Chapter IV: Part II: I (2)

"Did I behave so badly as that?" said Cosmo, feeling suddenly very much at ease with that lady with whom he had never even exchanged a formal greeting. She had grown more animated. As he was very fond of his sister he answered her numerous questions about Henrietta with interest and pleasure. From that subject the lady on the sofa, who may or may not have been Adèle d'Armand at one time, went on putting a series of questions about the house and all the people in it in a manner that proved a precise and affectionate recollection of those days. The memory of the countryside seemed to have been cherished by her too, and Cosmo's heart warmed to the subject. She remembered certain spots in the park and certain points of view in the neighbourhood as though she had left them but a year before. She seemed not to have forgotten a single servant in the house. She asked after Spire.

"I have got him with me," said Cosmo. "Of course he has grown elderly."

He almost forgot to whom he was speaking. Without associating her very distinctly with the child Adèle, he was taking the Countess de Montevesso for granted. He delighted in seeing her so quiet and so perfectly natural. The first effect of her appearance persisted, with only the added sense of the deep dark blue of her eyes, an impression of living profundity that made his thoughts about her pause. But he was unconsciously grateful to her for the fact that she had never given him a moment of that acute social awkwardness from which he used to suffer so much; though there could not be the slightest doubt that the little Adèle (if there had ever been a little Adèle) was now a very fine lady indeed. But she loved the old place and everything and everybody in it. Of that too there could be no doubt. The few references she made to his mother touched and surprised Cosmo. They seemed to imply some depth in her which he, the son, and Henrietta, the daughter, had failed to penetrate. In contrast with that, Cosmo remarked that after the inquiry after Sir Charles's health, which was one of her first questions, his father was not mentioned again.

"Are you going to make a stay in Genoa?" she asked after a pause.

"A few days," said Cosmo, in an irresolute tone, because he did not know what answer was expected to this inquiry, the first which had nothing to do with Yorkshire. His interest in the rest of Italy was, he perceived, very small. But by the association of ideas he thought suddenly of the passing hours. He raised his eyes to a faintly engraved brass disc with black hands hung on the wall above one of the two doors at that end of the room which he was facing. The black hands pointed to eleven, but what prevented his eyes from returning at once to the delighted contemplation of the Countess of Montevesso was the fact that the door below the clock seemed to have moved slightly.

"I intend to see something of Italy," he said. "My time really is my own, I have nothing special to do. It seems to me that the principal object of my journey has been attained now. I don't think my father would be surprised to hear that I had turned back after leaving Genoa."

The Countess looking up at this, their eyes remained fastened together for a time and Cosmo thought: "What on earth am I saying?" He watched her lips move to form the words which quite frightened him.

"Did Sir Charles give you a message for me?"

He thought he had brought this on himself. It was a painful moment. It lasted long enough to give the Countess the time to assume an expression of indifference, startling after the low tone of her question.

"No," said Cosmo truthfully. "I have only a message for your father." He waited a moment. "But I will tell you one of the last things Henrietta told me. She told me that when you were married my father could think of nothing for days but you."

He did not venture to look at her; then added impulsively, "My father loved you dearly. We children could see it very well. Ad----"

"Why don't you finish my name?" her seductive voice asked.

Cosmo coloured. "Well, you know, I never heard you really called by any other name. It came naturally since I suppose you must be--Adèle."

Madame de Montevesso, who had been hanging on his lips, was surprised by Cosmo raising his eyes to stare intensely into the part of the room behind her back. Just as he was making his apology he had noticed the door under the clock swing open without any sound at all; and there entered quite noiselessly, too, and with something ambiguous in the very motion, a young girl (nothing could have been more unexpected) in a sort of dishabille of a white skirt and a long pink jacket of some very thin stuff which had a silky shimmer. She made a few steps and stopped. She was rather short, her hair was intensely black and drawn tightly away from her forehead. Cosmo felt sure (though he couldn't see) that it was done in one long plait at the back. Her face was a short oval, her chin blunt, her nose a little too big and her black eyes perfectly round. Cosmo had the time to notice all this because astonishment prevented him from looking away. The girl advanced slowly if with perfect assurance, and stared unwinkingly at Cosmo, who in the extremity of his embarrassment got up from his chair. The young girl then stopped short and for a moment the three persons in the room preserved an absolute immobility. Then the Countess glanced over her shoulder leisurely and addressed Cosmo.

"This is Clelia, a niece of my husband." Cosmo made a deep bow to the possessor of the round black eyes. "I didn't know of her existence till about a fortnight ago," added Madame de Montevesso carelessly. The round-eyed girl still staring hard made a curtsey to Cosmo. "My husband," went on Adèle, "has also two old aunts living here. I have never seen them. This house is very big."

Cosmo resumed his seat and there was a moment of silence. The girl sat down in the chair before the writing table sideways, folded her arms on its back, and rested her chin on her hands. Her round eyes examined Cosmo with a sort of animal frankness. He thought suddenly that it was time to bring his visit to an end. He would have risen at once but for the Countess de Montevesso beginning to speak to him, still in English. She seemed to have guessed what was passing through his mind.

