Читать книгу Majesty - Louis Couperus - Страница 8

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The door was opened; the flunkey stood stiff and upright, with a fixed look that stared straight before him, in the shadow of the hangings. Princess Thera and Othomar entered. The princess went up gaily and kindly to her cousin, they kissed; Othomar also embraced Herman, with a single word. But, in comparison with the natural utterances of the empress and of Thera, this single word of the Duke of Xara sounded studied and smilingly cold, not intimate, and carried a needless air of etiquette. It failed to conceal a translucent insincerity, a transparent show that made no effort to simulate affection, but seemed quite simply what at this moment it could not but seem, a greeting of feigned kindness between two cousins of the same age. Prince Herman was accustomed to this: there was no intimacy between him and Othomar; and this was the more striking when they saw each other for the first time after several months; it affected the empress keenly, disagreeably.

The conversation again turned upon the inundations in the north. The empress showed her children the latest telegram, the same that she had shown to Herman; it mentioned fresh disasters: still more villages swept away, towns harassed by the swollen and overflowing rivers, after a month of rain that had resembled the Flood. It had caused the emperor to proceed three days ago to the northern provinces; but they at court were now every moment expecting his orders that the crown-prince should replace him there, as he himself was returning to Lipara because of the cabinet crisis.

The crown-prince discussed all this a little coldly and formally. He was a young man of twenty-one, slender and of short stature, very slightly built, with delicate, melancholy features and dull, black eyes, that generally stared straight before him; a young moustache tinted his upper lip as with a stripe of Indian ink. He had a way of drooping his head a little on his chest and then looking up from under his eyelids; he generally sat very quiet; his hands, which were small and broad but delicate, rested evenly upon his knees; and he had a trick of carrying his left hand to his eyes and then—he was a little short-sighted—just peering at his ring. He was tightly girt in the blue-and-white uniform of a captain in the lancers, the uniform which he generally wore in public: its silver frogs lent a certain breadth to his slenderness; on his right wrist he wore a narrow, dull-gold bracelet.

"This is the first letter," said the empress. "Read it out, Thera...."

The princess took the letter. The emperor wrote:

"It is heartrending to see all this and to be able to do so little. The whole district south of the Zanthos, from Altara to Lycilia, is one expanse of water; where villages stood there now float the remains of bridges and houses, trees, accumulations of roofs, dead cattle, carts and household furniture and, as we were going along the Therezia Dyke, which—God be praised!—still stands firm at Altara, a cluster of corpses was slowly washed straight before our feet in one gigantic embrace of death...."

The crown-prince had suddenly turned pale; he remained sitting in his usual attitude, peering at his ring, with the trick that was his habit. Thera read on. When the crown-prince looked up he met his mother's eyes. She nodded to him with her eyelids, unseen by the others, who were listening to the letter; he smiled—a smile full of heartbreaking melancholy—and answered her with the same invisible quiver of the eyelids; it was as though he understood that gentle greeting and drew a scrap of comfort from it for a mysterious, silent sorrow that depressed him within himself, that lay on his breast like an oppression of the breath, like a nightmare in his waking life.

But Prince Herman was already talking about the ministerial crisis: it was momentarily expected that the authoritative government, rendered powerless, since the new elections, in the house of deputies with its majority of constitutionals, would proffer its resignation to the emperor. The question, as always, was that of a revision of the constitution, which the constitutionals desired and the authoritatives—taking the side of the emperor—opposed. The Empress Elizabeth heaved a sigh of fatigue: how often had not this question of a revision of the constitution, which in Liparia always meant an extension of the constitution and a restriction of the imperial authority, come looming up during their twenty years' reign as a personal attack upon her husband! Resembling his long line of Liparian ancestors, hereditarily autocratic, Oscar could never forgive his father, Othomar XI., for allowing a constitution to be passed in his more liberal reign. And now, at this crisis, it was no small thing that they were asking, the constitutionals. The house of peers, hereditary and authoritative, the emperor's own body, which cancelled every proposal of a too constitutional character sent up from the house of deputies, was no longer to stand above them, hereditary and therefore, because of its hereditary nature, invariably authoritative: they wanted to make it elective! Even Othomar XI., with his modern ideas in favour of a constitution, would never have suffered this attack upon one of the most ancient institutions of the empire, an attack which would shake Liparia to its foundations....

