'Gloria Victis!' A Romance

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2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

Gloria Victis!

A Romance

BY OSSIP SCHUBIN Author of "Our Own Set."

"Alas! poor human nature!"

_Chesterfield_.

From the German by MARY MAXWELL

New York William S. Gottsberger, Publisher 11 Murray Street 1886

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886 by William S. Gottsberger in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

Press of William E. Gottsberger New York

Gloria Victis!

Chapter I.

"There is no help for it, I must do it to-day," the Baroness Melkweyser murmured with a sigh breathed into the depths of the toilet-glass, before which, she was sitting while her maid dressed her hair. "It is now just a week," she went on to herself, after having uttered the above words aloud, "quite one week since Capriani entrusted the affair to me. I have met him three times, and each time was obliged to tell him that there had been no favourable opportunity as yet. He is beginning to take my delay ill. Come, then, _courage!_.... _en avant!_.... Truyn certainly ought to be glad to marry his daughter as soon as possible, and I cannot see why Gabrielle should make any objection to becoming the sister-in-law of the Duke of Larothiere. To be sure, most Austrians have such antediluvian ideas! _Nons verrons!_ I will, as Capriani desires, see how the land lies."

She shrugged her shoulders as though shifting off all responsibility and turning to her maid exclaimed: "_mais depechez vous donc_, Euphrosine, will you never remember how much I always have to do!" Whereupon the impatient lady, snatched from her maid the head-dress which she was arranging, and, quite in the style of Napoleon I., crowned herself.

* * *

The scene lies in Paris. The short after-season which, like an echo of the carnival, is wont to follow Lent, that holy intermezzo crowded with charity-bazaars, musical soirees and other elegant penitential observances, is rather duller than usual this year. Easter came too late and although _Figaro_ continues its daily record of balls and routs, Paris takes very little heed. All genuine enthusiasm for such entertainments is lacking. Paris thinks of nothing now save the races, the last auction at the Hotel Drouot, the latest change of ministry, and the newest thing in stocks.

It is the beginning of May. Two weeks ago, rather later than usual, spring made its appearance--like a young king full of eager benevolence, and generous promises, with green banner held aloft and crowned with sunshine--thus it swept above the earth which sullenly and reluctantly opened its weary eyes. "Awake, awake, I bring with me joy!" called spring in sweet siren tones sometimes low and wooing and anon loud and imperious. And a mysterious whisper thrilled and stirred the land, the trees stretched their black branches, the buds burst. Men felt a pleasant languor, while their hearts beat louder.

The spring advanced quickly, working its lovely miracles--loading the trees with blossoms and filling human hearts with joy--and upon those for whom its lavish hand had left nothing else, it bestowed a smile, or it granted them a dream.

There are, indeed, some unfortunates for whom its brilliant splendour never does aught save reveal the scars of old wounds, which in its careless gayety it formerly inflicted; and while others flock abroad to admire its beauty, these hide away their misery. But when daylight's haughty glare has faded, and spring has modestly shrouded its loveliness in a veil of grey, these wretches inhaling its fragrance in their seclusion come forth from their concealment, into the soothing twilight, among the dewy blossoms, and once more give utterance to the yearning that has so long been mute, rejoicing with tears in their old anguish, crying: "Oh Spring, oh youth--even thy falsehood was lovely--" thus doing it homage by their grief, for spring has no enemies.

* * *

Somewhat apart from the aggressive brilliancy of the Avenue l'Imperatrice wind a couple of quiet streets like detached fragments of the Faubourg St. Germain. Everything here breathes that charming and genuine elegance which is almost an instinct, and rules mankind despotically. It is not a grimace artificially assumed for show.

One of the prettiest of the small hotels standing between its court-yard and garden, in the Avenue ----, formerly it was called the Avenue Labedoyere, tomorrow it may perhaps be the Avenue Paul de Cassagnac, and the day after the Avenue Montmorency--was occupied by Count Truyn with his young wife and his daughter.

This evening the family had assembled in a pleasant drawing-room on the rez-de-chaussee, and one after another each expressed delight in the repose and relief of such an hour after the social exertions of the day. The husband and wife as they sat opposite each other near the fireplace--he with his _Figaro_, and she busy with the restoration of some antique embroidery--were evidently people who had attained the goal of existence and were content. It was plain that their thoughts did not range beyond the present.

Not so with Gabrielle. Twice during the last quarter of an hour she has changed her seat and three times she has consulted the clock upon the chimney-piece.

At last she goes to a mirror and arranges her breast-knot of violets.

"Our Ella is beginning to be pretty," said Truyn opening his eyes after a doze behind the _Figaro_.

"Have you just discovered that?" Zinka asked smiling.

"Do you think my gown is becoming, Zini?" Gabrielle asked as gravely as if the matter were the Eastern question.

"Very becoming," her step-mother kindly assured her.

"Oho!" said Truyn banteringly, "our Ella is beginning to be vain."

Whereupon Gabrielle blushed deeply and to hide her confusion went to the piano and began to strum "Annette and Lubin." She did not play well but her hands looked very pretty running over the keys.

"I am surprised that Ossi does not make his appearance," said Truyn, laying aside his _Figaro_. Like all Austrians residing in Paris he had a special preference for that frivolous journal. "I met him this afternoon on the Boulevard, and he asked me expressly whether we were to be at home this evening."

Gabrielle looked, as her father observed with surprise, rather embarrassed. He had spoken thoughtlessly, and in masculine ignorance of the state of affairs. He was just beginning to teaze the girl about her behaviour when the footman announced the Baroness Melkweyser.

Her head-dress of red feathers sat somewhat askew upon the old-fashioned puffs of hair that framed her sallow face. She wore a gown of flowered brocade, the surpassing ugliness of which showed it to have been purchased at a bargain at some great bazaar as a "_fin de saison_." She squinted slightly, winked constantly, was entirely out of breath, and sank exhausted into an arm-chair, before uttering a word of greeting.

"Ah, if you only knew all I have done this blessed day!" she exclaimed.

The Truyn trio looked at her in smiling silence.

"Confessed and received the sacrament very early," the baroness began the list of her achievements, "always on the second of every month--I never can manage it on the first--then at the Pierson sale I bought six things marked with Louis Philippe's cipher, then I went to see Ada de Thienne's trousseau,--then to a breakfast at the new minister's--too comical--his wife made herself perfectly ridiculous, in a bare neck at two o'clock in the daytime!"

"That is the inevitable consequence of a change of ministers," Zinka remarked. Her manner of speech, quiet, and rather inclined to irony, was that of those who, with rigid self-control have for years endured with dignity some great grief.

The baroness, meanwhile, rattled on, unheeding. "Then I went my round of charities, then looked for a wedding-present for my niece Stefanie...."

"Heavens, Zoe!" Truyn groaned.

"Yes, I lead a most fatiguing existence," the baroness wailed. "Just as I sat down to supper,--I missed my dinner--it occurred to me that it really would be better not to let to-day pass without making you a very important communication--that is--hm--discussing--a most important matter with you--and--here I am. Pray, Zinka, let me have a sandwich, for I am dying of hunger."

"Ring the bell, Erich," Zinka said with a smile.

"And now to business," said the baroness, "_je tiens une occasion_--it really is the most advantageous opportunity!"

"You shall have your sandwich, Zoe," said Truyn, quietly stretching out his hand to the bell handle, "but pray spare me your advantageous opportunities. If I had availed myself of all your boasted 'opportunities,' I should now be the proud possessor of fourteen rattle-trap Buehl pianos and at least twenty-five tumble-down country houses. As it is I have bought for love of you three holy-water pots of Mme. Maintenon's, an inkstand of the Pompadour's, and I can't tell how many nightcaps of Louis XVI., warranted genuine."

"And an excellent bargain you had of them," the baroness declared. "Louis Sixteenth's nightcaps have latterly been going up in price. But this time there is no question of purchase," she went on to say, "and that is the best of it."

"That certainly is very fine," muttered Truyn.

"The question is,--I suppose I ought to ask Gabrielle to leave the room, that used to be the way, girls never were allowed to be present while their parents disposed of their future, but I .... _j'aime a attaquer les choses franchement_. The question is, in fact, with regard to--Gabrielle's marriage."

Zinka with a smile took the hand of the young girl standing beside her in her own, and tenderly laid it against her cheek.

"Gabrielle's beauty produced a sensation at the last ball at the Spanish embassy's," the baroness continued.

"I must entreat you not to make such a fatal assault upon my daughter's modesty," exclaimed Zinka.

"Bah!" the baroness shrugged her shoulders, "stop up your ears, Gabrielle. Produced a sensation is the correct phrase. It is remarkable--the _succes_ that the Austrian women always have in Paris. I have a suitor for Gabrielle--the most brilliant _parti_ in Paris."

"Stop, stop, Zoe, I beg you," said Truyn, provoked, "you make me nervous! You always forget how your French way of arranging marriages goes against the grain with us and our old-fashioned Austrian ideas. You say I have a rich husband for your daughter in just the same tone in which you say I have a purchaser for your house! And I seriously entreat you to consider that a jewel like my dear comrade yonder, may be bestowed, upon one deemed worthy of such a possession, but can never be sold."

"Ah, here is my sandwich!" exclaimed the baroness, paying no attention to his words in her satisfaction over the tea-tray. Whilst Gabrielle was occupied with making tea the visitor applied herself to the refreshments, whispering meanwhile confidentially and mysteriously to Truyn. "I thought that your new domestic relations might make you desirous to have Gabrielle mar ...."

An angry flash in Truyn's blue eyes, usually so kindly, warned her that she was on the wrong track; she lost countenance and consequently proceeded rather too precipitately in her investigations as to 'how the land lay.'

"At least my proposition is worth being taken into serious consideration," she said hastily. "Count Capriani commissioned me to ask you whether there was any prospect of his obtaining Gabrielle's hand for his only--remember, his only son."

"Count Capriani, I do not know who he is," Truyn said coldly.

"Well then, Conte Capriani," Zoe explained impatiently.

"Ah, indeed, Conte Capriani," Truyn said significantly,--"the railroad Capriani!"

"Yes."

"And he dares to ask my daughter's hand for his son?"

Perfect silence reigned for a moment. Gabrielle's little nose expressed intense disdain.

"Zoe, you are insane," Truyn said at last, very contemptuously. "This is not, I believe, the first of April."

"I cannot understand your irritation," the baroness rejoined, with the bravado that is the result of great embarrassment. "You are always proclaiming yourself a Liberal with no prejudices!"

Truyn coloured slightly. He had grown more decided than he had been a few years before, and his shirt collars were perhaps a little higher and stiffer. His whole bearing expressed the dignified content that distinguishes the man of conservative views of life. He gently twitched his high collar as he began: "I am a Liberal--at least I fancy that I am. If my daughter had set her heart upon marrying a man her inferior as regards birth and family, I should certainly consent to her doing so, provided the man were one whose character and attainments atoned for his low origin."

Zinka smiled sceptically with a scarcely perceptible shrug. Truyn's colour deepened. "I do not deny," he admitted, "that it would be very hard for me, but all the same I should consent and should do all that I could to assist such a son-in-law to attain a position worthy of my daughter--that is suitable to her mode of life."

"Do not be afraid, papa. I have not the slightest desire to fall in love with a deputy on the extreme Left," Gabrielle observed.

"In young Capriani's case there would be no need for you to trouble yourself about your son-in-law's position," said the baroness loftily. "_Sa position est toute faite_. All Paris was at the ball the night before last in the Capriani Hotel--all the _rois en exil_ appeared there, and even some Siberian magnates, and all--that is very many--of the Austrians at present in Paris."

"You know just as well as I do why all these magnates appeared at Capriani's," Truyn rejoined angrily. "But indeed I care nothing for this speculator's position--the man himself is odious--a common parvenu with a boor of a son."

"Have it your own way," said the baroness. "Perhaps you know that a daughter of Capriani's is married to the Duke of Larothiere?"

"Yes, I know it."

"And that the Conte's property is estimated at a hundred million?"

"It may be a hundred billion for all I care."

"He is incontestably one of the most influential financiers in Europe."

"Unfortunately, and one of the most corrupt and corrupting," Truyn rejoined with emphasis.

"You have not, however, asked Gabrielle's opinion," persisted the baroness.

Gabrielle tossed her head, but her answer was unuttered, for just at this moment the servant flung open the door, and the interesting conversation was interrupted by the announcement of fresh visitors.

Chapter II.

Two young men entered--two Counts Lodrin. They bore the same name; they were the sons of brothers--and as unlike each other as possible.

With regard to Oswald--the "Ossi" of whom Truyn made mention a while before.--Gabrielle was convinced that no sculptured classic god, none of Raphael's cherubim could compare with him in beauty and distinction. She was perhaps alone in this view, although it must be confessed that few mortal men surpassed him in these two respects. About six and twenty, tall, slender--very dark--a gay, good-humoured smile on his handsome, aristocratic face--with an eager, ardent manner--and with what might be called the gypsy-like distinction that characterizes an entire class of the Austrian aristocracy he was the embodiment of chivalric youth. With all the attractiveness of his face, his eyes struck you at once--it would be hard to say what was wrong about them, whether they were too large, or too dark.

