Chapter X: The Ducal Audience (9)

He again put forth his hand toward her. "What a morbid child it is!" said Louis Quillan. "I can assure you I have resided in this same universe just twice as long as you, and I find that upon the whole the establishment is very creditably conducted. There arrives, to be sure, an occasional tornado, or perhaps an earthquake, each with its incidental inconveniences. On the other hand, there is every evening a lavishly arranged sunset, like gratis fireworks, and each morning (I am credibly informed) a sunrise of which poets and energetic people are pleased to speak highly; while every year spring comes in, like a cosmical upholsterer, and refurnishes the entire place, and makes us glad to live. Nay, I protest to you, this is an excellent world, my Nelchen! and likewise I protest to you that in its history there was never a luckier nor a happier man than I."

Nelchen considered. "Well," she generously conceded; "perhaps, after all, the stars are more like diamonds."

Louis Quillan chuckled. "And since when were you a connoisseur of diamonds, my dear?"

"Of course I have never actually seen any. I would like to, though--yes, Louis, what I would really like would be to have a bushelful or so of diamonds, and to marry a duke--only the duke would have to be you, of course,--and to go to Court, and to have all the fine ladies very jealous of me, and for them to be very much in love with you, and for you not to care a sou for them, of course, and for us both to see the King." Nelchen paused, quite out of breath after this ambitious career in the imaginative.

"To see the King, indeed!" scoffed little Louis Quillan. "Why, we would see only a very disreputable pockmarked wornout lecher if we did."

"Still," she pointed out, "I would like to see a king. Simply because I never have done so before, you conceive."

"At times, my Nelchen, you are effeminate. Eve ate the apple for that identical reason. Yet what you say is odd, because--do you know?--I once had a friend who was by way of being a sort of king."

Nelchen gave a squeal of delight. "And you never told me about him! I loathe you."

Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your loathsomeness is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by.

"But there is so little to tell. His father had married the Grand Duke of Noumaria's daughter,--over yonder between Silesia and Badenburg, you may remember. And so last spring when the Grand Duke and the Prince were both killed in that horrible fire, my friend quite unexpectedly became a king--oh, king of a mere celery-patch, but still a sort of king. Figure to yourself, Nelchen! they were going to make my poor friend marry the Elector of Badenburg's daughter,--and Victoria von Uhm has perfection stamped upon her face in all its odious immaculacy,--and force him to devote the rest of his existence to heading processions and reviewing troops, and signing proclamations, and guzzling beer and sauerkraut. Why, he would have been like Ovid among the Goths, my Nelchen!"

"But he could have worn such splendid uniforms!" said Nelchen. "And diamonds!"

"You mercenary wretch!" said he. Louis Quillan then did what seemed advisable; and presently he added, "In any event, the horrified man ran away."

"That was silly of him," said Nelchen Thorn. "But where did he run to?"

Louis Quillan considered. "To Paradise," he at last decided. "And there he found a disengaged angel, who very imprudently lowered herself to the point of marrying him. And so he lived happily ever afterward. And so, till the day of his death, he preached the doctrine that silliness is the supreme wisdom."

"And he regretted nothing?" Nelchen said, after a meditative while.

Louis Quillan began to laugh. "Oh, yes! at times he profoundly regretted Victoria von Uhm."

Then Nelchen gave him a surprise, for the girl bent toward him and leaned one hand upon each shoulder. "Diamonds are not all, are they, Louis? I thank you, dear, for telling me of what means so much to you. I can understand, I think, because for a long while I have tried to know and care for everything that concerns you."

The little man had risen to his feet. "Nelchen--!"

"Hush!" said Nelchen Thorn; "Monseigneur is coming down to his supper."

II

It was a person of conspicuous appearance, both by reason of his great height and leanness as well as his extreme age, who now descended the straight stairway leading from the corridor above. At Court they would have told you that the Prince de Gâtinais was a trifle insane, but he troubled the Court very little, since he had spent the last twenty years, with brief intermissions, at his château near Beaujolais, where, as rumor buzzed it, he had fitted out a laboratory, and had devoted his old age to the study of chemistry. "Between my flute and my retorts, my bees and my chocolate-creams," the Prince was wont to say, "I manage to console myself for the humiliating fact that even Death has forgotten my existence." For he had a child's appetite for sweets, and was at this time past eighty, though still well-nigh as active as Antoine de Soyecourt had ever been, even when--a good half-century ago--he had served, with distinction under Louis Quatorze.

