visitation 
 is near at hand. I thous^ht the value of this 
 locket would buy a priest's gown, if my cousin 
 de Yannes would not be angry.' 
 
 ' That is a pretty thought of you ; it would 
 certainly buy many soutanes^' said Othmar. 
 ' But I think Alain would not be at all pleased 
 if you sold his present ; and I told you the 
 other day that I will give the cure a new 
 gown myself with the very utmost pleasure. 
 You say that I belong to his parish.' 
 
 She smiled ; nevertheless, she hesitated to 
 accept his offer. 
 
 ' You must liave so many things to give. 
 Nicole says that people are always asking you 
 for things.' 
 
 'They do not always get them,' rephed
 
 314 PRINCESS NAPRAXINF:. 
 
 Othmar, with a smile. ' If they wished only 
 for such useful and harmless things as soutanes^ 
 they should always have their wish.' 
 
 ' Are you so immensely rich then ? ' she 
 asked him, opening widely her golden-brown 
 eyes, which looked as if the sunshine was always 
 shining in them. 
 
 ' To my misfortune,' said Othmar, annoyed. 
 Could not even a child of sixteen out of a 
 convent forget his riches ? Was it possible she 
 too w^as going to ask him for something ? 
 
 She looked at him gravely. 
 
 'I wonder you do not build a cathedral,' 
 she said, after a pause. 
 
 ' A cathedral ! ' he echoed, in surprise. ' I 
 would if I had the faith of those who used to 
 do so.' 
 
 ' It is what I would do if I had money,' 
 said she, still very gravely. ' I w^ould build 
 one in the heart of a forest, with the deer and 
 the birds all round it ; not jammed up amongst 
 streets and crowds like I^otre Dame or 
 Chartres.' 
 
 Then a sudden sense came over her that 
 she was violating all the rules of propriety by 
 w^hich her life was ordered in thus speaking out
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 315 
 
 her tlioughts to one who was almost a stranger ; 
 in tarrpng at all by the side of a man who 
 was of no parentage to her. She rose, a little 
 hurriedly, but with the stately grace which was 
 natural to her ; the grace of old Versailles 
 and Marly. 
 
 ' I think I must go back to the house,' she 
 said, with a little shyness. ' My cousin does 
 not like me to be alone, or to talk to any- 
 one 
 
 ' The Duchesse will not object to me,' said 
 Othmar, with the same smile as he had had 
 when using the same words a few days 
 before. 'Besides, Mademoiselle, you are in 
 another world than your convent. At Millo 
 men are not thought dragons and tigers. We 
 are poor creatures, indeed, but harmless ; more 
 injured than injuring. Do not be so alarmed. 
 I want you to tell me a great deal more about 
 our vicar. Where am I to get his measure 
 for his gown ? Will he be surprised with it ? 
 Will you not let me send it to you that you 
 may take it to him ? I should be ashamed to 
 do so. I have never been inside his church, 
 even to hear you sing.' 
 
 ' No, you never came yesterday ! ' she said,
 
 3i6 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 with a sigli, innocently revealing that she had 
 remarked his absence with regret. 
 
 ' To my shame and loss, I did not. I had 
 my uncle with me all the day, and at night a 
 dinner, a concert, and the sauterie^ to which I 
 hoped you would have been brought.' 
 
 ' But I cannot dance,' said the child, blush- 
 ing very much as she made the humiliating 
 confession. 
 
 ' So much the better,' said Othmar, incon- 
 sistently, ' I am sure, however, that you would 
 dance with admirable grace if you danced at 
 all. Anyone who moves well can dance well.' 
 
 This time the colour in her cheeks was that 
 of pleasure at his praise. She was silent, look- 
 ing at him a little wistfully, recalling what De 
 Vannes had said of the Princess Napraxine. 
 
 The kindliness of his tone, its mingling of 
 familiarity and reverence, melted her reserve 
 and disarmed her shyness. There had been 
 that in the compliment of Alain de Vannes which 
 had startled and alarmed her ; but in the 
 almost paternal gentleness and friendliness of 
 Othmar's words there was nothing to do so. 
 He had little to her of the chillness and 
 languid irony which often frightened even
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 317 
 
 women in liim, whilst he had all the graceful 
 conrtesy of a man polished by all the habits 
 of the great world, and accustomed to that 
 pre-eminence which gives supreme ease of man- 
 ner. To her Othmar seemed a hero, a king, 
 an ideal among men ; when her cousin had 
 said to her that this person, so powerful, so 
 great, and so rich, was also unhappy, he had 
 said the only thing needed to complete his 
 fascination for her and to make him the master 
 of her dreams. 
 
 He bowed low before her with a sense of 
 something holier than was often met with in 
 this world, and looked after her as she sped 
 over the lawns to the house. 
 
 ' A beautiful creature, with a tender heart 
 in her breast,' he thought. ' Why could I not 
 meet her and find my heaven in possessing her, 
 instead of caring only for a woman who has 
 no more passion or pity than those Mexican 
 aloes ? ' 
 
 As he walked home the remembrance of 
 Nadine Xapraxline seemed like a little adder 
 growing in his heart, and the large eyes of 
 Yseulte de Valogne seemed to look into his 
 soul with their golden sun-rays. He was pas-
 
 3i8 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 sionately in love with the one, bitterly, angrily, 
 resentfully, in love ; for the other he felt an 
 extreme pity, a sympathy, which with propitious 
 circumstances might become affection, an ad- 
 miration of the senses which might with time be 
 heightened to desire, an inchnation to take her 
 in his arms and save her from her fate as he 
 might have taken up a wounded bird to save it 
 from the trap.
 
 319 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 YsEULTE the next day was sitting writing a 
 German theme in the children's room, of which 
 the windows opened on the gardens, when 
 Alain de Vannes, witli a cigarette in his mouth, 
 pushed open the glass door and sauntered in 
 from the open air. 
 
 ' Well, my cousin,' he said gaily. ' Here 
 you are, shut up like a little mouse. What 
 nonsense it is ! German ? What good will 
 that do you ? When the revanche comes, we 
 shall speak with bullets and they will under- 
 stand as we understood. Pardieu ! When 
 they burnt my woods in Charente ! — I had a 
 ball in my ribs at Saarbriick ; did you know 
 it ? Where were you P In Paris ? — during 
 the siege ? A baby like you ! Is it possible ! ' 
 
 ' There were many other little children 
 there,' said the girl with a shudder ; she had 
 been such a little child then, that the horror of 
 the time had left an inefilxceable mark upon her. 
 
 ' Of course, of course,' said the Due, seating
 
 320 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 himself on the edge of the table. ' But not 
 many of your rank. Most people got away. 
 Ah, to be sure, I remember your uncles de 
 Creusac were both shot ; yes, we all lost heavily ; 
 it is no use thinking of it ; but I would give my 
 life to enter Berlin. Tiens ! this is not what I 
 came to say, but you make one serious ; why 
 will you not laugh ? Do you know that we 
 have a ball next week ? ' 
 
 ' I heard Blanchette saying so.' 
 
 ' Ah, the little cat ! She knows everything. 
 Now, this ball — would you not like to come 
 to it, instead of being shut up in your room 
 writing crabbed German characters ? ' 
 
 * It is impossible.' 
 
 While she said the cruel word firmly, her 
 heart gave a great leap of longing that was 
 almost hope. 
 
 ' ISTot impossible ; perhaps difficult,' said 
 de Vannes, with a smile as he threw his cigar 
 out on to the grass. ' But I think I could 
 persuade Cri-Cri ; it is a shame for you to be 
 shut up ; you will have enough of that all your 
 life if you go where they say.' 
 
 Yseulte was silent ; her heart was still 
 beating tumultuously, she breathed quickly.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 321 
 
 ' How handsome she is ! ' thought the Due. 
 ' She only wants that flush of life to be perfect. 
 Women are like alabaster lamps, unlit until 
 they learn envy and desire. When that flame 
 is lighted, then tlie alabaster glows.' 
 
 He stooped his head and kissed her hand, 
 but he did it with a different touch to Othmar's, 
 and she coloured with a sense of pain and 
 anger. 
 
 '•Marnier he murmured. ' I will under- 
 take to combat successfully the scruples of 
 your cousin ; you shall see the ball next week. 
 Cri-Cri shall find you a frock, and jewels you 
 want none ; you have the supreme jewel — 
 youth ; crowns are dull without it ; and, let 
 our dear women use wliat arts they may, they 
 cannot counterfeit it. I will be your good 
 genius, Yseulte, and open your prison doors. 
 You will not refuse me a little gratitude — a 
 little goodwill? Something quite simple and 
 commonplace will content me, you see, but you 
 must give it de hon coeur! 
 
 The words were harmless, and said little, 
 but his eyes as tliey were bent upon her said 
 much ; much more than he knew. There was 
 a look in them wliich lighted tlieir pale blue 
 
 VOL, I. y
 
 322 
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 with a fire from which she shrank by instinct, 
 as from something which scorched and hurt 
 her. The eyes of Alain de Yannes, hke those 
 of most men who have hved his hfe and had 
 his experiences, Avere cold, jaded, passionless in 
 repose, but when amorous, were cruel, eager, 
 rapacious. Yseulte drew her hand from him ; 
 her heart sank five fathoms deep, but she 
 gathered up all her courage. 
 
