Читать книгу Artist and Model (The Divorced Princess) - René de Pont-Jest - Страница 5

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Toward the end of May, after a most brilliant winter season, all the society of St. Petersburg made ready for its departure. The sledges were put away in the coach-houses, the theaters were closed, and very soon all that were not kept back by their duties or business began their flight.

Some went to Yalta, to be at the sea-side with the court, which goes every year for the summer to the Palace of Livadia; others to the Caucasus, to hunt the lynx and the bear. Many prepared to refill their places at Paris and the watering-places of north-eastern France, in the charming Russian colony which is so truly French in its elegance and tastes.

The moment, then, was come for the Prince Olsdorf, like other great landed proprietors, to visit his estates. He had given his orders at Pampeln some time back. Moreover, as we have said, he had been thither in person to see that all was ready for the reception, not only of his wife, but also of General Podoi, his wife, and the many guests invited to pass part of the summer in Courland.

Somewhat fatigued by balls and receptions, Lise Olsdorf was not less wishful than her husband to quit the city, so that on the appointed day she did not keep the post-chaise waiting that was to take them to Pampeln.

At the time of which we are writing, in 1860, the railway that now joins St. Petersburg and Konigsberg did not exist. The distance between the prince's town house and his country place at Pampeln was not less than a hundred leagues.

All the household he took with him to Courland where his valet, a faithful servant who, so to speak, had seen his master born; his cook, formerly the head cook at the French Embassy, and two women servants for the princess. One of them was a French woman. General Podoi had transferred her services to his daughter when Lise married, being assured thus of always knowing what might be passing in the young people's household when he himself would be away from it.

The servants followed their master and mistress in a big coach, which carried the necessary provisions as well, for no dependence was to be placed on the hotel accommodation in the towns they had to pass through. In most of them the only thing that could be found was the "samovar," ready for the brewing of tea.

After a three days' journey the prince and his people reached the end of their journey.

It was dark when they arrived. All that the princess could make out of the château was its monumental appearance, but next day she had to confess that all that had been told her of Pampeln was short of the truth.

Built in the reign of the Empress Anne on a hill which overlooks the Wandau River, the residence of the Olsdorfs shows signs of the eclecticism which influenced Russian architecture in the eighteenth century. After having been Grecian in style, and then Italian, it did not take a truly national character until the time of the Czar Nicholas. Though, regarded as a building, the massive and heavy-looking château offered nothing remarkable to the view in its colossal dimensions, the Pampeln estate was, nevertheless, the most important in the neighborhood, from its extent, the richness of the soil, and the immensity of its forests.

A true gentleman farmer, as his father had been before him, Prince Pierre overlooked everything himself, sometimes being on horseback at day-break to visit the most distant parts of his property. His care was not wholly for the improvement of the land; as we have said before, he was ever anxious for the well-being of his tenants.

The inside of the château was luxuriously and comfortably furnished.

The wood-work, in cedar, of the great banqueting halls, in the style of Henry II., had been carved by the most skilled Flemish workmen. The fencing-room, the large Gothic windows of which looked on to the park, contained a curious collection of arms of all periods, from the heavy, damasked weapons of the forefathers of the house to the modern musket; while the chapel, whose service was performed by a pope who lived at the château the year round, was a marvel of Byzantine art.

As for the suite of apartments of the princess, it was easy for her to think in entering it that she had not left St. Petersburg, so scrupulous had the prince been about the furnishing of it, and every petty detail.

Besides the principal bed and reception-rooms there were forty guest chambers. The stables could accommodate at least a hundred horses, and the kennels were filled by the handsomest packs of hounds in the country.

The servants' quarters were at the end of the great shady park full of old trees, where huntsmen, grooms, and all the servants, to the number of forty or fifty, who were not employed within the mansion, were lodged. Counting in the gamekeepers who looked after his ponds and woods, the master of Pampeln had thus at his orders quite a small army, disciplined, alert, and wholly devoted to him.

The pride can easily be imagined that Lise Olsdorf felt when a few days after her arrival her husband conducted her over this splendid domain of which she was to be the queen, and wished to be the benefactress.