They certainly were very beautiful, but they produced the impression of not suiting the face--of having been placed there by accident. But the incongruous impression made by those large, dark eyes upon almost every one who saw the young man for the first time was extremely fleeting, and passed away as soon as Oswald began to talk--as soon as his look became animated.

His cousin Georges was at least a dozen years his elder, and nearly a head shorter than he. Many persons declared that he looked like a jockey; they were wrong. He looked like what he was, a prodigal son, very well-born. Spare in figure, his face smoothly shaven, except for a long sandy moustache, his hair quite gray, and brushed up from the temples after a vanished fashion, his features keen and mobile, his eyes round as a bird's, his carriage rather stooping and with motions characterized by a certain negligence, he produced the impression of a man who had seen a great deal of the world, and who now took a philosophic view of his life and of his position.

Oswald is the heir, Georges is the next to inherit.

Scarcely were the usual formal greetings over when Oswald made an attempt to join his pretty cousin Gabrielle, with the laudable purpose of helping her to pour out tea. His design was cruelly frustrated, however, by Count Truyn, who instantly engaged him in a brisk discussion of the latest anti-Catholic measures on the part of the Republic. Oswald sat beside his uncle restlessly drumming on the brim of his opera-hat, the image of politely-concealed youthful impatience, now and then adding an "abominable!" or a "disgusting," to the indignant expressions of the elder man, and all the while glancing towards Gabrielle. Certain personal matters interested him far more just now than the deplorable excesses of the French government. He had not read the article in the _Temps_ to which his uncle alluded, he did not take the French Republic at all in earnest, he considered it in fact no Republic at all, but only a monarchy gone mad; French politics interested him from an ethnographical point of view only, all which he calmly confessed to his uncle, by whom he was scolded as "unpardonably indifferent," and "culpably blind." The elder man's conservative philippics grew more eager, and the younger one's courteous admissions more vague, until at last Zinka succeeded in releasing the latter by asking Gabrielle to sing something. Gabrielle, of course, declared that she was hoarse, but Oswald who was, by the way, about as much interested in her singing from a musical point of view as in the trumpet-solos of the emperor of Russia, smiled away her objections and rising, with a sigh of relief, went to open the grand piano.

No one seemed to have any idea of according a strict silence to the young girl's music, and whilst Gabrielle warbled in a sweet, but rather thin voice, some majestic air of Handel's, and Oswald leaning against the cover of the instrument looked down at her with ardent intentness, Georges, his hands upon his knees, his body inclined towards the Baroness Melkweyser who, still busied with her refreshments, was disposing of sandwich after sandwich, said: "You are wearing yourself out in the service of mankind. Have you allowed yourself one half-hour's repose to-day?--No, not one--as any one may see who looks at you. _A propos_, who was the Japanese woman dressed in yellow at whose side I saw you to-day sitting in a fainting condition in a landau--in front of Gouache's was it?--on the Boulevard de la Madeleine?"

"Adeline Capriani."

"_Ah tiens!_ That was why I seemed to have seen her before."

"A very queer figure was she not?"

"She is not ugly," said Georges. "It is a pity that she dresses so ridiculously."

"Her dress costs her a fortune every year--the first artists in Paris design her gowns," Madame Zoe declared.

"Indeed----? Now I understand why she always looks as if she had been stolen from a bric-a-brac shop," said Georges. "Explain to me, however, why this wealthy young lady is still unmarried. Perhaps the Conte thinks another son-in-law too expensive an article ... Did you know that Larothiere lost 300,000 francs again yesterday at baccarat at the Jockey Club?"

"That is of no consequence," Zoe said loftily. "Gaston loves his wife--it is all that Capriani requires of his sons-in-law."

"_Sapperment!_" Georges exclaimed, "that's the right kind of a father-in-law; what if you should negotiate a marriage, Baroness, between me and Mademoiselle Capriani?"

"Do not indulge in such sorry jests," Truyn interposed disapprovingly.

"I am in solemn earnest; the financial ground beneath my feet is very shaky at present, and having one's debts paid by such a good fellow as Ossi palls upon one in time. I am undecided whether to turn Hospitaller or to marry an heiress."

"Ah, if Oswald heard you!" Zinka said with her quiet smile.

"Ossi at this moment, if I am not greatly mistaken, is listening to the songs of angels in Heaven, and takes precious little heed of us ordinary mortals," replied Georges, glancing with a certain dreaminess in his eyes towards the youthful pair who had left the piano and were standing in the deep recess of an open balconied window.

"Happy youth," murmured Georges.

Yes, happy youth! They were standing there, he very pale, she blushing slightly, mute, confused, the sparkling eyes of each seeking, avoiding the other's. He has led her to the recess to show her the moon, to lay his heart at her feet, but he has forgotten the moon, and he has not yet dared to pour out his heart to her.

The fragrant breath of the spring night was wafted towards them, fanning their youthful faces caressingly.

All nature was thrilling beneath the first gentle May shower. The large white panicles of the elder in the little garden in front of the house gleamed brightly through the gray twilight. The small fountain murmured monotonously, its slender jet of water sparkling in the light from the drawing-room windows. They were dancing in the house opposite; like colourless phantoms the different couples glided across the lowered shades of the windows. The "Ecstasy" waltz played by a piano and a violin mingled its frivolous sobs and laughter with the modest song of the fountain and the whispers of the elder-bushes. All else was quiet in the Avenue-Labedoyere, but from the distance the restless roar of the huge city invaded the silence of night--mysterious, confused, as the demoniac restlessness of Hell may sometimes invade the divine peace of Heaven.

"Gabrielle!" Oswald began at last with hesitation and very gently, "I have come very often of late to the Avenue-Labedoyere. Can you guess why?"

"Why?" The blush on Gabrielle's cheek deepens. "Why?--since you were in Paris for three weeks without coming near your relatives you ought to make up for lost time," she murmured.

"True, Gabrielle--but--do you really not know for whose sake I have come so often, so very often?"

She was silent.

His breath came more quickly, the colour rose to his cheek. Surely he must have divined Gabrielle's innocent secret from the young girl's tell-tale shyness, but yet at this decisive moment the words died in his throat as they must for every genuine, honest lover who would fain ask the momentous question of her whom he loves.

"Gabrielle," he murmured hastily and somewhat indistinctly, "will you take the full heart I offer you--can you accept it, or...." he hesitated and looked inquiringly into her lovely face. "Ella, all my happiness lies in your hands!"

Her heart beat loudly, the lace ruffles on her bosom trembled, as she slowly lifted her eyes to his.--How handsome he was, how well the tender humility in his face became him! His happiness lies in her hands! Her eyes filled with tears. "I do not know ... I ... Oswald ... Ossi!" she murmured disconnectedly, and then she placed her slender hand in the strong one held out to her.

Truyn with his back to the window, noticed nothing, but the baroness who had been observing this romantic intermezzo through her eyeglass with cold-blooded curiosity, said drily to herself: "_J'en suis pour mes frais_;" then turning for the last time to Truyn, she said, "I have communicated to you Capriani's proposal."

"And you are at liberty to tell him how I received it," Truyn replied stiffly.

"_J'arrangerai un peu_," the baroness said as she rose, "do not disturb the young people, I will slip out on tiptoe. Adieu." And with a courteous glance around, she hurried away.

"Well, what do you think?" exclaimed Truyn, as he returned to the drawing-room, after escorting her to the hall. "What do you think, Georges?" and sitting down beside the young man he tapped him on the knee. "Capriani sends that goose Zoe in all seriousness to ask for my daughter's hand for his son. What do you say to that?"

"Audacious enough," said Georges shrugging his shoulders, "but what would you have--'tis a sign of the times!"

This dry way of judging of the matter did not please Truyn at all. "Ossi!" he called.

"What, uncle?" The young people advanced together into the room.

"I have an interesting piece of news for you. A secret agent of the _Maison Foy_ has made a proposal to-day for Ella's hand for Capriani, jr! What do you say to that?"

"Ella's hand for the son of that railway Capriani!" exclaimed Oswald angrily. "Impossible! The secret agent deserves .... and he made an expressive motion with his hand. His indignation became him extremely well, and Truyn's glance rested with evident admiration upon the young fellow's athletic figure as he stood with head slightly thrown back, and eyes flashing scornfully.

"Unfortunately it was a lady--Zoe Melkweyser," the elder man explained.

"Then she deserves at least six months of Charenton," said Oswald, "'tis incredible!" and he clinched his hand. "Your daughter, uncle, and the son of the Conte--I suppose he is a Conte--or a Marchese perhaps--Capriani! You know that little orang-outang, Georges?"

"Of course, one meets him everywhere. He addressed me by my first name yesterday," Georges replied calmly. "Ah, my dear friends, you entirely misconceive this extraordinary proposal. For my part, I see in it no personal insult to the Countess Gabrielle, but simply a symptom of an approaching social earthquake. The triumph of the tradesman is manifest everywhere. Zola in his most prominent work has celebrated the apotheosis of the bag-man and the shop-girl; Chapu has designed the facade of the latest millinery establishment; Paris will yet see the Bourse hold its sessions in _La Madeleine_, and the _Bon Marche_ will set up a branch of its trade in _Notre Dame_."

"Likely enough," said Truyn with a troubled sigh, "I am only surprised that Capriani has not tried to be President of the French Republic."

"He has not thought the position at present a favourable one for his speculations," said Georges, "but what is not, may be."

"Ah, I am proud of my Austria," said Truyn, suddenly becoming stiff and wooden of aspect. "Such adventurers have at least no position there."

"Do not be too proud of your Austria," rejoined Georges, "I heard something at the embassy to-day that will hardly please you. _Id est_, Capriani has bought Schneeburg and will be your nearest neighbour in Bohemia."

Truyn started to his feet. "Capriani .... Schneeburg .... impossible! How could Malzin bring himself to such a sacrifice!"

"It must have gone hard with the poor fellow, God rest his soul! The night after the contract had been signed he died of apoplexy."

"Good Heavens!" murmured Truyn, pacing restlessly to and fro. "Good Heavens!"

"And there is another interesting piece of news," Georges went on.

"Well?"

"Fritz--do you remember him?"

"Certainly. The only Malzin now left, a very amiable lad who unfortunately made an impossible marriage."

"Yes, he married an actress, and just at the time when every one else was tired of ...."

"Georges!" exclaimed Oswald frowning and glancing towards Gabrielle. He was evidently of the opinion that such things should not be mentioned in the presence of young girls.

"Hm--hm," muttered Georges, "and he has accepted the post of Capriani's private secretary."

"Frightful!" exclaimed Oswald.

"He must have become morally corrupt to some degree, before he could make up his mind to submit to such a humiliation," interposed Truyn indignantly.

"Poor devil!" said Oswald.

"What would you have?" the philosophic Georges remarked and hummed ironically the air of '_Garde la reine_.' "_Ce n'est pas toujours les memes qui ont l'assiette au beurre_. I tell you it is all up with us."

All preserved a melancholy silence for a while, then Truyn favoured the party with a few grand political aphorisms, and Oswald at last said to himself perfectly calmly, and as if impromptu, "Gabrielle and Capriani's son!"

The melancholy mood vanished and they talked and laughed so that there was a sound as of merry bells through the silence of the night.

Chapter III.

Zoe Melkweyser was an Austrian and a distant relative of Truyn's. Very well-born, but in very narrow pecuniary circumstances, she had grown up on her widowed father's heavily-mortgaged estate, condemned through want of means to a continued residence there, restless as was the temperament with which nature had endowed her. As a school-girl she had no greater pleasure than imaginary journeys from place to place upon the map, and one day she confided to her governess, Mrs. Sidney, under the seal of secrecy, that she would consent to marry any man, even were he a negro, who would promise to indulge her restlessness and allow her to travel to her heart's content.

It was no negro, however, but a banker from Brussels, who finally fulfilled her requirements. She met him at a watering-place, whither she had gone under the chaperonage of a wealthy and compassionate relative. In spite of her thirst for travel she could hardly have made up her mind to marry an Austrian banker, but a Belgian Cr[oe]sus was quite a different affair in her opinion.

All the objections and remonstrances of her aristocratic connections in Austria upon her return thither betrothed, she cut short with, "What would you have? Of course I never should have met him here, but he was received at court in Brussels."

And in fact Baron Alfred Melkweyser was not only received at court in Brussels, but what was still more extraordinary, by the Princess L----, being admitted to the most exclusive Belgian circles, 'among the people whom everyone knows.'

It would have been difficult to find any fault with him except for his brand-new patent of nobility, and Zoe never had any cause to repent her marriage. His manners were perfectly correct, he rode well, had a laudable passion for antiquities, ordered his clothes at Poole's, always used _vous_ in talking with his wife, paid all her bills without even a wry face, patiently travelled with her all over the world, and at her desire removed with her to Paris.

After ten years of childless marriage he died suddenly, of his first and unfortunately unsuccessful attempt to drive four-in-hand. As this, his first ambitious folly, was also his last, society forbore to ridicule it, and even after his death he enjoyed the reputation of an '_homme parfaitement bien_.'

