Chapter IV: Part 4

Several times, my friend, my dear friend--when death hovers overhead why should I not confess those follies which are the price and glory of life for men like ourselves?--under the spell of that old story of a gallant, murdered lover and a fair dead Queen, and impelled by an instinct the sureness of which Fate was in due course to reveal, I pushed open the door of my room with a beating heart. The corridor was dark. The old staircase creaked beneath my steps. Often in the great hall I had seen the lantern of the sleeping watchman. What on earth should I have said, had I been challenged?

The open postern exposed a great steel blue vault in the middle of which mysterious Cassiopeia seemed to shiver. I went out, crossing the moon-bathed lawns, hiding in the shadows of the yews. A light shone in the centre wing of the palace. The Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus must be a late worker! All was dark in the left wing, but when I reached the end of the building and pressed myself against the wall I knew that here, too, there were some who kept late hours.

Spring was not yet with us, but one felt that the song of the nightingale would soon be heard. Bright and spearlike, a ray of light spanned the gravel path, emanating from another window dark with heavy hangings and curtains.

The nightingale was not yet singing in the French park, embedded in the heart of that Germany whither Fate had led me. But behind that window a poignant long-drawn wail, interrupted at intervals by maddening silences that made my nerves quiver with apprehension, came slowly and softly from the silent palace straight to my heart. For Fräulein von Graffenfried was playing Schumann's most plaintive berceuses to her mistress on her violin.

[Footnote 2: _Secret History of the Duchess of Hanover_, published in London in 1732, without the author's name but attributed to Baron von Bielefeld, _chargé d'affaires_ of the Court of Prussia at Hanover. For this and later references I have amplified Vignerte's particulars with the aid of Blaze de Bury's articles, which appeared first in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and were collected into one volume, the "_Episode de l'Histoire du Hanovre, Les Königsmark_," in 1855.]

[Footnote 3: Blaze de Bury: "_Episode de l'Histoire du Hanovre_." Notes and evidence, p. 378.]

[Footnote 4: A duplicate in manuscript of this confession, entitled "_Funeral Oration of Countess C. E. von Platen_," may be seen in the archives of Vienna.]

V

_PETERMANN'S MITTHEILUNGEN_ is the most exhaustive. And also it must be confessed the best, geographical work in the world. Our _Annales de Géographie_ is only a feeble reflection of it. The Russians have an excellent geographer, Woïkow. We have Vidal de la Blache, whose preface to Lavisse's _Histoire de France_ is a masterpiece. But these are only fragments and do not cover the whole ground. The astonishing feature of _Petermann's Mittheilungen_ is its universality. My tutors at the Sorbonne--I won't mention names as it would hardly be kind to them at the present moment--have told me hundreds of times that no serious geographical work could be attempted without the assistance of this powerful machine.

I will not exaggerate either the scope or value of the lessons I gave my pupil by having you imagine that I never prepared _one_ without consulting the _Mittheilungen_. But I can assure you that whenever it was necessary to emphasize some particular point I never failed to fortify myself by reference to the great work.

Accordingly I had recourse to it when occasion arose to instruct Duke Joachim on a question which was indeed a topic of the hour--the question of the Cameroons and the recent German acquisitions in the Congo. It was just two years since the Cambon-Kiderlen-Wächter conversations had resulted in an agreement which gave Germany the famous "Duck's bill" and Togoland. It, therefore, seemed to me a natural proceeding to dwell at some length on the region which had been the cause of the Kaiser's famous bang on the diplomatic table.

I shall never forget that day--Monday, March 2nd--nearly eight months ago now.

I first ran through the Table of Contents of the _Mittheilungen_ in order to look up the references and authorship of the six articles on the Cameroons and the Congo. The second I came across was the work of Professor Heidschütz, of Berlin University, describing the means of access (natural and artificial) to this territory.

I carried the appropriate volume to the library table and began to make some notes. As I was opening the book at the page of the article I wanted, a piece of paper fell out. It was a sheet, folded in four and already yellow with age, and the writing on it was large, thick and free. It was German in Latin characters. No signature. Even without that writing to help me I had immediately guessed what was its subject and who had written it.

It contained the complete plan of a journey in one of the remotest parts of the Congo, along the famous, or, rather, notorious, river Sangha. The routes were carefully drawn up, with the assistance of the information given in Professor Heidschütz's article, which, as I expected, was the very last word on these regions. All practicable tracks, fords, and resources available to the explorer of the country--from the moment he left Libreville to the time of his return there--were noted. Each halt was marked: Ouesso, two days--French post, water, porters: Manna, one day--porters: Gléglé, on the N'Sagha, canoes, etc.

A fierce joy possessed me. Fate had delivered up to me the Grand Duke Rudolph's own plan, in his own hand, for his scientific journey in the very region where he was to meet with his death. Mine was not, I realized, the triumph of the historian at the discovery of a document throwing interesting light on German designs in the Congo, a document in itself proof positive, in view of the rank and personality of the explorer, that the Agadir _coup_ was premeditated. What cared I for dryasdust History at that moment? In a flash I realized that pique had been the motive for all my labours since that famous occasion when the Grand Duchess had insulted me before the whole world!

If you would know the nature of the emotions that convulsed me as I scrutinized the precious document I must tell you how my imagination had been at work since that date. I had tried in vain to hate the Grand Duchess. I could not do so. The effort only had the effect of sharpening my desire to approach her, claim her notice, convince her that my end in life was to devote myself to her service.