A week later her mother and General Podoi arrived. About a score of guests soon followed them, and the hunting season began in full earnest.

The princess had scarcely the time to become used to this stirring pleasure. Being enceinte, she was obliged to remain comparatively quiet, which she did very willingly.

From this time forth she was satisfied to go with the hunters in her carriage, as far as the state of the roads would permit. Then with her mother and some women friends she would return to the château, where in the evening she did the honors of the house with a grace and ease that charmed the guests.

Toward the end of August, Lise, to the great joy of her husband, was delivered of a son, whom they named Alexander. The happy event formed an excuse for a series of entertainments, which brought the season to a close in princely fashion.

September came, and everybody was making the best of their way back to St. Petersburg. The Olsdorf mansion was open again. The princess often stole away from the drawing-room to be with her son.

Lise Olsdorf made a good mother. For two years she was not a single day absent from her child. She had scruples even about trusting him for a few hours to strange hands, and she nursed him through all his infantile troubles.

This tender, complete, and devoted maternal love estranged her somewhat from her husband, and gave her a special distaste for the life he led at Pampeln. She went with the prince, of course, to Courland, but she was rarely to be seen with him on his hunting expeditions and excursions on the banks of the Livonian gulf. The result of this was the birth of a sort of coolness between the prince and his wife, which was sure to grow day by day. Mme. Podoi very quickly saw what was happening. She spoke to her daughter about it, but Lise only replied:

"Why, mother, the prince is a very amiable man, but he is far from being the husband I dreamed of. He never in his life had a passion, and never will have, except for horses and dogs; I am sure of it."

The princess spoke the words in so bitter a tone, and with such a gleam in her fine eyes, that the ex-actress, well versed in this sort of thing, felt a presentiment of some catastrophe in the future.

She was careful, however, to betray no sign of uneasiness. She smiled even, and, smiling, made up her mind to watch.

At the end of three years from the birth of her son, when her constant care for him had become less indispensable, the princess showed a disposition to return to worldly pleasures. At first she was seen at the Michael Theatre, then she began to hold receptions anew, opening her doors to the foreign artistes that her mother introduced to her; and, finally, her reappearance at the court balls was triumphantly welcomed. Then, when the season in the capital was over, she became, to the surprise and joy of the prince, the hardy amazon that she had been in the first months of their marriage.

It was like a new birth in Lise, attributable, one might suppose, to the development of her symmetrical and dazzling beauty, while her bearing betrayed a kind of new vigor, surprising to her friends, which seemed to welcome noise and movement. She was soon a constant attendant at all entertainments, and took her place at the head of fashionable women in the highest circles of Russian society.

Still, notwithstanding the active, frivolous, and trying life she was leading, the heart of the Princess Olsdorf was calm. Amid the crowd of adorers her high position and beauty had won for her, she remained an irreproachable wife, but a radical change had occurred in both her mind and disposition. Her comparative indifference for frivolous things was replaced by a sort of unhealthy curiosity. She now lent a ready ear to risky stories which formerly had been very distasteful to her. Her imagination, suddenly aroused, seemed to question the unknown, and be in search of emotions of which she was ignorant. In theatrical performances she preferred a love story to a comedy of modern life and manners. After having for long read nothing in French but the historical romances of the elder Alexander Dumas, she began to devour highly spiced novels, which she obtained from France by stealth; for in Russia then, as now, the government forbade the introduction into the country of many of the best-known and least moral novels of the day.

In the earliest days of her marriage, as we have said, the princess would accompany her husband in his excursions, but only to please him. Now she was grown into a daring sportswoman, eager in the pursuit of the quarry, greedy of danger, and finding a sharp pleasure in encountering it. In these mad gallops, mounted on one of the small, fiery, and swift horses that are used in the country for hunting purposes, she was wonderfully handsome, her eyes glistening, her bosom heaving, her lips quivering. She seemed to try, by wearying her body, to keep her soul in repose.