His widow bewailed his loss sincerely, and purchased all her mourning of _Cypres_ at reduced prices. Bargains had always been a passion with her, and scarcely had her year of mourning passed, before, thanks to her expensive taste for cheap, useless articles, she had disposed of half the source of her income. Among other things she purchased at low prices various stocks which turned out badly. She owed her familiarity with financial affairs entirely to her speculative vein, and not at all, as her aristocratic relatives and country-folk erroneously imagined, to her deceased husband, who had, in fact, held himself persistently aloof from former financial acquaintances.

It was not acquisitiveness that spurred Zoe on to her various undertakings, but the restlessness of her temperament. She delighted in everything novel and fatiguing, whether it were a pilgrimage to _Lourdes_, a bargain day at the _Bon Marche_, or a first representation at the _Francais_, to which, by persistent wire-pulling and constant appeals to one and another person of influence, she was able to obtain tickets of admission not only for herself but for all her most intimate friends. She had one means, however, far more entertaining than all others, of procuring the excitement needed by her temperament, and this was the introduction to 'the world,' of American or European financial magnates. She extorted for them invitations to the most distinguished routs, she designed the balls which these wealthy people were to give to dazzle Paris withal, and she expended an incredible amount of cunning and energy in inducing the aristocratic world to appear at these entertainments. Her tactics were those of genius; instead of contenting herself after the fashion of less skilful mortals with inviting the poorer and more modest members of Paris society, she bent all her efforts to securing the presence of some legitimist duchess at the ball, if only for an hour. She succeeded in doing this in most cases by placing at the duchess' disposal a large sum of money for charitable purposes. When she had gained over two or three of these fixed stars, the planets of Parisian society began to appear at these balls.

Planets, in their social relations, are notably much more fastidious than fixed stars, as is but natural; they are forced to reflect a light not their own.

The entire scheme was usually most successful; the balls were beautiful and everything went excellently well. Sometimes, indeed, not one of the assembled guests had the civility to invite the mistress of the mansion to dance, and many of those present affected to mistake the host for a footman, but none the less was everyone content and pleased when the ball was over. Zoe Melkweyser was glad that she had enjoyed so brilliant an opportunity of getting out of breath; the givers of the ball were pleased to read the long list of their distinguished guests in _Figaro_; and _le monde_ rejoiced in having something to laugh at, and spent three days in ridiculing the extravagance of the Cotillon favours.

The latest and most brilliant of Zoe's proteges was Conte Capriani.

Who was he? What was he? 'A poisonous fungus that the sultry storm-laden atmosphere had bred upon heaven only knows what muck-heap.'

A clever statesman had made use of this phrase not long before to define the innate characteristics of this Cr[oe]sus. The phrase had been laughingly caught up and repeated, and no one had troubled themselves further about Capriani's antecedents. In a smaller city they would soon have been investigated, but Paris never busies itself long with the solution of such commonplace mysteries; on the contrary it takes care not to pry into the past of an adventurer whom it finds of very great use. Thus the antecedents of this financial Jove remained, like those of most deities, shrouded in myth.

Among the many legends that had at first been circulated concerning him, was one that he had formerly been a lady's physician and that he had been most successful with his aristocratic patients.

Whether this were or were not true, certain it was that his air and manner suggested that adulatory, fawning servility which characterizes those physicians whose professional efforts are, for lack of other occupation, chiefly directed to soothing the nerves of hysteric women. His exterior was that of a man who has once been handsome, _cidevant-beau_, spoiled only by the piercing glance of his large black eyes, and the cynical droop of his loose under-lip. He carried his head well forward, as if listening, and around his mouth and eyes there were strange lines and wrinkles in the yellow skin which had of late grown flabby,--lines suggesting that some of the figures with which he played the despot had flown angrily into his face and embedded themselves there.

That he had begun life with nothing he himself was wont to declare, whenever he gave way to the fit of rage that seized him upon any offence offered to his vanity; but how he had gained his immense fortune he never told. He made profit out of every thing that afforded gain, most of all out of the credulity of indolent inexperienced avarice. His success as a 'bear' was famous, and notorious; it sometimes seemed as if ill-luck existed only for his advantage, and it was well known that he had emerged from great financial crises which ruined thousands, not only unharmed, but with an increase of wealth.

There were various whispers afloat concerning his speculations, but no one had been able to attach any direct blame to him. Once only, in connection with his construction of a Spanish railway he had laid himself open to a couple of disgraceful charges. The times were unpropitious; the public, exasperated by various huge swindles, demanded a victim; but whilst several lesser individuals, were brought to trial and subjected to a public investigation, all legal proceedings against Capriani were suddenly quashed. Why?.... No one knew or at least no one told aloud what was known.

He was a '_personnage tare_,' but the stain upon his name was of so peculiar a nature that prudence required of many well-known and eminent men that they should not see it. Poor devils who stood outside the demoniac spell of his financial magic art called him an unprincipled swindler: people who had penetrated within the conjuror's circle called him a financial genius, flattered him almost servilely in their longing to share in his colossal enterprises, and if they did so procured for him in return a slight social recognition. And it was curious to observe how much at heart the magnate had this same social recognition, how he sued for the favour of every lofty dignitary, of every capital letter in the social alphabet. He persisted unweariedly in hurling his golden bomb-shells into the stronghold of Parisian society, and at last the fortress capitulated. He was received, as an enemy to be sure, with closed shutters and in silence, but he was received everywhere, at all the embassies, throughout the entire official representative world, and even in some drawing-rooms of the Faubourg. Everywhere he met those who, while he smiled at them in the most friendly way, looked over his shoulder without seeing him, but this he endured serenely. The hour for revenge will come, he said to himself, and almost always it did come!

Thanks to an ostentatious benevolence backed by millions, he had of late contrived to improve perceptibly his social standing; at his last ball, several crowned heads had been present. Zoe was right; he was undoubtedly one of the most influential financiers in Europe; she might almost have described him as one of the most influential men.

In Paris he was one of the celebrities that are shown to strangers. When he walked past, or rather drove past, for he was physically indolent and avoided all bodily exertion, he was pointed out as Monsieur Grevy or Mdlle. Bernhardt is pointed out. He occupied a vast hotel that he had built after the model of the castle of Chenonceau, but two stories higher, in the neighbourhood of the Park Monceau; in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Avenue Labedoyere the Baroness Zoe's _fiacre_ drew up before this mimicry of vanished feudalism erected by a modern Cr[oe]sus.

"Gabrielle's betrothal will make everything smooth," she said to herself. "I am glad to be well rid of the affair!"

A Maitre d'Hotel, who, it was said, had formerly been chamberlain to the Duc de Morny, and one of whose duties it was to instruct his present master in the laws of aristocratic etiquette, conducted the baroness with dignified solemnity to the 'small drawing-room' where the Contessa Capriani was wont to receive on quiet evenings.

The 'small drawing-room' was a very large, and very brilliantly-furnished apartment, which, in spite of landscapes by Corot, in spite of gold-woven Japanese hangings, old inlaid cabinets and a thousand articles of value, produced a dreary in-harmonious impression. It was evident that nothing here was devised for the pleasure and comfort of the inmates of the house, but that everything was arranged with a view of impressing visitors. It almost seemed as if millions run mad had tossed all these splendours together aimlessly, insanely shouting, "something more costly, something more costly still!"

Here sat the Contessa busied with some fancy work. She appeared well-bred, but shy, and embarrassed by her wealth, as she advanced a few steps to welcome the baroness, made a few conventional remarks, and then begged with a sigh to be excused for going on with her work, which work consisted in cutting all sorts of flowers and birds out of a piece of cretonne in order to sew them on a piece of satin. She devoted several hours a day to this occupation, and since her own rooms, as well as those of her acquaintances, were far too splendidly furnished to have any place in them for this sort of work, the result of her diligence was bestowed every year upon some charity-bazaar.

Zoe Melkweyser thought the Contessa unusually depressed. Excited voices were heard in the next room, and every time that there was a particularly loud explosion the mistress of the mansion winced.

"Can the 300,000 francs which the Duke of Larothiere lost last night be a bitter pill for even King Midas?" Zoe asked herself.

This supposition proved, however to be erroneous. Madame Capriani moved her chair rather nearer to Zoe, and whispered, "My husband is terribly agitated,--my poor son--that article in _Figaro_,--you saw it of course ...."

"I? I have not seen _Figaro_ to-day," Zoe reassured her. It was true, she had not seen _Figaro_ but she had heard of the article to which the countess alluded; the excitement in the _casa_ Capriani was quite intelligible to her now. No, Capriani never even pulled a wry face at the sums lost at play by his son-in-law; he enjoyed smiling away such losses; everything was allowable in the duke. For the comparatively petty extravagances of his own son he had much less forbearance, in fact he showed very little tenderness for this scion of his, whose name was Arthur, and who was far from satisfactory to his father. The Croesus could forgive his son's noble scorn of everything relating to business, for positively refusing to have a desk in his father's counting-room and for devoting his entire existence to sport,--but it drove him frantic to have Arthur held up to ridicule by the sporting world.

Hitherto Arthur's grandest achievements in the sporting world had culminated in a couple of broken collar-bones and a quantity of lost wagers,--today their number had been increased by a trifling _fiasco_.

A very trifling _fiasco_, but of a highly delicate nature. Two Austrians, an attache and one of his friends at present in Paris, both belonging to extremely aristocratic families, had lately out of wild caprice, and amid much laughter, undertaken to run a foot-race backwards.

Several French journals had taken immediate occasion to write articles on this eccentric wager, describing backward races as a traditional and very favourite sport among the youthful aristocrats of Austria. These journalistic rhapsodies had incited Arthur Capriani to arrange a similar race with brilliant accessories, music, torchlight, and a large assemblage of young dandies, and ladies of every description. He lost the race, got a severe contusion on his head, and the next day appeared the article in _Figaro_ which so exasperated the Conte.

"If you were only capable of something in the world beside making yourself ridiculous!" Zoe distinctly heard the father's excited voice say, "but you can do nothing else, nothing! And to think of my toiling for you,--making money for you!"

"_Mon Dieu!_ you make money because you delight in nothing else," retorted young Capriani.

"And for you--for _you_, I am contemplating one of the most brilliant matches in Austria," the Conte fairly shouted, "'tis ridiculous!"

"I fancy that Count Truyn agrees with you there," was Arthur's repartee.

"Ah, you would, would you?--you dare to sneer at your father?" Capriani burst forth, after the illogical fashion of angry men, "the father to whom you owe everything! I should like to see you begin life as I did, bare-footed, with only one gulden in your pocket!"

"What's the use of these recriminations?" drawled the son, "your antecedents mortify me enough without them, and ...."

There was a incoherent cry, a savage word ....!

The Contessa, very pale, put down her scissors; she trembled violently.

"I think it would be better to separate them," Zoe remarked very calmly.

"I will try to," gasped Madame Capriani, and opening the door into the next room, she called, "_Mon-ami_, the Baroness Melkweyser is here--I believe she brings you some news ...."

"_Il s'agit de votre fameuse affaire, mon cher comte_," Zoe called coaxingly.

Her words produced a magical effect; both men made their appearance, the father with a honeyed smile, the son, a short thick-set fellow with handsome features but a rude ill-tempered air, frowning and sullen.

"_Bon soir baronne_."

"_Bon soir_."

"_Eh bien?_" and settling himself in an arm-chair, his legs outstretched, and toying with his double eyeglass in the triumphant attitude with which he was wont to contemplate the favourable development of some particularly clever business transaction, Capriani began, "So you have at last found a favourable opportunity."

"No,--no, not at all!" said Zoe, "but I thought best not to leave you in uncertainty any longer, and so I came to you this evening."

"You know I gave you no authority to make a direct proposal," said the Conte.

"How can you suppose me capable of such want of tact!" Zoe rejoined hypocritically, "unfortunately I have not been able even to find out how the land lies. If you had commissioned me a little sooner--just a little sooner,--but there is nothing to be done now, for Gabrielle Truyn is already betrothed!"

"_Nom d'un chien!_" muttered Arthur; he had been no less impressed by Gabrielle's beauty than by her lofty descent--"_nom d'un chien!_"

"Indeed, already betrothed," his father said coldly, slowly putting his eyeglass upon his nose and scanning the baroness mistrustfully as he asked, "betrothed to whom?"

"To her cousin, Oswald Lodrin."

"To Oswald Lodrin," he repeated quickly. "You cannot, indeed, enter the lists against him, my poor Arthur!"

"Perhaps not as far as arrogance is concerned," growled the Vicomte, "he is the haughtiest human being I ever came across."

"That may be, but--" the Conte smiled oddly, "he is also one of the handsomest and most distinguished of Austrians, and he is renowned as such."

Whilst Arthur continued to mutter unintelligibly, but in evident ill-humor, Capriani senior left his arm-chair and taking a low seat beside Zoe, said, "To-morrow the X---- railway stock is to be issued. The shares will be in great demand; shall I save you a couple of hundred?"

Chapter IV.