Devote myself! Good God, what on earth could have led me to think that this dazzling, distant goddess might need my humble devotion?...

It was here, my friend, that my imagination led me on. To tell the truth it certainly had something to build upon. You don't suppose that during my long, lonely nights I had forgotten the confidences of a man of Professor Thierry's standing? Quite the reverse. What wealth of meaning had I not read into them? In a vague way I felt myself in an atmosphere of mystery. I felt, just as I feel you now at my side in the dark, that some tragedy was at the bottom of the presentiments of evil that flooded my mind from time to time. My work and the nights devoted to the tragic story of Königsmark had only aggravated my apprehension. All moonshine, you will say; the diseased imaginings of a brain excited by work in solitude, and, perhaps, a stronger emotion. You might have some reason for thinking so if events had not abundantly justified my excitement.

Whatever the cause, my friend, even before I discovered the Grand Duke's plan I had pieced together a story which satisfied my notions. I imagined the Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus, correct and kind as he always was towards me, as the executioner of his wife, that adorable Grand Duchess. You see beauty made me fundamentally unjust. It made me attribute imaginary wickedness to the man who, obviously, had many virtues and was, in any case, the author of my present prosperity, while I raised a monument in my mind to the woman who had once held me up to public scorn and subsequently seemed to ignore my existence whenever I had been thrown in her way. In my lucid moments I would reflect that there was little of the martyr about the cold, haughty creature who spent her nights listening to her Melusine's violin and her days on horseback, hunting with her miserable red Hussar! That Hagen.... Wasn't it plain as a pikestaff that it was the Grand Duke who deserved pity and affection!... I should never have had his patience!

Useless sedatives. Vain strivings to forget. A moment later, back among my fantastic imaginings I pictured Aurora of Lautenburg turning to her fiery mount, hunting, music--anything to assuage her grief at the loss of her first husband, that handsome, gallant husband who had loved her, whom she still loved, no doubt.... And the jealousy born of these reveries made me cherish them all the more.

Many conversations had failed to convince me of heir lack of substance. It was useless for Frau von Wendel, with her sullen hatred of the Grand Duchess, to sigh out tales of poor, dear Grand Duke Rudolph, who had been so unhappy. I ruthlessly cleared everything from my path that seemed to threaten the integrity of my fantastic fabrications.

You can call me a lunatic. But assuming I was one, you can imagine the frenzy with which I put back the volume of the _Mittheilungen_, thrust my precious sheet into my case and went up to my room.

Open, Sesame! I had now in my possession the mysterious key which would open the way to the Grand Duchess's presence, and enable me to compel her regard. "When she sees these lines," I thought, "in the handwriting of a beloved husband, she will know that he who brings them to light and gives them to her does not deserve the unworthy indifference she shows him. Perhaps she will ask my pardon. Then I shall have compelling words to stay the flow of regrets on those fair lips. She will only wonder the more at her own past behaviour."

Twice I attempted to write a letter to accompany the document, and twice I threw it into the fire. The first did not seem respectful enough. The second was too full of the importance of my discovery. Eventually I hit upon the simplest possible form of words:

MADAM,

By pure chance I have discovered a document which cannot fail to concern your Highness. Permit me to enclose it with this note, in witness of your humble servant's respectful devotion.

I had thought of entrusting my missive, with a couple of words of explanation, to Fräulein von Graffenfried, who had never ceased to show me a marked regard which was very flattering. But I was doomed to disappointment, as Melusine had just gone out into Lautenburg, so I had to be content with an old half-witted Russian waiting-woman. The ancient dame took it, not without suspicion, and went off mumbling something unintelligible.

I went back to my room at once and there my excitement oozed away. In fact, I was soon practically taking myself to task for my action. What purpose would it serve? Why was I mixing myself up in the affair? I think I almost wished the old Russian even sillier than she seemed so that she might lose my letter.

A step sounded in the corridor and there was a knock at the door. Ludwig entered.

"Excuse me, Herr Professor. The Herr Professor has been sent for."

Stepping aside he ushered in a lackey. I thought I should collapse when I saw the blue and gold livery of the Grand Duchess.

"Will the Herr Professor kindly come with me?" said the man.

Stunned by the almost immediate effect of my action, I followed him, even forgetting my hat. We cut across the park. Where was he taking me? We reached and descended the slopes of the English garden. Soon we were among the willows by the Melna, flushed with the ruddy glow of dying day.

A shot rang out from a clump of chestnut trees, and I thought I heard a rustle in the branches as if a bird were falling.

"Will the Herr Professor please step this way?"

I was now in a kind of arbour. The Grand Duchess was standing with her gun still smoking in her hand.

"Excuse me, monsieur. I am having a little thrush shooting," was all she said.

And she nodded to her lackey to leave us.

* * * * * *

I was alone with the queen of my dreams. I had known that this moment would come, but never imagined that it would find us in this leafy tunnel, which I had passed many a time in my walks, without suspecting its existence.

For a few seconds she gazed at me in silence. My embarrassment was absolutely indescribable. It was only later, much later, that I learned how well it had served my cause. So nervous a visitor could hardly be an enemy.

At length she spoke, and her voice was soft, so soft that I did not recognize it.

"I am grateful, Monsieur Vignerte, for your communication. You were right in thinking that any relic of the late Grand Duke Rudolph could not be a matter of indifference to me. Will you tell me," she added, "how this paper came into your possession?"