These were the only moments in their married life in which there was a full community of ideas and sensations between Pierre Olsdorf and his wife; for when once the prince was on horseback and in pursuit of the game, he was no longer the cold and self-contained man he ordinarily was. He was like a soldier on the field of battle. For the time being he was on fire. The most spirited horses were controlled by his strong hand; no horn sounded so clear and loud as his. He was superbly cool and brave when he had a bear at bay. He seemed to be possessed with a love of courage when he attacked a wolf in its lair, and watched the beast being tossed piece by piece to the hounds.

The day over, all this manly energy vanished. Sitting down to table in the evening at the château, when the guests saw Pierre in his black coat, his face calm, his eyelids drooping, it was hard to believe that this was the man whose impetuous daring would sometimes frighten his companions in the chase.

The strange glances which Lise cast furtively on her husband then might have been observed. Her face expressed surprise and contempt, and when the prince paid her a compliment, she would reply dryly or sarcastically, though she tried not to betray the state of her mind.

The fact was that the princess, who had never really loved the man whose name she bore, and, above all, had never felt any sensual attraction toward him, began to avoid him, instituting comparisons between him and the other men by whom she was surrounded.

The calm and respectful affection of Pierre was not enough for her. That was not the love which, as a consequence of the active life she led, her awakened senses gave her glimpses. She felt that the contact of two beings really in love with each other must be more troubling to both. By what right was she cheated of the deep emotions, the burning pleasures, that she had heard some of her women friends whispering about? Was not her beauty worthy of being passionately loved? Was not she desirable from every point of view? Where, then, was the excuse for this monotony in her life, this lake without a ripple on its surface, this heaven without a cloud? She thirsted unconsciously, as it were, for unknown storms, and the fact made her irritable and nervous.

This moral and physical excitement led the princess at first to try and rouse her husband. Supposing that she might succeed by making him jealous, she grew coquettish, whimsical, frivolous, much like many of the young women of the Russian aristocracy; but Pierre did not seem to even notice the change. Lise's strangest whims drew from him no reproach. But as, doubtless, he had not found in her his ideal of a woman, he saw less and less of her each day, giving himself up to his own pursuits. Then Lise, humiliated and offended, isolated too, began to look about her with disquieted curiosity.

This happened in the middle of summer, when there were many guests at Pampeln, and certainly the princess had only to choose. None of them, however, brilliant as they were, pleased her so much that she distinguished him by particular favor.

They were what the young men were who had formed her court since her marriage—most of them military men, handsome cavaliers, elegant, brave, extravagant. They had all much the same good qualities and much the same bad. Their declarations offered no variety, they scarcely made her smile. Their attempts to win her heart were alike. The same madrigals were used, the same melodramatic protestations were spoken by all. There was nothing about them that was simple or natural, true or from the heart. Some of them loved or desired her ardently, no doubt; but such of them as dared to tell her so, all did it in the same way, with the tone of that frivolous world for which love is a pleasant episode of life, and not its end and aim.

Besides, each of these sighers and adorers was a friend of the prince, and Lise was revolted by the thought. She thought them vile to wish to abuse the confidence of the man whose hand they pressed with a thousand protestations of devotion.

This was the state of mind of the Countess Barineff's daughter when Count Barewski, a regular visitor at Pampeln, arrived at the château. He brought with him his wife and a young painter from Paris, M. Paul Meyrin, whom General Podoi had already presented to the Olsdorfs at one of their last receptions of the previous winter, on the eve, almost, of their departure for Courland, so that the prince scarcely remembered the young man's name.

Paul Meyrin was none the less hospitably received, like all guests at the château. When he approached and saluted the princess, she recalled so vividly at the sight of him how the beauty of this young foreigner had struck her at St. Petersburg, that she was for the moment confused.

She recovered herself quickly, however, and offering her hand, after the English and Russian fashion, to the young man, she bade him welcome in a perfectly calm voice.

Still, while Count Barewski was telling Prince Olsdorf that M. Paul Meyrin was only an indifferent huntsman, though a skillful horseman, so that he was more often to be seen with his sketching materials than with a gun, Lise examined the new-comer with curious eyes, such as she had turned on nobody else as yet.