 'You are very good, M. mon cousin,' she 
 said with a ceremonious coldness worthy of 
 one twice her years. ' But do not trouble 
 yourself for me. That sort of pleasure would 
 , not accord with the life tliat I am always to 
 lead. I do not know the world ; I do not 
 wish to know it ; it is never to have anything 
 to do with me ; it is better I should not even 
 see it, I might only regret.' 
 
 She said tlie little speech bravely, not 
 falterin£[ once, thouo-h to make it cost her 
 a pang, but she crushed out all her natural 
 longings, all her wistful instincts, all her youth- 
 ful dreams to do so ; flowers plucked up by 
 the roots and thrown down at the foot of the 
 altars of Marie. But even at this moment 
 the altar still seemed to her that which she
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 323 
 
 had been always told that it was, a refuge 
 sweet, safe, unfailing. A refuge from ^vhat? 
 She did not know, but a vague fear had 
 assailed her. 
 
 De Vannes looked at her with surprise and 
 irritation ; at the bottom of his heart he was 
 himself ashamed of the unholy wishes which 
 had awakened in him, of the treacherous tempt- 
 ations which he had begun to put in the path of 
 a girl who was his own guest, his wife's relative, 
 and whose position ought in its sheer defence- 
 lessness to have been her best safeguard with 
 any man of honour. He was not without 
 honour, in a loose fashion, but he w^as very 
 unscrupulous when his fancy w^as excited. If 
 before her retirement to the religious life she 
 should have an ' affaire,' and if that ' affaire ' 
 should have himself for its hero, it did not 
 seem to him that anything terrible w^ould have 
 taken place. What was the use of occupying 
 a high position if one could not successfully 
 conduct and cover a little intrigue like that .? 
 
 At the same time he knew that his designs 
 would scarcely be condoned, even by the very 
 hght-minded set amongst wliich he hved, if it 
 were seriously known that lie endeavoured
 
 324 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 to be the first to corrupt his young cousin. 
 Therefore her words struck a certain nerve of 
 susceptibihty within him ; he felt a kind of 
 compunction before that serious and guileless 
 regard. Yet he was very angry. He, Alain 
 de Vannes, who never looked at a fillette^ who 
 never deigned to notice any lesser thing than 
 some of the famous beauties of the great world, 
 or of the half-world, had taken the infinite 
 trouble to distinguish this child, to seek her 
 and to offer her his influence and protection, 
 and she had repulsed him, with her hands 
 lying crossed on her German books and her 
 rose-leaf cheeks growing neither the warmer 
 nor the colder for his regard. 
 
 He rose, and his eyebrows contracted in a 
 heavy frown. He was a good-humoured man 
 usually, but in such rare times as his will was 
 crossed he had the petulance and the malice 
 of a spoiled child. 
 
 ' You are not wise, jillette,' he said, with a 
 little laugh. ' I would be a good friend to you, 
 and you may want one before you are safe in 
 the bosom of Our Lady. I wonder the ball did 
 not tempt you. You would have seen your 
 friend Othmar — and Madame Napraxine.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 325 
 
 Then he pulled the glass door open with 
 an impatient hand, and went out into the 
 grounds without, leaving behind him the 
 odour of his ciorarette and the stini^ of his 
 last words. 
 
 Blanchette peeped in from behind a silk 
 curtain ; her saucy babyish eyes were full of 
 curiosity and wonder. 
 
 • Tiens^ Yseulte,' she said, running up to 
 her cousin, ' I heard all papa said. Why should 
 he want you at the ball, and why should you 
 not go ? You are a goose, such a goose ! 
 You know papa can always make mamma do 
 what he chooses. He always threatens to send 
 away M. de Prangins.' 
 
 Then Blanchette laughed, curling herself 
 up in a little ball at her cousin's feet. 
 
 ' You should not say such wicked things, 
 Blanchette,' said Yseulte ; ' and it is very 
 shameful and dishonoural^le to listen anywhere 
 unseen ' 
 
 Blanchette made a jnecl de nez with her little 
 rosy fingers, with all the mockery and insolence 
 of Gavroche himself. 
 
 ' You are vulgar as well as wicked,' said her 
 cousin sadly, as she looked away.
 
 326 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 ' It is distinguished to be vulgar, now,' said 
 the httle ten-year-old Parisienne. ' All the 
 great ladies are. except Madame Napraxine ; 
 she is always wrapped up in herself. She has 
 no entrain^ she cares for nothing. She is not 
 at all my model. Listen ! If you were not 
 such an idiot, you would see that 'petit papa is 
 in love with you, ever so much in love ! Why 
 don't you get all kinds of things out of him 
 while he is in the humour ? He would buy 
 you all the Palais Eoyal if you knew how to 
 manage him, and mamma Avill not say anything 
 as long as the Marquis Eaymond is here-.' 
 
 ' Blanchette ! ' cried the girl, indignantly. 
 She rose to her feet ; a flood of shame seemed 
 to roll over her. 
 
 The insolent, malicious turquoise eyes of 
 Blanchette amused themselves with her horror 
 and trouble. 
 
 ' You are such a baby ! ' said the child 
 again, contemptuously. ' You never seem to 
 understand anything. Me, I understand it all. 
 I shall do it all when I am married. I shall 
 be just like mamma. It is the Marquis Eay- 
 mond now ; it was the Prince Jacques last year. 
 I liked the Prince Jacques best. He gave me
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 327 
 
 an orchestra of monkeys ; you wound it up and 
 all the monkeys played — fife, drum, clarionet, 
 flute, too-too, too-too, tra-la-la-la ! The marquis 
 has never given me anything, except a sack of 
 bonbons he might have bought at St. Cloud. 
 If he do not give me something very good at 
 new year, I shall say out loud in the salon, 
 when a lot of people are making visits : " You 
 are not as nice as Prince Jacques ! " And how 
 he will look, because he always frets and fumes 
 about the prince 1 I think they fought about 
 mamma. Oh, it must be such fun to be a 
 woman ! I wish, I wish, I wish I were fifteen. 
 I would be so naughty, they would have to 
 marry me to-morrow ! If you were not a goose 
 you would be as naughty as ever you could 
 be. They would get you a husband then ; 
 papa would see to it.' 
 
 ' Blanchette ! ' cried Yseulte, again, in 
 desperation, not knowing how to stem the tide 
 of the child's words. She, like Blanchette her- 
 self, was ignorant of all the horrible import of 
 those words which the little thing used, half in 
 malicious precocious knowledge, and half in 
 absolute childish ignorance ; but they terrified 
 her and appalled her both in themselves and
 
 328 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 for their speaker, and for all which, even to 
 her innocence, they suggested of unspeakable 
 inconceivable shamefulness. 
 
 ' Blanchette ! ' echoed the child, mimicking 
 the horror and expostulation of her cry. ' Oh, 
 how glad I am I have Schemmitz and Brawn to 
 teach me instead of going to a convent to be 
 made a goose of Hke you. Schemmitz and Brawn 
 are old owls, but I keep my eyes and my ears 
 open at Trouville, at Biarritz, in Paris, here, 
 anywhere, everywhere. Now, in your nunnery 
 you see no more, you hear no more, than if you 
 w^ere a statue in a chapel. That is why you 
 are so stupid. Tiens ! Why did papa call 
 Count Othmar your friend ? Is he your friend? 
 You are as still as a mouse about everything.' 
 
 Her quick glance saw the colour mount into 
 her cousin's face, and the cruel child laughed 
 triumphantly. ' Oh, how you blush, oh- oh ! 
 Nobody blushes now-a-days. One must be old- 
 fashioned like you to be so silly. 1 shall never 
 blush. Tiens, Yseulte, tell me all about it and 
 I will not tell Toinon.' 
 
 'There is nothing to tell,' said Yseulte, 
 almost losing her patience. 
 
 ' Papa never says anything without meaning
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 329 
 
 something by it,' said Blancliette, sagaciously. 
 ' And if there be nothing, why should you 
 blush ? I know all about Count Othmar ; he is 
 rich — oh, so rich ! Nobody was ever so rich 
 outside the Juiverie ; I heard them say so this 
 autumn at Aix. But all he cares about is 
 Princess Napraxine. Have you ever seen Prin- 
 cess Fapraxine ? She drives in the Bois with 
 three horses in the Eussian w^ay ; the one in 
 the middle is a little in front of the others, and 
 they have only little bits of silver for harness, 
 and they fly — ouf ! I mean to marry a Eus- 
 sian.' 
 
 ' Is she so very beautiful ? ' said Yseulte, in 
 a low tone, ashamed of questioning the child, 
 and yet impelled by an irresistible desire to 
 hear more of this wondrous sovereign. ■ 
 
 ' Pas tant que ca ! ' said Blanchette, critic- 
 ally. ' But she is much more than only hand- 
 some. She makes every one that goes near 
 her mad about her. She is pale, and has great 
 eyes ; but there is no one like her, they say. 
 What do you think they call her ? They call 
 her Flocon de Neige. She cares for nobody, 
 you know ; that is what they mean. She is 
 not at all what I admire ; what I admire is the
 
 330 PRINCESS NAPRAXJNE, 
 
 Duchesse d'Ambree. Elle sait se faire une 
 tete I ' — continued Blancliette, growing breath- 
 less, and powerless to express her immense 
 admiration. 
 