"Don't go yet for a moment," she said, in a perfectly unconcerned voice, then paused. "We were talking about your father."

"As to him," said Cosmo, "I have nothing more to say. I have told you all the truth as far as I am certain of it."

She inclined her head slowly and in the same level voice:

"The Court is here and most of the foreign ambassadors. We are waiting here for the arrival of the Queen of Sardinia, who may or may not come within the next month or so. This is considered a good post of observation, but there is very little to observe just now from the diplomatic point of view. Most of us have exhausted almost all emotions. Life has grown suddenly very dull. We gossip a little about each other; we wait for the end of the Vienna Congress and discuss the latest rumour that floats about. Yes. The play is over, the stage seems empty. If I were you I would stay a little longer here."

"I certainly mean to stay here for some time," declared Cosmo with sudden resolution.

"That's right," she continued in the same indifferent tone. "But wait a few days before you write home. You have awakened old memories in me. Inconceivably distant," she went on in a voice more expressionless than ever, "and the dormant feelings of what seems quite another age."

Cosmo smiled at this. The girl with round eyes was keeping perfectly still with her watchful stare. Madame de Montevesso seemed to read Cosmo's thoughts.

"Yes," she insisted. "I feel very old and everything is very far. I am twenty-six and I have been married very nearly ten years now."

Cosmo, looking at her face, thought that those had been the most agitated ten years of European history. He said, "I have no doubt that Yorkshire must seem very far away to you."

"I suppose you write very often home?" she said.

Cosmo defended himself from being one of those people who write letters about their travels. He had no talent for that; and then what could one write to a young girl like Henrietta and to a man as austere as his father, who had so long retired from the world? Cosmo had found it very difficult. Of course he took care to let them know pretty often that he was safe and sound.

Adèle could see this point of view. She seemed amused by the innocent difficulties of a young man having no one but a father and a sister to write to. She ascertained that he had no intimate friend left behind to whom he could confide his impressions. Cosmo said he had formed none of those intimacies that induce a man to share his innermost thoughts and feelings with somebody else.

"Probably your father was like that too," said Madame de Montevesso. "I fancy he must have been very difficult to please, and still more difficult to conquer."

"Oh, as to that," said Cosmo, "I can safely say I've never been conquered," and he laughed boyishly. He confessed further that he had the habit of thinking contradictorily about most things. "My father was never like that," he concluded.

The gravity with which she listened to him now disconcerted him secretly. At last she nodded and opined that his difficulties had their source in the liveliness of his sympathies. He declared that he suffered most at times from the difficulty of making himself understood by men of his own age.

"And the women?" she asked quietly.

"Oh, the women!" he said, without the slightest levity. "One would not even try." He raised his eyes and, obeying a sudden impulse, added: "I think that perhaps you could understand me."

"That would be because I am so much older," she said. Cosmo discovered in her delicately modelled face, with all its grace and freshness of youth, an interrogative profundity of expression, the impress of the problems of life and the conflicts of the soul. The great light of day had treated her kindly. Bathed in the sunshine entering through the four windows, she appeared to him wonderful in the glow of her complexion, in the harmony of her form and the composed nobility of her attitude. He felt this wonderfulness of her whole person in some sort physically, and thought that he had looked at her too long. He glanced aside and met the dark girl's round unwinking stare of a cat ready to fly at one. She had not moved a hair's breadth, and Cosmo felt reluctant to take his eyes off her exactly as though she had been a fierce cat. He heard the voice of the Countess of Montevesso and had to turn to her.

"Well, wait a few days before you write home about . . . Genoa."

"I had a mind to begin a letter yesterday," he said.

"What? Already! Only a few hours after your arrival!"

"Yes. Henrietta is very anxious to hear everything relating to the Emperor Napoleon."

Madame de Montevesso was genuinely surprised. Her voice lost its equable charm while she asked what on earth could he have had to tell of Napoleon that he could not have written to her from Paris.

"Yes. He is in everybody's thoughts and on everybody's lips there," he said. "Whenever three people come together he is the presence that is with them. But last night . . ."

He was on the point of telling her of his adventure on the tower when she struck in:

"The Congress will put an end to all that presently." It checked Cosmo's expansiveness and he said instead:

"It's very possible. But last night on arriving here I experienced a curious sensation of his nearness. I went down in the evening to look at the Port."

"He isn't certainly very far from here. And what are your feelings about him?"

"Oh," he rejoined lightly, "as about everything else in the world--contradictory."

Madame de Montevesso rose suddenly, saying:

"I won't ask you, then, as to your feelings about myself." Cosmo stood up hastily. He was a little the taller of the two but their faces were nearly on a level. "I should like you to make up your mind about me before you take up your traveller's pen," continued Adèle. "Come again this evening. There will be a few people here; and, as you have said, when a few people come together just now Napoleon is always with them, an unseen presence. But you will see my father. Do you remember him at all?"