Above the middle height, broad-shouldered, and carrying himself with a slight swagger, the friend of Count Barewski was quite the romantic hero in appearance. His colorless face made his silky beard look the darker. He had fine eyes, and boldly marked eyebrows. On his full red lips the smile of youth played. His expression of face was gentle in the extreme, almost simple. Born in Bucharest, he was, in a word, one of the purest specimens of that handsome Latin race which crossing is making rarer and rarer.

As though he felt the young woman's eyes were fixed on him, Paul Meyrin turned abruptly toward her, and as their eyes met both of them felt a secret tremor.

Lise, surprised, bent to caress a dog lying at her feet, while Paul, certainly not analyzing or fully understanding what he felt, took leave of the prince for the moment, Pierre having said kindly, in reply to Count Barewski:

"Monsieur Meyrin must make himself at home. At Pampeln every one lives in his own way. I shall console myself about his indifference to hunting by admiring the pictures he will be inspired to paint by his walks and musings."

No one remarked that the princess returned the artist's bow with downcast eyes.

We are not of those who believe in love at first sight, but we do believe that, in given cases, the attraction of two beings one for the other is, in a degree, a matter of fate; and that, from the first, each of them has a vague presentiment of possession in the future. The feeling is due to neither the heart nor the imagination.

It is a kind of magnetic attraction of the senses, a nervous shock such as sensitive natures feel in case of sudden emotion—say, at an unexpected chord in music, a too pungent odor, a glorious sunset, a glance into space from the top of a high precipice. There is surprise and a dazed feeling. They last but a second or two, and are like a dream. Then comes forgetfulness, until a new meeting or a memory, though only indirectly evoked, reawakens the undefined and unavowed feeling, and gives double vigor to the sensation originally felt.

Lise Olsdorf and Paul Meyrin unconsciously underwent this purely physiological experience.

That evening, when they were near each other again at dinner, there was an exchange of looks which troubled them. The artist, already rather spoiled by his successes with women, was quite ready to think that the princess looked on him with favorable eyes. Conceit thus operated with him. Up to now his conquests had not been of so high an order; he soon fancied that he was deeply in love with Lise Olsdorf. The simple truth was that he desired her, and that as much out of vanity as passion.

Unfortunately, Paul had no idea how to set about paying his court to a "great lady." He had heard a friend maintain the paradox that the best means one can use with women is to treat them by contraries; scrupulous politeness, tender care, timid and romantic declarations, for women of the town, and exactly the opposite for women in good society. But if the latter way is successful, as unhappily it too often is, thanks to the manners of to-day, Paul was not convinced that it was; besides which, he had no aptitude for the part of a coarse libertine, nor did he think that the princess was a woman to put up with a want of respect. Without any preconceived plan, then, he made up his mind to wait until a favorable occasion should offer itself.

As for Lise Olsdorf, without analyzing her own emotions, she felt herself so strongly drawn to the handsome stranger that, fearing to betray herself, she was during dinner less gracious to him than she ordinarily was to guests in general newly arrived at the château; nor could she without a tremor think of the approaching moment when, after the Russian custom, the mistress of the house, standing on the threshold of the dining-room, receives the homage of her guests, who, passing one by one before her, each kiss her hand, while her lips touch their forehead.

From modesty, or perhaps designedly, Paul Meyrin was among the last few. When Lise offered him her hand he pressed his lips to it in so long a kiss that she withdrew it sharply and fell back a step, without giving him the expected kiss in return.

Fearful that he had offended her, he raised his head quickly to ask the question by a look; but the princess had turned from him and was moving toward the rooms where the guests spent their evenings according to their varying fancies. Some liked music, others would rather talk. There was dancing, too; but most of the visitors were to be seen gathered round the play-tables. Though the prince was the declared enemy of gambling as an amusement, he would not deny his guests the pleasure.

Throughout the evening, try as he might, Paul could not get near Lise; his eyes did not meet hers once. She retired early, and had slipped away before he had guessed that she was going.

The next day he hardly saw her, for she did not come down to dinner, the prince making her excuses to their friends on the plea of slight indisposition. After this day, however, Lise, as if she had schooled herself to calmness, again appeared gracious and smiling, with that care for the comfort of her guests that she always showed in fulfilling her duties as mistress of the household.