I told her the whole story of my discovery. There must have been a wealth of emotion and candour in my words, for I felt she was touched.

"Monsieur," she said, and her words were gentleness itself, "if, as I hope, we are to know each other better, you will, I feel sure, cease to bear me any ill-will for what may have seemed unmannerly in my behaviour towards you. No, don't protest. That behaviour was deliberate, monsieur. Indifference in a woman is always feigned. You must believe that, to understand me, certain factors are required which are far from being in your possession."

Where was the pretty speech I had promised myself in reply to these words, long foreseen?

"Are you always working, Monsieur Vignerte?" asked Aurora, with a smile tinged with delicate irony.

"Madam!" I murmured, overcome.

"Oh! I have no intention of taking you from your exalted pupil, but I cannot help remembering that when the Grand Duke brought you here, it was with a kindly idea of lending you to me occasionally. I have only myself to blame for not taking advantage of his forethought before."

My doubts as to whether she was serious or not nailed me, dumb, to the spot.

"Do you play bridge?" she asked.

"Yes--a little," I stammered, blessing Kessel and old Colonel von Wendel, to whom I owed this latest accomplishment.

"We--that is, Fräulein von Graffenfried, Lieutenant von Hagen and I--play bridge every evening. You shall make a fourth. You will do us a much greater service than you imagine," she added, smiling. "I need hardly add that you must come when you like."

"I understand, too," she continued, "that you have some most interesting French books. I do a certain amount of reading, and should be very glad to become acquainted with them, providing I'm not robbing that good Frau von Wendel."

I blushed atrociously.

"Very well, then," she said, noticing nothing. "You will come when you like, Monsieur Vignerte; but if you will let me give you further proof of my gratitude by making a request, may I say that I shall be happy to see you in my boudoir this evening, about half-past nine."

I bowed and was about to withdraw when she beckoned me back.

"Monsieur," she said in low, grave tones, "of course, it is understood that everything touching this is strictly between ourselves."

She indicated my letter, which she had just drawn from one pocket of her black, full-skirted jacket.

I bowed again.

"This evening, then, Monsieur Vignerte, and if you would do me a last kindness, please go out as quietly as you possibly can, so as not to scare away the thrushes."

I returned to the palace by a circuitous route, along the Melna. A kingfisher skimmed backwards and forwards over the darkening water. It was of the same colour as the emerald I had just noticed on the white finger of Aurora of Lautenburg-Detmold.

* * * * * *

The Grand Duchess's bridge-table was set in a curious little Louis Quinze salon on the first floor. Two Bouchers, a Largillière and an excellent Watteau were its best features. Flowers, masses of flowers, everywhere.

Remembering that Hagen would be there, I had made a special point of not arriving first. Indeed, it was a quarter to ten when I knocked at the door of Aurora of Lautenburg.

It was Melusine who opened it.

"I'm very pleased to see you!" the charming creature murmured as she took my hand. The Grand Duchess gave me a smile of welcome and beckoned me to the table, at which she was already sitting with Hagen. I had an impression that the red Hussar was in a thoroughly bad temper, and this pleased me so much, that I lavished the most delicate attentions upon him all the evening.

Aurora of Lautenburg was wearing a kind of black silk tunic, very _décolleté_, with masses of gold braid and edged with chinchilla at the neck and sleeves. A net of gold filigree confined her cloud of tawny hair.

She played with careless assurance, nearly always winning, and never missing a lead, and Melusine, too, played well. I made appalling mistakes, but as luck would have it, calmly trumped my partner's tricks and ended by winning. The thought that Hagen would several times have thrown his cards in my face if it had not been for the Grand Duchess's presence made me almost delirious with joy.

The first rubber came to an end as the clock struck eleven. The Grand Duchess rose.

"Cards will ruin you, little man!" she said familiarly to Hagen. "I haven't forgotten that you have General Hildenstein's inspection tomorrow, and must be down by six in the morning. You needn't hesitate to leave Melusine and myself alone," she added, "as Monsieur Vignerte has kindly consented to keep us company. So you'd better go to bed."

With maternal solicitude she offered him his sword. He took it with a fiendish glance at me, which I pretended not to see.

Melusine von Graffenfried smiled her eternal sphinx smile.

"Let us go to my room," said Aurora. "Monsieur Vignerte, don't forget the books you have brought me."

* * * * * *

In accordance with the principles set forth in Edgar Allan Poe's "Psychology of Furnishing," the Grand Duchess's room was elliptical. A large mauve globe, set in the ceiling, shed a misty, shadowless light.

On the walls were prints of Burne-Jones, Constable and Gustave Moreau.

The room was full of the three things I love most--flowers, rugs and precious stones. Flowers invaded every corner, and it was quite five minutes before I got used to their overpowering scent. Then the soothing fragrance possessed me, and I was almost able to distinguish between them. Roses and lilies, of course, predominated, though merely as a glorious framework in which the riches of the Tcherna and the Caucasus were exhibited in bewildering profusion. Against the walls were massed the mullein of Mongolia, with their great spikes of flowers nearly a yard long. The musky pink centaury swarmed on every table. Purple passion-flowers, the spring marvel of Aral's desolate shores, tuberoses from Erivan, crimson scabious, monster carnations of every hue, linaria and love-lies-bleeding, balsam and nigella, primroses of Kasbeck, huge red moonflowers from the defiles of Daried, the everlasting-flower of Colchis, once the refuge of the mythical green bird--all these flowers, known or unknown among us, turned that cool room into the haunt of eternal spring.