To-night the Prince de Gâtinais was all in steel-gray, of a metallic lustre, with prodigiously fine ruffles at his throat and wrists. You would have found something spectral in the tall, gaunt old man, for his periwig was heavily powdered, and his deep-wrinkled countenance was of an absolute white, save for the thin, faintly bluish lips and the inklike glitter of his narrowing eyes, as he now regarded the couple waiting hand in hand before him, like children detected in mischief.

Little Louis Quillan had drawn an audible breath at first sight of the newcomer. Monsieur Quillan did not speak, however, but merely waited.

"You have fattened," the Prince de Gâtinais said, at last, "I wish I could fatten. It is incredible that a man who eats pounds of sugar daily should yet remain a skeleton." His voice was guttural, and a peculiar slur ran through his speech, caused by the loss of his upper front teeth at Ramillies.

Louis Quillan came of a stock not lightly abashed. "I have fattened on a new diet, monsieur,--on happiness. But, ma foi! I am discourteous. Permit me, my father, to present Mademoiselle Nelchen Thorn, who has so far honored me as to consent to become my wife. 'Nelchen, I present to you my father, the Prince de Gâtinais."

"Oh--?" observed Nelchen, midway in her courtesy.

But the Prince had taken her fingers and he kissed them quite as though they had been the finger-tips of the all-powerful Pompadour at Versailles yonder. "I salute the future Marquise de Soyecourt. You young people will sup with me, then?"

"No, monseigneur, for I am to wait upon the table," said Nelchen, "and Father is at Sigéan overnight, having the mare shod, and there is only Leon, and, oh, thank you very much indeed, monseigneur, but I had much rather wait on the table."

The Prince waved his hand. "My valet, mademoiselle, is at your disposal. Vanringham!" he called.

From the corridor above descended a tall red-headed fellow in black. "Monseigneur--?"

"Go!" quickly said Louis de Soyecourt, while the Prince spoke with his valet,--"go, Nelchen, and make yourself even more beautiful if such a thing be possible. He will never resist you, my dear--ah, no, that is out of nature."

"You will find more plates in the cupboard, Monsieur Vanringham," remarked Nelchen, as she obediently tripped up the stairway, toward her room in the right wing. "And the knives and forks are in the second drawer."

So Vanringham laid two covers in discreet silence; then bowed and withdrew by the side door that led to the kitchen. The Prince had seated himself beside the open fire, where he yawned and now looked up with a smile.

"Well, Louis," said the Prince de Gâtinais--"so Monsieur de Puysange and I have run you to earth at last. And I find you have determined to defy me, eh?"

III

"I trust there is no question of defiance," Louis de Soyecourt equably returned. "Yet I regret you should have been at pains to follow me, since I still claim the privilege of living out my life in my own fashion."

"You claim a right which never existed, my little son. It is not demanded of any man that he be happy, whereas it is manifestly necessary for a gentleman to obey his God, his King, and his own conscience without swerving. If he also find time for happiness, well and good; otherwise, he must be unhappy. But, above all, he must intrepidly play out his allotted part in the good God's scheme of things, and must with due humbleness recognize that the happiness or the unhappiness of any man alive is a trivial consideration as against the fulfilment of this scheme."

"You and Nelchen are much at one there," the Marquis lightly replied; "yet, for my part, I fancy that Providence is not particularly interested in who happens to be the next Grand Duke of Noumaria."

The Prince struck with his hand upon the arm of his chair. "You dare to jest! Louis, your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the Empress,--Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder at Versailles! I tell you it is all planned that France and Austria will combine, Louis! Think of it,--our France on her feet again, mistress of Europe, and every whit of it your doing, Louis,--ah, my boy, my boy, you cannot refuse!"

Thus he ran on in a high, disordered voice, pleading, clutching at his son with a strange new eagerness which now possessed the Prince de Gâtinais. He was remembering the France which he had known; not the ignoble, tawdry France of the moment, misruled by women, rakes, confessors, and valets, but the France of his dead Sun King; and it seemed to Louis de Soyecourt that the memory had brought back with it the youth of his father for an instant. Just for a heart-beat, the lank man towered erect, his cheeks pink, and every muscle tense.

Then Louis de Soyecourt shook his head. In England's interest, as he now knew, Ormskirk had played upon de Soyecourt's ignorance and his love of pleasure, as an adept plays upon the strings of a violin; but de Soyecourt had his reason, a gigantic reason, for harboring no grudge against the Englishman.

"Frankly, my father, I would not give up Nelchen though all Europe depended upon it. I am a coward, perhaps; but I have my chance of happiness, and I mean to take it. So Cousin Otto is welcome to the duchy. I infinitely prefer Nelchen."