Still, calm and indifferent as she made herself appear before the artist, she doubtless distrusted her strength too much to risk a tête-à-tête, for Paul never found himself quite alone with her. When he greeted her at meeting, she had always to respond at that moment to some other greeting as well. She returned his bow hurriedly, with downcast eyes and an absent look; and if she met him by chance in passing through the fencing-room, in one of the vestibules, or at any other part of the house for the moment deserted, she quickened her step, though not too markedly, as he accompanied her, and, beginning to speak on different topics, she would continue to do so without giving him the chance to speak, until they had encountered some one else.

Paul Meyrin understood the tactics adopted by the mistress of Pampeln. He was vain enough to infer that she feared him, and in consequence grew more charmed with her, and the more decided to declare his love.

Things had gone on thus for a week, and the Roumanian had not yet found the chance he watched for, the more eagerly in proportion as he saw that the princess often seemed nervous, preoccupied, and fanciful, when one evening the prince announced to his guests an interesting hunting-party for the following day.

A few minutes later Lise retired, bending on Paul a look which he caught but hesitated to give a meaning. Was it on her part a sort of haughty defiance? Or was it, on the contrary, a kind of encouragement? Did she mean, "You dare go no further, and you are prudent," or "Why dare not you? I am waiting!"

Whichever it was, the painter slept little that night, and rose at daylight. He supposed he must be one of the first of the guests stirring in the house, but when he reached the court-yard he found the princess there before him, on horseback, though it was only just seven o'clock.

Pierre Olsdorf and his usual companions were to start for the banks of the Wandau, there to hunt the stag; and Lise had determined to accompany her husband's friends as far as the Elva farm, three leagues distant from the château, and cultivated by one Soublaieff, an old retainer of the prince, whom he had brought from his estates in the Crimea and for whom he had a great affection.

At this early hour, under the oblique rays of the sun, the great court-yard of Pampeln was a charming sight for a painter. There was a noise, a movement, and a kaleidoscope of colors not easy to describe. Excited by the barking of the hounds, which the footmen held coupled in leashes, by the blasts on the horns of the huntsmen giving the signal for the start, and by the different orders that were being shouted one over the other, the horses, with erect ears and waving manes, pawed the ground impatiently under their riders, who all wore the correct hunting costume, which the prince had been one of the first to make fashionable in Russia—wide breeches, high boots, and a double-breasted tunic, caught in at the waist with a leathern belt, in which a Circassian dagger was stuck.

In front of the flight of steps leading up to the house were the carriages for General Podoi's wife and her friends. The horses were superb creatures which the drivers could scarcely control.

The artist saw none of these things, however. His eyes were fixed on the princess, and could not quit her. In her riding-habit, a masterpiece of some great Parisian costumer, which showed the symmetry of her form and the rich swell of her bust, Lise Olsdorf was wonderfully beautiful. Under the coquettish hat, made in the Louis XV. style, her clearly cut face had a brave and almost saucy look. Her little gloved hand held firmly and gracefully the reins of the splendid thorough-bred she was riding. Paul, in admiration, stopped short at a few paces' distance, forgetting even to salute her.

Not until the princess spoke did he recover himself.

"Are you not going to join us?" she asked in an amused tone. "What are you thinking?"

"Pardon me, madame, pardon me," said the painter, doffing his hat. "I was admiring."

He had not dared to say, "I was admiring you," but Lise Olsdorf understood.

"That is not a reply," she said, smiling. "See, yonder are two horses ready saddled. But perhaps you are not a rider, and I warn you that our animals are pretty spirited."

"I should not be one of my race or my country, madame, if I were not a horseman."

At a sign from him the groom holding the two horses brought them up and gave him one. Not using the stirrup, he leaped into the saddle.

"Bravo!" exclaimed the prince, coming up at that moment to ask his wife if he should give the order for a start. "Are you going with us?"

"Only as a companion on the road, prince," Paul replied, taking a whip—the najayka, as it is called—that one of the footmen handed to him.