While Herman was debating this, casually, his words lightly touching this all-important question, it seemed to Othomar as though he were turning giddy. A world passed through his head, rushing with rapid clouds through his imagination; and out of these clouds visions loomed up before him, pale-red, quick as lightning, terrible as a kind of apocalypse, the universe ending in a dynamite explosion. Out of these clouds there flashed up for an instant a scene, a recollection of the history of his imperial inheritance: an emperor of Liparia murdered centuries ago by one of his favourites at a court festival. Revolutions in other countries of Europe, the French revolution, flickered up with a blood-red reflection; the strikes in the quick-silver mines of the eastern provinces grinned at him out of them, out of the clouds, the world of clouds storming through his thoughts.... And so many more, so many more, all so rapid, with the rapidity of their lightning-flashes; he could not grasp them, the ruddy lightning-flashes; it all just flickered through him and then away: it flickered away, far away!... And it seemed strange to him that he was sitting there, in his mother's drawing-room, with the stately park swarming behind the plate-glass windows, with tints of old, medieval gold-leather, now, in the lowered gleam of the sun-rays; with his mother opposite him, so sweet, so daintily gentle in the intimacy of this short, uninterrupted meeting: his cousin talking and his sister replying and the little lady-in-waiting listening with a smile.... How strange to sit like this, so easily, so peacefully, so serenely, in the seclusion of their palace, as though Liparia were not shaking like an old, crazy tower!... Yes, they were talking about the crisis, Herman and Thera, but what did talking amount to? Words, nothing but words! Why this endless stringing together of words, beautiful, empty words, which a sovereign is obliged to string together and then utter to his subjects, now on this occasion, now on that? No, no, they were not in his province, speeches! For what, after all, were they supposed to express, this or that? What was right, what was just, what was right and just for their empire, this or that? How could one know, how could one be certain, how could one avoid hesitating, seeking, groping, blind-folded? Even if he had a thousand eyes all over the empire, would he be able to see everything that might happen? And, if he were omniscient, would he always be able to know what would be right? The constitution: was it good for a country to have a constitution or not? In Russia: was it good in Russia? A republic: would a republic be better? And who was right? Was his father right in wanting to reign as an absolute monarch, with his hereditary house of peers, in which he, Othomar, now recalled his admission, as Duke of Xara, at his eighteenth year, with the ducal crown and the robes and chain of the order of the Imperial Orb? Or was the house of deputies right? Would it be a good thing to place a restriction upon absolute sovereignty? It was difficult to decide.... The inundations: "It is heartrending to see all this and to be able to do so little.... An expanse of water all the way to Lycilia, a cluster of corpses in the embrace of death...."

It lightened.

Dull, heavy rumblings rolled through the sky; thick drops fell hard as liquid hail upon the leaves of the plane-trees; the whole park seemed to shiver, dreading the threatening cloud-burst. Hélène rose and closed the open window.

Then Othomar heard a strange sound: Syria.... Had they ceased talking of the house of peers? Syria, Syria....

"The king and queen were to have come next week, but they have now postponed their visit," said the empress.

"Because of the inundations," added Thera. "They are going to Constantinople first. I only wish they would remain with the sultan...."

"This visit seems to me at least to be something of an infliction," said Herman, laughing. "And how long do they stay, aunt?"

The empress raised her shoulders to say that she did not know: the approaching visit of the King and Queen of Syria pleased neither her nor the emperor, but it was not to be avoided.... However, not wishing to say much on this subject before Hélène, she replied:

"All the court festivities are now postponed, as you know, Herman, because of these terrible disasters. You will have a quiet time, my boy. You had better go with Othomar to Count Myxila's this evening...."

Count Myxila, the imperial chancellor, was that day keeping his sixtieth birthday. He was the emperor's principal favourite. That morning he had been to the empress to receive her congratulations. The crown-prince was, by the emperor's desire, to appear for a moment at the reception in the chancellor's palace.

Prince Herman glanced at Othomar enquiringly, as though expecting a word from him too.

"Of course," the Duke of Zara hastened to say. "Myxila will reckon on seeing Herman...."