The fragrance of the elder blossoms floated sweet and strong upon the air in the dim warm stillness of the Avenue Labedoyere. The poetry that breathes in the odour of flowers no words can reproduce, music alone can sometimes translate it; it ascended from the full white panicles in the little garden before the Hotel Truyn and breathed through the open window into Gabrielle's chamber like an exultant yearning, like a song filled with love's delicious pain.

Zinka sat on the edge of the little white bed where the young girl was lying, her golden hair rippling about her brow and temples, while upon her pale face lay the melancholy of illimitable joy; her eyes were moist.

"And you are not surprised, Zini ... not at all?" she whispered.

"No, my child," replied Zinka tenderly, "not in the least; I knew you were destined for each other from the first moment that I saw you together."

"Ah," Gabrielle sighed, "I cannot comprehend it yet. It all seems to me like a delicious dream from which I must waken, but even if I must, even if the dear God takes from me all that He has given me, I shall thank Him on my knees as long as I live for this one lovely dream."

"Calm yourself, my darling," Zinka whispered, lovingly stroking the young girl's cheeks, "how your cheeks burn!" And she poured a few drops of essence of orange flowers into a glass of water, "drink this, you little enthusiast."

"It will do no good, dear little mother," said Gabrielle, obediently lifting the composing draught to her burning lips. "Ah, you cannot imagine how I feel, it seems as if--as if my heart would break with happiness!"

Zinka kissed her, made the sign of the cross upon her forehead, drew the coverlet over her shoulders, once more admonished her to be calm, and left her.

Thunder rumbled without; Zinka started and as a second clap resounded she turned back. "Are you afraid of the storm, Ella, shall I stay with you?" she asked gently.

"Ah no, dear little mother," Gabrielle replied in the intoxication of her happiness, "I hardly hear the thunder."

And Zinka departed. "I do not know why I cannot rejoice in this as I ought," she said to herself, "it seems to me as if we had forgotten to invite some one of the twelve fairies to this betrothal."

And whilst the thunder crashed above the Champs Elysees she suddenly recalled an old fairy story that a fever-stricken peasant from the Trastevere had once told her in Rome.

It was a gloomy story, one of those legends in which the popular imagination, boldly overleaping all chronological and historical obstacles, bestows upon Pagan gods the wings of Christian angels, and arms God the Father with the lightnings of angry Jove. It ran somewhat thus:

"There was once a beautiful maiden who was good as an angel, so good that it gave her unutterable pain to see any one sad and not to be able to help; and once when she had cried herself to sleep over the woes of mankind she had a wonderful vision. A dark form with a veiled face approached her and said, 'If you have the courage to cut your heart out of your breast and plant it deep in the earth, there will spring from it a flower so glorious, so wonderful, that whoever inhales its fragrance will feel a bliss so intense that he would gladly purchase it with all the torture of our mortal existence.'

"And the maiden cut her heart out of her breast and planted it deep in the brown earth, and watered it with her tears, and there sprang from it a magically-beautiful flower, with luxuriant green leaves, and large white blossoms with blood-red calyxes, and whoever inhaled the breath of these blossoms felt an intoxicating delight course through his veins, so that in his wild ecstasy he forgot all earthly care and trouble. The flowers unfolded to more and more enchanting loveliness, and through the thick foliage sighed the sweetest music.

"Now when the angels in Heaven heard of this strange plant they entreated the Almighty Father to allow them to go get it and to plant it in Paradise.

"The Lord granted their request. Then they fluttered down from Heaven, but when they approached the wondrous plant a voice spoke from it, saying, 'Let me alone, I blossom for the consolation of the earth, I could not live in Paradise; the soil in which I flourish must be watered with heart's blood and tears!'

"But the angels did not heed these words, and, beguiled by the delicious fragrance, they tried to tear away the roots from the lap of earth; their efforts were vain, they had to return with their purpose unfulfilled.

"When mankind saw this it exulted in its blissful possession. Happy mortals laughed at the angels' futile envy. Then the angels prostrated themselves anew at the feet of the Almighty, and implored Him to revenge them upon the blasphemers. And the Almighty gave ear to their prayer; He hurled a thunderbolt at the plant, and it was swept from off the face of the earth.

"But its roots still slumber underground, and sometimes when in mild spring nights a mysterious fragrance steals upon the air, a fragrance wafted from no visible blossom, these roots are stirring to life, and green leaves shoot upward into the spring. But the sweet perfume still moves the angels to anger, and it scarcely rises aloft before the thunder rolls over the earth and the lightning blasts the green leaves. The flower will never blossom again."

Chapter V.

Oswald and his cousin Georges were sitting at breakfast in their pleasant room in the Hotel Bristol by a window that looked out upon the Place Vendome, and down the brilliant Rue de la Paix, the perspective of which was lost in a hurly-burly of omnibuses, orange carts, flower wagons, advertising vehicles painted fiery red, fiacres, sun-illumined dust, and human beings rushing madly hither and thither. Whilst Georges was drinking his tea in sober comfort with a brief remark as to the incomparable excellence of the Paris butter, Oswald, who although endowed by nature with an excellent appetite had paid but scant attention to his meals of late, recounted for the tenth time to his cousin the extraordinary combination of circumstances which had brought together Gabrielle and himself. He was a victim of the lovers' delusion that sees in the most ordinary occurrences the finger of the Deity, and that regards their happiness as a special marvel wrought by Providence for their benefit.

It was, so Oswald narrated, in April, on the second day of the Auteuil races, the first faint tinge of green was perceptible on the landscape. He was on horseback, riding a magnificent Arabian steed which one of his friends had lent him, and which he was handling with the excessive care which an Austrian always bestows upon a horse that is not his own. Suddenly he saw walking across the race-course a young lady in a dark green dress; a ray of sunlight that turned her hair to gold attracted his attention to her. She walked quickly past with an elderly gentleman and Oswald turned to look after her. His horse was a little restless, his rider's spurs were rather too sharp; with the sudden movement he scratched the animal's silken skin, and instantly exclaimed, "_Ah, pardon!_" a piece of courtesy for which his companions ridiculed him loudly. In the meantime the young lady with the gray-haired gentleman had vanished.

"Who is that exquisitely beautiful girl?" he asked, and Wips Siegburg, secretary of the Austrian Legation, replied laughing, "Do you not know her, she is your cousin!"

"Gabrielle Truyn!" exclaimed Oswald; and Siegburg said sagely, "this comes of enjoying one's self too busily in Paris, and consequently finding no time to visit one's nearest relatives."

Oswald peered in every direction but he could not discover her again. After the race, under the leafless trees of the Champs Elysees rolled crowds of carriages, victorias, all sorts of coaches, four-in-hands, lumbering roomy omnibuses,--all veiled in the whirling, sunlit dust as in golden gauze, while everywhere, alike in the omnibuses and in the more elegant vehicles, reigned a uniform air of dull fatigue.

Paris had lost another battle with ennui.

In the motley throng Oswald was almost forced to walk his horse, pondering as he went upon the best way of excusing his discourtesy to his uncle. He had now been four entire weeks in Paris, and had not yet presented himself in the Avenue Labedoyere. Fortunately he had gone so little into society that he had not yet met the Truyns; Paris is so huge, perhaps they had not yet heard that he was there. Yes, Paris is huge, but 'society' everywhere is small. No, he could hardly venture to appear at his uncle's yet.

He was growing quite melancholy over these reflections, when he suddenly observed that his horse had coolly poked his nose over the hood, which had been thrown back, of a low carriage in front, and was nibbling at a bouquet of white roses that he found there. Oswald shortened his bridle, and just then a lady sitting in the carriage turned round; it was Gabrielle Truyn. With no attempt to conceal her displeasure she observed what had been done, and when Oswald, hat in hand, humbly stammered his excuses, she bestowed upon him the haughty stare which an insolent intruder would have merited, and turned away. She knew perfectly well who he was, as he afterwards learned, and that he had been four weeks in Paris. The gentleman beside her now turned round, his eyes met Oswald's; he smiled, and said with good-humoured sarcasm ... "Ossi!--what an unexpected pleasure!"

"Uncle--I--I have long been intending to pay you my respects...." Oswald stammered.

"Apparently your resolutions require time to ripen," said Truyn drily.

"Ah uncle!--I--may I come to see you now?"

"You do us too much honour," said Truyn provokingly, "we will kill the fatted calf and celebrate the Prodigal's return." Then taking pity upon his nephew's embarrassment he added. "Don't be afraid, we shall not turn you out of doors, we have some consideration for young gentlemen who are in Paris for the first time; we know that they have other things to do besides looking up tiresome relatives, what say you, Ella?"

"My cousin has forgotten me," the young man murmured, "have the kindness to present me to her."

"It is your cousin, Oswald Lodrin, an old playmate of yours."

At her father's words Gabrielle merely turned her exquisite profile towards her cousin and acknowledged his low bow by a slight inclination of her head. Then she stretched out her hand for her bouquet, murmuring, "My poor roses! they are entirely ruined." And she suddenly tossed them away into the road. There was an opening in the blockade of carriages before them; Gabrielle's golden hair gleamed before Oswald's eyes for a flash, then all around grew gray; the twilight had absorbed the last glimmer of sunshine.

That same evening Oswald ordered at a large flower shop, on the Madeleine Boulevard, the most exquisite bouquet of gardenias, orchids and white roses that Paris could produce and sent it to his cousin to replace her ruined roses.

All this he retailed. His first visit, too, in the Avenue Labedoyere, the visit when he did not find Truyn at home, and when Gabrielle did not make her appearance, but Zinka, whom he had not known before, received him. There had been much discussion in Austria over this second marriage of his uncle, and Oswald had brought to Paris a violent antipathy to Zinka. But it soon vanished, or rather was transformed into a very affectionate esteem.

And then the first little dinner, a very little dinner (just to make them acquainted, Truyn said) strictly _en famille_--no strangers, only Oswald and Siegburg. The brightly-lit table with its flowers, glass, and sparkling silver, in the middle of the dim brown dining-room, the delicate fair heads of the two ladies in their light dresses standing out so charmingly against the background of the old leather hangings, Truyn's paternal cordiality, and Zinka's kindly raillery,--he thought he had never had so delightful a dinner.

Gabrielle, to be sure, held herself rather aloof. She evidently resented his tardy appearance in the Avenue Labedoyere; she hardly noticed his beautiful flowers. She talked exclusively to Siegburg who was odiously entertaining, and who glanced across the table now and then, his eyes sparkling with merry malice, at Oswald. Then as they were serving the asparagus, he took it into his head to ask Gabrielle, "Do you know who is the most courteous man in Paris, Countess Gabrielle?"

"No, how should I?"

"Your charming cousin there," rejoined the young diplomat.

"Indeed!" Gabrielle said with incredulous emphasis, bending her head a little on one side as is the fashion with pretty women when they undertake the inconvenient task of eating asparagus.

"Yes, verily, he says '_pardon_' even to his horse, when he scratches it with his spurs."

"Ah! Apparently he lavishes all his courtesy upon horses," Gabrielle said pointedly.

"In the case to which I allude, he really did owe some consideration to his horse, for the poor animal could not possibly know why he was made to feel the spur. The fact was that at the races the other day Lodrin saw a lady the sight of whom so electrified him that he turned positively all round on his horse, and in doing so scratched the poor beast with his spur."

"Ah, and who, if one may ask, was this remarkable lady?" asked Gabrielle.

"Ella, since when have you become conscience keeper for young gentlemen?" asked Truyn.

She blushed to the roots of her hair, but Oswald said with perfect composure, looking her directly in the face: "Certainly--it was Countess Gabrielle Truyn."

She bit her lip angrily.

"It serves you right," said Truyn smiling, "why do you ask about matters that do not concern you? The jest, however, is a little stale, Ossi."'

"I should not venture to jest; I simply told the truth," rejoined Oswald. In view of the young girl's evident agitation he had regained entire calm.

"One is not always justified in telling the truth," Gabrielle observed with the pettish frankness in which even the best-bred young ladies will indulge, when irritated by the accelerated beating of their hearts.

"Indeed? Not even in reply to a question?" Oswald said very quietly, and Truyn frowned after the fashion of affectionate papas, whose daughters' behaviour does not exactly gratify their paternal ambition. Zinka interrupted the fencing of the young people by an inquiry as to the new vaudeville which Gabrielle wished to see, but of which Zinka was not quite sure she should approve.

Oswald took no further notice of Gabrielle that evening, but devoted himself to Zinka. He sat beside her for nearly an hour, and enjoyed it extremely; she had a charming way of listening, assenting to his observations by a silent smile, and inciting him to all kinds of small confidences, without asking any direct questions.

When he afterwards reflected upon what had been the interesting subject of their conversation, he discovered that she had led him to speak only of himself, that he had told her everything about his life that a young man can tell to a young woman whom he has seen but twice.

She listened attentively, and when he took his leave she had grown almost cordial.

"Now that you have broken the ice, I hope we shall see you frequently. _A propos_, to-morrrow is our night at the opera; if you have nothing more agreeable in prospect and have not heard '_La Juive_' too often...."

