Читать книгу The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer) - Висенте Бласко-Ибаньес, Blasco Ibáñez Vicente - Страница 3

MICHAEL arrived in time to receive the body of the Princess in Paris. Before her death her mind had been illuminated by the sudden flare of reason which is the signal of the end in cases of serious mental disturbances. She had left various papers on which she had noted loans made to certain persons, and judicious suggestions for her son in regard to the management of the enormous fortune. She wanted to be buried beside her husband, her first husband, "the hero," in the Père Lachaise cemetery. During the last years she had stayed in Paris, she had been seized once more by the craze for building, and had busied herself with the preparation of her final dwelling place. Beside the mausoleum of the Marquis of Villablanca, whose image, frowning and indomitable, held in one hand a broken sword, she had set up another monument no less ostentatious with a statue which was supposed to be her exact likeness and was nothing less than the semblance of the unhappy Queen of Scots, as it appears in the engraving of the Romanticist period.

During the funeral ceremonies, Michael Fedor met again many persons who formerly visited the Lubimoff palace, and whom he had thought were dead. Doña Mercedes in tears embraced him. She had become extraordinarily stout, and the coppery complexion inherited from her Aztec ancestors had taken on an unhealthy ascetic pallor. She looked like the Mother Superior of a noble convent of nuns. At her side, Monsignor, in his silk cassock and with an air of compunction, was moving his lips to save the dead woman's soul. "My son! We have all our sorrows." And as she said this, the poor lady looked at another woman elegantly dressed in mourning who stood there somewhat aloof, in the cemetery, and seemed utterly incapacitated by the ceremony which had obliged her to rise before noon.

The Duchess de Delille also came forward to meet him, taking both his hands and giving him a strange glance.

"Your mother loved me … really loved me. During these last years we saw each other very often."

Michael nodded assent. He knew that already. The Princess Lubimoff had been the one loyal friend of this passionate unscrupulous woman, who was gradually losing every one's respect. She had defended Alicia when other high society women declared open war and closed their doors to her, fearing for their husbands' fidelity. As she used to play every winter at Monte Carlo, she had been in the company of the Princess up to the last moments.

"She loved me more than my mother ever did… Perhaps she remembered that I might have been her daughter."

The Prince walked away, as though annoyed by this allusion. He had heard such things about her!.. But all during the ceremony he kept seeing her in his mind's eye. She was still beautiful, but so strangely beautiful. Her skin had lost the golden tinge of ripened fruit, and now was pale, the dull white of Japanese paper. Her large eyes, which gave off green and yellow glints, stared with disturbing fixity and seemed at the same time to have a blank expression, as though covered by an invisible spider web. Her least bitter enemies accused her of a certain propensity for spirits. She drank all sorts of American mixed drinks like an habitué of the bars. Other people attributed her pallor and the continual darkly bewildered look in her eyes to morphine, opium and all the various liquids and perfumes producing lethargy and creating "artificial paradise." The little Alicia of former years was drinking, draining it to the last drop from the cup of life in deep draughts.

Michael Fedor thought that he had seen the last of her, but a few days later he began to receive letters. He was alone, and must be feeling sad, so she was inviting him to come and eat with her, informally, of course, as was natural among close relatives. His evasions brought fresh invitations by telephone. The Prince, like a person fulfulling a tiresome social obligation, finally went one evening to her little palace in the Avenue du Bois, one of the numerous imitations of the Petit Trianon, which are to be found in various parts of the world.

The Duchess de Delille was proud of this edifice and the tiny garden with its sharp, gilded grating, in front of which all fashionable Paris passed. Michael was acquainted with the drawing rooms without ever having been inside them. The illustrated journals, which cover the styles of wealthy social life, had published photographs, in Europe and America, of the interior of her residence. Gossip had kept him informed of Alicia's strange life. She had suddenly been taken with the mad desire of seeing people, of being admired, and of astonishing every one by her prodigality. She gave a series of great fêtes, and publicly protested because the municipality of Paris would not allow her to illuminate the entire Champs Élysées and the Arch of Triumph so that her guests might ride up to her very door in a fiery apotheosis. She had given a garden party in the Bois de Boulogne, with water sports, and dances of sacred dancers, brought from Asia. The buffet supper had been prepared for three thousand guests. On another occasion, for a single costume ball, she spent a hundred thousand francs, to transform part of her residence into an interior of Persian style and the next day she began to have the rooms restored to their original state.

Suddenly she would disappear, and people would wink and make malicious comments because she left no address. Some new love affair! Hers were nearly always wandering fancies, that called for long trips and new horizons! Perhaps she was in Constantinople or in Egypt; perhaps she was in hiding in one of the large New York hotels. At times such guesses were right; and then again the most intimate friends of the Duchess could affirm that she had not left Paris. Was not her automobile standing in front of the door?

This was another of Alicia's eccentricities. At all hours of the day and night, one of her various expensive cars was kept in readiness in front of the stairway. Three chauffeurs divided the service between them. They stayed in the porter's quarters; and as soon as the bell was heard, they had only to put on their gloves, run to the machine, and start the motor. She often chose the most extraordinary hours for going out. Sometimes it would be just after returning from a ball, then again she would get up for a ride after she had gone to bed. Frequently she would select the early morning hours which were usually her time of soundest sleep.