Cosmo assured her that he remembered the Marquis d'Armand perfectly. He was on the point of making his parting bow when Madame de Montevesso, with the two words "_à l'Anglaise_," put out her hand. He took it and forgot himself in the unexpected sensation of this contact. He was in no haste to release it when to his extreme surprise, with a slight movement of her eyes towards the girl at the writing table, Madame de Montevesso said:

"Did you ever see anything like that?"

Cosmo was taken completely aback. He dropped her hand. He did not know what to say, and even if it was proper for him to smile. Madame de Montevesso continued in a voice betraying no sentiment of any kind: "I can never be sure of my privacy now. Do you understand that I am her aunt? She wanders all over this palazzo very much like a domestic animal, only more observant, and she is by no means an idiot. Luckily she knows no language but Italian."

They had been moving slowly towards the other end of the room, but now Madame de Montevesso stopped and returned Cosmo's parting bow with a slight inclination of her head. Before passing round the screen between him and the door Cosmo glanced back. The girl on the chair had not stirred.

He had half a hope that the mulatto maid would be waiting for him. But he saw no one. As he crossed the courtyard he might have thought himself leaving an uninhabited house. But the streets through which he made his way to his inn were thronged with people. The day was quite warm. Already on the edge of the pavements, here and there, there was a display of flowers for sale; and at every turn he saw more people who seemed carefree, and the women with their silken shoes and the lace scarves on their heads appeared to him quite charming. The plaza was a scene of constant movement. Here and there a group stood still, conversing in low voices but with expressive gestures. As he approached his hotel he caught an evanescent sight of the man he had met on the tower. His cap was unmistakable. Cosmo mended his pace but the man had disappeared; and after looking in all directions Cosmo went up the steps of the inn. In his room he found Spire folding methodically some clothes.

"I saw that man," said Cosmo, handing him his hat.

"Was he following you, sir?" asked Spire.

"No, I saw his back quite near this house."

"I shouldn't wonder if he were coming here," opined Spire.

"In any case I wouldn't have spoken to him in the piazza," said Cosmo.

"Much better not, sir," said the servant.

"After all," said Cosmo, "I don't know that I have anything to say to him."

From these words Spire concluded that his master had found something more interesting to occupy his mind. While he went on with his work he talked to Cosmo, who had thrown himself into an armchair, of some repairs needed to the carriage, and also informed him that the English doctor had left a message asking whether Mr. Latham would do him the honour to take his midday meal with him at the same table as last night. After a slight hesitation Cosmo assented, and Spire, saying that he would go and tell them downstairs, left the room.

In the solitude favourable to concentration of thought Cosmo discovered that he could not think connectedly, either of the fair curls of the Countess de Montevesso or of the vague story of her marriage. Strictly speaking he knew nothing of it; and this ignorance interfered with the process of consecutive thinking; but he formed some images and even came to the verge of that state in which one sees visions. The obscurity of her past helped the freedom of his fancies. He had an intuitive conviction that he had seen her in the fullest brilliance of her beauty and of the charm of her mind. A woman like that was a great power, he reflected, and then it occurred to him that, marvellous as she was, she was not her own mistress.

Some church clock striking loudly the hour roused him up, but before he went downstairs he paced the floor to and fro several times. And when he forced himself out of that empty room it was with a profound disgust of all he was going to see and hear, a momentary repulsion towards the claims of the world, like a man tearing himself away from the side of a beloved mistress.

III

Returning that evening to the Palazzo Brignoli, Cosmo found the lantern under the vaulted roof lighted. There was also a porter in gold-laced livery and a cocked hat who saluted him, and in the white anteroom with red benches along the walls two lackeys made ready to divest him of his cloak. But a man in sombre garments detained Cosmo, saying that he was the ambassador's valet, and led him away along a very badly lighted inner corridor. He explained that His Excellency the Ambassador wished to see Monsieur Latham for a few moments in private before Monsieur Latham joined the general company. The ambassador's cabinet into which he introduced Cosmo was lighted by a pair of candelabra. Cosmo was told that His Excellency was finishing dressing, and then the man disappeared. Cosmo noticed that there were several doors besides the one by which he had entered, which was the least conspicuous of them all, and in fact so inconspicuous, corresponding exactly to a painted panel, that it might have been called a secret door. Other doors were framed in costly woods, lining the considerable thicknesses of the walls. One of them opened without noise and Cosmo saw enter a man somewhat taller than he had expected to see, with a white head, in a coat with softly gleaming embroideries and a broad ribbon across his breast. He advanced, opening his arms wide, and Cosmo, who noticed that one of the hands was holding a snuffbox, submitted with good grace to the embrace of the Marquis d'Armand, whose lips touched his cheeks one after another and whose hands then rested at arm's length on his shoulder for a moment.