 Madame d'Ambree was a blonde, with a 
 profusion of real gold curls, cheeks admirably 
 tinted, and a tiny Cupid's bow of a mouth ; a 
 great huntress, a great swimmer, a great 
 smoker ; she had very extravagant toilettes, 
 and very loud manners, and was a really great 
 lady, with the language of a cantiniere : she 
 was the object of the child's idolatry. 
 
 ' I will be just like that,' Blanchette said to 
 herself whenever she saw Madame d'Ambree 
 walking on the planks at Trouville, going into 
 the casino at Aix, or driving her piebald ponies 
 round the Bois. Blanchette admired her own 
 mother immensely, but she admired the 
 Duchesse d'Ambree still more. 
 
 ' Maman haisse un peu^' she often said to 
 her sister, with a little scornful smile. She 
 knew that her mother was twenty- eight ; to 
 Blanchette that age seemed to be quite hopeless 
 decrepitude. 
 
 ' Yseulte,' she said, suddenly now, ' if you 
 do not give me your silver prayer-book, I
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXTNE. 331 
 
 shall tell mamma about you and papa. Bis 
 donc^ sois sage. Give me the silver Hours.' 
 
 The silver prayer-book had belonged to a 
 Marquise de Creusac, in the time of Louis 
 Treize. It was adorned with illuminated letters, 
 and the coronet and initials were set in opals 
 on one side of the silver cover. Yseulte had 
 been given the book by her grandmother on 
 her death-bed ; she used it always, and it was 
 the object of Blanchette's desires. 
 
 ' You know that I cannot give it you,' said 
 Yseulte, gently. ' It was my grandmother's 
 last gift ; it is an heirloom.' 
 
 Blanchette looked up from under her yellow 
 hair. 
 
 ' You had better give it me. Sois sage I ' 
 
 She had the same expression — half menace, 
 half mahce — that her father had had. 
 
 ' I cannot,' repeated her cousin, ' I have 
 told you so, dear, a hundred times. I should 
 not have a moment's peace if I parted with 
 that book.' 
 
 Blanchette said nothing more, but she made 
 a wheel of herself on the school-room floor, as 
 she had seen the boys do on the pavement in 
 Paris. ' Comme on est bete ! Comme on est
 
 332 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 bete ! ' she kept thinking in her shrewd little 
 mind, as she stood on her wise little skull with 
 all the dexterity of any street-boy. 
 
 Blanchette at ten years old had already 
 resolved the problem of life with great sim- 
 plicity ; its solution seemed to her to consist in 
 getting whatever you wanted by being detest- 
 able whenever you did not get it. 
 
 On the night of the ball, when the first 
 carriages rolled up to the perron of Millo, 
 Yseulte, who had gone to bed at ten o'clock, 
 but had not slept, rose and went to her 
 window, which looked on the front of the house. 
 The illuminations of the building and of the 
 grounds were so brilliant that the light was 
 almost as strong as day. The awnings hid from 
 her sight the steps at which the arriving guests 
 descended, but she could see the carriages as 
 they came up toward them, and she could hear 
 the Suisse bawl out the names of those who 
 arrived one after another ; amongst them some 
 of the greatest names of Europe. At twelve 
 she heard the name of Ochmar ; but she had 
 not seen liim, for the blinds of his brougham 
 were down. 
 
 An hour and a half later, almost the last of
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 333 
 
 the apparently endless succession of champing 
 horses and lamp-lit coupes, she saw one car- 
 riage of which the window next her was 
 lowered as it drove up ; she could see within it 
 a very lovely woman, with a little tiara of dia- 
 monds on lier head, and a great bouquet, made 
 entirely of gardenias, in her hand, and a cloak 
 of gold tissue, lined with ermine, drawn up as 
 high as her mouth. The lady's profile, delicate as 
 if it were cut in ivory, with something satirical 
 and mutinous in its expression, was all that 
 Yseulte could see of her ; but she felt that in 
 that moment she had looked on the Princess 
 Napraxine. In effect, as the carriage rolled 
 beneath the awning, the sonorous Muscovite 
 name was shouted by the waiting lackeys. 
 
 The girl withdrew from the casement and 
 shut the shutters ; she did not want to see any 
 more. 
 
 She lay down again, but she did not sleep. 
 The sound of dance music, played by the band 
 of the ball-room, echoed through all the villa, 
 which was a light modern structure, and had 
 Httle solidity in it. She did not care for the 
 dancing ; she hardly knew what it was like ; 
 but she thought of the lovely woman with the
 
 334 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 pretty contemptuous profile, and the diamonds 
 and the gardenias in her hair. She could not 
 sleep for thinking of her ; she was there below 
 in the light, amidst the music and the flowers, 
 and Othmar was there too. The visitants which 
 Alain de Vannes had wished should go to her, 
 envy and regret, entered her innocent soul, and 
 made sad ravages there, as when a rat runs 
 amidst a white rose and pulls its blossoms down. 
 
 Sleep kept aloof from her ; she was ashamed 
 of her own thoughts, but the dawn found her 
 with hot wide-open eyes. The music was still 
 sounding, like a tireless, immortal thing that 
 shouted and laughed for its pleasure. It was 
 only the first notes of the cotillon ; but to 
 Yseulte it sounded like the song of triumph of 
 the world — that world which she would never 
 know. 
 
 All her nuns and priests could not perhaps 
 have read her a sounder homily than the house 
 mutely spoke when she went timidly down- 
 stairs and through its many rooms at sunrise. 
 
 The flowers covering the balustrades and 
 walls of the staircase were dying ; the sleepy 
 servants were turning out the gas, putting out 
 the wax candles ; other servants were drinking
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 335 
 
 champagne and smoking cigars as they hurried 
 to clear away the supper tables ; in the ball- 
 room there was a litter of dropped flowers, torn 
 lace, discarded cotillon toys, atoms of fringe 
 and of ribbon which looked scarcely better 
 than rags; the torches were still flaming amongst 
 the scorched clusters of azaleas and roses ; in 
 the vestibule two gentlemen who had stayed to 
 drink some black cofiee were putting on their 
 furs and yawning miserably ; Alain de Vannes, 
 as he sauntered upstairs, was muttering, ' C'est 
 crevant ! — un bal chez soi : — on ne me re- 
 prendra jamais ! ' and a maid of his wife's was 
 recounting her griefs to a tall powdered lackey, 
 with sobs of rage ; ' Madame m'a donnee des 
 gifles, mais des gifles ! — enfin — elle tomba de 
 sommeil et puis le petit Prangins n'a pas ete 
 gentil pour elle, du tout, du tout, ce soir ! '
 
 336 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 Nadine Napraxine meanwhile rolled home iu 
 the pale light of the winter morning, which 
 had dawned over a quiet sea and a peaceful 
 country. She was neither fatigued nor exhila- 
 rated by a ball which had been one of those 
 long triumphs to which she was so well used. 
 She looked as calm, as cool, as delicate of hue, 
 as any Lenten lily that opens between the snow 
 and the moss on an April morning. She was 
 one of those women who can go through in- 
 credible fatigue, whether of pleasure or of 
 travel, without any personal traces of it. 
 
 Whilst her companion. Lady Brancepeth, 
 nodded and slumbered, she looked out at the 
 landscape over which the sun was slowly dawn- 
 ing, driving before its rays the white mists 
 which stretched over sea and mountain. There 
 were people moving in it : women came down 
 the steep stone ladders of their fields bearing 
 heavy loads of oranges or of vegetables ; mule
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 337 
 
 carts plodded along the cactus-lined paths ; 
 fishermen were pushing boats into deep water ; 
 church bells were ringing. She, with her 
 delicate and acute perception of what was 
 beautiful, found pleasure in watching the simple 
 hardy figures which were seen for a moment 
 and then disappeared beneath the mist, in 
 hearing the bells answer one another ringing 
 across the white clouds that were touching the 
 earth. 
 
 ' What does it feel like,' she wondered, 
 ' to sleep sound all night on a bit of sacking, 
 and get up in the dusk, and go into the wet 
 fields and labour ? What do these people think 
 about ? What do sheep think about, or oxen ? 
 It must be much the same thing. Wilkes, 
 what do field-labourers think about ? — you 
 have got ever so many at home, you ought to 
 know.' 
 
 Lady Brancepeth felt cross at being aroused 
 and cross at having been asleep : 
 
 'Think about?' she murmured; 'oh, I 
 don't know ; beer, I believe with us, beer and 
 bacon ; here I should say francs, nothing but 
 francs, probably. What put them in your 
 head ^ And there are no labourers here in 
 
 VOL I. z
 
 338 FT^IA'CESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 our sense of the word, you know ; it is most of 
 it la petite culture^ you know. I never believe 
 it is good for the soil, certainly not in the long 
 run ; it can't be ; they get everything out, they 
 put nothing in. Of course they think only of 
 the market of the day ; they don't think of the 
 future, those people. That will be always the 
 upshot of peasant proprietors, they Avill always 
 ruin the soil.' 
 