At times the chauffeurs would succeed each other, week after week, without leaving the gate of the mansion. The Duchess did not care to go out. She no longer felt her sudden impulses to ride aimlessly about Paris, while the city slept, pay unseasonable calls, or glide through the woods on the outskirts of the capital at the height of some violent storm. Meantime, the autos seemed to age, as they stood there motionless, now with their wheels deep in the snow of the courtyard, and again with the glass of the wind shield flecked with the tear drops of the slanting rain, that swept under the glass covered porte-cochère. During all such periods, Alicia, in spite of her restless impulsive nature, would be spending whole days in bed, telling her intimate friends that to keep one's beauty one must take a "rest cure" from time to time. She would entertain her friends at dinner without getting out of bed. The table would be spread in luxurious fashion in her large bedroom, and lying between the sheets, with the dishes within reach on a tiny table, she would laugh and chat for hours with her guests. Months would go by without her seeing the outside of her house, while the costly objects in her rooms, amassed to indulge her whims, were quite forgotten. Her vanity was satisfied, at such times, by the mere fact of having constructed a costly jewel case to harbor her idleness.

The Prince met her in a little reception room on the ground floor. She was in truth receiving him with absolute lack of ceremony. She was dressed in a black tunic of her own invention, a combination of the Greek peplum and the Japanese kimono. Her bare arms floated free from the soft silk that almost seemed to live, it clung so closely to her body. Underneath it, half revealed, were the contours and perfumed warmth of her flesh, hidden by no inner veils. Michael glanced at his tuxedo and gleaming shirt-front as though his own costume were quite out of place.

As she took him to the elevator, which was white and quilted like a glove box, he caught a rapid glimpse of the drawing rooms of the lower floor, ostentatious, but left in a shadow almost as dark as night; of the large dining-hall, deserted, with the furniture covered; of the little dining-room in which there were no signs whatsoever of preparations… Where was she taking him?.. Was the table set in her bedroom?

The elevator passed the second floor without stopping? "We are going to my study," said Alicia. "I eat there when I am alone."

The Prince was amazed at the so-called "study," a large room which occupied a major portion of the third floor, and in which only one or two books in a small book-rack were to be seen. The place was decorated in imitation "Far East" style: plain black lacquer furniture, silk either of pale shades or of an intense dark purple, and an array of frightful idols. A diffused bluish light, like that used in night scenes on the stage, descended from the ceiling. A screen, embroidered with a design in gold, formed a sort of second more intimate room, the floor of which was covered with white rugs of fur, with long, silky hair. Heaped about were dozens of pillows of various colors adorned with winged reptiles and unheard of flowers.

An exotic, penetrating odor made Lubimoff wince. He knew that perfume. And there was a look of severity in his eyes as he glanced sharply at the Duchess.

"Sit down," she said. "They are going to serve us."

As the Prince looked about, without seeing any sort of a chair, Alicia set him an example, dropping on a heap of cushions. Michael sat down in the same fashion, beside a tiny mother of pearl table no bigger than a tabouret. On it a lamp with a dark shade let fall a circle of soft light. Inwardly the Prince began to feel a boiling of suppressed anger as he thought of his evening wasted.

"You must have eaten this way often," she continued, "you have traveled more than I. The style of decoration must be familiar to you."

Yes; he knew the style, the original and authentic style, and for that very reason he did not care to see it again in imitation. Besides obliging him to eat on the floor, there in a house on the Avenue de Bois… What an affectation!

But in a short time his opinion began to change. A poseur she undoubtedly was, but affectation had already become a more or less natural trait in her, a sort of second nature. He guessed that even in its slightest details none of this had been prepared especially for him. Alicia lived and ate there when she was alone just as she was doing then. She was prey to a desire to be different from other people even when no one was noticing her.

The servant in charge of the meal was a copper-colored man with a long down-curling mustache. He was dressed in a black tuxedo, with a white cloth wrapped around his legs like a skirt. He had long hair, done up on his head like a woman's and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. The Asiatic was placing the huge trays containing the food on the floor: Some of the dishes were of ancient hammered silver, others of many colored lacquer, or of semi-transparent materials made in imitation of emerald, topaz, and red sealing wax.

For Michael the meal looked like something a great chef might have prepared if he had suddenly gone mad and made up the dishes in the midst of his ravings. There was not a single item that suggested the harmonious course of an ordinary dinner. The palate acted on the imagination, awakening memories of distant travels, visions of far off lands. Exotic preserves alternated with hot dishes. Pastry flavored with penetrating perfumes was served along with sharp, biting, or intensely bitter sauces.

Alicia, half reclining on the cushions, looking at the dishes without appetite, extended her hand carelessly toward the most unusual delicacies, and those with the most pungent and racy savors. Clearly the perversion of her palate was profound. She herself saw to it that Michael's glass was always filled. It was a drink of her own invention, having a champagne base. It burned and rasped his mouth, paralyzing all other sensation with its stinging coolness. It penetrated his nostrils with a lingering scent of the rarest flowers and of Asiatic spices.

Speaking of the dead Princess, Alicia came to mention her own mother. They were now on terms of open hostility. Her eyes began to gleam with defiance as she was reminded of Doña Mercedes, confined in the Champs-Élysée residence with her court of clericals, and showing herself in public only for the organizing of pious works. She was trying to starve her only daughter to death!.. And as Michael smiled at this explosion of anger, she explained her grievances.