The princess having replied to her husband that she was ready, the master of Pampeln gave a signal, the horns sounded, the dogs barked twice as loud as before, the riders gave the reins to their mounts, and the party set out.

Five minutes later the whole troop was galloping along the road to Elva.

It was about twenty minutes from the start when, taking advantage of the fact that Pierre Olsdorf was in earnest conference with his stremenoy—as the Russians call the chief huntsman—Paul Meyrin drew near to the princess. As usual, she was encircled by a crowd of adorers, among whom was naturally found that good fellow Podoi, who, in spite of his age, was still a daring sportsman.

It seemed as if the old soldier had foretold the truth in assuring the Countess Barineff, to persuade her to accept his name, that in marrying him she would be restoring his youth to him. He had never been more smart.

"I must compliment you, monsieur," said Lise Olsdorf to the young painter when she saw him take up a position at some paces from her, after making his horse execute a curvet that was both clever and daring.

The fact is, Paul Meyrin, without belonging to any great school of horsemanship, rode as few men can ride. His horse, a hardy little mare of the country, full of fire, at first had tried all she could to unseat him, but soon finding that she was under her master, she had yielded, her mouth full of foam and her flanks quivering.

Paul, replying only by a bow to the young woman's compliment, joined the others who were cantering near her.

In rather more than another half hour they came to the Elva farm, where such as did not accompany the prince further were to rest a short time before returning to Pampeln.

Forewarned by a huntsman sent on in advance, the farmer Soublaieff was there with his people, but before any one else had approached the princess, the painter was by her side and offering his hand.

A little surprised at his quick movement, Lise Olsdorf hesitated for a moment; but feeling that to refuse the aid of the young foreigner would be to confess, by implication, that she thought him dangerous, she swayed forward, and he lifted her to the ground so lightly and cleverly, and with such strength of arm, that the sensation was a pleasant one for her.

"Thanks, monsieur," she said, lifting the long skirt of her riding-habit over her arm. "Do you stay with us, then?"

"I am not a sportsman, Madame la Princess," he replied, "so that I ask permission to return with you to Pampeln."

"You know well that all our guests are perfectly free to do what best pleases themselves."

And Lise Olsdorf, who was unwilling to approve in any other form the artist's intention, left him, to respond affectionately to the salutation of a young girl barely sixteen years old who was advancing to meet her.

It was Vera, Soublaieff's daughter.

Like most women of Southern Russia, Vera was a decided brunette. From the purity of her features, the perfect oval of her face, and the smallness of her head, she might have been taken to be of Grecian origin. Her large eyes, shaded by long, up-curled lashes, were unspeakably gentle: a virginal smile was constantly playing about her scarlet and slightly parted lips, revealing the pearly teeth. From the national head-gear that she wore two long braids of hair hung, reaching to below the waist, which was defined by her linen dress of various bright colors. Reared at the château until she was fifteen years old, Vera spoke French with a pure accent, had some knowledge of music, and, through her natural elegance of movement of bearing, was a charming child.

Her father, who loved her fondly, could not make up his mind to part with her to the princess, who had several times asked him to do so, wishing that Vera should be a sort of elder sister to her little son.

Paul Meyrin was too much of an artist not to pay homage to Vera's beauty. The princess had kissed her tenderly. Thinking that it could not but please Lise Olsdorf, he said, approaching her:

"What a lovely young girl that is. I supposed that only women of your station in life could be so perfectly beautiful."

"You see that you were mistaken, monsieur," the princess replied, rather ungraciously. "Vera is, in fact, very pretty. She is just as good and as modest, and I love her very much."

Then, moving toward the group of hunters, who had not dismounted, she left the painter standing there, and asking himself uneasily if he had not a second time displeased the woman whom he was growing more infatuated about hour by hour.

A few minutes later the blasts on the horns were again heard, the hunters went off on their way toward the Wandau, and the princess, having remounted with the aid of one of the servants, gave the signal for a start to be made. She wished to be back at the château by breakfast-time.