"Otto! a general in the Prussian army, Frederick's property, Frederick's idolater!" The old Prince now passed from an apex of horror to his former pleading tones. "But, then, it is not necessary you give up Nelchen. Ah, no, a certain latitude is permissible in these matters, you understand. She could be made a countess, a marquise,--anything you choose to demand, my Louis. And you could marry Princess Victoria just the same--"

"Were you any other man, monsieur," said Louis de Soyecourt, "I would, of course, challenge you. As it is, I can only ask you to respect my helplessness. It is very actual helplessness, sir, for Nelchen has been bred in such uncourtly circles as to entertain the most provincial notions about becoming anybody's whore."

Now the Prince de Gâtinais sank back into the chair. He seemed incredibly old now. "You are right," he mumbled,--"yes, you are right, Louis. I have talked with her. With her that would be impossible. These bourgeois do not understand the claims of noble birth."

The younger man had touched him upon the shoulder. "My father,--" he began.

"Yes, I am your father," said the other, dully, "and it is that which puzzles me. You are my own son, and yet you prefer your happiness to the welfare of France, to the very preservation of France. Never in six centuries has there been a de Soyecourt to do that. God and the King we served ... six centuries ... and to-day my own son prefers an innkeeper's daughter..." His voice trailed and slurred like that of one speaking in his sleep, for he was an old man, and by this the flare of his excitement had quite burned out, and weariness clung about his senses like a drug. "I will go back to Beaujolais ... to my retorts and my bees ... and forget there was never a de Soyecourt in six centuries, save my own son...."

"My father!" Louis de Soyecourt cried, and shook him gently. "Ah, I dare say you are right, in theory. But in practice I cannot give her up. Surely you understand--why, they tell me there was never a more ardent lover than you. They tell me--And you would actually have me relinquish Nelchen, even after you have seen her! Yet remember, monsieur, I love her much as you loved my mother,--that mettlesome little princess whom you stole from the very heart of her court.[Footnote: The curious may find further details of the then Marquis de Soyecourt's abduction of the Princess Clotilda in the voluminous pages of Hulot, under the year 1708.] Ah, I have heard tales of you, you conceive. And Nelchen means as much to me as once my mother meant to you, remember--She means youth, and happiness, and a tiny space of laughter before I, too, am worm's-meat, and means a proper appreciation of God's love for us all, and means everything a man's mind clutches at when he wakens from some forgotten dream that leaves him weeping with sheer adoration of its beauty. Ho, never was there a kinder father than you, monsieur. You have spoiled me most atrociously, I concede; and after so many years you cannot in decency whip about like this and deny me my very life. Why, my father it is your little Louis who is pleading with you,--and you have never denied me anything! See, now, how I presume upon your weakness. I am actually bullying you into submission--bullying you through your love for me. Eh, we love greatly, we de Soyecourts, and give all for love. Your own life attests that, monsieur. Now, then, let us recognize the fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I. Ah, my father,--"

Thus he babbled on, for the sudden languor of the Prince had alarmed him, and Louis de Soyecourt, to afford him justice, loved his father with a heartier intensity than falls to the portion of most parents. To arouse the semi-conscious man was his one thought. And now he got his reward, for the Prince de Gâtinais opened his keen old eyes, a trifle dazedly, and drew a deep breath which shook his large frail body through and through.

"Let us recognize that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are de Soyecourts, you and I."

"Heh, in that event," said the Marquis, "we must both fall upon our knees forthwith. For look, my father!"

Nelchen Thorn was midway in her descent of the stairs. She wore her simple best. All white it was, and yet the plump shoulders it displayed were not put to shame. Rather must April clouds and the snows of December retire abashed, as lamentably inefficient analogues, the Marquis meditated; and as she paused starry-eyed and a thought afraid, it seemed to him improbable that even the Prince de Gâtinais could find it in his heart greatly to blame his son.

"I begin to suspect," said the Prince, "that I am Jacob of old, and that you are a very young cherub venturing out of Paradise through motives of curiosity. Eh, my dear, let us see what entertainment we can afford you during your visit to earth." He took her hand and led her to the table.

IV

Vanringham served. Never was any one more blithe than the lean Prince de Gâtinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?--because there were no pianos in Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince de Gâtinais became so jovial that Nelchen was quite at ease, and Louis de Soyecourt became vaguely alarmed. He knew his father, and for the Prince to yield thus facilely was incredible. Still, his father had seen Nelchen, had talked with Nelchen....