"She gives me hardly anything; a mere nothing: half a million francs. And I have to hand two hundred and fifty thousand a year over to my husband: a rather expensive lover, whom I avoid seeing. You are really rich, my dear, and don't understand such things… Since the fortune is all in her name, she tries to starve me out and keeps her money to squander it with the priests… Poor Señora! She can't find any admirers now except that Monsignor and other sponges like him… And I, her own daughter, have to implore her like a beggar for the crumbs she gives me, seasoned with sermons… Oh, if it hadn't been for your mother! She really was a great lady: I never lamented my poverty to her in vain; she gave me even more than I asked for. You know of course that I owe you some money. A little… I don't know how much. Didn't you really know that?.. I shall pay you back when I get my inheritance."

And with brutal frankness she expounded her full thought.

"When will that bigot leave me in peace?.. Old people ought to make way for the young. What fun do they get out of going on living?"

They had finished eating. She went on filling both their glasses with her special drink. At first Michael had found it repugnant, but in the end he was attracted to its refreshing fragrance which gently troubled the senses, like an intoxication with perfumes.

"Of course you use the pipe," said Alicia simply.

He shook his head and thought of the odor which struck him on entering. He knew what sort of a "pipe" it was, and gazed about the study. The smoking den must be in some hidden corner!

"A man like you!" she went on. "A sailor! And I fooled myself into thinking we'd smoke together!"

She even gave him to understand that the hope of being able to give him that forbidden pleasure was the principal reason for her invitation. She became resigned when she learned that the Prince, vigorous as he was, suffered nausea every time he attempted to experiment with that Asiatic vice. And while he lighted a havana, Alicia took from a silver case the cigarettes which she smoked in the presence of the "uninitiated": Oriental tobacco, but heavily dosed with opium. Suddenly Michael was convinced of something of which he had a presentiment the moment he entered the place, or even earlier, the moment their glances had met in the cemetery. He saw her half rising from the cushions, with a panther-like contraction of her muscles, as though she were ready to spring at him. It was the concentrated impulse of the beast, beautiful and sure of its power, unable to wait, and not knowing how to feign.

Alicia had forgotten the demi-tasse she held in her hand, as she sat there, looking at him fixedly. The tiny blue electric spark dancing in her eyes was something well known to Michael.

It was the offering glance of female silence, inviting violence, and mastery. He had encountered that glance often along his path of triumph as a conquering millionaire… He felt he must say something at once to break the silent charm of the beautiful witch, who, sure of her final victory, was smiling and blowing puffs of cigarette smoke toward him. So Michael alluded to her amorous fame, to the great number of lovers she was supposed to have had. That might widen the distance between them.

"Ah! You too?" said Alicia laughing, with masculine frankness. "I don't suppose your morals are the same as Mamma's! You are not going to read me a sermon on my behavior. Although, after all, Mamma doesn't blame me for what I do. What makes her angry is the fact that I am not afraid of what people say, and that sometimes I am attracted to unknown men of low birth. Poor Señora! If I were to have an affair with a king or a crown prince, perhaps she'd even let us see each other in her house, and have her Monsignor mount guard into the bargain."

She remained silent for a moment. That disturbing glance was still fixed on Michael.

"It is true; I have had a lot of men. And how about you? Do you think I don't know about your wanderings all over the planet in quest of types of women unknown to the novels and capable of giving new sensations?.. We have both done the same: only it wasn't necessary for me to travel around so much to learn just what you have learned… And you are not so absurd as to imagine, as certain men do, that our cases are not to be compared because we are of different sexes."

The Prince listened silently as she expounded her ideas. She was deeply in love with life, and in return she demanded all that life could give her… The minds of other women were occupied with questions of a material nature: desire for wealth, longings for luxury, domestic cares… As for her, she possessed everything; to-morrow held no worries for her; not even in regard to her beauty, sustained as it was by wonderful health, and seeming to increase in spite of age and her prodigal waste of energies.

In her life, made up of caprices, always completely satisfied, even to the point of satiety, only one thing interested her, from its infinite variety and from its many phases, which might seem to vulgar people a monotonous repetition of one another, but which in reality were distinct for a mind attuned, as hers was, to exquisite sensations. That thing was love.

"Oh please understand me, Michael; don't sit there laughing to yourself. You know me too well ever to imagine that I believe in love as the majority of women do. I know that a certain amount of illusion is necessary to color the material aspect of love; we all lie about it a little, and we enjoy the lie even though we know it as such; but way down deep, I laugh at love as the world understands it, just as I laugh at so many things which people venerate… I don't want lovers, I want admirers. I am not looking for love; I care more for adoration."

She was proud of her beauty. She spoke of Venus as though the goddess were a real person. She admired the Olympic serenity with which the Deity of Passion gave herself to gods and men, never surrendering her superiority even at the moment when she was submitting to the domination of the stronger sex. Alicia considered herself a super-beauty, belonging to a sphere outside the ordinary limits of vice and virtue. She thought herself a living work of art; and art is neither moral nor immoral; its mission is fulfilled when it is beautiful.

"Poets, painters, and musicians seek to abandon themselves to the greatest number of admirers. They do their utmost to enlarge their circle of public worshipers and with feminine coquetry they try to attract new suitors. I am like them. I do not need to create beauty, for as they say, I have it in myself. I am my own work, but I love glory; I need admiration; and for that reason I give myself generously, content with the happiness which I apportion, but keeping my public at my feet, without allowing myself to be dominated by those whom I seek."

Michael was sure that many artists must have left their imprint on that woman's life. It was evident in the words and imagery with which she endeavored to express her enthusiasm for her own body. Her pride in her beauty was boundless. What were the ambitions of men, compared to the satisfaction of being lovely and desired? Only the glory of warriors, of blood-stained conquerors, whose names are known even in the remotest wilds of the earth, equals the glory that a woman feels in the sense of universal power over men.