"Sit down, _mon enfant_," were the first words spoken, and Cosmo obeyed, facing the armchair into which the Marquis had dropped. A white meagre hand set in fine lace moved the candelabra on the table, and Cosmo good-humouredly submitted to being contemplated in silence. This man in a splendid coat, white-headed and with a broad ribbon across his breast, seemed to have no connection whatever with his father's guest, whom as a boy he remembered walking with Sir Charles amongst deep shrubberies or writing busily at one end of the long table in the library of Latham Hall, always with the slightly subdued mien of an exile and an air of being worried by the possession of unspeakable secrets which he preserved even when playing at backgammon with Sir Charles in the great drawing room. Cosmo, returning the gaze of the tired eyes, remarked that the ambassador looked old but not at all senile.

At last the Marquis declared that he could detect the lineaments of his old friend in the son's face, and in a voice that was low and kindly put a series of questions about Sir Charles, about London and his old friends there; questions which Cosmo, especially as to the latter, was not always able to answer fully.

"I forget! You are still so young," said the ambassador, recollecting himself. This young man sitting here before him with a friendly smile had his friends amongst his own contemporaries, shared the ideas and the views of his own generation which had grown up since the Revolution, to whom the Revolution was only a historical fact and whose enthusiasms had a strange complexion, for the undisciplined hopes of the young make them reckless in words and sometimes in actions. The Marquis's own generation had been different. It had had no inducement to be reckless. It had been born to a settled order of things. Certainly a few philosophers had been indulging for years in subversive sentimentalism, but the foundations of Europe seemed unshakable. He noticed Cosmo's expectant attitude and said:

"I wonder what my dear old friend is thinking of all this."

"It is not very easy to get at my father's thoughts," confessed Cosmo. "After all, you must know my father much better than I do, Monsieur le Marquis."

"In the austerity of his convictions your father was more like a republican of ancient times," said the Marquis seriously. "Does that surprise you, my young friend? . . ." Cosmo shook his head slightly. . . . "Yet we always agreed very well. Your father understood every kind of fidelity. The world had never known him and it will never know him now. But I, who approached him closely, could have nothing but the greatest respect for his character and for his far-seeing wisdom."

"I am very glad to hear you say this," interjected Cosmo.

"He was a scornful man," said the Marquis, then paused and repeated once more: "Yes. _Un grand dédaigneux._ He was that. But one accepted it from him as one would not from another man, because one felt that it was not the result of mean grievances or disappointed hopes. Now the old order is coming back and, whatever my old friend may think of it, he had his share in that work."

Cosmo raised his head. "I had no idea," he murmured.

"Yes," said the Marquis. "Indirectly if you like. All I could offer to my Princes was my life, my toil, the sacrifice of my deepest feelings as husband and father. I don't say this to boast. I could not have acted otherwise. But for my share of the work, risky, often desperate, and continuously hopeless as it seemed to be, I have to thank your father's help, _mon jeune ami._ It came out of that fortune which some day will be yours. The only thing in all the activities the penetrating mind of your father was not scornful of was my fidelity. He understood that it was above the intrigued, the lies, the selfish stupidities of that exiles' life which we all shared with our Princes. They will never know how much they owe to that English gentleman. When parting with my wife and child I was sustained by the thought that his friendship and care were extended over them and would not fail."

"I have heard nothing of all this," said Cosmo. "Of course I was not ignorant of the great friendship that united you to him. This is one of the things that the world does know about my father."

"Have you brought a letter for me?" asked the Marquis. "I haven't heard from him for a long time. After we returned to France, through the influence of my son-in-law, communications were very difficult. Ten years of war, my dear friend, ten years."

"Father very seldom takes a pen in hand now," said Cosmo, "but . . ."

The Marquis interrupted him. "When you write home, my dear friend, tell him that I never gave way to promptings of mean ambition or an unworthy vanity. Tell him that I twice declined the Embassy of Madrid which was pressed on me, and that if I accepted the nomination as a Commissioner for settling the frontiers with the representatives of the Allied Powers it was at the cost of my deepest feelings and only to serve my vanquished country. My secret missions had made me known to many European statesmen. I knew I was liked. I thought I could do some good. The Russians, I must say, were quite charming, and you may tell your father that Sir Charles Stewart clothed his demands in the form of the most perfect politeness; but all those transactions were based after all on the right of the strongest. I had black moments and I suffered as a Frenchman. I suffered . . ."

The Marquis got up, walked away to the other end of the room, then coming back dropped into the armchair again. Cosmo was too startled by this display of feeling to rise. The ambassadorial figure in the laced coat exhaled a deep sigh. "Your father knows that, unlike so many of the other refugees, I have always remained a Frenchman. One would have paid any price almost to avoid this humiliation."

Cosmo was gratified by the anxiety of a king's friend to, as it were, justify himself before his father. He discovered that even this old royalist had been forced, if only for a moment, to regret the days of imperial victories. The Marquis tapped his snuffbox, took a pinch of snuff, and composed himself.