Now the Prince rose. "Fresh glasses, Vanringham," he ordered; and then: "I give you a toast. Through desire of love and happiness, you young people have stolen a march on me. Eh, I am not Sgarnarelle of the comedy! therefore, I drink cheerfully to love and happiness, I consider Louis is not in the right, but I know that he is wise, my daughter, as concerns his soul's health, in clinging to you rather than to a tinsel crown. Of Fate I have demanded--like Sgarnarelle of the comedy,--prosaic equity and common-sense; of Fate he has in turn demanded happiness; and Fate will at her convenience decide between us. Meantime I drink to love and happiness, since I, too, remember. I know better than to argue with Louis, you observe, my Nelchen; we de Soyecourts are not lightly severed from any notion we may have taken up. In consequence I drink to your love and happiness!"

They drank. "To your love, my son," said the Prince de Gâtinais,--"to the true love of a de Soyecourt." And afterward he laughingly drank: "To your happiness, my daughter,--to your eternal happiness."

Nelchen sipped. The two men stood with drained glasses. Now on a sudden the Prince de Gâtinais groaned and clutched his breast.

"I was always a glutton," he said, hoarsely. "I should have been more moderate--I am faint--"

"Salts are the best thing in the world," said Nelchen, with fine readiness. She was half-way up the stairs. "A moment, monseigneur,--a moment, and I fetch salts." Nelchen Thorn had disappeared into her room.

V

The Prince sat drumming upon the table with his long white fingers. He had waved the Marquis and Vanringham aside. "A passing weakness,--I am not adamant," he had said, half-peevishly.

"Then I prescribe another glass of this really excellent wine," laughed little Louis de Soyecourt. At heart he was not merry, and his own unreasoning nervousness irritated him, for it seemed to the Marquis, quite irrationally, that the atmosphere of the cheery room was, without forerunnership, become tense and expectant, and was now quiet with much the hush which precedes the bursting of a thunder-storm. And accordingly he laughed.

"I prescribe another glass, monsieur," said he. "Eh, that is the true panacea for faintness--for every ill. Come, we will drink to the most beautiful woman in Poictesme--nay, I am too modest,--to the most beautiful woman in France, in Europe, in the whole universe! _Feriam sidera_, my father! and confound all mealy-mouthed reticence, for you have both seen her. Confess, am I not a lucky man? Come, Vanringham, too, shall drink. No glasses? Take Nelchen's, then. Come, you fortunate rascal, you shall drink to the bride from the bride's half-emptied glass. To the most beautiful woman--Why, what the devil--?"

Vanringham had blurted out an odd, unhuman sound. His extended hand shook and jerked, as if in irresolution, and presently struck the proffered glass from de Soyecourt's grasp. You heard the tiny crash, very audible in the stillness, and afterward the irregular drumming of the old Prince's finger-tips. He had not raised his head, had not moved.

Louis de Soyecourt came to him, without speaking, and placed one hand under his father's chin, and lifted the Prince's countenance, like a dead weight, toward his own. Thus the two men regarded each the other. Their silence was rather horrible.

"It was not in vain that I dabbled with chemistry all these years," said the guttural voice of the Prince de Gâtinais, "Yes, the child is dead by this. Let us recognize the fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I."

But Louis de Soyecourt had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the newelpost and gripped it so firmly that he seemed less to walk than by one despairing effort to lift an inert body to the first step. He ascended slowly, with a queer shamble, and disappeared into Nelchen's room.

VI

"What next, monseigneur?" said Vanringham, half-whispering.

"Why, next," said the Prince de Gâtinais, "I imagine that he will kill us both. Meantime, as Louis says, the wine is really excellent. So you may refill my glass, my man, and restore to me my vial of little tablets"....

He was selecting a bonbon from the comfit-dish when his son returned into the apartment. Very tenderly Louis de Soyecourt laid his burden upon a settle, and then drew the older man toward it. You noted first how the thing lacked weight: a flower snapped from its stalk could hardly have seemed more fragile. The loosened hair strained toward the floor and seemed to have sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished it to be.

"See, my father," Louis de Soyecourt said, "she was only a child, more little even than I. Never in her brief life had she wronged any one,--never, I believe, had she known an unkind thought. Always she laughed, you understand--Oh, my father, is it not pitiable that Nelchen will never laugh any more?"

"I entreat of God to have mercy upon her soul," said the old Prince de Gâtinais. "I entreat of God that the soul of her murderer may dwell eternally in the nethermost pit of hell."

"I would cry amen," Louis de Soyecourt said, "if I could any longer believe in God."

The Prince turned toward him. "And will you kill me now, Louis?"