* * *

And then the charming, uncertain, hoping, exulting, despairing time that ensued! Gabrielle's pique slowly vanished; then without any reasonable cause returned; her behaviour towards her cousin vacillated strangely between naive cordiality and proud reserve; some days she seemed to misconstrue everything that was said, and then all at once a single cordial word would mollify her.

And the dances, the cotillon at the Countess Crecy's ball in the pretty little Hotel, Rue St. Dominique,--the cotillon in which all had paid homage to Gabrielle as to a young queen, and in which when, of all the favours that she had to bestow only one remained, she suddenly became confused, looking from the favour to her cousin, and seeming more and more undecided until at last he advanced a step towards her and whispered, "Well, Gabrielle, am I to have the Golden Fleece or not?"

That was two days before the betrothal. To the day of his death he should wear that favour and no other on his heart. It should be buried with him!

Although not given to writing much he had kept a diary in Paris. Long since he had torn out the first pages; its contents now extended exactly from the first meeting to the first kiss. After his marriage the book was to be sealed up, to be given to his eldest son upon his twenty-first birthday.

Whilst Oswald, borne upon a lover's wings that knew no boundary line between heaven and earth, between the future and the past, at one time eulogized his betrothed, and at another made arrangements for his own burial, and his eldest son's twenty-first birthday, Georges, who had gradually finished his breakfast, leaned back in his chair watching the fantastic wreaths of smoke ascending from the bowl of his tschibouk. When at last Oswald paused and fell into a reverie he took occasion to utter the following profundity. "Living is very dear in Paris!" Twice was he obliged to repeat this brilliant aphorism, before Oswald seemed to hear it. Then glancing at his cousin reproachfully, the young fellow put his hand in his pocket, "would you like the key, Georges?" he said offering it to him.

"No," replied Georges, taking Oswald's hand, key and all in his own, and pressing it down upon the table. "No, my dear fellow, many thanks. Do you remember what Montaigne says about _le desir qui s'accroist par la malaysance_."

"Montaigne?--I am not very intimate with the old gentleman," Oswald replied with a laugh, "how came you pray to make his acquaintance?"

"Why you see, Oswald, there have been times when my means were not sufficient to provide me with amusements befitting my station in life, and I was obliged to have recourse, _faute de mieux_, to reading. But to recur to _plaisirs de la malaysance_, Montaigne proves as clearly as that two and two make four that if there were no locks there would be no thieves! Now,--hm--one thing is certain; since your strong box has been open to me I no longer have the smallest desire to possess myself of its contents. Do you know, Ossi, that I have grown very fond of you in these few weeks? Do not overturn the pepper cruet," he admonished his cousin, who suddenly extended his hand to him with somewhat awkward shyness. "Yes, very fond, you have effected a radical change in me; I should really like to go back with you to Bohemia, perhaps you could find me something to do there. Will you take me with you to Bohemia?"

"With the greatest pleasure, Georges."

"Reflect a little. What would your mother say to your introducing an unbidden guest into her household?"

"My dear Georges, my mother, if I were to take home Karl Marx--or--" he did not conclude for at that moment his servant brought in a small salver upon which lay his newspapers and letters.

Chapter VI.

A couple of cards of invitation were after a fleeting examination stuck into the frame of the mirror, then came two Austrian newspapers, then three letters from Austria; one addressed in a firm, bold hand he opened instantly with a smile of pleasure and the exclamation "from my mother! at last! I am very curious to know what she says to my betrothal--I began to be anxious--she has taken so long to write."

But the light in his eyes faded, he frowned, angrily crushed the letter together, and propping his elbows on the table leaned his head upon his hands. "I could not have thought this possible," he murmured.

"Is not your mother satisfied?" Georges asked.

"Satisfied--?" growled Oswald, "satisfied--? she couldn't be dissatisfied if she tried ever so hard, but she does not rejoice with me. There, read that. 'Dear child, I agree to everything that will make you happy, and pray for every blessing upon yourself and your betrothed, whom, moreover, I remember as a charming little girl ....'"

"Well, what more can you ask?" said Georges, elevating his eyebrows.

"What more can I ask?" Oswald very nearly shouted, "what more can I ask? why, I am not used to having such conventional phrases served up to me by my mother!"

"Do you and your mother live upon perfectly good terms with each other?" asked Georges, mechanically brushing away a few crumbs on the table-cloth, and without looking at his cousin.

Oswald opened his eyes wide. "My mother and I? Why, yes, what can you be thinking of?"

Georges made no reply, he remembered perfectly well that years previously, before he had left home the Countess Lodrin had been anything but tender to her charming little son, nay, that she had been the downright fine-lady mother who figures in romances, but who fortunately is found but seldom in real life.

He thought it unnecessary, however, to remind his cousin of this.

In the meanwhile Oswald had somewhat cooled down. "My poor unreasonable mother!" he said half-aloud to himself, "it is so hard for her to give me up, in all her life she has had me only. Well, I shall soon bring her round. Ah, Georges, Georges, it seems but a poor arrangement in this life that we must so often take from one person to give to another! I only hope that my mother's letter to my betrothed is more cordial. Ah, here are two more epistles," and in no cheerful mood he opened one after the other of the two very business-like envelopes, read their contents, compared them with each other, threw both upon the table and, quite pale, with very red lips and flashing eyes, began to pace to and fro, from time to time passing his hand angrily across his forehead. "Everything disagreeable is sure to happen all at once!" he exclaimed.

Georges knowing his cousin's impetuousity watched his excitement with smiling composure. "Is Vesuvius again in a state of eruption," he said kindly, "or what is the matter, man alive?"

"Siegl is an ass!"

"Ah?--and your man of business besides?"

"Yes."

"Then this present affair is a matter of business?"

"No!" Oswald said gloomily, "an affair of honour. The matter is that I am forced to break my word--_voila tont!_ But I cannot understand Siegl, he ought to know ...." Suddenly he went to his secretary, opened it, rummaged nervously among a chaos of letters, at last finding a closely-written sheet, which he read through carefully, then grew very quiet, and seating himself opposite Georges at the uncleared breakfast-table, said "I am wrong, it is my fault."

"Pray explain yourself," said Georges, "my counsel, and my experience are at your service."

"The matter is simple enough. Before I came away from home I gave Siegl a power of attorney to conclude an unfinished sale, the sale of a couple of insignificant building lots in W----. In practical business matters I can thoroughly rely upon him. Well, the other day I had this letter from him asking whether I would agree to the winding up of the affair under certain conditions, and at the end of the letter he asked me in this case to telegraph him. His handwriting is execrable and his style most tedious,--and--and I hurried off to the Avenue Labedoyere. I was going to ride in the Bois with Gabrielle,--in short I skimmed over the letter, never noticing that he asked about another far more important sale, and telegraphed, 'I agree to everything; do as you think best.'"

"_Eh bien!_"

Oswald cleared his throat. "You remember Dr. Schmitt? He was our family physician, a true man if ever there was one, my father valued him highly. Well, he leased an estate from us, Kanitz, it lies in one corner of the Schneeburg grounds; after the old man's death his son held the lease, he is a very good fellow, we served together in the same regiment in our volunteer year. He married, and set great store by the lease, which would run out in three years. Before his marriage he came to me to know whether he might depend upon an extension of the lease; of course I promised it to him, thereby relieving him of immense anxiety. And now Siegl has sold the property at a high price to Capriani, and is very proud of the transaction, and it is all because of my thoughtlessness, because I thought it too tedious to read through his roundabout epistle and .... and young Schmitt, poor devil, is quite beside himself, and writes me this letter! I cannot understand Siegl, he might have asked me again, he knows me perfectly well, he ought to have known that I could never have contemplated anything of the kind ....! But it's just the way with all my people! If they can make a few gulden for me, no matter how, they pride themselves upon it hugely; no one seems to understand that I care precious little for the augmentation of my income; what I want is, to alleviate as far as lies in my power the existence of as many men as possible!"

"How old are you, Ossi?" Georges asked with an oddly-scrutinizing glance at his cousin.

"Twenty-six. What makes you ask?"

"Your transcendental views of life, my child. Men and ants are born with wings, but both rub them off in the struggle for existence,--men usually do so before they are twenty-four."

"That goal is passed," rejoined Oswald, "and the winged ants do not lose their wings, they only die young," and he became again absorbed in study of the two letters. "I cannot blame Siegl this time, try as hard as I can, it is _my_ fault; 'tis enough to drive one mad!"

"I can understand how it goes against the grain, but--well, you must indemnify Schmitt with another property."

"That of course, but it does not help the matter," Oswald grumbled, "he has a special love for Kanitz--he was born there, his parents are buried there in a pretty little churchyard on the edge of the woods by the Holtitzer brook. He takes care of their graves himself--they are perfect beds of flowers. And his wife!--I paid her a visit last Autumn,--she is a dear little shy thing, and she looked at me out of her large eyes as if I were Omnipotence itself. There is such an old-fashioned loyalty, so poetic a content about those people; upon whom shall we depend if we heedlessly destroy the devotion of such as they? Schmitt must keep Kanitz, even although I buy it back at double the price paid for it!"

"My dear fellow you can do nothing with money where Capriani is concerned," Georges observed calmly, "but I am convinced that he is very desirous of standing well with all of you. If you make a personal request of him he certainly will not object to annul his purchase. If the matter is really important to you go and call upon Capriani, and...."

Oswald tossed his head angrily. "What? ask me to have any personal intercourse with that man--no--in an extreme case indeed----but there must be some legal way out of the difficulty, it is a matter for our agents--_Ca!_ A quarter of twelve and I breakfast at Truyn's."

"You must make haste. Can I do anything for you?"

Oswald went to the writing-table and in large bold characters wrote a couple of lines on a sheet of paper. "Pray see that this telegraph to Schmitt goes off immediately, and then one thing more--if it does not bore you too much--please leave a card for me at the places on this list. Do not take any trouble, but if you should be passing.... Good-bye old fellow--remember we are to go home together."

"Hotspur!" murmured Georges as the door closed after his cousin. "Well, after all, I do not grudge him his position; he becomes it well."

Chapter VII.

If Oswald Lodrin might be regarded as the chivalric embodiment of the old-time '_noblesse oblige_,' his cousin Georges was on the contrary the personification of the modern axiom '_noblesse permet_.'

He had made use of the credit of the Lodrins, the accumulation of centuries, to screen his maddest pranks. True, he had never overdrawn this credit, he had never by any of his numberless eccentricities raised any barrier between himself and his equals in rank. He had grown to manhood discontentedly convinced that Count Hugo Lodrin, his father's elder brother, had done him great wrong, and this wrong was his marriage late in life with the beautiful Princess Wjera Zinsenburg.

Georges was barely eight years old at the time, but he remembered as long as he lived how angrily his father, after a life of careless extravagance led in the certainty of inheriting the Lodrin estates, had received the announcement of the betrothal, and how hardly he had spoken of Wjera Zinsenburg.

The boy grew up, his heart filled with a hatred none the less vehement because it was childish, first for his aunt, and afterward for his cousin.

His hatred for his aunt grew with his growth, but as for his hatred for his cousin?... It was difficult to cherish resentment against his loving, helpless little cousin with his big black eyes and pretty rosy mouth. And in the summer holidays, which he spent every year in Tornow with his father, he struck up a friendship with the little fellow.

It was a lasting friendship. One day after his father's death when he had for several years been an officer of hussars, and always in pecuniary difficulties, Georges received a letter, which upon very slanting lines evidently ruled in pencil by Ossi, himself, and in very sprawling clumsy characters, ran thus:

"Dear Georges,

"Papa says you need money, I don't need any, so I send you my pocket money, and when I'm big you shall have more. The donkeys are given away. Papa got angry with Jack because he bit me. Now, for a punishment, he has to carry sand for the gardeners. I have a pair of ponies now; they are very pretty and I ride every day. I can ride quite well and I am not afraid, but I stroke Jack whenever I see him, and I think he is ashamed of himself.

"Your Ossi."

Yes, he needed money--a great deal of money; his father had left him next to nothing, and the small allowance which his uncle made him, always seasoning it with good advice, did not nearly suffice him.

His uncle paid his debts upon condition that he should exchange from the hussars into the dragoons, then held in rather high estimation as heavy cavalry. Georges needed money quite as much as a dragoon, however, as when a hussar. Then came feminine influences--a quarrel with his colonel--a duel. He resigned his commission with honour and to the regret of the entire staff. Once more, and, as he was solemnly informed, for the last time, his uncle paid his debts, and wishing to have no further concern in his nephew's money matters he also paid out a handsome sum as a release from all further demands.

Georges manifested his repentance after this settlement by an immediate excursion to Paris with a pert little French concert-saloon singer. This was the finishing stroke in the eyes of his strictly moral, nay, even bigotted uncle. From that time onward the young man's letters to the old count were returned to him unopened. Georges vanished from the scene. The rumour ran that after he had tried his luck and failed in the California gold diggings, he had been a rider in a circus; there was also a report that he had served mahogany-coloured Spaniards and jet-black negroes as waiter at Rio Janeiro, that he had been an omnibus driver in New York--this last fact was vouched for. Still, he contrived to impress the stamp of spontaneous eccentricity upon every one of the expedients to which he resorted in his pecuniary embarrassments.