"To me," continued Alicia, "the truest and most beautiful thing ever written is 'the old men on the wall.'"

The Prince looked at her questioningly; so she went on to explain. She referred to the old Trojan men in the Iliad, who were protesting against the long siege of their city, against the blood sacrifice of thousands of heroes, against poverty and hardship, all due to the fault of a woman… But Helen, majestic in her beauty, passed before the old men, trailing her golden tunic; and they all lapsed into silent contemplation, rapt in wonder, as though divine Aphrodite had descended upon earth; and they murmured like a prayer: "It is indeed fitting that we should suffer thus for her. So lovely she is!"

"I like to see men suffer on my account. How glorious if I might be the cause of a great slaughter, like that ancient immortal woman!.. I have an exultant feeling of pride when I notice that envy and spite are whispering behind my back, starting all that gossip that makes my mother so furious. Only extraordinary people stir up torrents of abuse… And afterwards, in the drawing rooms, the very same austere gentlemen who have seconded all that their wives and daughters have to say against me, look at me with sly admiring glances, as I pass; and some of them blush in confusion and others turn pale. It is easy to guess that I have only to beckon and their silent admiration would… I too have my 'old men on the wall.'"

Michael suddenly realized that while she was talking she had been coming gradually closer, from cushion to cushion as she lay resting on her elbows. She was almost at his feet, with head held high, endeavoring to envelop him in a wave of magnetism from her fixed and dominating eyes. She seemed like a black and white snake, twisting forward little by little among the cushions as though they were rocks of various colors.

"The only man of whom I have ever thought the least bit, the only one I ever considered at all different from other men," she continued in a half whisper, "is you… Don't be alarmed: it isn't love. I am not going to invert rôles, and propose to you. Perhaps it is because, as children, we used to hate each other; because you never wanted me. That is such an unheard of thing in my life, that it alone is enough to interest me."

She put her hands on his knees, as though she were about to rise.

"When I saw you in the cemetery, after so many years, I remembered all that I had heard about you. Many women whom I know have been sweethearts of yours, and I said to myself: Why not I, too? Then I thought of all the men who have come into my life, and I added: Why not he?" …

And now Alicia's elbows were resting on his knees, and as the Prince was seated on but two pillows, their lips and eyes were almost on a level. As she talked he could feel her breath on his face. It was like the breeze in an Asiatic forest, whispering beneath the moon. The spices and flowers with which the wine was saturated seemed to float in that volatile caress.

Michael tried to avoid her advance, but one of Alicia's hands was already on his shoulder. He merely shook his head.

"Don't be afraid," she added, exaggerating the caressing quality of her sigh. "There are no embarrassing obligations with me. You may leave me when you wish; perhaps I shall be the one to leave you first. I have wanted you for the last few days. You must surely desire me as the others do… Let us live this moment, like people who know the secret of life and all it can give… Then if we tire of each other, good-by, with no hard feeling and no pining!"

When from time to time in after years the Prince recalled that scene, he always felt a certain dissatisfaction with himself. He was sure he had seemed brutal as well as ridiculous. In his travels he had approached women frequently in the most matter of fact way, often remembering them afterwards with some repugnance; yet here he was, rebelling with a feeling of offended modesty at the advances of the Duchess. No! With her, never! Rising within him he felt the same displeasure that had once made him raise his whip in his youth.

He found himself on his feet in the middle of the study, looking anxiously toward the door and muttering stupid excuses. "No, I must go: it is late. Some friends are waiting for me…" She had gained control of herself. She too was standing looking at him with astonishment and wrath.

"You are the only one who could do a thing like this," she said, in a cutting tone, as they parted. "I see it all clearly now. I hate you as you hate me. My whim was a stupid one. You have permitted yourself a liberty which no one in the world will ever be able to take again. If I were younger than I am I would thrash you again as I did in the Bois; but instead, just consider that I am repeating everything I said then."

They did not see each other again.

When the Prince had set in order everything concerning the inheritance from his mother, he thought of resuming his voyages, but on a more magnificent scale. It was no longer necessary for him to ask the Princess for money. He was one of the great millionaires of the world. Those who were in charge of the administration of his affairs – an office with numerous clerks, almost equalling the government bureau of a small state – made the announcement that the fifteen million francs which the Princess had received annually would soon be twenty, through the development of Russian railways, which allowed more intensive working of his mines.

The Colonel was commissioned to have the heavy medieval walls of Villa Sirena torn down, and the place replanned according to the Prince's tastes. The latter hated architectural resuscitations. He could not bear modern buildings patterned to flatter the pride of the rich proprietors, after the Alhambra, the palaces of Florence, or the solemn and orderly constructions of Versailles.

"The furniture ought to correspond to the period," said Michael, "and people ought to live in such houses as they lived in in the century which produced that particular style. People living in an ancient house ought to dress and eat as in former times… What an absurdity to reconstruct those historic shells, with the interior arranged to suit the needs of modern men who are forced to commit an anachronism at every step!"

He recalled the project of a millionaire friend of his, a member of the Institute, who had built a Roman house on the Riviera, Roman in all the exactness of its details. At the house-warming the guests were obliged to sleep on corded beds and to eat reclining on couches; and even more intimate conveniences were modeled on the principle of hygiene known to the ancient Cæsars. Within twenty-four hours they all pretended they had received urgent telegrams calling them to Paris, and the owner himself after a few months, left his house in charge of a keeper to show to tourists as a museum.