The sweet-smelling irises, of a deep violet hue approaching black, almost held me spellbound. The Grand Duchess noticed this and smiled.

"Those are what I love best. They are brothers to those I used to gather in my childhood by the banks of the Volga."

She sat down on the great, low bed, with its two polar-bear skins for a cover, and took off the net which confined her hair. Her tawny mane fell out over the white rugs. At her feet Melusine, stretched on a tiger-skin, with her arm on the great beast's head, toyed with a kind of guzla from which she drew wavering, plaintive sounds.

The Grand Duchess took off her jewels, one by one, and put them on little side-tables about the bed. On a chest, with a top of green onyx and painted like a Persian cabinet, I noticed the barbaric tiara she had worn at the fête of the 7th Hussars. By it was another, even heavier one, in sapphires.

The floor was strewn with rugs on which little red and green roses from Armenia swarmed like scarabs and ladybirds. A long necklace of amber and turquoise, strung chaplet-wise, hung from the head of the bed, and above it was a dark little niche where a burning lamp showed up a blue and gold ikon.

Two large silver bowls, gloriously chased, stood near the Grand Duchess. One was full of petals, the other of uncut jewels. In this she plunged her hand, and as fine sand slips through the fingers, she let fall a smooth bright rain of pearls and corundum, chalcedonies and beryls, sardonyx and peridots.

O Margravine of Lautenburg, as you reclined there before me, you were once more the Tartar princess, the fay of the East, the peri of the Volga's mystic waters.

* * * * * *

She asked me to tell her the circumstances which had brought me to Lautenburg, She had heard some of the details from Marçais, but from the smile with which she told me this I had no difficulty in guessing her opinion of that diplomatist's perspicacity.

It was plain that she wanted to know my story, and I met her wishes with straightforward simplicity. Towards the end, as I felt her interested and friendly, I could not help giving her a moving picture of the distress our first meeting had caused me, I who had no sooner set eyes on her than my sole idea in life had been to gain her regard.

Melusine von Graffenfried nodded approval, closing her eyes as she blew rings from her cigarette to the ceiling.

"Please let us forget all that, Monsieur Vignerte," said the Grand Duchess. "Give me your hand." Then, turning to Melusine, she spoke in Russian, not knowing that I had a smattering of her native tongue.

"It's no good relying on him for my admission to the _Kirchhaus_."

Fräulein von Graffenfried replied with a shake of the head, which might be interpreted as "Didn't I say so?"

"Melusine," said the Grand Duchess, "light the samovar."

While the girl arranged the teacups round the heavy, humming tower of burnished copper, Aurora rose from the bed and opened a small secretaire. She beckoned me to her.

"Do you know that writing?" she asked, holding out a letter.

I examined the paper. I had never seen the writing in question.

"It is the hand of the late Grand Duke Rudolph," she said simply.

My surprise grew to amazement. She could not restrain a smile.

"But, excuse me, madame. I don't understand. Then whose is the document I sent you, to which I owe ..."

"Don't get excited; keep calm, Monsieur Vignerte. The paper to which you owe my regard--nay, my friendship--was not written by my husband, the late Grand Duke. But it is not without its value for me. It may even have a greater value."

As she spoke she unfolded the document "I see there a name," she said. "Sangha. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," I answered. "I found out this morning. It is a miserable village in the Cameroons--the last German post, ten leagues from Fort Flatters, the first French post."

"That's the place," she added, "and you don't seem to know that it was in that very village that the Grand Duke Rudolph died of sunstroke on the 10th of May, 1911. He is buried there. Now you will realize my feelings on seeing in the list of projected stages of his journey the name of the place where he was to stay for ever."

"But whose is this list, then? Who drew it up?"

"A friend," replied the Grand Duchess, "the Grand Duke's faithful companion. The same man who saved his life twice in the Congo. The same who stayed with him to the end, and rendered him the last services, though he was unable to save him from the fell malady."

"What was his name?" I asked.

"Baron Ulrich von Boose."

"Boose!" I cried. "So it was Boose!"

The Grand Duchess turned rather pale and drew herself up to her full height. Melusine, at her feet, had stopped playing the guitar, which was lying on the floor.

"What do you mean, monsieur?" said Aurora of Lautenburg. "Please explain yourself."

I had already recovered myself somewhat, and was vaguely conscious of my stupidity. I wanted to turn the conversation, but the Grand Duchess was not to be put off.

"Do you know Baron von Boose?"

"Excuse me, madame," I stammered. "I don't really know whether I ought, whether I can ..."

"What oughtn't you to say? What can't you say?"

I cursed my clumsy and premature exclamation, which looked like compromising in one second two months of patient approach. Thoroughly alarmed, and grasping at a straw, my eyes fastened on Melusine.

The Grand Duchess seemed to doubt the meaning of that look.

"Monsieur," she said, "Fräulein von Graffenfried is my friend, and you must know that I have no secrets from those I have once called by that name. You can speak freely before her. Indeed, I ask you to."

There was only one way out of the impasse. Stammering in the approved manner of those with nothing definite to say, I told her as well as I could about my conversation with Professor Thierry in the course of which I had first heard the name of Baron von Boose.