 Nadine Napraxine laughed : 
 
 ' What a fine thing it is to be an English- 
 woman ; you think of political economy and of 
 ' the soil ' the very moment that you wake out 
 of a doze ! I suppose the earth wil] certainly 
 last our time ; what does the rest matter ? ' ' 
 
 ' You are so — so — so egotistic and autocratic, 
 ISTadine.' 
 
 The Princess laughed : 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know ; I don't think so. I 
 hke a despotism, I was born under it ; it saves 
 so much trouble, and one big despot is very 
 much easier to deal with than a score of little 
 ones, especially when you stand well at his 
 Court. It is always better to be judged by a 
 judge instead of a jury, but simpletons will not 
 see that.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXIXE. 339 
 
 ' But how can one judge, however just, 
 rightfully judge a nation of millions unless he 
 have the eyes and ears of Yishnou? I think 
 you really are a despot by nature, but you are 
 so very disputatious that you are always ready 
 to repudiate your most cherished opinions for 
 sheer sake of argument. You should have 
 been a sophist.' 
 
 'Every question is polygonal. Look at 
 that gleam of light on that sail and all the rest 
 of the vessel lost in fog — how charming ! — it is 
 like a picture of Aivanoffsky's. That is what 
 I like in life ; nothing said out, nothing broadly 
 and rudely done, everything a demi mot, every- 
 thing suggestion, not assertion ; that is the only 
 way to exhaust nothing, not to be wearied.' 
 
 ' You like impressions, not pictures ; that is 
 the new school. Everyone is not satisfied with 
 it. That there are people to whom these vague 
 wavy lines, those dim Avashes of colour, tell 
 
 httle ' 
 
 ' Oh, the people to whom one must explain! 
 Let them all go where the sheep of Panurge 
 went.' 
 
 ' I wish you would condescend for once to 
 explain something,' said Lady Brancepeth, and 
 
 z 2
 
 340 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 paused : Princess Nadine lieard with a look of 
 infinite ennui. 
 
 ' You mean to revenge yourself for having 
 been awakened out of that dose. I never ex- 
 plain — enfin ! tell me what you want.' 
 
 Under this slight encouragement Lady 
 Brancepeth gained courage to plunge straight- 
 way into a question which she had long medi- 
 tated. 
 
 ' Will you tell me, my dear Nadine, what 
 you mean to do with my brother ? ' 
 
 Madame JSTapraxine turned a little round 
 in lier ermine and gold brocade, and looked 
 solemnly in her companion's face. 
 
 ' My dear Evelyn, you amaze me ! Do with 
 him ? I ? With your brother ? — with Lord 
 Geraldine? AYhat should I do with him ? 
 Do you want me to make a good marriage for 
 him ? But you are there to preside over that ; 
 and, besides, he will make one himself — some 
 day.' 
 
 ' Speak seriously for a moment,' said Lady 
 Brancepeth with impatience. ' You are very 
 clever, and are fond of denii-mots ; I am a 
 blunt, stupid woman, and so I like plain ones. 
 It is two years since Geraldine has had any
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 341 
 
 other thought than yourself. When will you 
 be merciful and unmagnetise him ? ' 
 
 ' Does that depend on me ? ' said the Prin- 
 cess Nadine, with a little laugh. ' Do you want 
 me to make a few passes in the air with my 
 hand? I can do it if you wish, but I doubt 
 the result.' 
 
 Lady Brancepeth made an impatient move- 
 ment. 
 
 ' Poor Ealph is only one amongst many, 
 I know, my dear ; but for that very reason 
 surely you might spare him ? You do not care 
 the least little atom about him ' 
 
 ' The least little ! I am a Eussian, but I 
 do know that is not good English. I speak 
 better Enghsh than you do.' 
 
 ' You do everything admirably well. You 
 are the most intelhgent as you are the most 
 interesting woman that I know ; but you are 
 also the most heartless,' answered Lady Brance- 
 peth with some heat. ' I am not a prude ; I 
 can understand temptation and the weakness 
 that cedes to it ; I can understand love and the 
 force that it may exercise, and I can forgive 
 even its follies ; but your kind of coquetry I 
 cannot forgive. It is the exercise of a merciless
 
 342 PJ^/A'C£SS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 power whicli is as cliill as a vivisector's attitude 
 before his victim. You have no sympathy or 
 compassion ; you have only a sort of cynical 
 amusement in what you do ; you make your- 
 self the centre of a man's life with no more 
 effort than you use that fan ; the man is 
 nothing to you, nothing on earth ; but you 
 destroy all his peace, all his future ' 
 
 ' Dear Wilkes, do not be so tragic ! ' mur- 
 mured Princess Napraxine, with a little yawn. 
 ' I dislike tragedy ; I never by any chance go 
 to Perrin's w^hen they play one. If men are 
 fond of me — as you say ' 
 
 ' As I say ! ' ejaculated Lady Brancepeth. 
 
 ' As you say ; it is merely because — as you 
 wisely if ungrammatically observed — it is be- 
 cause I do not care the •' least little atom " 
 about any one of them. I should have ex- 
 ceedingly liked to care for Platon ; it would 
 have been something new ; it would have 
 agreed with my programme of life ; it would 
 have suited me in every way ; but n'aime pas 
 qui veiU ; wdio could care for Platon ? Does 
 anybody ever care for a good-natured, very 
 big, and entirely uninteresting person who 
 drinks brandy and grows bald ? '
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 343 
 
 * You beg my question,' retorted Lady 
 Brancepeth ; ' you know very well that I am 
 not talking of your husband.' 
 
 ' Then you ought to be if you be not ! 
 You are a very immoral woman to recommend 
 me to care for anybody else,' said the Princess 
 with her soft, quiet little laugh, that was as 
 pretty as the coo of a wood dove but by no 
 means so harmless. 
 
 ' You would exasperate a saint,' cried her 
 companion. 
 
 ' I never met one,' said Nadine. ' The 
 nearest approach to one that I know is Melville, 
 and I can put hiia out of temper.' 
 
 ' I have no doubt you can,' said Lady 
 Brancepeth ; ' I think you would anyone ; you 
 do such immeasurable harm, and are all the 
 while as demure as a rabbit, and as innocent- 
 looking. My dear Princess, you are the cruellest 
 woman that lives ! Flocon de Neige they call 
 you. They might much more appropriately 
 call you Goutte de Morphine. You enervate, 
 and you kill, and all the while, what do you 
 care ? You care no more than the morphia 
 does.' 
 
 ' Did the ball bore you too so dreadfully
 
 344 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 that you are so very unkind ? A rabbit and 
 morphia ! Your similes are mixed, my dear. 
 I am never a flirt ; a flirt is a very vulgar 
 thing. No man lives, I can assure you, who 
 could say he ever had a word of encouragement 
 from me. That is not at all my way.' 
 
 ' No ! ' said Lady Brancepeth, bitterly, 
 ' your way is merely to look at men and destroy 
 them, and then laugh a little when they are 
 spoken of: I never reproached you with 
 ordinary coquetry ; I reproach you with some- 
 thing much more subtle, arrogant, cold, and 
 crueL There is a gum of the East advertised 
 which does not kill flies, only attracts them, so 
 that they cling to it by millions, and hang there 
 stupidly in a throng till they die. That gum 
 is very like your power over your lovers ; it is 
 just as passive, just as deadly.' 
 
 ' The gum and I were made as we are by 
 nature. Blame nature. The men and the flies 
 would do worse if they did not do that. And 
 pray do not talk about my lovers ; I have 
 none.' 
 
 ' You have no serfs in Eussia, but you have 
 moujiks ; and it is still much the same thing, 
 as far as their submission goes.'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 345 
 
 ' You are really too sarcastic, Wilkes. Was 
 Cri-Cri's champagne bad ? Surely not. But 
 there must be something you have not digested. 
 Perhaps it is the caviare sandwiches. Here 
 we are, at home. Do go to bed and dream of 
 your gum, your rabbit, and your bottle of 
 morphine. None of these things can swim, 
 but I, who am a combination of them, can ; 
 and I shall be swimming under your window 
 wMlst you sleep.' 
 
 The carriage sto])ped at the foot of the 
 terrace of La Jacquemerille, and she descended, 
 aided by Geraldine, who, with her husband, 
 had arrived a few minutes earlier. 
 
 Lady Brancepeth hurried indoors, conscious, 
 with the consciousness of thirty-five years, that 
 the morning light was not becoming after a 
 ball. Nadine Napraxine, with the equally 
 conscious immunity of an exquisite complexion, 
 and of that kind of beauty which is like a sea- 
 shell, unwound the lace from about her delicate 
 head, and paused in the doorway, looking 
 seaward. 
 
 ' I shall not go to bed,' she said, as the rays 
 of the sunrise touched the gilded pinnacles and 
 vanes of La Jacquemerille. ' I shall go and
 
 346 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 get into a peignoir, then breakfast, and tlien 
 bathe. It is so stupid to go to bed when 
 the sun is up. Platon, you look hke a bear 
 awaked before he has done hybernating. Did 
 you not get sleep enough in de Yannes' 
 fumoir ? ' 
 
 ' I never get sleep enough,' replied Na- 
 praxine, good-humouredly but drowsily ; ' and 
 you do a very foolish thing if you stand there, 
 Princess, in a frost, at seven o'clock, after five 
 hours of the cotillon ! ' 
 
 ' There is no frost ; look at the geraniums ; 
 and I never take cold ; that is not my malady 
 at all ; I am not so silly.' 
 