"I cannot," said the other. "Is it not an excellent jest that I should be your son and still be human? Yet as for your instrument, your cunning butler--Come, Vanringham!" he barked. "We are unarmed. Come, tall man, for I who am well-nigh a dwarf now mean to kill you with my naked hands."

"Vanringham!" The Prince leaped forward. "Behind me, Vanringham!" As the valet ran to him the old Prince de Gâtinais caught a knife from the table and buried it to the handle in Vanringham's breast. The lackey coughed, choked, clutched his assassin by each shoulder; thus he stood with a bewildered face, shuddering visibly, every muscle twitching. Suddenly he shrieked, with an odd, gurgling noise, and his grip relaxed, and Francis Vanringham seemed to crumple among his garments, so that he shrank rather than fell to the floor. His hands stretched forward, his fingers spreading and for a moment writhing in agony, and then he lay quite still.

"You progress, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, quietly. "And what new infamy may I now look for?"

"A valet!" said the Prince. "You would have fought with him--a valet! He topped you by six inches. And the man was desperate. Your life was in danger. And your life is valuable."

"I have earlier perceived, my father, that you prize human life very highly."

The Prince de Gâtinais struck sharply upon the table. "I prize the welfare of France. To secure this it is necessary that you and no other reign in Noumaria. But for the girl you would have yielded just now. So to the welfare of France I sacrifice the knave at my feet, the child yonder, and my own soul. Let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I."

"Rather I see in you," began the younger man, "a fiend. I see in you a far ignobler Judas--"

"And I see in you the savior of France. Nay, let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I. And for six centuries it has always been our first duty to serve France. You behold only a man and a woman assassinated; I behold thousands of men preserved from death, many thousands of women rescued from hunger and degradation. I have sinned, and grievously; ages of torment may not purge my infamy; yet I swear it is well done!"

"And I--?" the little Marquis said.

"Why, your heart is slain, my son, for you loved this girl as I loved your mother, and now you can nevermore quite believe in the love God bears for us all; and my soul is damned irretrievably: but we are de Soyecourts, you and I, and accordingly we rejoice and drink to France, to the true love of a de Soyecourt! to France preserved! to France still mighty among her peers!"

Louis de Soyecourt stood quite motionless. Only his eyes roved toward his father, then to the body that had been Nelchen's. He began to laugh as he caught up his glass. "You have conquered. What else have I to live for now? To France, you devil!"

"To France, my son!" The glasses clinked. "To the true love of a de Soyecourt!"

And immediately the Prince de Gâtinais fell at his son's feet. "You will go into Noumaria?"

"What does that matter now?" the other wearily said. "Yes, I suppose so. Get up, you devil!"

But the Prince de Gâtinais detained him, with hands like ice. "Then we preserve France, you and I! We are both damned, I think, but it is worth while, Louis. In hell we may remember that it was well worth while. I have slain your very soul, my dear son, but that does not matter: France is saved." The old man still knelt, looking upward. "Yes, and you must forgive me, my son! For, see, I yield you what reparation I may. See, Louis,--I was chemist enough for two. Wine of my own vintage I have tasted, of the brave vintage which now revives all France. And I swear to you the child did not suffer, Louis, not--not much. See, Louis! she did not suffer." A convulsion tore at and shook the aged body, and twitched awry the mouth that had smiled so resolutely. Thus the Prince died.

Presently Louis de Soyecourt knelt and caught up the wrinkled face between both hands. "My father--!" said Louis de Soyecourt. Afterward he kissed the dead lips tenderly. "Teach me how to live, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, "for I begin to comprehend--in part I comprehend." Throughout the moment Nelchen Thorn was forgotten: and to himself he too seemed to be fashioned of heroic stuff.

X

THE DUCAL AUDIENCE

_As Played at Breschau, May 3, 1755_

"_Venez, belle, venez,
Qu'on ne sçauroit tenir, et qui vous mutinez.
Void vostre galand! à moi pour recompence
Vous pouvez faire une humble et douce reverence!
Adieu, l'evenement trompe un peu mes souhaits;
Mais tous les amoureux ne sont pas satisfaits._"

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, tormented beyond measure with the impertinences of life. COMTE DE CHÂTEAUROUX, cousin to the Grand Duchess, and complies with circumstance. A COACHMAN and two FOOTMEN.

GRAND DUCHESS OF NOUMARIA, a capable woman. BARONESS VON ALTENBURG, a coquette.

SCENE

The Palace Gardens at Breschau.

THE DUCAL AUDIENCE

_PROEM:--In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between Acts_

Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de Gâtinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for indolence and dissipation.