Paul was the only male guest of the prince who had not joined the hunt, and he reckoned on the fact to afford the chance of an explanation between himself and Lise; but in the course of the hour that was spent on the return journey to Pampeln he could not get a moment alone with the princess. She never was away from the side of the carriages in which her mother and friends were.

Vexed and desperate, wondering whether it was that Lise Olsdorf dreaded him or that she was merely a coquette and laughing at him, Paul Meyrin determined to force her hand. Fortune was about to give him a chance of doing so sooner than he had dared to hope—that very day indeed.

In the evening, about six o'clock, when the few guests remaining at the château were going to their rooms to dress for dinner, the artist saw the princess crossing the lawn and going toward one of the alleys of the park.

Within five minutes, having gone a roundabout way, Paul, as if he had come from the outskirts of the park, met the young woman face to face.

Lise was walking with lowered head, pushing aside idly with the end of her parasol the dead leaves blown from the oaks and cedars, whose great branches met overhead in a thick arch, which made the spot dim and mysterious.

At the sound of the painter's footsteps she raised her eyes.

"You?" she exclaimed, in an ironical voice. "So you are as good a runner as you are a horseman."

"I don't understand you," said Paul, bowing.

"Because you don't want to. A few moments ago, as I was coming down the steps from the house, I saw you at one of the windows of the fencing-room. You must have been very fleet, then, to be here as soon as I am, coming direct from the château, while you seem to be coming from the other side of the park."

Finding his stratagem exposed, Paul Meyrin could not but blush slightly. He quickly recovered his composure, and said frankly:

"Well then, yes, you are right, madame. Chance is not to be thanked for this meeting. For some days now I have been trying in vain to speak to you. You seemed to avoid me; and I have dared, therefore, to join you here and now."

After hesitating a moment or two, and seeming about to turn and retrace her steps, the daughter of the Countess Barineff, with an odd, resolute gesture, walked onward.

Paul walked beside her.

The last rays of the sun scarcely pierced the thick wall of verdure formed by the great trees of the avenue; the air was warm, charged with electricity, and heavy with the balsamic odors of the Norwegian pine-trees. From the woods could only be heard the rustle of a breeze, and the first timid notes, at long intervals, of the song-birds of the evening. Under these shades, in the perfumed air, a mysterious harmony reigned, a thrilling calm, of which nature alone has the secret.

"What have you to say to me that is so interesting?" said the princess, after a momentary silence.

"I have a favor to ask of you."

"A favor? What?"

"That you will sit to me for a few hours."

Whether or not this was the proposal she had expected, the mistress of Pampeln trembled slightly.

As the princess did not reply, the painter added:

"You would not have me paint a masterpiece, then?"

The artist had spoken the words in so fervid and exalted a tone, that the princess, halting abruptly, and plunging as it were her eyes into Paul's, said, in a firm, vibrating voice:

"You love me, Monsieur Meyrin. That is what your request poorly hides."

"Madame."

"Let me speak. Neither of us is timid or fearful of calling things by their real name; neither of us is a coward, ready to fly before danger. You love me, or think you do; and you fancy that in the sittings you ask of me the chance would surely offer to speak to me of your love. But what if I do not love you?—if I look upon your protestations and declarations as outrages, and have you expelled from the house by my servants, what will you do, what will you say, what will become of you? Do you still hold by this masterpiece, which I say is a mere pretext?"

Lise Olsdorf, speaking thus, was superb in her energy. Paul looked at her with admiration. She had never seemed more beautiful or more desirable.

"You do not answer," she went on. "So, then, I am not wrong."

"You are wrong, madame—wholly wrong. It is true that I love you madly, but my love is one of the feverish passions that have their birth in the hearts alone of artists who are adorers of the beautiful. I feel within me a medley of passions. You are not for the man who loves merely the woman desired; you are also for the painter, the model he has dreamed of—the marvel of grace and beauty that will inspire him. You are not simply the woman who says 'Love;' you are the ideal as well that says 'Glory.' If it were otherwise, should I have had the courage to follow you, should I dare to speak as I am speaking, to take your hand and tell you that with my soul, with my senses, with my imagination—I love you—I love you?"