"Of course when this Turin mission was unexpectedly pressed on me I went to the King himself and explained that, having refused a much higher post, I could not think of accepting this one. But the King pointed out that this was an altogether different position. The King of Sardinia was his brother-in-law. There was nothing to say against such an argument. His Majesty was also good enough to say that he was anxious to grant me any favour I might ask. I didn't want any favours but I had to think of something on the spur of the moment and I begged for a special right of entrée on days on which there are no receptions. I couldn't resist so much graciousness," continued the Marquis. "I have managed to keep clear of prejudices that poison and endanger the hopes of this restoration, but I am a royalist, a man of my own time. Remember to tell your father all this, my dear young friend."

"I shall not fail," said Cosmo, wondering within himself at the power of such a strange argument, yet feeling a liking and respect for that old man torn between rejoicing and sorrow at the end of his troubled life.

"I should like him to know, too," the Marquis said in his bland and friendly voice, "that M. de Talleyrand just before he left for Vienna held out to me the prospect of the London Embassy later. That, certainly, I would not refuse, if only to be nearer a man to whom my obligations are immense and only equalled by the affection I had borne towards him through all those unhappy years."

"My father--" began Cosmo--"I ought to have given you his message before--told me to give you his love and to tell you that when you are tired of your grandeurs there is always a large place for you in his house."

Cosmo was surprised at the sudden movement of the Marquis, who leaned over the arm of his chair and put his hand over his eyes. For a time complete silence reigned in the room. Then Cosmo said:

"I think somebody is scratching at the door."

The Marquis sat up and listened, then raising his voice: "You may come in."

The man in black clothes, entering through the hidden door, stopped at some distance in a respectful attitude. The Marquis beckoned him to approach, and the man, bending to his ear, said in a low voice which was, however, audible to Cosmo: "He is here." The Marquis answered in an undertone, "He came rather early. He must wait," at which the man murmured something which Cosmo couldn't hear. He became aware that the Marquis looked at him irresolutely before he said:

"My dear boy, you will have to make your entrance into my daughter's salon together with me. I thought of sending you back the way you came, but as a matter of fact the passage is blocked. . . . Bring him in and let him sit here after we are gone," he directed the man in black, and Cosmo only then recognized Bernard, the servant of proved fidelity in all the misfortunes of the D'Armand family. Bernard withdrew without responding in any way to Cosmo's smile of recognition. "In my position," continued the Marquis, "I have to make use of agents more or less shady. Those men often object to being seen. Their occupation is risky. There is a man of that sort waiting in the corridor."

Cosmo said he was at the Marquis's orders, but the ambassador remained in the armchair, tapping the lid of his snuffbox slightly.

"You saw my daughter this morning, I understand." Cosmo made an assenting bow. Madame de Montevesso had done him the honour to receive him in the morning.

"You speak French very well," said the Marquis. "I don't really know why the English are supposed to be bad linguists. We French are much worse. Did you two speak French together?"

"No," said Cosmo, "we spoke in English. It was Madame de Montevesso's own choice."

"She hasn't quite forgotten it, has she?"

"It struck me," said Cosmo, "that your daughter has forgotten neither the language nor the people, nor the sights of her early life. I was touched by the fidelity of her memory and the warmth of her feelings."

His own tone had warmth enough in it to make the Marquis look up at him. There was a short pause. "None of us are likely to forget those days of noble and infinite kindness. We were but vagrants on a hostile earth. My daughter could not have forgotten! As long as there is anybody of our name left . . ."

The Marquis checked himself abruptly, but almost at once went on in a slightly changed tone: "But I am alone of my name now. I wish I had had a son so that gratitude could have been perpetuated from generation to generation and become a traditional thing between our two families. But this is not to be. Perhaps you didn't know I had a brother. He was much younger than myself and I loved him as though he had been my son. Directly I had placed my wife and child in safety, your father insisted on giving me the means to return to France secretly in order to try and save that young head. But all my attempts failed. It fell on the scaffold. He was one of the last victims of the sanguinary madness of that time. . . . But let us talk of something else. What are your plans, my young friend?"

Cosmo confessed that he had no plans. He intended to stay in Genoa for some time. Madame de Montevesso had been good enough to encourage him in that idea, and really there was such a feeling of leisure in the European atmosphere that he didn't see why he should make any plans. The world was enjoying its first breathing time. Cosmo corrected himself--well no, perhaps not exactly enjoying. To be strictly truthful he had not noticed much feeling of joy. . . . He hesitated a moment but the whole attitude of the Marquis was so benevolent and encouraging that he continued to take stock of his own sensations and continued in the same strain. There was activity, lots of activity, agitation perhaps, but no real joy. Or at any rate, no enjoyment. Not even now, after the foreign troops had withdrawn from France and all the sovereigns of the world had gone to Vienna.

The Marquis listened with profound attention. "Are those your impressions, _mon cher enfant?_ Somehow they don't seem very favourable. But you English are very apt to judge us with severity. I hear very little of what is going on in France."

The train of his own thoughts had mastered Cosmo, who added, "What struck me most was the sense of security . . ." he paused for an instant and the ambassador, bending forward in the chair with the air of a man attempting an experiment, insinuated gently:

"Not such a bad thing, that sentiment."

In the ardour of his honesty Cosmo did not notice either the attitude or the tone, though he caught the sense of the words.