 Napraxine opened his sleepy eyes. 
 
 ' When you cannot live in Eussia because 
 the tubercles on your lungs ' 
 
 ' Dr. Tliiviers is responsible for the tuber- 
 cles. One is obliged to say something civil to 
 get away from a Court. It is always safe to 
 say one suffers with one's lungs ; nobody can 
 ask to look at them. Pray go to bed, and 
 dream of Nirvana, if you know what it means.' 
 
 The Prince obeyed, and disappeared yawn- 
 m^. Geraldine remained, gazino- at this eleo'ant 
 figure on the marble step, with its sortie du bal
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 347 
 
 of ermine and gold silk folded about it, and 
 the face with its hue of a white tea-rose, which 
 could defy so surely the searching morning 
 light. 
 
 She glanced at him in return, and laughed. 
 ' How droll you look with your claque and 
 your ulster ; you are not harmonious with 
 the landscape, my friend ; and you look sulky. 
 The ball seems to have disas^reed with all of 
 you ; 3'et it was a very good ball, as balls go ; 
 it is impossible to give any variety to a ball. 
 Balls and funerals, ca se ressemhle trop' 
 
 She drew the ermine over her pretty chin, 
 the diamonds sparkled in her hair ; the bouquet 
 of gardenias swung in her hand. The eyes 
 of Geraldine grew very sombre and covetous. 
 
 ' I am sorry I am a blot on the scene,' he 
 said, moodily. ' Englishmen are always un- 
 picturesque. I stood still and gazed at you 
 all night, but no doubt I only looked like 
 a policeman or a fool ' 
 
 ' Or both,' she murmured, with a smile. 
 
 He continued imheedingly, ' While your 
 friend Othmar, who did precisely the same 
 thing, looked, of course, to you and to every- 
 body, like a Titian resuscitated.'
 
 348 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 * Othmar is not especially like any Titian 
 that I have ever seen,' said Madame Napraxine, 
 ' but he knows how to stand with grace, which 
 no Enghshman ever did know yet. You are 
 quite right ; your people do not " compose " 
 well, except when they are in the hunting-field, 
 or playing some very rough game ; but you 
 need not sonffler for compliments ; you are 
 very good-looking — in your way.' 
 
 ' Thanks,' muttered Geraldine, in a tone 
 which w^ould have better suited an imprecation. 
 
 Othmar had not danced once with her ; he 
 had indeed only moved reluctantly through 
 a contre-danse with his hostess ; but the un- 
 erring instinct of jealousy made the envy of 
 Geraldine fasten on him rather than on any 
 other of the crowd for whom the ball at Millo 
 had only meant Princess Napraxine. 
 
 ' It is a little chilly,' said the Princess as 
 she turned from the open door. 
 
 Geraldine caught her hand which held the 
 fan : ' If you would but believe all that your 
 life is to us, you would not run such mad 
 risks as this raw cold fog after a ball ! Had I 
 been Plat on, I would have carried you to your 
 room by main force,'
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 349 
 
 The face of Nadiiie Napraxine grew very 
 cold. 
 
 ' You are not Prince Napraxine — happily 
 for myself and yourself; and I do not like 
 impertinences. Go and smoke, and recover 
 your good manners.' 
 
 ' You were kinder to me before Othmar 
 came home ! ' said Gireraldine, with injudicious 
 reproach. 
 
 ' You have very bad manners,' said the 
 Princess calmly, as she gathered up her ermine 
 and drew her flower-laden train over the little 
 hall and up the staircase. 
 
 She smiled as she passed upward. 
 ' How babyish they all are ! ' she reflected. 
 'As if to complain of another man were not 
 th^ very way to cement a woman's preference 
 for him, — if she had any preference. That 
 poor boy has no tact ; if his sister had not said 
 anything about him I woidd send him away ; 
 he is a bore. To be sure, he is here to take 
 Platon off one's hands, and smoke Avith him. 
 All men are tiresome when you have known 
 them a month or so ; all human beings are 
 tiresome. Nobody ever tires of me, and I tire 
 of everybody. Perhaps '
 
 350 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 She remembered that Othmar had alone 
 never tired her ; he had been too romantic, too 
 presuming, too prone to fancy he liad riglits 
 and wrongs ; but he had never wearied her. 
 Most men were so absurd when they were 
 enamoured of her, but he was not so ; a httle 
 too, hke Euy Bias perhap sa little too inclined 
 to be serious and impassioned, to the vieux 
 jeu in a word ; but still he had kept his grace 
 and kept his dignity. He kept them still ; he 
 would not let her play with him. She was the 
 one woman on earth for him ; but he did not 
 become her slave. 
 
 She had her bath and wrapped herself in a 
 loose gown of satin and lace and went out into 
 the garden with a rose-coloured hood over her 
 head. It was certainly cold, and the mists had 
 not altogether cleared ; but it was a point of 
 honour with her to do what her physician and 
 her friends denounced as most dangerous. 
 
 ' Platon is snoring,' she thought contempt- 
 uously, as she glanced over the closed shutters. 
 ' And I dare say Geraldine snores too, if one 
 only knew. I dare say they both took soda and 
 brandy. Men are certainly unlovely creatures. 
 As long as we are young we are a little better
 
 PR/XCESS NAPRAXINE. 351 
 
 tlian they ; we look pretty asleep, and we don't 
 snore. How maquilUe poor Cri-Cri w\as last 
 night, and then she really throws her heart 
 into the affair with de Prangins ; nothing ever 
 ages a woman like that ; and I am quite sure 
 he does not care a straw^ about her.' 
 
 She walked up and down her terrace, 
 trailing her rose-coloured skirts over tlie 
 marble ; she was a little sleepy, a little bored ; 
 but she wished to show to her friends that she 
 could dance all night and breakfast out of 
 doors without more fatigue than a nightin- 
 gale, after singing all night, feels as he trips 
 across the grass at sunrise. 
 
 She thought, with a httle amusement, that, 
 if Geraldine were really as w^asting with despair 
 as he professed to be, he would have been out 
 of bed still on the mere chance of her reappear- 
 ance. The various degrees of passions in her 
 lovers diverted her ; she had no vanity ; she 
 could dissect and w^eigh their emotions with 
 perfect accuracy and philosophise upon them 
 with a clearness of understanding wholly beyond 
 the reach of vain woman. Analysis diverted 
 her much more than conquest. Some had loved 
 her tragically, some had died through her if
 
 352 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 not for her ; she had had genuine triumphs, 
 great enough and costly enough to satisfy the 
 pride of anyone ; therefore she could amuse 
 herself very well with the contradiction when 
 somebody, who declared that he only lived for 
 her, nevertheless drank his claret with relish ; 
 or somebody else, who was for ever at her feet, 
 nevertheless ceased not to be critical of his 
 cigars. 
 
 ' Poor Othmar ! ' she thought now ; ' he 
 would stay sleepless in the street all night on 
 the chance of seeing my shadow on a window 
 blind ! ' 
 
 That was the vieux jeu ; romanticism which 
 did not suit their world ; which even made her 
 impatient of it as indifferent people are always 
 impatient of earnestness. But it was fine after 
 all : finer than Geraldine's sulkiness which let 
 him go to sleep. 
 
 The air was very coid, but the morning 
 was fair, and the mists were lifting liigher and 
 higher every moment ; as her skirts brushed 
 the bay hedge it gave forth a sweet odour, 
 snowdrops and hepatica blossomed under the 
 big aloes, and ground ivy was green about the 
 stems of the palms ; the mountains grew the
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 353 
 
 hue of summer roses under tlie sun's approach , 
 then paled into amethyst and pearly grey ; it 
 was intensely quiet, there was no sound but of 
 some unseen gardener sweeping up dead leaves ; 
 the yellow wings of an oriole flashed among the 
 glossy leaves of a pitosperum. 
 
 ' The world looks as if God washed it clean 
 every morning,' she thought. ' It gets soiled 
 before noon. Decidedly it is only the birds 
 who are innocent enough for the sunrise.' 
 
 The latent sadness of the Eussian character 
 was in her, beneath her insouciance and her 
 pessimism and her irony : sometimes she wished 
 she had not been born to that world in 
 wdiich she lived, where there is no pause for 
 reflection, but only a continuous succession of 
 spectacles, excitations, revelries, where no one 
 is ever alone, where no one has ever time to 
 note a wild flower grow or a sun sink to the 
 west, where the babble of society is for ever 
 on the ear, and Nature has no place at all 
 except as a decor de theatre of ^v-liich no one 
 thinks more than the actor thinks of the painted 
 canvas behind him with its bridge or its garden 
 or its windmill. 
 