Michael was fond of modern architecture, whose cathedrals are machine shops and large railway stations. Applied to dwellings it pleased him for its lack of style: white walls, a few moldings, rounded corners, with no angles whatsoever, so that the dust might be pursued to its remotest hiding places, wide openings letting in the breeze and the sunlight, double walls between which hot or cold air, and water at various temperatures, could circulate.

"Up to the present time," the Prince asserted, "man has lived in magnificent jewel cases of art and filth. Modern architects have done more in the last thirty years to make life pleasant than the artist-builders, so much admired by history, did in three thousand. They have declared running water and the bath-room as indispensable, things which were unknown to kings themselves half a century ago. They have invented the furnace and the water closet. Don't talk to me about the magnificent palaces of Versailles, where there was not a single toilet, and where every morning the lackeys were obliged to empty two hundred vessels for the king and his courtiers. Often to be through quicker, they threw their contents out of the majestic windows, and sometimes it would fall on the sedan chair and the retinue of a Dauphine or an ambassador."

Toledo applied himself to supervising the construction of Villa Sirena in accordance with the desires of the Prince, making it a plain white building, and without any definite style of architecture. Lubimoff himself, at the proper time, would take charge of the artistic touches, placing famous pictures, statues, tapestries, or rugs, just where they would be most pleasing to the eye. The house was to be a harmony of simple, pure lines. The walls were to have heating and cooling systems for the different seasons, and running water was to be available in abundance everywhere. Each room was to have its electric lights and its electric fan.

The Prince found it a much easier task to make over his wandering ocean residence. He simply sold the Gaviota, which reminded him of his youthful dependence on his family, and went to the United States to look into an advertisement. Three years before a certain multimillionaire had begun the construction of a yacht, designed to be more luxurious and of greater tonnage than that of any European sovereign. As the American was about to witness the consummation of this triumph of the democratic kings of industry over the historic kings of the Old World, he was killed in an automobile accident, and his heirs did not know what to do with the leviathan which would only be of use to an immensely rich, and, in their opinion, somewhat crazy traveler. They were thinking of selling it at a loss to the Kaiser, William II, having decided finally to endure his demands as a sharp business man, when Prince Lubimoff appeared. A week later on the white stern and bows of the yacht a new name in gold letters was displayed, a name that was repeated in addition on the life preservers and on the various tenders, the dingies, the steam launches, and the motor boats. The American yacht had become the Gaviota II.

It had the tonnage of a small trans-Atlantic liner and the speed of a torpedo boat. Each day the wealth of an ordinary man went up in smoke through the Gaviota II's double funnels. During a trip to some distant island, the supply of coal gave out. Immediately a collier chartered by the Prince, came to meet the Gaviota II in the farthest seas to fill the bunkers with fuel.

Quiet harbors came to be illuminated at night, as though the sun had risen. When the Prince gave a fête, the ship would be a blaze of glory from the water to the mastheads, its outline marked by electric bulbs of various colors, while powerful searchlights shot out movable streams of radiance and drew the waves, the shores, and rows of city houses from the depths of the darkness. At other times, the white fire of the Gaviota II's monstrous eyes would flash on walls of ice towering to the clouds, and seals, penguins, and polar bears would waken from sleep frightened by the strange luminous, puffing monster that darted off like lightning into the mystery of night.

To be the owner of a floating palace which, when anchoring off large cities, drew such crowds of sightseers as rare spectacles only attract, was not enough for Michael Fedor. So he created something more interesting even than the luxurious salons, and the refinements of comfort of the Gaviota II: he built up an orchestra.

Sensuous delight in music was for him the most exquisite of emotions. When his ears were satiated with the sweetness and melody of traditional music, he sought unknown and often bizarre composers, who aroused his curiosity; but he always came back to demanding as the pièces de résistance of his harmonic feasts, the masters who had been his first love, and above all, Beethoven.

Treated as though they were officers, paid to their liking, and with the added inducement of being able to see a great deal of the world, musicians from every country offered their services to the yacht's orchestra. Famous concert players and young composers came in as mere instrumentalists. Some were ill, and sought to regain their health in a voyage around the world in real luxury and without expense; others embarked through love of adventure, to see new lands in this floating castle, in which everything seemed organized for an eternal holiday. There were never less than fifty of them.

"My orchestra is the finest in the world," the Prince would proudly say when his guests complimented him after one of the concerts his musicians gave at rare intervals on land.

In tropical nights, beneath the enormous honey-colored moon changing the sea to a vast plain of quick-silver, the musicians, seated in evening clothes before the rows of music racks illuminated by tiny electric lights, would weave on the quiet air, which seemed to have retained the first faint cries of the planet at its birth, the most original melodies, the most subtle combination of sounds that the sublime rapture of artists in god-like inspiration ever created. The music floated out behind the boat in the mystery of the ocean, like a scarf unfolding, breaking and scattering in fragments, with the smoke of the funnels. When the orchestra paused one could hear the distant subdued beat of the propellers, churning the foam with a humming sound; and then from time to time the slow tolling of the bell calling the men on watch, or the cry of the lookout snuggled into the crow's nest on the mainmast, reporting his vigilance with the rhythmic intonation of a muezzin from a minaret. And the monotonous music of the sea gave an impression of night, and of immensity, to the music of man.

