Читать книгу The Uncrowned King - Baroness Orczy - Страница 16

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The pretty chatterers in Baden-Baden had still more to gossip about when they perceived that a certain intimacy seemed thereafter to be established between the austere Princess and the Austrian financier, and when Madame was actually seen driving down the Allée, sitting beside Baron Christophe in his magnificent calèche, tongues wagged more furiously than they had ever done before and there was no end to the tittle-tattle.

“That’s the third time this week,” one lady declared with a solemn nod of her pretty head in the direction where the calèche was fast moving out of sight.

“There’s something in the wind, you may be sure,” commented another.

And the smart Duchesse de Mouchy, who was always in the van of gossip-mongers, added with a twinkle of her fine eyes: “Milliards in the wind, I should say, my dear. What can one talk to a financier about, except finance?”

The ladies were horrified. They never talked finance. Not with anyone. Not even with Baron Christophe. Finance was not ladylike. Besides, what kind of financial talk could a Princesse de Bourbon carry on with that Austrian?

“Do you mean to say—?” somebody queried vaguely.

The Duchesse shrugged and looked as wise as any pretty woman can look. She said: “Well! A milliard or so would be very useful to the Bourbons. They say that Louis would stand a very good chance just now, for the Emperor is not as popular as he was.”

“Bah! Christophe wouldn’t be such a fool as to finance any wild-cat schemes of that sort,” a stout, florid man asserted pompously; a man with jet-black hair carefully brought crescent-wise over his ears, and jet-black whiskers not altogether innocent of dye. He had once been something in the Ministry and was generally supposed to be in the know.

The lively Duchesse de Mouchy, whose pretty mouth uttered more scandal in an hour than any journalist could invent in a week, gave the ex-Minister a playful prod with her tiny parasol.

“Perhaps you will explain then, my friend,” she said with a knowing twinkle in her bright eyes, “why Madame la Princesse de Bourbon goes out driving thrice a week with Monsieur Albert Christophe.”

“If you ask me—” a young man began sententiously. He was correspondent to the Paris Figaro, and what gossip he did not know was certainly not worth knowing.

“I would as soon ask you, Duprat,” the Duchesse put in lightly, “as anyone else.”

Duprat bowed from the waist. He evidently took the remark as a compliment.

“Then I would remind you, ladies,” he said, addressing the smart throng collectively, “that old Christophe has a daughter whom he adores.”

“A very lovely daughter,” the pompous Ministerial personage put in with a sigh: “Just out of the schoolroom.”

“And the richest heiress in Europe,” sighed another.

“We all know that,” came in a chorus which filled the air very much like the chattering of a swarm of parrakeets.

Duprat was now the centre of attention. He knew such a lot, the young scandal-monger! So he resumed, complacently:

“You also know, dear ladies, that the old man is worth a couple of milliards, at least.”

“That is why I ask you,” the Duchesse concluded. “Why this intimacy? Christophe is not likely to give his only child to a penniless, dispossessed prince—”

“I agree; but a milliard or two can easily turn a dispossessed prince into—”

He paused, measuring his effect. He had reason to be satisfied with the attention he commanded, for the chorus of pretty parrakeets was raised once again.

“Into what?” they asked.

“Into a King of France,” young Duprat said solemnly.

“Ah, bah!” “Oh, no!” “Impossible!” were some of the exclamations that greeted this amazing suggestion.

“Why impossible?” retorted the correspondent of the Figaro. “Thrones and kingdoms have been bought before now.”

“And the French Treasury has an enormous deficit this year,” someone commented gravely.

“With the Empress so wildly extravagant.”

“If old Christophe were to put down a milliard there’s no knowing what the government might not do.”

“Do you mean to say—?” a fair chatterer gasped, unable apparently to get any further; another gossip-monger, however, came to her rescue by putting in the unspoken words.

“Do you mean to say that Albert Christophe wants to buy a royal husband and the crown of France for the lovely Véronique?”

“That is what it comes to,” replied young Duprat.

“Quelle horreur!” exclaimed the pretty Duchesse: “a Jewess!”

“Albert Christophe is not a Jew, Madame,” a deep-toned, earnest voice broke in gravely. “He is a financier. An Austrian. But not a Jew.”

It was Count Friesen, chancellor of Embassy at the Austrian Legation, who had spoken. He was greeted effusively. Room was made for him to join the smart assembly, for Hugo Friesen was very popular in Baden-Baden society; though no longer in his first youth he was extraordinarily good-looking and gave very smart dinner-parties at the Kursaal; dinner-parties at which if one was privileged to be invited, one met the élite of cosmopolitan society.

Baron Christophe’s elegant equipage drove by once more just then at a rapid pace. Carriage à la Daumont. Silver harness. Sombre but very elegant livery. Two elderly people reclined on the cushions. Madame la Princesse de Bourbon, statuesque with a single note of colour in her black attire, a crimson flower tucked into her chignon under her hat, and a small thin man, with sharp features, shrewd dark eyes and thin compressed lips, the man who was said to control the destinies of Europe by the mere tightening and loosening of his own purse-strings: Albert Christophe, the multimillionaire.

Somehow the whole turn-out was impressive; the beautiful equipage with its air of unostentatious wealth, and the two elderly occupants whose aims and destinies set the smart gossip-mongers talking.

“Where is the beautiful Véronique now?” one of these asked, turning to Count Friesen.

“Staying with a relation in Vienna, I understand. She will be here soon.”

“And the future King of France?” the Duchesse asked, not without a touch of malice.

“I haven’t seen him for ages,” one of the ladies said.

“Nor I.”

“No one has seen him for the past two seasons. They say he spends his time in France, doing secret propaganda for his cause. Isn’t that so, Friesen?”

But the diplomat assured the ladies that he didn’t know.

“Perhaps he has gone to court the lovely Véronique.”

“Or to make arrangements for his coronation.”

“Or both, since one will depend on the other.”

“Don’t speak of it,” the Duchesse now exclaimed irritably. “La reine Véronique. The thought of it gives me goose-flesh.”

But there were a good many in the crowd who murmured, thinking of the beautiful daughter of the multimillionaire: “She would make an exquisite Queen.”

Hearing which, a man who had been sitting on the fringe of the crowd, all by himself, rose so abruptly that he knocked over his chair and drew from his nearest neighbour a black look and the epithet “maladroit.” He was a tall, well-built man, who would have been good-looking but for the shock of hair of a warm chestnut colour which hung over his forehead and seemed to have successfully defied comb and brush, and an unkempt moustache and beard which disfigured the lower part of his face.

“Do you know who that was?” someone in the crowd asked no one in particular.

“No. Do you?”

“I have noticed him before. He always reminds me of someone. I can’t think of whom.”

“Strange you should say that,” Count Friesen put in thoughtfully. “I had just the same feeling a moment ago.”

“He is an unlicked cub at any rate.”

As usual young Duprat, the correspondent of the Figaro, who always knew everything, was able to throw light on the subject.

“That unlicked cub,” he said, “will be a world celebrity one day.”

“Not really?”

“What do you mean, my dear Monsieur Duprat?”

“Who is he?”

“I forget his name,” the young journalist went on, “but his portrait of Mademoiselle Christophe in the Salon this spring was one of the pictures of the year.”

“Ah! I remember the portrait.”

“Marvellous!”

“Admirable!”

“The work of a genius!”

And the society butterflies continued to flutter their wings.

“Do try and remember his name, Duprat.”

“Can you bring him to my reception to-morrow?”

Pretty heads were turned to catch another glimpse of the “unlicked cub.”

But he had already disappeared.