 ' I do believe I should have liked to have 
 
 VOL. I. A A
 
 354 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 been a poor woman and have married such a 
 man as Millet or Corot,' she thought to herself 
 now as she walked along the alley of bay that 
 ran parallel with the sea. Then she laughed 
 at the idea of herself, living in a cottage in a 
 French wood, without any lace, without any 
 diamonds, without any toilettes, looking for a 
 dusty footsore artist coming home through the 
 trees to his i^ot au feu. Somehow the artist 
 in her fancy had the features of Othmar, — of 
 Othmar, who was a prince of the Bourses and 
 could no more escape the world than she could ! 
 
 It scarcely surprised her when she saw him 
 in person, as though her thoughts had com- 
 pelled him to come thither. He was alone, 
 in a little boat, which drifted slowly past the 
 sea-terrace of La Jacquemerille ; his hands 
 rested idly on the oars, and his eyes were look- 
 ing upward at the house. 
 
 She leaned down through one of the open- 
 ings of the wall of dipt bay, and thrust her rose 
 satin hood over the water : 
 
 ' Is it you, Othmar ? ' she said to him. 
 ' What are you doing on the sea at eight 
 o'clock .^ How astonished you look ! Do you 
 wonder what I am doing in the open air?
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 355 
 
 They are all asleep comfortably, though they 
 think I am courting death. Eow to the stairs ; 
 you can breakfast with me.' 
 
 He hesitated, looking up at her with his 
 head uncovered and his eyes dazzled by the 
 delicate face that was peering forth from the 
 framework of close- sheared bay boughs. 
 
 ' Come ! ' said Madame Kapraxine. Her 
 voice could be very imperious, and was so 
 now. 
 
 He obeyed in silence, passed to the landing- 
 place a hundred yards farther down, and in 
 five minutes' time approached her under the 
 arched roof of the bay charmille. 
 
 ' But you Avere only back from the ball an 
 hour or less ! ' he said, as he bowed before 
 her. 
 
 ' I was not inclined to go to bed ; the 
 morning is fine. You are up betimes, too. 
 When did you leave Millo ? ' 
 
 ' I left when you did,' said Othmar, with 
 significance in the brevity of the reply. 
 
 ' Then you cannot have breakfasted either. 
 You will breakfast with me ; I was just going 
 back to the house.' 
 
 It was precisely the sort of coiijp de scene 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 which would amuse her ; her husband and 
 Geraldine lounging downstairs, late, cross, and 
 easily ruffled, to find her alone with their 
 neighbour from S. Pharamond. It was one 
 of those amusing little incidents which Provi- 
 dence, who, she was sure, was kind to her, was 
 always sending her to relieve the monotony 
 of human life. 
 
 ' What were you doing under the seawall? ' 
 she pursued. ' Is it your habit, too, never to 
 go to bed ? You must have been rowing some 
 time. We are two sea leagues at lea^t from 
 your place. What did you think of Cri-Cri's 
 ball .^ That new figure with the coloured hoops 
 was pretty ; but the Due leads a cotillon better 
 than anyone.' 
 
 'Admirable pre-eminence!' said Othmar. 
 * I saw you with the coloured hoops. You made 
 them look as if Ariel had just brought them 
 from Titania. But I do not think the charm 
 was in the hoops themselves.' 
 
 • If you had cared to lead a cotillon, Othmar, 
 you might have been a happier man.' 
 
 ' That I do not doubt ; the frivolous faculty 
 is a very happy one.' 
 
 ' At all events, though you despise it, you
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 357 
 
 are indulgent to it. You gave us superb 
 presents at your own fete. Come in to break- 
 fast. I would not admit it if Platon were here, 
 but it is cold.' 
 
 ' And surely it is not very wise to be in the 
 cold after a ball ^ ' 
 
 ' That is what they all said, so I came. I 
 have not much sympathy with children, but 
 I do understand why they like to do a thing 
 for no other reason than that they are told not 
 to do it. My physicians pretend that morning 
 air is as bad as damp shoes, but I believe they 
 say that to be agreeable to their patients who 
 turn night into day. It is not only Moliere's 
 doctors who are charlatans. I imagine it is the 
 perpetual affectation of sympathy which doctors 
 are compelled to put on which makes them 
 hypocrites. Come into the house.' 
 
 He went on in silence beside her along the 
 bay path. He could not easily talk of trifles 
 with her ; she had filled all his life for two 
 whole years ; he loved her as he had loved no 
 other woman. When he had returned home 
 from the Millo ball, he had bathed and swam 
 in the little bay of S. Pharamond, and then had 
 rowed himself along the coast in that vague
 
 358 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 irresistible desire to pass near where she 
 dwelt which every true lover feels. 
 
 He had resolved to emancipate himself from 
 her power ; as he had watched her through the 
 night he had told himself that to care for her 
 was to waste life on a baseless and ungrateful 
 dream. Yet, when she had looked down from 
 her evergreen rampart, and had said ' Come,' 
 he had been unable to resist. 
 
 As he paced beside her now, the delicate 
 perfume of her laces, the floating, indefinite 
 lines of the rose-satin draperies, the glimpse of 
 her profile which the hood showed, her slender 
 feet in their rose-coloured pearl-sewn slippers, 
 which stepped so hghtly over the shining 
 shingle of the paths — one and all they con- 
 quered his calmness and his resolves, as the 
 fumes of new wine mount over the brain and 
 move the senses. She walked on, provocative 
 as Venus, unattainable as Una, speaking idly of 
 this thing and of that, knowing very well what 
 made his answers all at random and his colour 
 changeful. Other women might need to use 
 all the arts of conquest ; might need to woo 
 with their eyes, to charm with their smiles, to 
 solicit with their glances. She had no such
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 359 
 
 vulgar fashions ; slie moved, spoke, looked, as 
 the moment actuated her, and noticed her 
 lovers hardly more than she noticed the little 
 dog that ran after her skkts. To exist and 
 to be seen was enough to secure her more 
 victories than she chose to count. 
 
 If she noticed Othmar more than others it 
 was because he had gone away from her, he 
 had rebuked her, he had appeared to defy her, 
 and he had dared to tell her he loved her with 
 more reproach, and more bitterness of soul than 
 any other had ever done. She did not intend 
 to accept his life, or to give him hers ; but she 
 did intend that his should be unable to detach 
 itself. And all the while she talked to him 
 with that easy, even kindness, as of a friend, 
 with those light philosophies of a woman of 
 the world, which were to the passions of a 
 man as ether spray thrown upon a lava-flood ; 
 and she took him into breakfast with her as 
 though he were her brother. 
 
 She occasionally drank her chocolate in a 
 boudoir opening on to the terrace ; a little nest 
 of white satin and looking-glass and Saxe china ; 
 the ceiling was a mirror painted with little doves 
 and flowers ; the carpet was of lambskins ;
 
 36c PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 the corners were filled with azaleas, rose and 
 white, like her gown. She looked only a larger 
 flower as she sank down on one of the conches. 
 The chocolate was served on Moorish trays, in 
 Turkish cups, by a little negro who, gorgeous in 
 his dress and immovable as a statue, was often 
 taken by new comers for an enamelled bronze 
 cast by Barbedienne, so motionless did he 
 squat before the door of any room she occu- 
 pied. Othmar almost envied that httle 
 African menial the right he had to see his mis- 
 tress pass and repass a hundred times a day. 
 Nadine, in her nonchalant way, was kind to 
 the boy. 
 
 'He will die of pneumonia, — they always 
 do,' she said now. • Poor dusky little beetles, 
 they only live by their hot sand and their hot 
 sun ; to be sure, our houses inside are as hot as 
 Africa, but outside, the east wind blows, and 
 one day it will blow too much for Mahmoud. 
 I suppose it would be a terrible thing for 
 civilisation if the East ever again surged over 
 the West; but the East has very much to 
 avenge, and I am not sure that civilisation 
 would be any great loss. It has discovered 
 that man is only a sort of hotbed for bacteria,
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 361 
 
 and that butter can be made out of river mud, 
 and coffee out of powdered tan.' 
 
 She had taken the hood off her head ; she 
 was as charming as a child freshly out of a 
 bath, with her eyes brilliant and her cheeks a 
 little warmed by the transition from the chill 
 air of early morning to the room heated to 30° 
 Eeaumur. She had tossed herself backwards 
 amongst the white satin cushions. Her eyes, 
 which were like onyx, dwelt on him with a 
 gleam of amusement ; her beautiful mouth had 
 the smile which w^as so enigmatical, so gay, 
 and yet so cold. Slie had had a different 
 smile when she had said to little Mahmoud, 
 ' Cover yourself warmly here ; though the sun 
 shines, it is not African.' 
 
 'What has that black brat done that you 
 are so merciful to him ? ' asked Othmar. 
 
 She replied : ' That bLack brat is a victim 
 of civiHsation. I hate civihsation, as you 
 know. It even adulterates truffles.' 
 
 ' Did you ever smile so kindly on your own 
 children ?' 
 