At the foot of the companionways, or on the outjutting parts of the lower decks, the various officers and officials of the Prince gathered to hear the concert in the night. On the prow the sailors squatted, listening to the music in religious silence, as is often the case with simple men when confronted with something they do not understand, but which inspires awe. Aft, the only listener would be Michael Fedor, standing at a distance from the music, and with his back toward the musicians, watching at his feet, the divided, foaming waters which rushed by like a double river far out and away from the boat. As occasionally he raised his cigar to his lips, his pensive features would appear for a moment in the darkness, lighted by the red glow.

The yacht held another more silent group. Those who succeeded in getting on board in the ports always obtained a distant glimpse of a woman or two with white shoes, blue skirts, jackets with rows of gold buttons, masculine collars and neckties, and officers' caps. No one knew for certain how many such women there may have been. The men of the crew were forbidden access to the central quarters of the boat, and to the upper deck. Some of them, chancing to break the rule through oversight, had met the Prince's companions attired in elegant naval uniforms, or more lightly clad, like dancers, in elaborate and exotic costumes. At the large ports, steam launches landed these mysterious and beautiful travelers for a few hours on shore. It was remarked that they dressed with modest elegance and that they would speak various languages.

When the Gaviota II returned and anchored in the same harbor she had visited the preceding year, those whose curiosity had been aroused found that the personnel of the wandering harem had been completely renewed. They might occasionally recognize one or two of the former ladies, but now their faces wore the placid expression of the odalisque who has been supplanted, but is nevertheless contented with luxury and oblivion.

Some years Michael Fedor suspended his travels, during the summer, to take up his abode at fashionable beaches. The women who accompanied him on his long voyages remained on board, with all the lavish comforts to which they were accustomed. At other times he parted with them, as one dismisses a crew when a ship goes out of commission, at the end of a trip.

Immediately he became interested in women living stay-at-home lives, in shore society, and in summer flirtations at famous watering places. He would take up his abode in a hotel on the coast, while his yacht was to be seen rising from the azure waters, motionless, like a palace of mystery and magnificence, the center of all feminine imaginings.

Living in Biarritz he came to know Atilio Castro intimately through learning that they were related on his father's side. The Spaniard admired the fascination exercised by the Prince, often without wishing to do so, on all women.

Never at any period had women been more strongly attracted by luxury or felt less scruples in the means of obtaining it than at present. This was the opinion of Castro. Lavish display, which in other centuries had been within reach of only the very few families, was now possible for every one. All one needed to indulge in it was money. Besides, it was necessary to take into account present-day progress in material things, which has made life easier, but at the same time has increased our needs.

"The motor car and the pearl necklace have made more victims than the wars of Napoleon," said Atilio.

"These two things are like the gala uniform of women, and those who are forced to go without them consider themselves unfortunate and ill treated by fate. This twin image has shattered the illusions of maidens and the fidelity of wives. Mothers in middle class society, with melancholy dejection written on their faces as though they had made stupid failures of their lives, advise their daughters: 'If you are going to get married, make sure you will get an auto and a pearl necklace.' And long after the modest marriage this desire still remains, strengthened by maternal advice. Luxury is the one thought, luxury at whatever cost. Luxury has been democratized. It is within reach of all, obtainable through money, which has no taint, no odor, no sign of its origin."

"You are the great provider of the expensive motor car of fashionable make and of the rope of pearls," continued Castro. "You are the great Sultan of magnificence. Your signature to a check is enough to sweep a woman off her feet in a torrent of gold. Make the most of your opportunity! The period in which you were born has left you an open field for your talents."

And the Prince, who was not at all in need of such advice, went his way as conqueror through a world in which the best accredited virtues collapsed before his attack. Even sincere resistance finally appeared to him to be a clever device for postponing surrender and increasing the market value of desire. The millions from Russia were scattered broadcast in smaller and smaller subdivisions, maintaining the well being and display of many homes, indulging the taste for luxury of numerous ladies, and keeping numberless factories busy producing elegant novelties of female luxury. A few women felt a sincere interest in Michael Fedor for his own sake, because of the mysterious prestige of his voyages in a boat which was talked about as though it were an enchanted palace; and also because of his adventures with celebrated actresses and women of high society, which made him more attractive. But once their vanity and curiosity were satisfied, they allowed their own self-interest to have a word. "Why should I be any more altruistic than the rest?"

They were not obliged to use cunning or round-about phrases in formulating their requests. Some at the second meeting, took on a melancholy air, and spoke of the sad realities of life. But the generous Prince anticipated their desires. He preferred to pay his mistresses and dazzle them with splendid gifts. Thus he could regard them as favored slaves covered with jewels. In this way also, it was easier to break with them: He could go away from them whenever he so desired, satisfied with his own behavior, and quite unmoved by their tears and laments. From his semi-oriental Russian ancestors he had inherited a great sensual capacity, which caused him to be attracted to women, and at the same time to feel an inalterable scorn for them. He indulged them but could not love them; he adored them, but was stirred to indignation when they presumed to be on terms of equality with him. He was capable of ruining himself, of braving death for them, but he was ready to thrust them aside with his foot if they tried in the least to govern his life. The ambitious ones who feigned deep, passionate love for him in the hope of marriage, the sentimental ones who tried to interest him with psychological subtleties, and those who kept their maternal enthusiasm even in adultery, and murmured in his ear how happy they would be to have a child who might resemble him, waited for him in vain the following day. "Neither deep passion, nor children!" … Two trails of smoke were soon rising from the yacht, carrying its owner to another port or perhaps to another continent: or if he wished to flee from a city in the interior, he gave orders that his private car should be coupled to the first train that was leaving.