One day after Oswald had attained his majority he received a letter in which his cousin, after appealing to the old boyish friendship, described his present condition. Oswald, who was kindheartedness itself, and, moreover, enthusiastically eager to discharge his duties as head of the family, did not delay an hour in arranging his cousin's affairs and in settling upon him an income suitable to his rank.

Thus Georges returned to his old sphere of life and to his former habits, smiling calmly, but testifying no special delight, and not the slightest surprise at the change in his circumstances. The honest friendship which he felt for the cousin whom as a child he had petted, quite destroyed his old grudge against his fate.

Chapter VIII.

Picture a sleepy little market-town lying, at a respectful distance, near a very large castle, where the clock in the tower has not gone for twenty years; a ruggedly uneven market-place, thickly paved with sharp stones and no sidewalk, queer old-fashioned houses with high-gabled roofs and small windows, and here and there a faded-out image of the Virgin above an arched gateway, a tradesman's shop serving as post-office as well as for the sale of tobacco, and adorned over the doorway with a wreath of wooden lemons and pomegranates, and the imperial double-eagle, a corner where stands a piled-up carrier's van covered with black oilskin, a smithy sending forth from its dark interior a shower of crimson sparks, while from the low passage-way of the opposite inn, 'The Golden Lion,' a waiter with a dirty apron, and bare feet thrust into old red slippers, is gazing over at the smithy where a crowd of dripping street boys are collected about two thoroughbreds and a groom liveried in the English fashion--picture all this and you see Rautschin,--Rautschin on a dark afternoon in May in a pouring rain with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

Somewhat apart from the gaping urchins a young man is walking to and fro in front of the row of houses; his quick impatient step testifies to his having been detained by some untoward mishap and also to his being quite unused to such delay.

The rain descends from heaven in fine, regular, grey sheets. The young man's cigar has gone out, he is cold, and thoroughly annoyed he passes the unattractive waiter and enters the inn.

The room in which he takes refuge is low and spacious with bright blue walls, and a well-smoked ceiling. Limp, soiled muslin curtains reminding one of the train of an old ball-dress, hang before the windows where are glass hanging-lamps, and flower-pots of painted porcelain filled with mignonette, cactuses, and catnip. The furniture consists of two chromos representing the Emperor and his consort, of a number of yellow chairs, of several green tables, and of an array of spittoons.

At one of the tables sit three guests evidently much at home; one of them is tuning a zither, while the other two are smoking very malodorous cigars, and drinking beer out of tankards of greenish glass. Engaged in eager conversation none of them observed the entrance of the stranger who, to avoid attracting attention, seated himself in a dark corner with his back to the group.

"A couple more truck-loads of all sorts of fine furniture have arrived at Schneeburg," remarked one of the trio, a young man with red hair, and unusual length of limb. He is a surveyor's clerk, his name is Wenzl Wostraschil, but he is familiarly known as 'the Daily News' from the amount of sensational intelligence which he disperses. "Count Capriani ...."

"I know of no Count Capriani," interrupted an old gentleman with white hair and a red face; he is Doctor Swoboda, by profession district physician, in politics just as strictly conservative as Count Truyn became as soon as he had proclaimed his socialism by taking to himself a bourgeoise bride--"I know of no Count Capriani, you probably mean Conte!"

"It is the same thing," observed the zither player, Herr Cibulka.

"In the dictionary, perhaps," the old doctor rejoined sarcastically.

"The two titles are synonymous in my opinion," said Herr Cibulka as he laid aside his tuning-key and began to play 'The Tyrolean and his child,' while with closed lips he half-hummed, half-murmured the air to himself, his big fat hands groping to and fro on the instrument as if trying to aid his memory.

Herr Cibulka--this sonorous Slavonic name signifies _onion_ in Bohemian--Eugene Alexander Cibulka--he is wont to sign his name with a very tiny Cibulka at the end of a very big Eugene Alexander--assistant district-attorney, transcendentalist, and Lovelace, is the pioneer of culture in the sleepy droning little town. He is a tall young fellow inclining to corpulence, with an uncommonly luxuriant growth of hair on both his head and face, and with the flabby oily skin of a man who has all his life long been fed upon dainties.

Evidently much occupied with his outer man he dresses himself as he says, 'simply but tastefully;' he pulls his cuffs well over his knuckles, and delights in a snuff-coloured velvet coat with metal buttons. He fancies that he looks like the Flying Dutchman, or at least like the brigand, Jaromir. In reality he looks like an advertisement for 'the only genuine onion ointment for the beard.' He is considered by the Rautschin ladies as quite irresistible and fabulously cultured. He criticises everything--music, literature and politics, being especially great in the domain of politics, and he discourses at length whenever an opportunity presents itself, combating with admirable energy perils that have long ceased to terrify any one. It is not clear as to what party he belongs, but since he berates the clergy, hates the nobility, and despises the lower-classes, consequently pursuing the straight and narrow path of his subjective vanities and social aspirations, he probably considers himself a Liberal. His uncle is in the ministerial department and _he_ dreams of a portfolio.

Meanwhile the red-haired man with an air of indifference has taken up his tankard. "Count or Conte, as you please," he said, giving the disputed point the go-by, and continuing as he put his beer glass down on an uninviting little brown table, "at all events he must be accustomed to live in fine style, for he declared that it was impossible for a man used to modern conveniences to live in Schneeburg in the condition in which Count Malzin had occupied it. So the house has been entirely newly furnished. Immense! the doings of these money-giants--the world belongs to them!"

"Unfortunately, and our poor nobles must go to the wall," sighed the old doctor, whose platonic love for the nobility keeps pace with the red-haired man's equally platonic affection for money. "Except a couple of owners of entailed estates here and there none of them will be able to compete with these great financiers."

"The law of entail cannot be allowed to exist much longer, it is a stumbling block in the path of national progress .... My uncle in the ministerial department ...." Eugene Alexander began in a deep bass voice, which suggested a sentimentally guttural rendering of 'The Evening Star' at aesthetic tea-parties.

"Spare me the remarks of your uncle in the ministerial department," interrupted Dr. Swoboda angrily.

"The law of entail must be abolished," Herr Cibulka said, as another man might say, "that new street must be opened."

"Have you got your liberal seven-league boots on again?" Swoboda rejoined. "How you stride off into the future! You evidently suppose that if the law of entail were abolished to-day or to-morrow, this 'stumbling-block in the path of national progress' being removed, various districts of Tornow and Rautschin would find their way into the pockets of yourself and of your hypothetical children? You are mistaken, my dear fellow, hugely mistaken. Heaven forbid! Trade would monopolize the real estate, and that is all you would get by it, nothing more. The supremacy of money would be confirmed."

"I should prefer, it is true, the supremacy of mind!" Eugene Alexander said didactically.

"Ah! you think you would come in for a share there," growled the old doctor under his breath.

Without noticing the irony, Eugene Alexander went on, "The supremacy of money, of individual merit, is certainly more to be desired than the supremacy of fossilized prejudice."

"Indeed?... now tell us honestly," said the doctor, "do you really believe that the masses, whose sufferings are real and not imaginary, would gain anything thereby?"

"There certainly would be a fresh impetus given to culture,--a freer circulation of capital," began Cibulka.

"Listen to me a moment," broke in the doctor. "Circulation of capital? A financier's capital circulates inside his pockets, not outside of them except on certain occasions on 'Change. The art of spending money does not go hand-in-hand with the art of making it,--few things in this world delight me more than the spectacle of a millionaire who, having ostentatiously retired from business, contemplates his money-bags in positive despair, not knowing what to do with them and bored to death because the only occupation in which he takes any delight, money-getting, is debarred him by his position."

"No one can say of Conte Capriani that he does not know how to spend his money," the red-headed 'Daily News' affirmed, "everything is being arranged in the most expensive style, the rooms hung with silk shot with silver, the carpets as thick as your fist, and the paintings and artistic objects,--why they are coming by car-loads. I am intimate with the castellan, and he shows me everything; the outlay is princely."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "The extravagance of a financier is always for show, it is never a natural expenditure. There's no free swing to it, and I am not at all impressed by your Conte; one day he may take it into his head to paper his room with thousand-gulden bank-notes, and the next he will haggle like the veriest skinflint; just ask the Malzin servants; he discharged them at a moment's notice without a penny."

"They were a worthless old lot," Eugene Alexander rejoined, "and besides it was Count Malzin's duty to provide for his people."

"Poor Count Malzin!" exclaimed the doctor, "he pleaded for his servants, as I know positively; but provide for them--how could he provide for them when he could not provide for his own son! When I think of our poor Count Fritz! A handsomer, sweeter-tempered, kindlier gentleman never lived in the world! And when I reflect that Schneeburg is now in the hands of strangers, that Count Fritz cannot live there....!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon," the red-head insisted, wriggling on his chair like an eel, "he is going to live there, in the little Swiss cottage in the park where the young people used to be with their tutor and drawing-master in the hunting season, away from the bustle in the castle."

"Frightful!" murmured the doctor. "This whole Schneeburg business is too--too sad. The old bailiff is ill of typhus fever brought on by sheer grief and anxiety, and his whole family would go to destruction were it not for the generous support of the Countess Lodrin."

"Don't tell us of the generosity of the Countess Lodrin," sneered Cibulka, or of the generosity of any of the Lodrins. "You need only look at their estates; the peasants are huddled there in pens like swine."

The stranger, who had until now remained motionless in his dim corner, apparently paying no heed to the talk, here turned his head to listen.

"That seems very improbable," Dr. Swoboda replied to the last assertion, "The young count treats all his dependants with a kindly consideration that it would be difficult to match. If his people suffer from any injustice it certainly is without his knowledge; Count Oswald is one of the old school. Hats off to so true a gentleman!"

"You are, and always will be a truckler to princes," said Eugene Alexander, offended. "I must say that a man like Capriani who has won for himself a position in society among the greatest by his personal merit, by the work of his hands, seems to me more worthy of consideration than a petty Count, who has had everything showered upon him from his cradle."

"What trash you are talking about personal merit," thundered the doctor. "Capriani has grown rich on swindling--swindling, on 'Change--swindling in women's boudoirs. He was formerly a physician, and as such insinuated himself into distinguished houses, and wormed out political secrets which he made use of in his speculations. Finally he married a rich banker's daughter; they say his wife is a good woman. I never saw him but once, but I cannot understand how a woman with a modicum of taste could ever consent...."

"Oh they say that in his time he has enjoyed the favour of all kinds of ladies, very great ladies...." the red-head interposed with an air of importance. "I know from the widow of the late Count Lodrin's valet--there was a game carried on down there in Italy between the Countess Wjera...."

He had no time to conclude. The stranger sprang up and like a flash of lightning struck the speaker twice across the face with his riding-whip; then without a word he left the room.

"Who was that?" asked Cibulka pale with terror, while the red-headed man, bewildered, rubbed his cheek.

"Count Oswald Lodrin," said the doctor. "It serves you right for your insolence!"

"I shall not submit to such brutality--I will appeal to the courts," snarled red-head.

"And what can you say?" said the old doctor. "'I have wantonly repeated low, scandalous gossip--I have slandered a lady who is blessed and worshipped by all the country round, I have spit in the face of a saint'--this is what you can say. Let me advise you not to stir, my worthy Wostraschil."

This 'my worthy Wostraschil' was uttered by the simple old doctor in a tone which he must have caught unconsciously and involuntarily from some aristocratic patient.

He arose and stood at the window, looking with a smile of satisfaction after Oswald, who with head held haughtily erect, face pale, and eyes flashing angrily, was striding directly across the square to the smithy.

"A splendid fellow--a true gentleman," the old man murmured. He was proud of this Austrian, product, and would gladly have paid a tax for the maintenance of this national article of luxury.

Chapter IX.

Arrived in Tornow only that morning, Oswald hardly finished his breakfast before he rode over to Kanitz, where, after his good-humoured despotic fashion he adjusted the whole affair with a smile, and soothed the anxious young tenant.

On the way back his horse lost a shoe, and his groom was well scolded by his impetuous young master for the carelessness resulting in such an accident. The riders had been forced to abate their speed and to take a roundabout way through Rautschin, that the nervous, high-bred animal might be relieved as soon as possible.

On the way they were overtaken by the storm. Perhaps Oswald would not have endured the very smoky atmosphere of the inn room so long, had he not been unconsciously interested in the talk of its three guests.

By no means indifferent to Doctor Swoboda's enthusiastic appreciation of his merits, he had enjoyed playing the part of the Emperor Joseph in the popular song and was meditating some pleasantly-devised way of surprising the old man with his thanks for his loyalty, when the vile insinuation made by the red-head drove everything else out of his mind.

The horse was shod; he flung himself into the saddle and galloped out of the town.