At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the moment of Nelchen's death. Hé, the poor children! his Highness meditated. Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme yonder.... Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy.

So his Highness amused himself,--not very heartily, but at least to the last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most hideously bored himself. But I spare you a _chronique scandaleuse_ of Duke Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the matter I have now in hand.

Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg--not excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,--was beyond doubt possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the Baroness was in season moved to comment.

I

"The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!"

"Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first thing in the morning."

"--and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau--"

"And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay, I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose between the sceptre and a tooth-brush."

"Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a school-boy."

"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens; "as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication," he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete accord."

The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest scheme.

He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en tête-à-tête explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot, could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to her native land.

Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him with morality.

She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example you set your subjects is atrocious."

"And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,--"though I swear to you I have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand duke?"

"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady.

"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are adorable."

"--and that injures your popularity--"

"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist."

"--and moreover you create scandals--"

"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, "Amalia, it is very singular--"

"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously plural."

But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade."

The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went on, with some severity, "Your reputation--"

"_De mortuis_--" pleaded the Grand Duke.

"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse."

"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--"

"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg.

"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--"

"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of grandchildren."

"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity.

"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--"

"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna."

"But I am not going to Vienna."

"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!"

"I am not afraid, your Highness,--"

"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and heaven?"

"Or--" the Baroness helpfully suggested.

"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all things behind save happiness."

"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy."

"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen."

"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--"

"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration."

"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a husband--"

"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone implying that he knew whereof he spoke.

"--and if the Grand Duchess loved you--"

"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances."

"Nevertheless--"

"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St. Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an example to his children!"

"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take this trip to Vienna--"

"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself."

"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?"

"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the confidence of my wife."

Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your Highness."

"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene--"

"Which means--?"

"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I deduce that in all other women must remain--"

"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!"

"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion so early in the forties."

"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?"

"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone."

"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of moonlight she looked incredibly so.

"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de Châteauroux now--"

"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Châteauroux is not the sort of person--"

"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that sort of person."

"Phrases, your Highness!"

"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets."

"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers."

"You shall ensnare no more admirers."

"My milliner will be inconsolable."

"In short, you must leave Noumaria--"

"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!"

"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at dawn."

The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had reason, for there was about this slim white woman--whose eyes were colossal emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,--so much of the _baroque_ that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of Faëry dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it--the mislaid abracadabra.

"I knew that I had some obstacle in mind--Thou shalt not commit adultery. No, your Highness, I will not go."

"Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau."

"I have not the least intention of going--" the Baroness iterated, firmly.

"Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a portmanteau, in case of an emergency--"

"--although--"

"Why, exactly."

"--although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of Breschau."

"It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain days--particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on Thursdays."

"By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday."

"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is."

"And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the sunrise--"

"Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,--but with a portmanteau!"

The Baroness was silent.

"With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia."

The Baroness was silent.

"Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word portmanteau--"

The Baroness bent toward him and said:

"I am sorry to inform your Highness that there is some one at the door of the summer-house."

II

Inasmuch as all Noumaria knew that its little Grand Duke, once closeted with the lady whom he delighted to honor, did not love intrusions, and inasmuch as a discreet Court had learned, long ago, to regard the summer-house as consecrate to his Highness and the Baroness von Altenburg,--for these reasons the Grand Duke was inclined to resent disturbance of his privacy when he first peered out into the gardens.

His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, and it smacked more of bewilderment.

"It is only my wife," he said.

"And the Comte de Châteauroux," said the Baroness.

There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Châteauroux as a foil, his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's æsthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless.

"After all--" he began, and rose.

"I am afraid that her Highness--" the Baroness likewise commenced.

"She would be sure to," said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down.

"I do not, however," said the Baroness, "approve of eavesdropping."

"Oh, if you put it that way--" agreed the Grand Duke, and he was rising once more, when the voice of de Châteauroux stopped him.

"No, not at any cost!" de Châteauroux; was saying; "I cannot and I will not give you up, Victoria!"

"--though I have heard," said his Highness, "that the moonlight is bad for the eyes." Saying this, he seated himself composedly in the darkest corner of the summer-house.

"This is madness!" the Grand Duchess said--"sheer madness."

"Madness, if you will," de Châteauroux persisted, "yet it is a madness too powerful and sweet to be withstood. Listen, Victoria,"--and he waved his hand toward the palace, whence music, softened by the distance, came from the lighted windows,--"do you not remember? They used to play that air at Staarberg."

The Grand Duchess had averted her gaze from him. She did not speak.