These flights were never undertaken without a generous remembrance. Michael Fedor's munificence continued for those whom he had abandoned. Each year new names were added to his budget, like that of a reigning house which allots pensions to its forgotten servants. But the pensions of Prince Lubimoff were for the maintenance of luxury and not of life. The most modest were over thirty thousand francs a year. The average was double that amount.

"Your Excellency: there will have to be a revision," his administrator would say.

Michael would examine the list of names, hesitating at a few. He could not recall clearly the persons who bore them. Then suddenly he would smile, as certain visions were suddenly and attractively awakened in his mind. He was immensely wealthy: why not keep up the luxury which was the one dream of all of them?.. He was not disturbed by the jealous thought that his successors would be reaping the benefit of that luxury.

He felt a certain god-like pride in making his generosity felt at all times, without letting himself be seen. In Paris a jewelry shop managed by a Jew of Spanish origin limited its entire business to the production of the Prince's gifts. His gems of high intrinsic value, with no false artifices, had a certain family resemblance, a sort of imaginary perfume which enabled the women who displayed them to recognize each other. When it was least expected, at tea time, in the dining-room of a hotel, at an elegant watering place at a dance, two women who had just met would gaze at each other's ears and breast in silence, until the boldest, blushing imperceptibly under her rouge, would ask simply: "You knew Prince Lubimoff too?.."

Atilio Castro felt a deep admiration for his relative, less on account of his triumphs than of the iron constitution required to sustain them.

"What a Cossack! A regular Cossack!.. He is a true descendant of that lover of the Great Catherine!"

Nevertheless, frequently the yacht would hurriedly put out to sea on long voyages, without its master being forced to flee from any dangerous or entangling passion. He was running away from himself, from his perverse imagination and curiosity, which made him seek and allure different women, upsetting his peace of mind, without rousing in him any real desire. He undertook the most extraordinary voyages, for the sake of the bracing air and the sense of restfulness the sea brings. The orchestra accompanied him; but the "harem" remained on shore. He had gone completely around the globe, following the shortest route; then he had repeated this circumnavigation, but over a zig-zag course, to become acquainted with all the coasts of the earth. At present he was on going on whimsical trips; he was sailing from one hemisphere to another for the pleasure of visiting one or another of the small islands which seem lost in the Pacific, and are so tiny that on the maps they look like mere dots placed after long names traced on the blue colored surface.

Returning from one of these excursions on which he went around the world as though it were his personal property, he received by wireless the news that Germany had declared war against Russia and France.

He felt no great surprise. He knew William II personally. It was because of him that Prince Lubimoff avoided cruising off the coast of Norway in summer.

The year following his acquisition of the Gaviota II he had come across the Imperial yacht in those parts. The Kaiser, like an officious, all-knowing neighbor, came to see him in order to look over the yacht, examining it in all its details, giving advice, reviewing the men and materials, making a dissertation on the engines and interrupting himself to advise certain changes in the uniform of the crew. After a breakfast on his own yacht, and luncheon on the Emperor's, Prince Michael had had enough of this unexpected friendship. Lohengrin, with his winged helmet, white mantle, and both hands on the hilt of his sword, was less unbearable than this gentleman with turned up mustache, and wolfish teeth, dressed like a sailor, who laughed a false and brutal laugh, and (whenever he met on the seas a multimillionaire from America or Europe) played the rôle of a man of great simplicity and of an unconventional sovereign. Money inspired deep veneration in this story-book hero, this mystic with a mind fed on grandeur. Michael had never shared the enthusiasm of various snobs for the German Emperor. He smiled at the Hohenzollern's theatrical tastes, his war-like bravadoes, and his intellectual ambitions which pretended to embrace the whole knowable universe.

"He is a comedian," Michael said on receiving the news of the war, "a comedian who for a long time is going to make the whole world weep… And to think that the fate of mankind should depend on such a man!.."

Michael Fedor considered himself as a being set apart from the rest of mankind. He lamented the war as something terrible for the rest, but which could not influence his own particular fate. Since a madness for blood had descended upon Europe, he would go on sailing distant seas. Thanks to his wealth he could keep beyond the margins of the struggle.

But times changed rapidly; life was not the same: all old values had lost their significance. In spite of her Russian flag, the Gaviota II found herself halted by some English torpedo boats and was forced to submit to a minute inspection. They could not believe that any one should be cruising for pleasure when all the seas had been converted into a battlefield. In the latitude of the Azores it became necessary to force the yacht's engines to escape from a German corsair.

Besides, fuel was getting scarce. The various coaling stations located here and there on the coast were reserved exclusively for the warships. Important news kept coming by wireless from far-off Paris, where the chief agent of the Prince was located. Communication had been broken off between the Paris office and the administrators of the Lubimoff fortune in Russia. No money was coming from there, and the French banks, with their vaults closed by the moratorium, were willing secretly to lend money to a millionaire like the Prince, but not in quantities sufficient to meet his current needs.

The yacht came to anchor in the port of Monaco, and Michael Fedor, on arriving in Paris, almost laughed, as though witnessing some preposterous change in the laws of nature. The heir of the Lubimoffs in need of money, and compelled to make an effort to obtain it – something he had never done in all his life! Here he was having to ask for loans at frightfully usurious rates, on the security of his distant and famous wealth, which for the first time was regarded somewhat contemptuously!..

When communications were reëstablished in an intermittent fashion between Western Europe and Russia – which was practically isolated – the administrator of the Prince gave a look of despair. The collections had been reduced eighty per cent.