Aurora of Lautenburg's forehead showed a wrinkle.

"I understand," she murmured at length, "or, rather, I think I understand, in spite of the intentional reservations in your story."

She reflected a moment, then recovered her wonted calm and said:

"This proves, monsieur, how much one should distrust hasty conclusions. I do not know where your Professor Thierry went for the story with which he has stuffed your head. If, as you say, he is a conscientious historian, I think he would have acted less precipitately if he had been in possession of this--and this."

She handed me the letter I had just seen and with it another.

"These," she explained, "are two of the last letters written to me from the Congo by the Grand Duke Rudolph. In the first he tells me how he was saved by Ulrich von Boose from a buffalo which had killed his horse; in the second, how this same Boose rescued him from five or six natives who would have given him a bad time."

She looked at me with a smile while I read the passages she indicated.

I bowed, feeling somewhat sheepish.

Melusine had just filled the cups and we drank some very strong tea, in which pieces of citron-peel floated. Then I kissed the Grand Duchess's hand and clasped Melusine's.

"Au revoir till tomorrow, _ami_," said Aurora.

I went back through the park to my room, not without noticing, as I went out, a shadow which had more than a suggestion of Lieutenant von Hagen about it.

A shot, then another, rang out through the clear, empty night. We listened. Nothing followed.

Vignerte shrugged his shoulders.

"Some sentry with the creeps."

"Lend me your torch," he said.

He turned on the light and held out two pieces of paper.

"What are they?" I asked.

"The first," he replied, "is a letter addressed to Aurora of Lautenburg by the Grand Duke Rudolph. This other is the document drawn up by Boose, which, as I have told you, secured my restoration to the Grand Duchess's favour. It is as well," he added, "that you should not think you are dreaming as you listen to my story. Try a little contact with reality."

I scanned the two documents eagerly, one covered with Boose's strong, vigorous writing, the other adorned with those long feminine characters which indicate a temperament more prone to reflection than action. I was deeply moved by this letter of the German Grand Duke, who now rested beyond the seas in the hot clay of the Congo, between the glowing boundaries of the tropics. Mere contact with it conjured up a startlingly clear vision of her to whom it was written. Aurora of Lautenburg stood before us. I felt as if I had known her for ages.

Vignerte turned off the light and the rectangle of night sky reappeared. I handed back the papers. He continued.

Brunetière, speaking of the _Lettres de Dupuis et de Colonet_, says that they show less actual wit than a striving after wit. And that is more or less true of all Musset's work. Reverse that saying, and you have the best possible description of the Grand Duchess's conversation. That proud woman was always aptness itself. She was an exceptional being, and consequently what she said had always a quality of its own. Her judgments were severe, perhaps, but never pretentious or bookish.

She avoided the commonplace as the cat avoids water.

I had no idea how much she knew or what she liked, so the three books I took her that evening were _Le Voyage du Condotière_, _Les Eblouissements_, _Les Evocations_.

Next morning she gave me them back.

"I've read them all," she said, "but your selection was not a bad one. I see you like poetry."

Several books lay on a sofa. She picked one up and handed it to me.

"It is the _Caucasian Review_, which is published at Tiflis, and there is more beauty in these rude pages and simple tales of travel in unforgettable lands than in most of your modern poets. This is the rare spring to which the poets of tomorrow will come to drink."

She continued:

"Shakespeare has been dead three centuries, and the haunts of Macbeth are now treeless and a waste of factories. In Spain Don Quixote has been succeeded by a horde of commercial travellers from here. In Italy Carducci is a kind of half-witted Hugo. Like Switzerland, your romantic countries are now the hunting-grounds of tourists. There are turnstiles at the bottom of all your peaks.

"Suarès, whose book you lent me, felt all this, and surpasses himself when speaking of our Dostoevsky. He ought to come, if only for a short time, to our gorges of Dariel. I am quite sure he would prefer them to those of the Ebro and Douro, of which you see pictures in every station.

"There is no doubt that Madame de Noailles is your greatest poet. But why insist on calling her Greek! She is no more Greek than the Ariadne of the Indian Dionysus or the Circassian Medea. All that is best in her she owes to Armenia and Persia, our countries. Greek indeed! How silly they are! Haven't you ever seen her? I once lunched with her at Evian. I can tell you I took a great fancy to her. She's lovely and malicious, but honestly she is not Greek at all. At home we have a species of bird that you call jackdaw. It is very wild, flies high and has a vicious peck. Its plumage is blue and black, and it is strong, though slight. Your Madame de Noailles is a Tartar jackdaw, not a fat, lazy Greek dove."

"What about this?" I said, holding up Renée Vivian's volume of verse.

She kissed the book. "My words are too clumsy for her," she replied. "I adore her."

I was almost drank with joy to hear the woman whom I admired to the point of idolatry speak of things dearest to my heart in a setting which satisfied my exotic tastes. I told her so in a few simple words--as one always should.

I think she was touched, for she laid her hand on my shoulder and murmured, I have forgotten in what language:

"Thou art kind and I love thee well, my comrade."

Turning to Melusine, she repeated the Russian phrase of the previous evening:

"No, indeed, it's no good my relying on for my admission to the _Kirchhaus_."

Then, resuming her old sprightly tone:

"I believe I called you 'thou' just now, _ami_. You mustn't mind that. I mix all my dialects occasionally, and in my country we use 'thou' to practically every one, from our cattle up to the Czar himself."