"Was it of the right kind," he went on, as if communing with himself, "or was it the absence of sound thought, and almost of all feeling? M. le Marquis, I am too young to judge, but one would have thought, listening to the talk one heard on all sides, that such a man as Bonaparte had never existed."

"You have been in the society of returned exiles," said the Marquis after a moment of meditation. "You must judge them charitably. A class that has been under the ban for years lives on its passions and on prejudices whose growth stifles not only its sagacity but its visions of the reality." He changed his tone. "Our present Minister of Foreign Affairs never communicates with me personally. The only personal letter I had from him in the last four months was on the subject of procuring some truffles that grow in this country for the King, and there were four pages of most minute directions as to where they were to be found and how they were to be packed and transmitted to Paris. As to my dispatches, I get merely formal acknowledgments. I really don't know what is going on except through travellers who naturally colour their information with their own desires. M. de Talleyrand writes me short notes now and then, but as he has been himself for months in Vienna he can't possibly know what is going on in France. His acute mind, his extraordinary talents are fit to cope with the international situation, but I suppose he too is uneasy. In fact, my dear young friend, as far as I can judge, uneasy suspense is the prevailing sentiment all round the basin of the Mediterranean. The fate of nations still hangs in the balance."

Cosmo waited a moment before he whispered, "And the fate of some individual souls perhaps."

The ambassador made no sound till after a whole minute had elapsed, and then it was only to say:

"I suppose that like many of your young and even old countrymen, you have formed a project of visiting Elba."

Cosmo at once adopted a conversational tone. "Half-formed at most," he said. "I was never one of those who like to visit prisons and gaze at their fellow beings in captivity. A strange taste indeed! I will own to you, M. le Marquis," he went on boyishly, "that the notion of captivity is very odious to me, for men, and for animals too. I would sooner look at a dead lion than a lion in a cage. Yet I remember a young French friend of mine telling me that we English were the most curious nation in the world. But as you said, everybody seems to be doing Elba. I suppose there are no difficulties."

"Not enough difficulties," said the ambassador blandly. "I mean for the good of all concerned."

"Ah," said Cosmo, and repeated thoughtfully, "All concerned! The other day in Paris I met Mr. Wycherley on his way home. He seemed to have had no difficulty at all, not even in Elba. We had quite a long audience. Mr. Wycherley struck me as a man of blunt feelings. Apparently the Emperor--after all, the imperial title is not taken away from him yet----"

The Marquis lowered his head slowly. "No, not yet."

"Well, the Emperor said to him: 'You have come here to look at a wild beast,' and Mr. Wycherley, who doesn't seem to be at a loss for words, answered at once: 'I have come here to look at a great man.' What a crude answer! He is telling this story to everybody. He told me he is going to publish a pamphlet about his visit."

"Mr. Wycherley is a man of good company. His answer was polite. What would have been yours, my young friend?"

"I don't think I will ever be called to make any sort of answer to the great man," said Cosmo.

The Marquis got up with the words: "I think that on the whole you will be wise not to waste your time. I have here a letter from the French Consul in Leghorn quoting the latest report he had from Elba. It states that Bonaparte remains shut up for days together in his private apartments. The reason given is that he fears attempts on his life being made by emissaries sent from France and Italy. He is not visible. Another report states that lately he has expressed great uneasiness at the movements of the French and English frigates."

The Marquis laid a friendly hand on Cosmo's shoulder. "You cannot complain of me; I have given you the very latest intelligence. And now let us join whatever company my daughter is receiving. I think very few people." He crossed the room, followed by Cosmo, and Cosmo noticed a distinct lameness in his gait. At the moment of opening the door the Marquis d'Armand said:

"Your arm, _mon jeune ami._ I am suffering from rheumatism considerably this evening."

Cosmo hastened to offer his arm, and the Marquis with his hand on the door said:

"I can hardly walk. I hope I shall be able to go to the audience I have to-morrow with the King of Sardinia. He is an excellent man but all his ideas and feelings came to a standstill in '98. It makes all conversation with him extremely difficult even for me. His ministers are more reasonable, but that is only because they are afraid."

A low groan escaped the ambassador. He remained leaning with one hand on Cosmo's shoulder and with the other clinging to the door-handle.

"Afraid of the people?" asked Cosmo.

"The people are being corrupted by secret societies," the Marquis said in his bland tone. "All Italy is seething with conspiracies. What, however, they are afraid most of is the Man of Elba."

