The Master-Christian Part 23

"By reputation merely," replied the Marquis, setting a chair for his fair visitor, "And as the uncle of Donna Sovrani."

"Oh, reputation is nothing," laughed the lady, known as the Princesse D'Agramont, an independent beauty of great wealth and brilliant attainments, "Your butler can give you a reputation, or take it away from you! But the Cardinal's reputation is truly singular. It is goodness, merely! He is so good that he has become actually famous for it! Now I once thought that to become famous for goodness must surely imply that the person so celebrated had a very hypocritical nature,--the worst of natures indeed;--that of pretending to be what he was not,--but I was mistaken. Cardinal Bonpre IS good. Absolutely sincere and n.o.ble--therefore a living marvel in this age!"

"You are pleased to be severe, Princesse," said the Marquis, "Is sincerity so difficult to find?"

"The most difficult of virtues!" answered the Princesse, lightly tapping out a little tune with the jewelled handle of her riding whip on the arm of her chair, "That is why I like horses and dogs so much--they are always honest. And for that reason I am now inclined to like Abbe Vergniaud whom I never liked before. He has turned honest!

To-day indeed he has been as straightforward as if he were not a man at all!--and I admire him for it. He and his son will be my guests at the Chateau D'Agramont."

"What a very strange woman you are!" said Fontenelle, with a certain languid admiration beginning to glimmer in his eyes, "You always do things that n.o.body else would dare do--and yet . . . no lovers!"

She turned herself swiftly round and surveyed him with a bright scorn that swept him as with a lightning flash from head to heel.

"Lovers! Who would be bored by them! Such delightful company! So unselfish in their demands--so tender and careful of a woman's feelings! Pouf! Cher ami!--you forget! I was the wife of the late Prince D'Agramont!"

"That explains a great many of your moods certainly," said the Marquis smiling.

"Does it not? Le beau Louis!--romantic Louis!--poet Louis!--musician Louis!--Louis, who talked pretty philosophies by the hour,--Louis who looked so beautiful by moonlight,--who seemed fastidious and refined to a degree that was almost ethereal!--Louis who swore, with pa.s.sion flas.h.i.+ng in his eyes, that I was the centre of the universe to him, and that no other woman had ever occupied, would ever occupy, or SHOULD ever occupy his thoughts!--yes, he was an ideal lover and husband indeed!" said the Princesse smiling coldly, "I gave him all my life and love, till one day, when I found I was sharing his caresses with my plumpest dairymaid, who called him "HER Louis"! Then I thought it was time to put an end to romance. TIENS!" and she gave a little shrug and sigh, "It is sad to think he died of over-eating."

The Marquis laughed.

"You are incorrigible, belle Loyse!" he said, "You should write these things, not speak them."

"Really! And do I not write them? Yes, you know I do, and that you envy me my skill. The Figaro is indebted to me for many admirable essays. At the same time I do not give you permission to call me Loyse."

"Forgive me!" and the Marquis folded his hands with an air of mock penitence.

"Perhaps I will, presently," and she laughed, "But meanwhile I want you to do something for me."

"Toujours a votre service, madame!" and Fontenelle bowed profoundly.

"How theatrical you look! You are alarmingly like Miraudin;--and one MUST draw the line at Miraudin! This is a day of truth according to the Abbe Vergniaud; how dare you say you are at my service when you do not mean it?"

"Princesse, I protest . . ."

"Oh, protest as much as you like,--on the way to Rome!"

The Marquis started.

"To Rome?"

"Yes, to Rome. I am going, and I want someone to look after me. Will you come? All Paris will say we have eloped together." She laughed merrily.

The Marquis stood perplexed and silent.

"Well, what is it?" went on the Princesse gaily, "Is there some faint sense of impropriety stealing over you? Not possible! Dear me, your very muscles are growing rigid! You will not go?"

"Madame, if you will permit me to be frank with you,--I would rather not!"

"A la bonheur!--then I have you!" And the Princesse rose, a dazzling smile irradiating her features, "You have thrown open your heart! You have begun to reform! You love Sylvie Hermenstein--yes!--you positively LOVE her!"

"Princesse--" began the Marquis, "I a.s.sure you--"

"a.s.sure me nothing!" and she looked him straight in the eyes, "I know all about it! You will not journey with me because you think the Comtesse Sylvie will hear of it, and put a wrong construction on your courtesy. You wish to try for once, to give her no cause for doubting you to be sans peur et sans reproche. You wish to make her think you something better than a sort of Miraudin whose amorous inclinations are not awakened by one woman, but by women! And so you will not do anything which, though harmless in itself, may seem equivocal. For this you refuse the friendly invitation of one of the best known 'society leaders' in Europe! CHER Marquis!--it is a step in the right direction!

Adieu!"

"You are not going so soon," he said hurriedly, "Wait till I explain .

"There is nothing to explain!" and the pretty Princesse gave him her hand with a beneficent air, "I am very pleased with you. You are what the English call 'good boy'! Now I am going to see the Abbe and place the Chateau D'Agramont at his disposal while he is waiting to be excommunicated,--for of course he will be excommunicated--"

"What does it matter!--Who cares?" said the Marquis recklessly.

"It does not matter, and n.o.body cares--not in actual Paris. But very very nice people in the suburbs, who are morally much worse than the Abbe, will perhaps refuse to receive him. That is why my doors are open to him, and also to his son."

"Original, as usual!"