He continued: "Those were contented days, were they not, when we were boy and girl together? I have danced to that old-world tune so many times--with you! And to-night, madame, it recalls a host of unforgettable things, for it brings back to memory the scent of that girl's hair, the soft cheek that sometimes brushed mine, the white shoulders which I so often had hungered to kiss, before I dared--"

"Hein?" muttered the Grand Duke.

"We are no longer boy and girl," the Grand Duchess said. "All that lies behind us. It was a dream--a foolish dream which we must forget."

"Can you in truth forget?" de Châteauroux demanded,--"can you forget it all, Victoria?--forget that night a Gnestadt, when you confessed you loved me? forget that day at Staarberg, when we were lost in the palace gardens?"

"Mon Dieu, what a queer method!" murmured the Grand Duke. "The man makes love by the almanac."

"Nay, dearest woman in the world," de Châteauroux went on, "you loved me once, and that you cannot have quite forgotten. We were happy then--very incredibly happy,--and now--"

"Life," said the Grand Duchess, "cannot always be happy."

"Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is this of mine,--a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,--laughing, or insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady. Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically about the day's business, but I hunger more than ever--"

"This," said the Grand Duke, "is insanity."

"Yet I love better the dreams of the night," de Châteauroux went on; "for they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances which my love weaves out of multitudinous memories,--fantastic stories of just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohé, it is a wonderful vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of my heart's desire, and though the waking be bitter...! Need it be just a dream, Victoria?"

"Not but that he does it rather well, you know," whispered the Grand Duke to the Baroness von Altenburg, "although the style is florid. Yet that last speech was quite in my earlier and more rococo manner."

The Grand Duchess did not stir as de Châteauroux bent over her jewelled hand.

"Come! come now!" he said. "Let us not lose our only chance of happiness. 'Come forth, O Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I already have forgot, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go a-shepherding--!'"

"Oh, but to think of dragging in Theocritus!" observed his Highness. "Can this be what they call seduction nowadays!"

"I cannot," the Grand Duchess whispered, and her voice trembled. "You know that I cannot, dear."

"You will go!" said de Châteauroux.

"My husband--"

"A man who leaves you for each new caprice, who flaunts his mistresses in the face of Europe."

"My children--"

"Eh, mon Dieu! are they or aught else to stand in my way, now that I know you love me!"

"--it would be criminal--"

"Ah, yes, but then you love me!"

"--you act a dishonorable part, de Châteauroux,--"

"That does not matter. You love me!"

"I will never see you again," said the Grand Duchess, firmly. "Go! I loathe you, I loathe you, monsieur, even more than I loathe myself for having stooped to listen to you."

"You love me!" said de Châteauroux, and took her in his arms.

Then the Grand Duchess rested her head upon the shoulder of de Châteauroux, and breathed, "God help me!--yes!"

"Really," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have thought it of Victoria. It seems incredible for any woman of taste to be thus lured astray by citations of the almanac and secondary Greek poets."

"You will come, then?" the Count said.

And the Grand Duchess answered, quietly, "It shall be as you will."

More lately, while the Grand Duke and the Baroness craned their necks, and de Châteauroux bent, very slowly, over her upturned lips, the Grand Duchess struggled from him, saying, "Hark, Philippe! for I heard some one--something stirring--"

"It was the wind, dear heart."

"Hasten!--I am afraid!--Oh, it is madness to wait here!"

"At dawn, then,--in the gardens?"

"Yes,--ah, yes, yes! But come, mon ami." And they disappeared in the direction of the palace.

III

The Grand Duke looked dispassionately on their retreating figures; inquiringly on the Baroness; reprovingly on the moon, as though he rather suspected it of having treated him with injustice.

"Ma foi," said his Highness, at length, "I have never known such a passion for sunrises. Shortly we shall have them announced as 'Patronized by the Nobility.'"

The Baroness said only, with an ellipsis, "Her own cousin, too!" [Footnote: By courtesy rather than legally; Mademoiselle Berlin was, however, undoubtedly the Elector of Badenburg's sister, though on the wrong side of the blanket; and to her (second) son by Louis Quinze his French Majesty accorded the title of Comte de Châteauroux.]

"Victoria," observed the Grand Duke, "has always had the highest regard for her family; but in this she is going too far--"

"Yes," said the Baroness; "as far as Vienna."

"--and I shall tell her that there are limits, Pardieu," the Grand Duke emphatically repeated, "that there are limits."

"Whereupon, if I am not mistaken, she will reply that there are--baronesses."

"I shall then appeal to her better nature--"

"You will find it," said the Baroness, "strangely hard of hearing."