A long silence followed, broken only at rhythmic intervals by the weird strains Melusine drew from her guzla.

Incense was burning in a bowl.

I began to turn over, without reading, the pages of a book which lay open on a small table beside me.

"Do you like that?" Aurora asked.

"That" was the _Reisebilder_.

I told her I was a great lover of Heine.

"Now what I value most in a poet," she said, "is a certain quality of soul. That is why I love Shelley and Lamartine, and dislike this Heine. Oh, I know what you'll say, the Nordsee and the rest. No one knows my debt to him better than I; but he's like Deutz, who sold your Duchesse de Berry, and I always feel I want to offer him the tribute of my admiration with a pair of tongs."

She took the book from me and looked through it.

I had no idea what time it was. Suddenly a whiff of air, with that sharp nip in it that heralds the dawn, was wafted in through the open window behind the curtains. The smoke of the incense trembled like a tottering pillar.

Buried in the _Reisebilder_, the Grand Duchess had forgotten my presence. Melusine put a finger on her smiling lips and took me out without her mistress noticing that we had gone.

It was very cold outside. To the east the blue sky was undergoing a magic change, slowly turning to violet, then green, then orange. I sat down on a seat by the door beneath the Grand Duchess's window, indulging in a kind of mournful ecstasy. For it was the very spot whither I had come so many evenings solely in order to be near her.

Then, languid and monotonous, but pure as the icy waters of a mountain stream, came the sound of a voice. The Grand Duchess was singing to the accompaniment of Melusine's guzla. She was the very incarnation of harmony, and her voice was, indeed, the voice of my dreams.

She was singing Ilse's romance, the best of the _Reisebilder_. And because we had just been speaking of it together I seemed to be still with her in her room:

ILSA

The Princess Ilsa am I named, my home dark Ilsen's rock;
Oh come within my castle gate; there we shall happy be.

My sunlit waves shall bring a balm to soothe thine aching
brow,
Thy deep-set griefs thou shalt forget, poor youth all sick with
care.

I'll kiss thee and I'll hold thee fast, as once I held and kissed
The Emperor Henry, my heart's love; ah me! He is no more.

The dead are dead; they only live who are alive today;
I still am fair and full of grace; my heart still smiles and
throbs.

My heart still smiles and throbs.... Come see within my
crystal halls
My maids and knights together dance, my squires right glad
at play.

There's rustling of their silken trains, the clink of golden
spurs,
My merry dwarfs their cymbals clash, their lutes and trumpets
sound,

But thee my foam-white arms shall clasp, as once they clasped
the King,
When with my hands I stopped his ears against the clarion's
call.

* * * * * *

I was in the middle of an ancient history lesson with my pupil when the Grand Duke came in. He beckoned to us to sit down and told me not to stop.

I had been speaking to Duke Joachim of Alexander's successors, from the fighting of the Epigones in the streets of Babylon to the victory of Cyropedeon, which established the dynasties of the Lagides and Seleucides after the downfall of Lysimachus. I had been trying to bring before the eyes of my young German prince the grand and tragic figures of Eumenes, chief of the Argyraspides, Polysperschon, Antipates, Antigone Gonates, and Demetrius Poliorcetes. He listened attentively, taking notes with a docility which I should have preferred less abject....

The Grand Duke had sat down, and was also listening. Hypnotized by his grave, intellectual face, it was really to Frederick-Augustus, not the dull-witted Joachim, that my words were addressed. He was my audience as I closed with an attempt to show how the crumbling empires of the Epigones were to facilitate the victory of centralizing Rome.

As at this point I began to show signs of embarrassment, Frederick-Augustus broke in, with a smile:

"Don't let my presence embarrass you if you want to establish a parallel between Rome and Prussia."

It was obviously difficult for me to emphasize, in front of him, the dependence of the princes of the German Confederation on the King of Prussia. I did so, however, and he approved.

"God grant that this dependence," he said, "like the dependence of the powers allied to Rome, may mean the greatness of Germany and the peace of the world."

I ended by giving my pupil a list of the books bearing on my lesson, and mentioned that indispensable work, Droysen's "History of Hellenism."

"But excuse me, monsieur," said the Grand Duke, "is there no French work which can be used instead of Droysen?"

Even at the Sorbonne I had never felt so ashamed to say that there was not.

Eleven o'clock struck.

"Joachim," said the Grand Duke, "you can go. Please stay, Monsieur Vignerte."

We were alone.

"Monsieur," he said in his fine but grave, indeed rather melancholy voice, "you have hitherto had reason to think me sparing of compliments which you must have considered your due. I have always had the bad habit of waiting a long time before expressing opinions. The right moment has now arrived, monsieur. Yesterday, unknown to you, your pupil was examined by a Professor of Kiel University with little predilection for French methods. This professor has had to confess himself astonished at the results you have obtained."

He added, in a tone in which I detected a certain trace of bitterness:

"I know that the harvester deserves all the more praise when he has obtained his harvest from poor soil. Allow me to address my thanks to you today, and express the wish that the hospitality of Lautenburg may be sufficiently attractive to keep you here until you have completed a task so well begun."

"Your Highness's kindness overwhelms me, sir," I replied, deeply moved.