 * I cannot say. I do not count my smiles. 
 That poor little slave is interesting, he is an exile, 
 and he will die in a year or two ; my children
 
 362 PRINCESS NAPRAXIAE. 
 
 are insufferably uninteresting ; they have un- 
 changeable healtli, intense stupidity, and will 
 grow up to have every desire fulfilled, every 
 caprice gratified, and to become that irre- 
 sponsible, useless, tyrannical, anachronism — a 
 Eussian noble. Perhaps they will be good 
 soldiers and kill a score of Asiatics. Perhaps 
 they will only drink brandy, and gamble/ 
 
 Othmar did not reply ; he was looking at 
 the exquisite grace of her form, the tea-rose 
 tint of her cheeks. Was it possible that she 
 could be the mother of two stout, ugly, Tartar- 
 faced boys ? It seemed to him a profanation ; a 
 hideous incongruity. He did not like to think 
 of it. If she had had a child at all it should 
 have been some blossom-like creature, sharing 
 her own grace as the catkin shares the 
 willow's. The subtlest charm about her was 
 that ethereality, as of a virginal goddess, which 
 was blent in her with all the finesses of se- 
 duction and of mind. The boldest man felt 
 that in NadineNapraxine the senses had hardly 
 more empire than in the ivory Venus of 
 the Greeks. 
 
 The eyes of Othmar dwelt on her now 
 yearningly, sombrely, wistfully.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 363 
 
 ' It is of no use,' he said, abruptly. ' I did 
 wrong to come here. If you wish for men 
 who can, whilst they adore you, sit and drink 
 chocolate and talk epigrams, seek elsewhere ; 
 I am not one of them. I can wear a mask, 
 but it must be of iron, not of velvet.' 
 
 ' The iron mask was of velvet,' said she, 
 correcting him, unmoved by the repressed 
 passion in his voice. ' All our illusions vanish 
 under the electric light of history, and the iron 
 mask is one of them. I daily expect to hear 
 that Marie Antoinette was never guillotined, 
 but succumbed at seventy to dropsy at Schon- 
 brunn ; we know it is proved that Jeanne d'Arc 
 married and died, bonne hourgeoise^ at Orleans, 
 and her family enjoyed a pension for three 
 generations from the town. It is very dis- 
 tressing, but it is all proved fromr-the^r chives. 
 Why shouldn't you drink chocolate ? Perhaps 
 you do not like it. Men like nothing that has 
 sugar in it, except flattery. Eing. They will 
 bring you anything else.' 
 
 Othmar looked at her without speaking. 
 Something of the impotent rage against her 
 with whicli he had left her in Paris awoke in 
 him under the sting of her ever dulcet tones, in
 
 364 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 whicli a little tone of mockery could be felt 
 rather than heard. 
 
 He rose abruptly. 
 
 ' Have you never loved anyone ? ' he asked. 
 
 She lifted her eyebrows with impatience 
 and astonishment. 
 
 ' Vous voila emhalU ! Dear Othmar, I 
 should like you so much if you would not 
 always revert to that old theme. You are 
 a man of the world, or you ought to be one. 
 Be amusing, even be instructive if you like ; I 
 do not mind behig instructed, but do not be 
 romantic. Nobody is nowadays ; not even the 
 novelists.' 
 
 Othmar appeared scarcely to hear her. 
 
 ' Did you never love anyone ? ' he repeated. 
 
 She laughed a little. 
 
 'You speak as if I were forty years old, 
 with a cabinet full of old letters and faded 
 roses ! No ; I never loved anybody, not even 
 Platon ! ' 
 
 The notion su^(]jested in her Last Avords 
 tickled her fancy so much that she laughed 
 outrio^ht. 
 
 ' I suppose,' she continued, ' somewhere in 
 the world there are women who have loved
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 365 
 
 Platon ; but it seems too funny. He is always 
 eating when he is not drinking ; he is always 
 smoking when he is not sleeping ; admettons^ 
 done, that Cupid must fly from his presence. 
 How grave you look. I believe you have 
 something of the Eastern in you, and think that 
 all women should be prostrate before their 
 husbands. There is a good deal of that idea 
 among the moujiks ; it must be very agreeable 
 — for the man.' 
 
 ' Why did you marry him ? ' said Othraar, 
 gloomily ; it hurt his sense of honour to speak 
 of Napraxine in Napraxine's house ; yet he 
 could not repress the question. 
 
 ' Oh, my friend, why do girls always 
 marry P ' she said, indifferently. Because 
 the marriage is there ; because the families 
 have arranged it ; because one does not 
 know ; because one wishes for freedom, for 
 jewels, for the world ; because one does not 
 care to be a fiUette, chaperoned at every 
 step. There are many reasons that make one 
 marry : it is the thing to do — everyone does it ; 
 when a girl sees the young married women, 
 she sees them flirted with, sought, monopoHsing 
 everything; it is like standing behind a shut
 
 366 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 door and hearing people laughing and singing 
 on the other side, while you cannot get to 
 them ; besides, Platon did as well as anybody 
 else, he is more good-natured than inost ; he 
 never interferes ; he is very peaceable ' 
 
 ' How long ago is it ? Five years — six ? 
 Why could I not meet you before ? ' 
 
 She smiled, not displeased. 
 
 ' It is seven years. Oh, I do not think it 
 would have done at all ; you are too arrogant ; 
 we should have quarrelled before a month was 
 out. Besides, I should have tormented you 
 to do all manner of impossibilities ; with your 
 immense power, I should have expected you to 
 buy me an empire.' 
 
 Othmar was very pale ; the possibility of 
 which she jested so airily was one he could 
 not think of without a mist before his eyes, 
 a quickening of his heart. He hesitated to 
 say what rose to his lips ; she would only call 
 it vieux jeiL 
 
 ' I think you might be a great man, 
 Othmar, if you were not Othmar,' she pursued. 
 
 ' I do not feel the capabilities,' he replied. 
 
 ' That is because you are what you are,' she 
 answered. ' You are something hke a king of
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 367 
 
 England. A king of England might have 
 all the talents, but he could never be a great 
 man because his position binds him hand and 
 foot, and makes a lay figure of him. You are not 
 a lay figure, but the very fact that you are Otho 
 Othmar prevents your being anything besides. 
 I tliink, if I were you, I should buy some great 
 sunshiny fantastic eastern kingdom, and reign 
 there ; you might lead the life of a Haroum 
 Alraschid, and forget all about our stupid 
 Europe with its big dinners, its blundering 
 politics, its unreal religions, and its hideous 
 dress.' 
 
 ' A charming dream — if you were with me.' 
 
 ' Oh, no ; you would not Avant me ; you 
 would have two thousand slaves, each more 
 beautiful than the others.' 
 
 ' All my life I shall want you ! ' 
 
 He spoke under his breath. He was leaning 
 back in his chair ; his face was cold, almost 
 stern, but his eyes were ardent and full of 
 passion. All night at Millo he had sworn to 
 himself that never again would he succumb 
 to her influence or allow her to triumph in 
 the power she possessed over him, but in her 
 presence he was unnerved, and unable to keep
 
 368 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 silent. She, lying back amongst her cushions, 
 glanced at him mider her long lashes, and 
 understood very well the strife which went on 
 in his soul ; the pride of manhood which com- 
 batted the impulses of passion ; the impetus 
 which could not be resisted, the impatience of 
 his own weakness which vibrated through his 
 confession. 
 
 ' What was the use of your going to Mon- 
 golia ; you could not escape me,' she thought, 
 with a little of that contemptuous indulgence 
 which she always felt for her lovers' follies, 
 and a httle of a newer and more personal grati- 
 fication ; for Othmar touched a certain chord in 
 her mind, a certain pulse in her heart, which 
 others had not done. There was nothing 
 commonplace or trivial in liim. There was a 
 vague power, imused but existent, which com- 
 manded her respect. Nadine Napraxine de- 
 spised the world too heartily herself not to 
 have sympathy with the indifference he felt for 
 his own potentialities and possessions. He was 
 one of the masters of the world, and he only 
 wished for one thing on earth — herself. There 
 was a flattery in that which pleased even her, 
 sated with compHment though she was. There
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 369 
 
 were moments when she thought that if she 
 had met him before, as he said, there would 
 have been less ennui and more warmth in lier 
 life. ' Only we should have been so sure to 
 have tired of each other,' she reflected. ' People 
 always do ; it is the fault of marriage ; it 
 compels people at the onset to see so much of 
 one another that they have nothing new left 
 with which to meet the future. If you heard 
 the best of Bach every day, you would get 
 to hate Bach as intensely as you hate a street 
 organ ; the music would still be perfect, but 
 it could not withstand incessant repetition. 
 We should have been quite idylically in love 
 for a few months ; I am sure we should ; 
 but then we should have each gone our several 
 ways, and in the end he would have been 
 hardly better than Platon.' 
 
 Aloud, however, she only said, with a little 
 smile : 
 
 ' You should never say things straight out 
 like that, Othmar. You should never go be- 
 yond a suggestion. The world has spoilt you 
 so greatly that it has let you get blunt. It is 
 a pity. When I talk to people I al ways feel as 
 Boucher said he felt when he talked with his 
 
 VOL. I. B B
 
 370 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 lady-love. " J'aime tout ce qu'elle va dire ; je 
 n'aime rien qu'elle dit." If we could only 
 always remain at tlie stage when we are just 
 going to speak ! ' 
 
 Othmar did not reply. His face was very 
 pale ; it had a set stern look, as though he 
 exercised great self-repression. He was angered 
 against himself for being there ; for having let 
 her lead him thither merely to be made the 
 sport of her subtle and sarcastic intelhgence. It 
 seemed to him that if his passion were un- 
 welcome to her his presence should be unwel- 
 come too. 
 