The rain had ceased, the clouds were broken. Steaming with moisture, its outlines glimmering in the light of the setting sun, Rautschin was left behind. Long streaks of violet cloud with golden edges, lay just above the horizon, and where the sun was setting, the sky glowed dully red. The storm had torn the bridal wreath from the head of spring; on the surface of the water lying in the ruts and hollows of the roads glinted snowy, fallen blossoms, and the apple-trees and pear-trees trembled softly in their tattered white array, like young people awakened from a dream. By the roadside stretched a sheet of water, its shores bristling with rushes, its surface bluish-gray and gloomy, like a large pool into which the sky had fallen and been drowned. A couple of ravens were flapping heavily above it.

The golden edges of the clouds grew narrower, the glow of the sunset was consumed in its own fire, the colours faded, and profound melancholy brooded over all the plain.

Oswald's blood was still in a ferment. "Rascally dog!" he muttered between his teeth ...."and to have to drop the matter for my mother's sake, not to be able to thrash him within an inch of his life, and drive him from the country! No human being is safe from such envious liars, they would drag down everything above them, even the Lord God Himself! Bah, _cela ne devrait pas monter jusque a la hauteur de mon dedain_. But,"--he shook himself,--"it takes more than one's will to calm the blood."

Twilight had set in when he reached Tornow Castle.

It was a spacious, clumsy structure with several court-yards, one portion with pointed Gothic archways was ancient, irregular and picturesque, another part was of a later rococo style with conventional decoration. In front, fringed by tall alders lay a romantic little lake, the park stretched far to the rear of the castle. The iron gate with its quaint scroll work, above which was suspended the Lodrin escutcheon, between two time-stained sandstone urns, turned upon its rusty hinges, and Oswald rode up to the castle and dismounted. Two lackeys, who seemed to have little to do save to wear their blue liveries and striped waistcoats with due dignity, and self-complacency, were standing in the gateway, peering into the gathering darkness. The young Count ran hastily up the broad, flat hall-steps.

The last pale ray of daylight penetrated into the hall, through the tiny panes of the huge windows; here and there the metallic lustre of some old weapon on the wall gleamed among the dusky shadows.

"Ossi, is that you?" called a voice almost masculine in its deep tone, but musical withal and in evident anxiety, as a tall female figure advanced to meet him.

"Yes, mother," he replied gently.

"How late you are! We have been waiting dinner an hour for you."

"Forgive me, mother,"--he carried her hand with reverent affection to his lips,--"it really was not my fault."

"Fault--fault! I am not reproaching you, Ossi! No, but my child, I was half dead with anxiety. You are always so punctual, and one quarter of an hour after another passed and you did not come.--And then the storm. The lightning struck near here in several places, and your John Bull is skittish,--you do not think so,--but I know the beast well. If it had gone on for one more quarter of an hour .... but what detained you, my child?"

Oswald smiled tenderly and considerately, as tall chivalric sons are wont to smile at the exaggerated anxieties of their mothers. "Give me only five minutes to change my dress and I will tell you all," he said, and once more kissing her hand he hurried away.

Oswald's was one of those impetuous temperaments which are always stirred to the depths morally and physically by a violent outburst of anger; even when its cause is forgotten every pulse and vein will still thrill.

Although he joined his mother in the drawing-room some minutes later in a perfectly cheerful mood, she instantly saw from his face that something must have provoked him excessively.

"Anything disagreeable?" she asked drawing him down beside her upon a sofa, "did you have a distressing scene with Schmitt? did he reproach you? or ...."

"Heaven forbid, mamma!" broke in Oswald. "Schmitt and reproach?--he is the most devoted soul--humiliatingly devoted and faithful! Poor Schmitt! No, no, my horse cast a shoe. I was terribly vexed, I had to ride slowly, and take the roundabout way through Rautschin." He spoke quickly and with forced gayety.

"You are concealing something, lest it should annoy me," the countess said decidedly. "When will you learn that nothing in the world annoys me as much as your considerate reticence! I lie awake half the night when I see that you have some vexation to bear which you will not share with me. You ought to have no secrets from me."

"In a certain way every honourable man must have secrets from her whom he respects as I respect you," Oswald said half-annoyed, half-tenderly, while he puzzled his brains to discover a way of pacifying his mother without telling either a falsehood or the whole truth. A brilliant idea then occurred to him. "In fact the matter is a very stupid affair. In the inn where I stopped during the storm I suddenly heard one of three men who were in the room speak with contempt of the Lodrin generosity; the fellow asserted that on the Lodrin estates the labourers lived in pens like pigs, and,--er--my temperament is not exactly stoical, and I,--in short I got angry. It is hard to hear such things when one honestly tries to treat his people well! And there may be some truth in it; I will make inquiries to-morrow, no, I will find out for myself. I can learn nothing from my bailiffs, they only cajole me. Last year there was typhus fever in Morowitz, the people died like flies, and I knew nothing of it; when at last I did learn about it I went there immediately, but the epidemic was well nigh at an end. _A propos_, mamma, I cannot but forgive you if it be so, but was it not all concealed from me at your request? You knew that I should go over there at once, and you were afraid of contagion."

"No, my dear child," the countess said gravely, "foolishly anxious as I am about you upon trifling occasions,--and I have just shown how foolishly anxious I can be,--I never would lift a finger to seclude you from a peril if such peril lay in the path of duty. I would rather die of anxiety than hamper you or exert a detracting influence upon you in your line of conduct. I would be broken on the wheel to save your life, but----" she shuddered and moved closer to him,--"I would rather see you dead, than anything else save what you are--my pride, and a blessing to all around you!" She looked him full in the face, the mother's large, earnest eyes gleaming with exultant enthusiasm. "If you only knew how I suffered during that stupid storm! I am so glad to have you again, my boy, my fine, noble boy!" And drawing his head down to her she kissed him on the brow.

The rustle of a newspaper attracted Oswald's attention, and for the first time he observed Georges, who, buried in the depths of a luxurious arm-chair, had been watching from behind his newspaper the little scene between mother and son.

A servant appeared at the door--dinner was announced.

Chapter X.

"Very remarkable!" Georges said a few hours later as, smoking a cigar, he entered his cousin's bedroom, where Oswald was already in bed.

"What is very remarkable?" Oswald asked drowsily as he lay on his back, his hands clasped under his head.

"The change in your mother," said Georges, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "I should hardly have known her again."

"I can't understand that," Oswald rejoined. "Her hair has grown gray--it grew gray when she was quite young,--but her features are the same. I think her very beautiful still."

"I think her more beautiful than ever," Georges said gravely, "but...." he thoughtfully blew the smoke from his cigar upwards to the ceiling--"how old is your mother?"

"Fifty-six."

"Only fifty-six--and yet she seems an old woman."

"An old woman....! What are you thinking of? My mother can do nearly as much as I can, she can ride for five hours at a time, and can take long walks and never...."

"My dear fellow," interrupted Georges impatiently. "I did not mean to say that your respected mamma seemed at all decrepit, but only that her features, her whole bearing, wear the stamp of that calm, kindly cheerfulness that belongs to those who have done with life. She asks nothing more--she bestows. And that, Ossi, is not a characteristic of youth--no, not of even, the most generous youth."

"There you are right," Oswald rejoined thoughtfully. "Many a woman of her age would still go into society and enjoy its distractions, she, since my father's death, has had no thought of anything except my education and the management of my property. It is wonderful, the knowledge she has of business. You would laugh if I should tell you of what large sums she saved up for me during my minority. Such strict economy was not to my taste, and I put a stop to it, but it must be forgiven in a mother."

"And the gentleness and kindness of her manner!" Georges continued, "her unreasoning maternal nervousness! I assure you it was no easy task, the hour spent in trying to allay her anxiety. Her feeling for you is positive idolatry."

"Try to be patient with this weakness of hers."

"My dear boy, he would be a worthless fellow who did not respect this weakness. It only surprises me in your mother; I had not expected anything of the kind. Before I left home she kept you at such a distance. I could not then understand why she always treated you so coldly and harshly, and, to tell the truth, I took such, lack of affection on her part, very ill."

Oswald leaned upon his elbow among the pillows. "That was while my father was alive," he said softly, "yes, I have often thought of that, and have thought also that I could explain her conduct. You see my father's foolish fondness for me irritated her, and she suppressed the manifestation of her own affection. Between ourselves, Georges, my mother was wretched in her marriage; her poor heart was always upon the rack, it could no more beat freely and naturally than a man with a rope tight about his neck can sing. I respected my father immensely, but ... well, Georges, look there...." he pointed to a large painting above his bed, the portrait of the countess in the proud splendour of her youthful beauty, "and then, look there...." and he pointed to a white plaster death-mask framed in black velvet hanging on the wall opposite. "As far back as I can remember, my father looked just like that; they were never congenial. And now let me go to sleep, old fellow, good-night!"

Chapter XI.

No, 'congenial' they never had been and never could have been.

Although the painting was far from portraying the charm of the Countess Lodrin's beauty in the bloom of youth, the repulsive death-mask opposite did full justice to the deceased count. The face that it represented was almost horse-like in its length; smoothly shaven as that of a monk, with a sharp-pointed nose, little round eyes, a mouth like the slit in a child's money-jug, and seamed with innumerable wrinkles, it resembled one of those bloodless aged heads which abound in pictures by Memmling or Van Eyck.

It would be an error to suppose that illness and the final agony had distorted the face before it had been perpetuated in the plaster cast. Count Lodrin had never looked otherwise, he had always looked like a corpse, and Pistasch Kamenz boldly maintained that 'the old gentleman looked his best in his coffin.'

Not only Count Pistasch, but everybody else ridiculed Count Lodrin; few men have ever lived who have been more ridiculed. One fact, however, no ridicule could affect--Count Lodrin was a gentleman through and through.

That he possessed a tender heart and a sense of duty, which, in spite of the vacillations of a timid temperament, always triumphed in important crises, no one had ever denied who had seen him in any grave emergency,--and that this sense of duty, with a mild admixture of pride of rank, belonged to him more as a gentleman than as a human being, did not detract from his merit.

Given over in his youth to the ghostly influence of priestly tutors, he had led a melancholy, misanthropic existence. His delicate constitution made impossible any participation in the manly sports of his equals in rank. Therefore there was developed in him, as in many another recluse, an intense devotion to art; he was indefatigable in sifting and enlarging his collections.

People of his rank usually marry young. It was not so with him. As with several historic characters, the timidity of his temperament culminated in an aversion to women, which rendered futile all the bold schemes of ambitious mammas. In his solitude he had come to be forty-five years old; it was an article of faith in Austrian society that he never would marry, when suddenly his betrothal to Wjera Zinsenburg was announced.

His brother's creditors made wry faces; society laughed. Two months afterwards the strange couple were united in the chapel of the palace of the Zinsenburgs. Among those present at the ceremony there were some who envied the bridegroom, many who ridiculed him, and a few who pitied him.

As the pair stood beside each other before the altar they presented a strange contrast.

The face of the bride, nobly chiselled, and with an indignant curve of the full, red lips, recalled to the minds of all who had been in Rome a beautiful but unpleasing memory,--the profile of the Medusa in the Villa Ludovisi, that wondrous relievo in which the pride of a demon seems contending with the suffering of an angel.

The bridegroom looked as he did fifteen years afterward on his bier, only more unhappy, for upon the bier his face wore the expression of a man who had just been relieved of an old burden; at the altar his expression was that of one who bends beneath the weight of a burden just assumed.

It was shortly manifest that no late-awakened passion had decided him to contract this alliance. A weaker will had been forced to bow before a stronger.

Chapter XII.

But what had induced the exquisitely-beautiful girl to choose such a husband as this, every one asked; and no one answered. The question had to be dismissed with a shrug, and, 'She is a riddle!'

The same thing had been said four years previously, when with an air of proud indifference, and with cold, 'level-fronting eyelids,' she had appeared in Vienna society. There was about her an exotic air always irresistible to the genuine Austrian temperament. Her father was a diplomatist, her mother a Russian. Wjera's Russian blood betrayed itself in everything about her, in her deep, almost harsh voice, which was, nevertheless, capable of exquisite modulations, in the hybrid combination of Oriental nonchalance and northern energy that characterized her whole bearing, her gestures, her figure.

When she reclined upon a divan or leaned back in an arm-chair there was a suggestion of the odalisque in her attitude; but in her walk there was a short, sharp rhythm; it was firm and despotic like that of a race-horse, and yet light as the fluttering of a bird. She was tall and not too slender--the beauty of her shoulders and bust was so great that it had become famous--her head was small and faultlessly poised upon her neck--her features were not perfectly regular, but how charming was her face! pale, with ripe red lips, and brown hair with a shimmer of gold about the temples and the back of the neck. The cheek-bones were rather too high, the face not quite oval enough; the brow was low; the profile haughty, and delicately modelled.

The most remarkable feature of Wjera's face was her eyes. Long in their openings, but usually half-closed and shaded by dark eyelashes, they were as changing in colour as in expression, and there was in them something uncanny--mysterious--no one dared to look full into their depths.

Of course she created a sensation in Vienna, and yet she had almost no suitors--they were afraid of her and--she had a history, neither disgraceful nor dishonourable, but yet a history.