"No," he broke in emphatically, "it is I who am your debtor. I have just heard, Monsieur Vignerte, that you devote part of the little leisure that the education of my son leaves you to a task which is perhaps even more dear to me. This must, of course, be entirely between ourselves. I know the difficulties you must have met with before winning the confidence which I believe the Grand Duchess now extends to you. At first I did not know you well enough to speak more openly of my desire that you should be at her disposal, and try to interest her and save her from the fits of depression and that kind of spiritual disorder which are so fatal to her physical health. You understood, and have succeeded better than I could have hoped. You will thus realize that I am indeed in your debt."

There was so much sorrowful dignity in his voice that I was utterly overcome.

"Sir," I murmured, "I promise you ..."

He held out his hand.

"I don't need promises, monsieur. I know you now, and am certain that you will do everything you can to help the Grand Duchess. There is no better way of justifying my confidence in you. The task will not be always easy, I fear. A woman, especially when she has been stricken by the death of a man she loves, does not preserve that balance of mind of which we men are so proud. Do your best, monsieur." There was silence for a moment; then he continued: "I should add another form of thanks if it were not that any further mark of esteem is superfluous after the one I have given you in speaking as I have done. You must, however, allow me to offer you some recompense for the additional demands I am making upon you. I have just given orders that your salary is to be raised to fifteen thousand marks."

He met my protests with an exclamation.

"Nonsense!" he said, with his most charming smile. "Don't you play bridge every night at five pfennigs a point?"

* * * * * *

I was rather late for lunch, and found Professor Cyrus Beck in the thick of a dispute with Kessel. The latter obviously enjoyed teasing the old savant, who had a poor sense of humour and was purple with indignation.

My mind was far too full to pay any attention to what they were saying. I had a vague idea that the professor was explaining that chemistry in the next war would play a more important part than any other arm, and that he, Cyrus Beck, was on the high road to a discovery which would enable an ordinary laboratory and a few retorts to annihilate a whole army corps.

He was furious at Kessel's gibes.

He ended by appealing to me as witness against the Major, asking me to quote the passage in which Renan expresses a wish that the destiny of mankind should be entrusted to a committee of savants armed with a supply of explosives sufficiently strong to blow the earth to smithereens if its inhabitants tried to disobey them.

I admit I had not been listening very carefully. "Certainly," I said. "Allow me, Herr Beck, to ask you something in return."

"By all means."

"Can you tell me what the _Kirchhaus_ is?"

The old man rose. To my intense amazement he glared savagely at me and went out, slamming the door, before I had time to recover from my surprise. I looked at Kessel, but he, usually a model of self-possession and good manners, was literally shaking with laughter.

"What on earth's the matter?" I asked.

"You've fairly put your foot in it," he managed to get out at last. "Poor old chap; did you notice how furious he was? And to think that he had hoped you'd back him up!"

"But what's upset him?" I asked, and my astonishment was so genuine that it was Kessel's turn to be surprised.

"You mean to say you didn't do it on purpose?"

"What?"

"Didn't you ask him what the _Kirchhaus_ was on purpose?"

"I asked him because I didn't know and wanted to," I said, rather nettled.

He looked at me and began to laugh even more hilariously than before.

"Well, if that isn't the best thing I've ever heard! Don't you know what the Lautenburg _Kirchhaus_ is, my friend?"

"Well?"

"Well, good God, it's the asylum!"

* * * * * *

The Grand Duchess loved sport in season and out of season. Every now and then she would condescend to hunt foxes or deer by way of entertaining the officers of the 7th Hussars. But her private and peculiar delight was sport in solitude, preferably on a wet and windy day without grooms, attendants or beaters. All she required was a dog and the off-chance. Many an evening have I seen her in her little room making up her own cartridges. The pretty little cylinders, blue, violet, green, yellow, or red, white and blue, were spread out before her on a table, into which the ramrod was screwed. Carefully packing the copper loaders, she gave to each its dose of powder, wad, charge of shot and little piece of white cardboard. When she had rammed all this home, she wrote the number of the charge on each. Hagen was always present on those occasions, and as it was part of his duties, it would have been very difficult to get rid of him. Melusine von Graffenfried, indolent and a poor walker, preferred to stay behind, lying on rugs and smoking her eternal cigarettes. Count Marçais, on the other hand, always came with us. These excursions gave him a chance of showing off his sensational sporting clothes, on which Aurora never failed to compliment him. I must admit he was excellent company, with his high spirits and charming manner. We used to ride out of the castle about two o'clock in the afternoon. The first stage was the _Herrenwald_. Squirrels swarmed in the trees. Pheasants rose heavily from the ground as we passed. At the bottom of some wooded ravine we could hear the fussy but invisible flight of a woodcock.

Marçais would have preferred to stay there. He liked woodland sport, pheasant shooting in the open with some one beside him to load his gun and point out the game: "A cock on the left, Herr Count," "A hen on your right!"

But this kind of thing was not to the liking of the Grand Duchess Aurora, who detested everything official on such occasions and in any case showed a marked preference for water-fowl.

Soon the stunted trees grew rarer, great wastes of marsh appeared, under a sheen of grey and pale green. The sun above was already a glowing ball, low down on the horizon.

Two servants were waiting for us at a little rustic hut. They took our horses. Marçais had his dog, Dick, a big Auvergne pointer, hard of mouth and apt to range rather far, though it came to heel well. The Grand Duchess's ugly black and red spaniel seemed a kind of dog brother to Taras-Bulba.