Cosmo for an instant wondered at those confidences, but a swift reflection that probably those things were known to everybody who was anybody in Europe made him think that this familiar talk was merely the effect of the Marquis's kindness to the son of his old friend. "I think I can proceed now," said the Marquis, pushing the door open. Cosmo recognized one of the rooms which he had passed in the morning. It was the only one of the suite which was fully lighted by a great central glass chandelier, but even in that only two rows of candles were lighted. It was a small reception. The rest of the suite presented but a dim perspective. A semi-circle of heavy armchairs was sparsely occupied by less than a dozen ladies. There was only one card table in use. All the faces were turned to the opening door, and Cosmo was struck by the expression of profound surprise on them all. In one or two it resembled thunderstruck imbecility. It didn't occur to him that the entrance of the French King's personal representative leaning on the shoulder of a completely unknown young man was enough to cause a sensation. A group of elderly personages, conversing in a remote part of the room, became silent. The Marquis gave a general greeting by an inclination of his head, and Cosmo felt himself impelled towards a console between two windows against which the Marquis leaned, whispering to him, "If I were to sit down it would be such an affair to get up." The Countess de Montevesso advanced quickly across the room. Cosmo noticed that her dress had a long train. She smiled at Cosmo and said to the Marquis anxiously:

"You are in pain, Papa?"

"A little. . . . Take him away, my dear, now. He was good enough to lend me his shoulder as far as this."

"_Venez_, M. Latham," said Adèle, "I must introduce you at once to Lady William Bentick in order to check wild speculation about the appearance of a mysterious stranger. As it is, all the town will be full of rumours. People will be talking about you this very night."

Cosmo followed Adèle across the room. She moved slowly and talked easily with a flattering air of intimacy. She even stopped for a moment under the great chandelier. "Lady William is talking now with Count Bubna," she explained to Cosmo, who took a rapid survey of a tall, stout man in an Austrian general's uniform, with his hair tied up in a queue, with black moustaches and something cynical though not ill-natured in his expression. That personage interrupted suddenly his conversation with a lady, no longer very young, who was dressed very simply, and made his way to the ambassador, giving in passing a faintly caustic smile and a keen glance to Cosmo.

"Let me introduce to you Mr. Cosmo Latham," said Adèle. "He is the son of my father's very old friend. He and I haven't met since we were children together in Yorkshire. He has just arrived here."

Cosmo bowed, and in response to a slight gesture took a seat close to the lady, whose preoccupied air struck him with a sort of wonder. She seemed to have something on her mind. Cosmo could know nothing of the prevalent gossip that it was only the black eyes of Louise Durazzo that were detaining Lord William in Italy. He explained in answer to a careless inquiry as to the latest news from Paris that he had been travelling very leisurely and that he could not possibly have brought any fresh news. Lady William looked at him as if she had not seen him before.

"Oh, I am not very much interested in the news, except in so far that they may make a longer stay here unnecessary for us."

"I suppose everybody wants to see the shape of the civilized world settled at last," said Cosmo politely.

"All I want is to go home," declared Lady William. She was no longer looking at him and had the appearance of a person not anxious to listen to anybody's conversation. Cosmo glanced about the room. The card game had been resumed. The Austrian general was talking to the Marquis with Madame de Montevesso standing close to them, while other persons kept at a respectful distance. Lady William seemed to be following her own thoughts with a sort of impassive abstraction. Cosmo felt himself at liberty to go on with his observations, and sweeping his glance round noticed, sitting half hidden by the back of the armchair Adèle had vacated, the dark girl with round black eyes, whom he had seen that morning. To his extreme surprise she smiled at him and, not content with that, gave other plain signs of recognition. He thought he could do no less than get up and make her a bow. By the time he sat down again he became aware that he had attracted the notice of all the ladies seated before the fire. One of them put up her eyeglasses to look at him, two others started talking low together with side glances in his direction, and there was not one that did not look interested. This disturbed him much less than the fixed stare of the young creature, which became fastened on him unwinkingly. Even Lady William gave him a short look of curiosity.

"I understand that you have just arrived in Genoa."

"Yes. Yesterday afternoon late. This is my first appearance."

He meant that it was his first appearance in society and he continued:

"And I don't know a single person in this room even by name. Of course I know that it is Count Bubna who is talking to the Marquis, but that is all."

"Ah," said Lady William with a particular intonation which made Cosmo wonder what he could have said to provoke scepticism. But Lady William was asking herself how it was that this young Englishman seemed to be familiar with the freakish girl who was an object of many surmises in Genoa, and whose company, it was understood, Count Helion of Montevesso had imposed upon his wife. Meantime Cosmo, with the eyes of all the women concentrated upon him with complete frankness, began to feel uncomfortable. Lady William noticed it and out of pure kindness spoke to him again.

"If I understood rightly you have known Madame de Montevesso from childhood."

"I can't call myself really a childhood's friend. I was so much away from home," explained Cosmo. "But she lived for some years in my parents' house and everybody loved her there; my mother, my father, my sister--and it seems to me, looking back now, that I too must have loved her at that time; though we very seldom exchanged more than a few words in the course of the day."

He spoke with feeling and glanced in the direction of the group near the console where the head of Adèle appeared radiant under the sparkling crystals of the lustre. Lady William, bending sideways a little, leaned her cheek against her hand in a listening attitude. Cosmo felt that he was expected to go on speaking, but it seemed to him that he had nothing more to say. He fell back upon a general remark.