"Perfectly! I am going to write a column for the Figaro on the amazing little scene of this morning. Au revoir! My poor horse has been waiting too long already,--I must finish my ride in the Bois, and then go to Angela Sovrani; for all the dramatis personae of to-day's melodrama are at her studio, I believe."

"Who is that boy with the Cardinal?" asked the Marquis suddenly.

"You have noticed him? I also. A wonderful face! A little acolyte, no doubt. And so you will not go to Rome with me?"

"I think not," and Fontenelle smiled.

"Comme il vous plaira! I will tell Sylvie."

"The Comtesse Hermenstein is not in Paris."

"No!" and the Princesse laughed mischievously, "She is in Rome! She must have arrived there this morning. Au revoir, Marquis!" Another dazzling smile, and she was gone.

Fontenelle stood staring after her in amazement. Sylvie was in Rome then? And he had just refused to accompany the Princesse D'Agramont thither! A sudden access of irritation came over him, and he paced the room angrily. Should he also go to Rome? Never! It would seem too close a pursuit of a woman who had by her actions distinctly shown that she wished to avoid him. Now he would prove to her that he also had a will of his own. HE would leave Paris;--he would go--yes, he would go to Africa! Everybody went to Africa. It was becoming a fas.h.i.+onable pasture-land for disappointed lives. He would lose himself in the desert,--and then--then Sylvie would be sorry when she did not know where he was or what he was doing! But also,--he in his turn would not know where Sylvie was, or what she was doing! This was annoying. It was certain that she would not remain in Rome a day longer than she chose to,--well!--then where would she go? In Africa he would find some difficulty in tracing her movements. On second thoughts he resolved that he would lose himself in another fas.h.i.+on--and would go to Rome to do it!

"She shall not know I am there!" he said to himself, with a kind of triumph in his own decision, "I shall amuse myself--I shall see her--but she shall not see me."

Satisfied with this as yet vague plan of entertainment, he began at once making his arrangements for departure;--meanwhile, the Princesse D'Agramont riding gracefully through the Bois on her beautiful Arab, was amusing herself with her thoughts, and weighing the PROS and CONS of the different lives of her friends, without giving the slightest consideration to her own. Here was a strange nature,--as a girl she had been intensely loving, generous and warm-hearted, and she had adored her husband with exceptional faith and devotion. But the handsome Prince's amours were legion, though he had been fairly successful in concealing them from his wife, till the unlucky day when she had found him making desperate love to a common servant,--and after that her confidence, naturally, was at an end. One discovery led to another,--and the husband around whom she had woven her life's romance, sank degraded in her sight, never to rise again. She was of far too dignified and proud a nature to allow her sense of outrage and wrong to be made public, and though she never again lived with D'Agramont as his wife, she carried herself through all her duties as mistress of the household and hostess of his guests, with a brave bright gaiety, which deceived even the closest observer,--and the gossips of Paris used to declare that she did not know the extent of her husband's follies. But she did know,--and while filled with utter disgust and loathing for his conduct she nevertheless gave him no cause of complaint against herself. And when he died of a fever brought on through over-indulgence in vice, she conformed to all the strictest usages of society,--wore her solemn widow's black for more than the accustomed period,--and then cast it off,--not to dash into her fas.h.i.+onable "circle" again with a splurge of colour, but rather to glide into it gracefully, a vision of refinement, arrayed in such soft hues as may be seen in some rare picture; and she took complete possession of it by her own unaided charm. No one could really tell whether she grieved for D'Agramont's death or not; no one but herself knew how she had loved him,--no one guessed what agonies of pain and shame she had endured for his sake, nor how she had wept herself half blind with despair when he died. All this she shut up in her own heart, but the working of the secret bitterness within her had made a great change in her disposition. Her nature, once as loving and confiding as that of a little child, had been so wronged in its tenderest fibres that now she could not love at all.

"Why is it," she would ask herself, "that I am totally unable to care for any living creature? That it is indifferent to me whether I see any person once, or often, or never? Why are all men like phantoms, drifting past my soul's immovability?"

The answer to her query would be, that having loved greatly once and been deceived, it was impossible to love again. Some women,--the best, and therefore the unhappiest--are born with this difficult temperament.

Now, as she rode quietly along, sometimes allowing her horse to prance upon the turf for the delight of its dewy freshness, she was weaving quite a brilliant essay on modern morals out of the scene she had witnessed at the Church of the Lorette that morning. She well knew how to use that dangerous weapon, the pen,--she could wield it like a wand to waken tears or laughter with equal ease, and since her husband's death she had devoted a great deal of time to authors.h.i.+p. Two witty novels, published under a nom-de-plume had already startled the world of Paris, and she was busy with a third. Such work amused her, and distracted her from dwelling too much on the destroyed illusions of the past. The Figaro s.n.a.t.c.hed eagerly at everything she wrote; and it was for the Figaro that she busied her brain now, considering what she should say of the Abbe Vergniaud's confession.

"It is wisest to be a liar and remain in the Church? or tell the truth and go out of the Church?" she mused, "Unfortunately, if all priests told the truth as absolutely as the Abbe did this morning we should have hardly any of them left."

She laughed a little, and stroked her horse's neck caressingly.

"Good Rex! You and your kind never tell lies; and yet you are said to have no souls. Now I wonder why we, who are mean and cunning and treacherous and hypocritical should have immortal souls, while horses and dogs who are faithful and kind and honest should be supposed to have none."

Rex gave a gay little prance forward as one who should say, "Yes, but it is only you silly human beings who suppose such nonsense. We know what WE know;--we have our own secrets!"