"According to that, I am going to be poor?" asked Lubimoff, laughing, the news seemed so unbelievable and absurd.

It was very difficult to send money as far as Paris. Besides the rouble was decreasing in value at a dizzy rate. Millions on reaching France became mere hundred thousands. Mobilization had left the mines without workmen; there was no outlet for the produce; the peasants, seeing their sons in the army, refused to pay any money, and even to work. The Russian government, to keep as much money as possible at home, limited to small amounts the money sent to citizens residing abroad.

"The Czar putting me on a pension!" said the Prince in amazement. "A thousand or two thousand francs a month!.. How absurd!"

But he did not laugh long. His anger against the Russian court, which had gradually been growing in his subconsciousness ever since his expulsion so long ago from Petersburg, now moved by a selfish impulse suddenly flared up. The Czar and his counselors, desirous of Russianizing all Eastern Europe, were responsible for the war. They certainly might have kept peace with Germany. Why disturb the peace of the world, for the sake of a little race of people in the Balkans?

He coolly made fun of certain of his friends who, by devious routes across Europe and the icy Northern seas, returned to Russia to regain their former commissions in the army. As for him, he had no desire to die for the Czar. It made little difference to him whether his country were governed by Germans. There were times when he even thought that would be preferable, so long as peace were restored rapidly, allowing him once more to reap the benefit of his wealth, and resume the life he had been leading a few months before, or, as it now seemed, a half century before.

The next two years went by for Lubimoff like a nightmare. What sort of a world was he living in?.. His former friends were disappearing. Some of the frivolous women who had made life pleasant for him were not moved in the least by the unfortunate events which were happening; but others showed themselves to be heroic and self-sacrificing, forgetting all they had done before, feeling a new soul developing within them.

The Prince suddenly found himself dragged along by the world happenings. A mysterious and irresistible force was pushing against him, causing him to lose his balance, just as he was reaching the pinnacle of his life, so pleasant, so vast, crowned with a halo of such glory. And now, once started, he was tumbling head over heels, of his own inertia, and each step he struck as he descended, gave him a harder blow, a more painful surprise. How far would this landslide take him?.. What would he strike at the end of this unheard-of fall?..

His interviews with his Paris administrator seemed to him like something taking place in another world, subject to ridiculous laws. These conferences always ended with the same order on his part:

"Try and get some money. Ask for a loan… I am Prince Lubimoff, and this cannot last. Whoever wins – it is all the same to me – order will be reëstablished, and I shall pay my creditors immediately."

But the administrator answered, with a look of dismay: "Raise money on property in Russia?.." Taking advantage of the former prestige of the Prince, he had been able to negotiate various loans; but time was passing and the enormous interest was accumulating. Lubimoff in spite of cutting down expenses and doing away with pensions, was in need of money for his current living expenses.

The fall of the Czar gave a ray of hope to this magnate who hated the Imperial government. "With the Republic the war will be over sooner and we shall come back to the proper order of things." His egoism made him conceive of a Republic as a form of government occupied chiefly with restoring the wealth of beings of fortunate birth. The meager shreds of his fortune which now and then still got as far as Paris were suddenly cut off. The fountain of wealth was dry. The crumbling of a whole world had dammed its source, and perhaps forever.

"Your Excellency must sell," the administrator was always saying. "You must do without everything that is superfluous. We must liquidate in time. Who knows how long the present state of affairs may last!"

The yacht was lying idle in Monaco harbor. Almost the entire crew, composed of Italians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen, had left it to go and serve in the navies of their respective nations. Only a few Spaniards remained on board, to keep the boat clean.

The Gaviota II was renamed by the English admiralty, and turned over to the Red Cross. When he signed the bill of sale, Michael Fedor felt that he was giving up his whole past. The romantic prestige of his mode of life was vanishing now for all time; the Arabian Nights palace was being converted into a hospital ship… What a world!

The English millions afforded him a year of respite. The administrator paid the huge debts, and he was able to live without economizing, in Paris, a Paris nearing the end of its third year of war with inexplicable tranquillity, resuming its usual pleasures as though all danger were past. Love affairs with two distinguished women, whose husbands were called to arms – although they were not at the front – caused him to spend a few months, now at Biarritz, now on the Riviera, and now at Aix-les-Bains.

His agent disturbed these enjoyments. He was constantly repeating the same advice: "You must sell." The Prince's fortune was already like an old ship drifting aimlessly. The administrator had stopped the last leaks with the money from the most recent sale, but warned him at every moment that she was taking in water through new ones.

In the end Michael Fedor grew accustomed to misfortune, accepting it serenely.

The sale of the palace built by his mother moved him less than that of his yacht.

At the same time his desires had changed. He was beginning to tire of love adventures, which seemed to be the only object of existence. His fresh and vigorous constitution, which had amazed Castro, suddenly broke down. But this was more the result of worry than of physical wear and tear.

He felt that he was poor, and was he not accustomed to pay royally for his love affairs? Not being able to reward women with luxury, he would rather flee in order not to accept from them and be obliged to tolerate from them their caprices. He preferred to master his desires, as long as he could not satisfy them with all the grandeur of an oriental potentate. Besides he was tired of love, and all the pleasant things of life a man can find in this world!..

He thought of his friend Atilio, of the Colonel, of Villa Sirena, white and shining in the Mediterranean sunlight, among the olive trees and cypresses.

"The earth is being swept by the deluge. Perhaps the old lands will once more appear; perhaps they will remain submerged forever… Let us take refuge in our Ark, and wait and hope."