"I think boys are very stupid creatures. However, I wasn't so stupid as not to feel that Adèle d'Armand was very intelligent and quite different from us all. Her very gentleness set her apart. Moreover, Henrietta and I were younger. To my sister and myself she seemed almost grown up. A couple of years makes a very great difference at that age. Soon after she went away we children heard that she was married. She seemed lost to us then. Presently she went back to France, and once there she was lost indeed. When one looked towards France in those days it seems to me there was nothing to be seen but Napoleon. And then her marriage, too. A Countess de Montevesso didn't mean anything to us. I came here expecting to see a stranger."

Cosmo checked himself. It was impossible to say whether Lady William had heard him, or even whether she had been listening at all, but she asked:

"You never met Count Helion?"

"I haven't the slightest idea of the man. He is not in this room, is he? What is he like?"

Lady William looked amused for a moment at the artless curiosity of the Countess de Montevesso's young friend; but it was in an indifferent tone that she said:

"Count Helion is a man of immense wealth which he amassed in India somewhere. He is much older than his wife. More than twice her age." Cosmo showed his surprise, and Lady William continued smoothly: "Of course all the world knows that Adèle has been a model wife."

Cosmo noted the faintest possible shade of emphasis on those last words and thought to himself: "That means she is not happy and that the world knows it." But, several men having approached the circle, the conversation became general. He vacated his seat by the side of Lady William and got introduced by Adèle to several people, amongst whom was a delicate young woman splendidly dressed and of a slightly Jewish type who, though she was the wife of General Count Bubna, commander-in-chief of the Austrian troops and the representative of Austria at the Court of Turin, behaved with a strange timidity and appeared almost too shy to speak. A simple Madame Ferrati, or so at least Cosmo heard her name, a lady with white tousled hair, had an aggressive manner. Cosmo remarked in the course of the evening that she seemed rather to be persecuting Lady William, who, however, remained amiably abstracted and did not seem to mind anything. The Marquis, getting away from the console, had seated himself near the little Madame Bubna. This, Cosmo thought, was an unavoidable sort of thing for him to do. A young man with a grave manner and something malicious in his eye, apparently a First Secretary of the Embassy, informed Cosmo shortly after they had been made known to each other that "the wife of the general would not naturally be received in Vienna society," and that this was the secret of Bubna sticking to his Italian command so long, even now when really all the excitement was over. Of course he was very much in love with his wife. He used to give her balls twice a week at the expense of the Turin Municipality. Old Bubna understood the art of pillaging to perfection, but apart from that he was a _parfait galant homme_ and an able soldier. Bonaparte had a very great liking for him. Bubna was the only friend Bonaparte had in this room. He meant sympathy as man for man. Years ago when Bubna was in Paris he got on very well with the Emperor. Bonaparte knew how to flatter a man. It was worth while to sit up half the night to hear Bubna talking about Bonaparte. "I am posting you up like this," concluded the secretary, "because I see you are in the intimacy of the Marquis and of Madame de Montevesso here."

He went away then to talk to somebody else, and presently Madame de Montevesso, passing close to Cosmo, whispered to him, "Stay to the last," and went on without waiting for his answer. Cosmo amongst all the groups engaged in animated conversation felt rather lonely, totally estranged from the ideas those people were expressing to each other. He could not possibly be in sympathy with the fears and the hopes, strictly personal, and with the royalist-legitimist enthusiasms of these advocates of an order of things that had been buried for a quarter of a century and now was paraded like a rouged and powdered corpse putting on a swagger of life and revenge. Then he reflected that in this room, at any rate, it was probably nothing but scandalous gossip and trivial talk of futile intrigues. There was no need for him to be indignant. He was even amused at himself, and looking about him in a kindlier frame of mind he perceived that the person nearest to him was that strange girl with the round eyes. She had kept perfectly still on her uncomfortable stool like a captured savage. Her green flounced skirt was spread on each side of the seat. The bodice of her dress, which was black, was cut low, her bare arms were youthfully red and immature. Her hair was done up smoothly and pulled up from her forehead in the manner of the portraits of the 15th Century.

"Why do they dress her in this bizarre manner?" thought Cosmo. It couldn't be Adèle's conception. Perhaps of the Count himself. Yet that didn't seem likely. Perhaps it was her own atrocious taste. But if so it ought to have been repressed. He reflected that there could be nothing improper in him talking to the niece of the house. He would try his conversational Italian. With the feeling of venturing on a doubtful experiment he approached her from the back, sat down at her elbow, and waited. She could not possibly remain unaware of him being there.

At last she turned her head for a point-blank stare, and once she had her eyes on him she never attempted to take them away. Cosmo uttered carefully a complimentary phrase about her dress, which was received in perfect silence. Her carmine lips remained as still as her round black eyes for quite a long time. Suddenly in a low tone, with an accent which surprised Cosmo but which he supposed to be Piedmontese, and with a sort of spiteful triumph, she said:

"I knew very well it would suit me. You think it does?"

Her whole personality had such an aggressive mien that Cosmo, startled and amused, hastened to say, "Undoubtedly," lest she should fly at his eyes.