"--and afterward I shall have de Châteauroux arrested."

"On what grounds, your Highness?"

"In fact," admitted the Grand Duke, "we do not want a scandal"

"It is no longer," the Baroness considered, "altogether a question of what we want."

"And, morbleu! there will be a horrible scandal--"

"The public gazettes will thrive on it."

"--and trouble with her father, if not international complications--"

"The armies of Noumaria and Badenburg have for years had nothing to do."

"--and later a divorce."

"The lawyers will call you blessed. In any event," the Baroness conscientiously added, "your lawyers will. I am afraid that hers--"

"Will scarcely be so courteous?" the Grand Duke queried.

"It is not altogether impossible," the Baroness admitted, "that in preparation of their briefs, they may light upon some other adjective."

"And, in short," his Highness summed it up, "there will be the deuce to pay."

"Oh, no! the piper," said the Baroness,--"after long years of dancing. That is what moralists will be saying, I suspect."

And this seemed so highly probable that the plump little Grand Duke frowned, and lapsed into a most un-ducal sullenness.

"Your Highness," murmured the Baroness, "I cannot express my feelings as to this shocking revelation--"

"Madame," said the Grand Duke, "no more can I. At least, not in the presence of a lady."

"--But I have a plan--"

"I," said the Grand Duke, "have an infinity of plans; but de Châteauroux has a carriage, and a superfluity of Bourbon blood; and Victoria has the obstinacy of a mule."

"--And my plan," said the Baroness, "is a good one."

"It needs to be," said the Grand Duke.

But thereupon the Baroness von Altenburg unfolded to his Highness her scheme for preserving coherency in the reigning family of Noumaria, and the Grand Duke of that principality heard and marvelled.

"Amalia," he said, when she had ended, "you should be prime-minister--"

"Ah, your Highness," said the lady, "you flatter me, for none of my sex has ever been sufficiently unmanly to make a good politician."

"--though, indeed," the Grand Duke reflected, "what would a mere prime-minister do with lips like yours?"

"He would set you an excellent example by admiring them from a distance. Do you agree, then, to my plan?"

"Why, ma foi, yes!" said the Grand Duke, and he sighed. "In the gardens at dawn."

"At dawn," said the Baroness, "in the gardens."

IV

That night the Grand Duke was somewhat impeded in falling asleep. He was seriously annoyed by the upsetment of his escape from the Noumarian exile, since he felt that he had prodigally fulfilled his obligations, and in consequence deserved a holiday; the duchy was committed past retreat to the French alliance, there were two legitimate children to reign after him, and be the puppets of de Puysange and de Bernis, [Footnote: The Grand Duke, however, owed de Puysange some reparation for having begot a child upon the latter's wife; and with de Bernis had not dissimilar ties, for the Marquis de Soyecourt had in Venice, in 1749, relinquished to him the beautiful nun of Muran, Maria Montepulci,--which lady de Bernis subsequently turned over to Giacomo Casanova, as is duly recorded in the latter's _Mémoires_, under the year 1753.] just as he had been. Truly, it was diverting, after a candid appraisal of his own merits, to reflect that a dwarfish Louis de Soyecourt had succeeded where quite impeccable people like Bayard and du Guesclin had failed; by four years of scandalous living in Noumaria he had confirmed the duchy to the French interest, had thereby secured the wavering friendship of Austria, and had, in effect, set France upon her feet. Yes, the deed was notable, and he wanted his reward.

To be the forsaken husband, to play Sgarnarelle with all Europe as an audience, was, he considered, an entirely inadequate reward. That was out of the question, for, deuce take it! somebody had to be Regent while the brats were growing up. And Victoria, as he had said, would make an admirable Regent.

He was rather fond of his wife than otherwise. He appreciated the fact that she never meddled with him, and he sincerely regretted she should have taken a fancy to that good-for-nothing de Châteauroux. What qualms the poor woman must be feeling at this very moment over the imminent loss of her virtue! But love was a cruel and unreasonable lord.... There was Nelchen Thorn, for instance.... He wondered would he have been happy with Nelchen? her hands were rather coarse about the finger-tips, as he remembered them.... The hands of Amalia, though, were perfection....

Then at last the body that had been Louis Quillan's fell asleep.

V

Discontentedly the Grand Duke appraised the scene, and in the murky twilight which heralded the day he found the world a cheerless place. The Gardens of Breschau were deserted, save for a travelling carriage and its fretful horses, who stamped and snuffled within forty yards of the summer-house.

"It appears," he said, "that I am the first on the ground, and that de Châteauroux is a dilatory lover. Young men degenerate."