In sheer joy Aurora dropped the reins and sprang from her horse. I can still see her opening her "Hammerless" and slipping in the two mauve cartridges. I can still hear the sharp click of the brass rim against the steel of the barrel....

At fifteen, armed with an old fowling-piece, I had already tasted the extraordinary delights of shooting over marsh. When, later, I was in the army, firing at disappearing targets had seemed to me mere child's play compared to the fine right and left at diverging snipe I managed to pull off more than once in those early days.

To the north of Dax there is an immense marsh bounded by the wretched hamlets of Herm and Gourbera. You reach it through a gorge known as "La Cible" because the Emperor's gamekeepers used to shoot there in bygone days.

Here was the same misty waste. How well I remember the soft squish of the wet ground, as if the earth itself were dissolving, and the tall yellow grasses, which are sharp as a knife and cut your hands if you're foolish enough to touch them.

I knew all the birds and beasts, all the varied life of those stretches of mud, treacherous beds of green moss, reed-fringed ponds--the whole great expanse that looks so flat and monotonous.

Like the fair sportswoman of the Volga marshes, I knew all the birds that haunt these wan regions: the black, or water-rail, which hops about in leafless trees; the red-rail, or corn-crake, which runs at lightning speed through the high grass, throws the best dogs off the scent, reduces the sportsman to breathlessness and makes you think you are after a hare, until it suddenly decides to take wing, from which moment it becomes an easy prey, poor, silly thing.

There were many species of duck, which sweep dizzily overhead in their curious oblique and rigid flight; shovellers, pochards, sheldrake, with their pretty red heads; shrill-voiced teal, which fly in couples and have a trefoil of three black feathers on their ruddy breasts.

There were lapwings, black and white, like magpies, which rise up swiftly with their croaking cry and then swoop wildly to earth to dodge your shot.

There were plovers, handsomest of birds, in their golden spring raiment.

And, last and best, there was snipe, queen of the marshes, and the finest and hardest of shots; the jack snipe, smaller than a lark, which has blue and green stripes; the common snipe, which is about the size of a quail, and amazingly timid, and the great snipe, rarest of all, which is as big as a partridge.

With their plaintive, hoarse cry they fly in disconcerting zig-zags at an incredible speed. You aim to the right and when the wind has blown away the smoke you see the little grey bird vanishing in the dim distance on the left.

In the midst of these Hanoverian marshes, so like our marshes of the Landes, Aurora of Lautenburg was even more beautiful than in all her finery at the palace. Wearing a feather toque and huge but shapely top-boots, she jumped as lightly as a bird over the sodden turf. The yellow mist of that water-laden atmosphere seemed to cast a pale mauve halo about her. Marçais shot calmly and well. Little Hagen was fussy and always fired too soon. I was a much better shot than either of these two, but what a poor figure I cut beside the Grand Duchess!

Leaving us the rail and duck, she devoted her attention exclusively to the snipe. Gradually night came down on the watery waste. The sky turned to burnished copper in a last conflagration. The great pools were sheets of green which grew darker and darker. A thin tongue of flame began to leap from the barrel of our guns every time we fired, a tongue which became redder as the darkness grew more intense.

It was the Grand Duchess's hour. Her diabolical spaniel was everywhere at once. We could hear the snipe start up before her and her repeated cries of "Heel!" Neither Marçais, Hagen nor I could see them at all. But Aurora saw them all right; each of her shots brought down a little grey bird.

We would wait for a second. Then out of the darkness came the sound of rustling grass. The spaniel, dripping, black and shining, with his eyes full of phosphorus, suddenly appeared, bearing the dead snipe to his mistress.

It was now quite dark. In the low sky an invisible procession of cranes passed over our heads, with remote, raucous cries. The Grand Duchess took the bird from her dog. We went up. I saw her run her fingers over the poor little body, still warm. No wound could be seen, nothing to reveal the presence of that tiny ball of lead, or the imperceptible black hole whence that little life had fled.

Then, with that inconsequence which is the hallmark of the sportsman, Aurora raised the inert little head to her lips and kissed it.

VI

IT was on Saturday evening, May 16th, 1914, that the Grand Duchess of Lautenburg did me the honour of telling me the story of her life. Let me repeat that story to you, not only because certain of its incidents are absolutely indispensable to a proper understanding of the drama which is fast approaching its climax, but above all because it gives me an exquisite pleasure to open this jewel-case and handle the beautiful, barbaric stones it contains, gems which will always light me through my blackest hour.

Hagen had had to go to a dinner, given by the 7th Hussars, and was not there. It gave me no small pleasure to see that she was always more open with me in his absence, however casually she treated that moody and stubborn adorer.

Reclining on the white bearskin thrown over her _chaise-longue_, she was dressed that evening in a very loose, light tunic of yellow Turkish silk, embroidered in mauve and silver.

Every now and then she passed her fingers through a bowl of huge roses standing on a low table close by, and we could hear the petals falling softly on the blue carpet.

Melusine, her hair shaken loose, was sitting on the carpet, resting her drooping head on the bare feet of her mistress, which she clasped in her arms from time to time.

From the chair where I was sitting I could see the voluptuous curves of the girl's smooth throat in the opening of her Valenciennes fichu. The window was open behind the drawn curtains, and the night breeze, wafting them apart from time to time, mingled the balmy scents of the _Herrenwald_ with the heady odours of amber, roses and cigarettes.