 She guessed his thoughts with that rapid 
 intuition which is the gift of such minds as 
 hers. 
 
 'Oh, I am not like that,' she said, with some 
 unspoken amusement ; ' I am not startled at a 
 confession like yours, as a horse starts at a pistol 
 shot. It seems to me that men are never 
 happy unless they are talking in that kind of 
 way to some woman who does not belong to 
 them. They are so like children ! In Peters- 
 burg, last year, I saw Sachs crying for a sen- 
 tinel's cartouche-box because he could not 
 have it. He had all Giroux's shop in his own
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 371 
 
 nursery, but that did not do. You are like 
 Sachs. Ought I to ring the bell and dismiss 
 you? Why should I? I do not think so. 
 Only very primitive beings take fright at 
 declarations. Besides, you made me so many 
 in Paris, and then you went to the Mongols. 
 I never knew why you went to the Mongols ; 
 why did you go ? ' 
 
 'Wounded brutes always get away some- 
 where to be unseen as long as their wound 
 bleeds,' said Othmar, with some bitterness. 
 
 ' How Sachs cried for that cartouche-box ! ' 
 she said, as she lit a cigarette. ' His women 
 scolded him, but I said to them, '' Wliy do you 
 scold him ? He is a male creature ; therefore 
 he must weep for what he cannot get." Some 
 children cry for the moon ; a moon, or a car- 
 touche-box, or a woman, the principle is the 
 same.' 
 
 Othmar rose and approached her. He 
 seemed scarcely to have heard her jest. 
 
 ' Nadege, hear me a moment,' he said, in a 
 low tone, through whose enforced calmness there 
 was the thrill of an intense passion. ' You are 
 not alarmed at declarations ; they are nothing 
 to you, you neither requite nor reject them; 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 
 
 PR/iVCESS NAFRAXINE. 
 
 they amuse you, that is all. You are used to 
 do just what you please with men ; I under- 
 stand that you despise them so far as you deign 
 to think of them seriously.' 
 
 ' Despise, no ! ' she said, with a little ges- 
 ture of depreciation ; 'that is too strong. Why 
 should I despise them for acting according to 
 their natures? I do not desire cartouche- 
 boxes myself, but I did not despise Sachs.' 
 
 ' I told you in Paris,' pursued Othmar, 
 ' that I would not add one to the hst of those 
 Avhom you have made ridiculous in the eyes of 
 the world. I will be all to a woman, or 
 nothing to her. You would have let me swell 
 the cortege that marks your triumphal passage ; 
 you would have let me fill the place that Lord 
 Geraldine occupies now. You would have 
 allowed me to drive with you, dine with you, 
 come in and out of your house, take your hus- 
 band away when he bored you, do everything 
 that Lord Geraldine is permitted to do now ; 
 and you would have repaid me as you repay 
 him, by a little laugh, a smile now and then, a 
 vague liking which would have grown, little by 
 little, into contempt ! I Avould not accept that 
 place in your household. I would not then.
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 2>1Z 
 
 I left you, though it cost me more than you 
 would ever know or pity, for you do not 
 understand what love is. I Avent away ; I de- 
 sired to escape from you. I did escape. I 
 desired also to forget you, but I could not 
 forget. You are not a woman who can be for- 
 gotten ; you are hke one of those misericordes 
 with which they stabbed men in the Yalois 
 days, that look like mere threads of silver 
 sheathed in velvet, and yet can go home 
 tlirough breast and bone, and kill more surely 
 than swords that are as high as a man's 
 shoulder ' 
 
 He paused a moment ; he breathed quickly 
 and heavily ; she looked up, holding her little 
 cigarette suspended : 
 
 ' I am like a great many things,' she mur- 
 mured ; ' I thought Wilkes exhausted all possi- 
 bilities in comparison this morning. Go on ! 
 you are very entreprenant, but it rather be- 
 comes you ; you may go on if you Hke.' 
 
 He dropped on his knee beside her : 
 
 ' No, I would not be what Geraldine is ; 
 you tolerate him now, to scorn him immeasur- 
 ably hereafter. His own weakness will be tlie 
 measure of your scorn. He has never dared to
 
 374 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 say to you what I said to you in Paris, what I 
 say now : love me, or I will not see your face 
 again, except as society may compel me to see 
 it in a crowd. Listen, Nadhie ! I love you, 
 only you ; I never thought to love any woman 
 so ; but I love you as men did in the old 
 times, and there is nothing I will not surrender 
 to you save my own self-respect. If to meet 
 you, to touch your hand, to hear your voice, 
 I must come and go like a dog in your hus- 
 band's house, petted one day, chidden the next, 
 absurd in my own sight and emasculated in the 
 sight of others, I will wrench my love for you 
 out of my life if my life goes with it ! Last 
 night I heard someone who did not know him 
 inquire who Geraldine was ; someone else an- 
 swered him, " Oh, that is one of Princess 
 Napraxine's ensorceles ; she never looks at him, 
 but he is content to follow her shadow." You 
 know me very little if you believe I would 
 ever let the world speak of me like that. I 
 told you in Paris I would never be the trem- 
 bling valet of a bloodless Platonism ! ' 
 
 She looked at him, and a gleam of admira- 
 tion passed into her eyes for a moment ; she 
 breathed a trifle more quickly ; she thought to
 
 PRINCESS NAPnAXINE. 375 
 
 herself : 'He is superb when he looks and 
 speaks like that ! Cest un homme celui-la ! ' 
 
 She did not speak, she leaned back amongst 
 her cushions with a httle look of expectancy 
 upon her face ; the whole thing pleased her, as 
 some admirable piece of acting on the boards 
 of the Theatre Fran9ais pleased at once her 
 eye, her ear, and her taste. 
 
 But Othmar was passionately in earnest ; 
 all his heart was in his hps, all his passions 
 had found voice. He could scarcely see her 
 for the red mist that swam before his eyes, 
 for the tumult of his senses. He dropped on 
 his knee beside her. 
 
 ' Nadine,' he murmured, as his forehead 
 touched her hand, ' I have told you what I 
 will not do ; let me tell you what I will do. I 
 will do as you say, I will buy some sunlit 
 kingdom far away in the heart of Asia, and I 
 will take you to it and obey every breath of 
 your mouth as my one divine law. I will turn 
 my back on Europe once and for ever ; I will 
 let men call me a coward, a fool, an infidel ; 
 what they will ; I will give all my present and 
 all my future to you and to you alone ; all I 
 possess shall only exist to minister to you ; I
 
 376 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 
 
 will be your slave, body and mind and will ; 
 but only so — only if you give yourself to me as 
 absolutely in return, only if you come with me 
 where nothing of this world Avhicli we have 
 known shall pursue us to remind me that you 
 were ever else than mine.' 
 
 His forehead burned her hand as it touched 
 her, his voice was passionate in its emotion and 
 eloquence, his heart beat so loudly that it was 
 audible in the stillness around them. For once 
 she was touched, almost awed ; for once the 
 electricity of the passion she excited commu- 
 nicated something of its fire and thrill to her. 
 She was silent a few moments, her eyelids 
 closed, her hps parted, she felt a vague 
 pleasure in the contact of this intense and 
 imperious love. He saw upon her delicate 
 features a change of colour, a flicker of emotion, 
 which no one else had ever seen there ; but 
 she motioned him farther away from her with 
 that dislike to any concession and that sensitive 
 hauteur which but added to her charm. 
 
 She smiled a little, but there was an accent 
 which was almost tenderness in her voice as 
 she said to him : ' C'est de ne rien perdre de 
 beaucoup prier ! ' You evidently have belief
 
 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE. 2>77 
 
 in tliat saying. It is to ask a very great deal, 
 but then you would give a great deal in your 
 turn. Go away now ; I will think. No, I 
 shall not answer you ; I want time for thought. 
 Be satisfied that I am not offended, and go. 
 I ought to be so, I suppose, but I am not. 
 Go.' 
 
 ' I may come back ? ' 
 
 His heart beat eagerly and exultantly. He 
 was not refused or dismissed ! ' Chateau qui 
 parle, femme qui ecoutee — the old proverb 
 drifted through his thoughts, all confused as 
 they were in a tumult of hope and desire, and 
 triumph and doubt. A moment's hesitation 
 from her was more concession than a thousand 
 caresses from a humbler woman. 
 
 • I may come back ? ' he repeated, as she 
 remained silent. 
 
 ' If you like, we shall meet in other places ; 
 yes, you may return in a fortnight — at this 
 time — in this room, then I will tell you.' 
 
 ' In a fortnight ! ' — it seemed to him to be 
 ten years. 
 
 ' Be thankful for so much,' she said, as she 
 gave him the tips of her fingers. * Now go. 
 Mahmoud is in the antechamber.'
 
 378 PRINCESS NAPRAXINE, 
 
 He kissed her Land with hps that burned 
 like fire, bowed low and obeyed her. Nadine 
 Napraxine remained motionless, her eyes were 
 closed, her mouth smiled ; she seemed to 
 dream. 
 
 THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME,
 
 M: 
 
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