In St. Petersburg, where she had been with her father, she had been distinguished by the homage of a prince of the blood, and was finally betrothed to him. For a year the betrothal was kept up, and then the tie was suddenly snapped. The world discovered the reason in the fact that Wjera could not consent to a morganatic marriage; her ambition had been defeated. The true significance of the breach the world at large did not divine. Only very few suspected that Wjera had loved the man--so much her inferior in all save rank and birth--with all the fervour and poetic purity that are found in Russian girls alone. She did not see him as he really was, handsome, with a superficial air of distinction, but mentally coarse--alternating between brutish excesses and superstitious penances--at once cynical as a roue and sentimental as a school-miss,--no, she endowed him nobly in her imagination.

Of all poets in the world the hearts of young girls are the most highly gifted. There are women whose illusions are so tough that they carry them to their graves undamaged; there are others who voluntarily patch up the rents, made by their understanding in their illusions, in order that an ideal--of which they would perhaps be ashamed if it stood unveiled before them, and to break with which they yet have neither the desire nor the force--may not be without a decent garment to cover it.

It was not so with Wjera; when doubt had once sown discord between her head and her heart, she fought out the battle unflinchingly, inexorably, in strict honesty, and when the conflict was over her dream had vanished. In this wondrously lovely illusion she had exhausted all the ideality of her nature. Her reason gained the upperhand at last, and ever after she analyzed her fellow-mortals with sharp precision; judging them with harsh justice, and speaking of the affections with an unaffected, contemptuous coolness very rare in a girl so young.

Time passed by. She came to be twenty-six years old. She was the eldest and the handsomest of five daughters, and her distaste for marriage increased the difficulty of providing for the other sisters, and excited unpleasant remark among her family circle. Chance introduced Count Lodrin to her acquaintance, and perhaps because he seemed to her a respectable nullity, she selected him for her husband.

No one could remember ever having seen so ill-matched a pair. She, aglow with life, delighting in physical exercises, a reckless and indefatigable horsewoman--to whom a steeple-chase was no more than is a waltz to other women,--and he, paying with an attack of illness for every unusual physical effort, not even daring to take a long drive without an extra cushion at his back.

Whilst his thoughts moved slowly in a traditional roundabout way, 'her woman's wit flew straight and did exactly hit,' before the Count had cleared his throat for his first 'consequently.'

Her quick wit bewildered him; her outspoken acuteness of discernment offended him. There was a world-wide dissimilarity between her views and his. The Count was a strict Catholic; the Countess was inclined to scepticism; although cast in a loftier mould, in her daring mockery and her graceful eccentricity she recalled the fine ladies of the eighteenth century--of that time when social and mental freedom, made fashionable by philosophers, had not yet been degraded to vulgarity by demagogues. His wife's wicked wit shocked poor Count Lodrin. Much ridicule was cast upon the couple, but every one was none the less glad to belong to the brilliant circle which the Countess drew around her, and daily the wonder grew that calumny could not touch the beautiful wife of this dead-and-alive dotard.

Three years passed; now and then women hinted innuendoes about Wjera Lodrin, but the other sex continued to speak of her with that mixture of admiration and irritation which bears the truest testimony to the blamelessness of a very beautiful woman. At last society was content to shrug its shoulders and to repeat, 'She is a riddle.'

The Countess was unutterably bored. The only occupation that she pursued with inexhaustible interest, though at the same time with reckless intrepidity, was riding.

"She has no sphere of activity; hers is the grand, fiery nature of a gifted man beating against the petty barriers of feminine existence. What is to come of it?" a sagacious student of human nature once said, in speaking of her.

All at once there was a decided change for the worse in Count Lodrin's health, and the physicians prescribed a sojourn in the South. Reluctantly enough the Countess consented to accompany her husband.

They set out, and the world maliciously compared Wjera to Juana of Castile, because she travelled with a corpse, and a father-confessor.

The Count found Nice quite too gay, and therefore took refuge in a secluded villa in the Riviera.

The Countess nearly died of ennui in the gray, sultry, sirocco-like monotony of an autumn heavy with the fragrance of roses, and in the tedium of an Italian winter. In spring the pair returned to Bohemia, the Count in somewhat better health, the Countess as cold and hard as ever, but irritable to a degree until now quite foreign to her.

In the August after their return Oswald was born. The old Count could not contain himself for joy; the Countess cared but very little for the child.

This was the woman whom Georges had known fifteen years before, and now,--he could hardly believe his senses!

Before he went to bed on the first night of his return to Tornow, he stood for a long while at the window of his room looking thoughtfully out into the night. The moon was high in the heavens; everything was still, save for a low rustle now and then in the huge lindens growing on the border of the pond in front of the castle. The ancient trees seemed to stir and stretch themselves in their sleep. His gaze wandered over the compact angular architecture of the high, black-gabled roofs, the rows of houses with tiny windows, in the little town,--all bathed in bluish moonlight. It was hardly changed since he had last seen it,--in the castle everything was changed. What had become of the social distractions in which the Countess Lodrin had been wont to delight?--Vanished, as by magic. The entire castle impressed him as having recovered from a restless fever.

Had the Countess's former cold, harsh demeanour been but the mask for the intense hunger of a strangely dowered nature that could find no fit nourishment? And had love for her child filled up at last the fearful rift made in her inmost life by an early disappointment?

Georges asked himself these questions. Once more his glance wandered to the pond in whose waters the moon was mirrored. "Strange!" he murmured,--"today it was but a dark pool, and now in the moonlight it gleams a silver disk! Hm! Extraordinary, how true maternal love will hallow every woman's heart! Strange exceedingly! what must she not have suffered in her life ...!"

Chapter XIII.

The bright spring sunshine streamed through the open bow-window of the Countess's boudoir and stretched a broad band of light at her feet. She was sitting in an arm-chair knitting with very thick wooden needles and coarse brown worsted, something evidently destined for a charitable purpose.

The boudoir, an irregular square room and with a picturesque bow-window, was furnished with no regard to uniformity of style, and therefore had the charm which characterizes rooms which have been as it were gradually evolved from the habits and tastes of a cultured occupant, until they are the frame or setting of an individuality. A delightful confusion of comfort and feminine taste reigned here, and the two or three trifling articles that offended all artistic sense, struck the eye only as piquant beauty spots. The cabinets, filled with rare old porcelain, threw into strong relief the ugly inkstand and candlesticks of modern dark-blue Sevres upon a writing-table. They were a memento,--a marriage gift from a Russian cousin and youthful playmate who fell in the Crimean war. Among some old pictures, an Andrea del Sarto, a Franz Hals, and two Wateaus, hung in triumphant self-complacency a portrait by Lawrence--a man's head and bust,--a crimson-lined cloak was thrown around the shoulders, the shirt collar was open, black hair fell low on the brow, the eyes were large and wild, the frankly smiling mouth was exquisitely chiselled. It hung just over the writing-table, lord of all, and was the portrait of Oswald Zinsenburg, an uncle of the Countess, a gifted fellow, who, when Secretary of Legation in England, had been intimate with Lord Byron, and in all the romantic ardour of a young aristocrat fighting for freedom, had died of brain fever at Missolonghi at the age of twenty-seven, shortly after Lord Byron's death.

This portrait the Countess Wjera loves, principally because it is so like her son, and upon it her gaze rested as she dropped the long wooden-needles in her lap, and fell into a revery.

The air of the room was penetrated with the delicious fragrance of the roses, and lilies of the valley that filled the various vases. Everything was quiet,--the birds were taking their siesta, the faint pattering of the horse-chestnut blossoms could be heard as they fell upon the gravel path, before the castle.

The drowsy midday stillness was suddenly broken by a softly whistled Russian gipsy melody and an elastic young footstep. The Countess turned her head. She knew the air well--how often she had sung it! The whistling came nearer, then ceased, and the door of the boudoir opened. "May we come in?" a cheery voice asked.

"Always welcome!" replied the Countess, and Oswald, followed by a large shaggy Newfoundland, entered, his curls wet and clinging to his forehead, a bunch of waterlilies in his hand, and looking more than ever like the portrait by Lawrence.

"Good morning, mamma; how are you? Make your bow, Darling--so, old fellow--so!" And as the Newfoundland gravely lowered his fine head, a performance for which he was duly caressed by his master, Oswald sank into a low seat beside his mother.

"You have been bathing," she observed, stroking back his wet hair.

"Yes, I have been swimming in the lake at Wolnitz, and I have brought you these waterlilies," he replied, laying the flowers in her lap, "they are the first I have seen this year, and they are your favourite flowers, are they not? How fair and melancholy they are! Strange that these pure white things should spring from such slimy mud! May I?" taking out his cigar-case.

"Of course, my child. What have you been about to-day? I have not seen you before."

"I went out very early. I had sent for the forester to come to me at seven, and I went with him to the new plantations. The young firs are as straight as soldiers. And then I dawdled about in the woods--it was so lovely there!--'tis the earth's honeymoon, and when I see everything blossoming out in the sunshine, I think of all that lies in the near future for me, and I feel like shouting for joy! Apropos, mamma, I have found a site for the Widow's Asylum that you want to found. I have been puzzling over the best situation for it, and I have decided to put the old Elizabeth monastery at the disposal of your benevolence. Is this what you would like?"

She held out her hand to him with a smile. "Have you found time to think of that too? I thought you had forgotten my scheme long ago."

"Ah yes, I am in the habit of forgetting your wishes!" he said gaily.

"No, Heaven knows you are not," the Countess murmured, "you have always been loving and considerate to me."

"And what else could I be, mamma?" he said affectionately. "Ah, on a glorious spring day like this, when the world is so beautiful, and my blood goes coursing in my veins with delight, I am tempted to kneel down before you and thank you for the dear life you have bestowed upon me--what is the matter, mamma, you have suddenly grown so pale?"

"It is nothing--only a slight pain in my heart--it has gone already," the Countess whispered, turning aside her head.

"Quite gone?--is it my cigar smoke?"

"Not at all, dear child!"--

In spite of this assertion he tossed his cigar out of the window. "You used to smoke yourself," he observed.

"Yes," she said, looking down at her knitting, "but since I have learned to employ my hands, I have given up smoking."

"You knit instead--It seems odd to me to see _you_ knitting. Georges thinks you very much altered."

"I have grown old, _voila!_"

"And he thinks too that you spoil me tremendously, that no mother in all Austria spoils her son as you do me."

"No other mother has such a son," the Countess said proudly.

"Oh, oh!" he laughed and took his seat beside her again.

"Nevertheless, I am not blind to your faults," she continued, "I know them all."

"And love every one of them."

"Because they are the faults of a noble nature--men of lower tendencies are obliged to show more self-control."

"Indeed! God bless your aristocratic prejudices! and now for a piece of news. The Truyns reach Rautschin to-morrow by the four o'clock train. Will you drive with me to meet them?"

"Certainly, if you wish me to."

"If I wish you to--if I wish you to!"--he softly snapped his fingers, "and you look all the while as if I had asked you to attend an execution with me. I cannot quite understand you, mamma, you used to take delight in every little pleasure that chance threw in my way, and now will you not rejoice in my great happiness? As soon as there is any allusion made to my betrothal, your whole manner changes; you grow so distant and reserved, that I hardly like to mention my betrothed."

"I really did not know, Ossi ..." began the Countess with constraint.

"Oh, yes, mother, I felt in Paris that you were not pleased with my betrothal, and I have racked my brain to discover what there can be about it that you do not like, and I can not imagine what it is. There can be no objection to make to Gabrielle." Then suddenly smiling in the midst of his irritation, and curbing the impetuous flow of his words, he asked in a lower tone and more calmly, "Ah, _ca_, mamma, perhaps you dislike the connection with my darling's stepmother? I assure you that ...."

"Nonsense!" replied the Countess, growing still more disturbed, "from what you and Georges both tell me of the young woman, she seems to adapt herself very well to her position. A residence abroad and foreign associations are much better means of training than ...."

"Yes, mamma," interrupted Oswald in some surprise, having followed out his own train of thought, "but if you are so kindly disposed towards Zinka, I cannot possibly conceive what exception you can take to my betrothal. There never was a purer, more noble creature than my little Gabrielle. Highly as I rank you, mother, she is every way worthy of you."

The Countess changed colour, "I do not understand what you wish," she exclaimed, "do not distress me, I have no objection to the girl!...."

"Well then,--you could not possibly expect me to remain unmarried."

The Countess cast down her eyes and was silent.

Oswald sprang up, called his dog and left the room, his face very pale, his eyes very dark.

Impetuous and hasty as he was with others, he had always controlled himself in his mother's presence. Leaving the room was the extreme point to which he allowed his displeasure to manifest itself when with her. If he wished to vent his anger, he did it in seclusion, he never had spoken an angry word--scarcely a loud one to her. And his disagreeable mood never lasted long.

"I am myself again, mamma!" with these words, in which he was wont to announce his return to a better frame of mind, he presented himself half an hour afterward in his mother's boudoir. She was sitting just as he had left her, the waterlilies in her lap, very pale, very erect, with the set features that veil distress of mind.

Pushing his chair close up to her he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and said with the winning tenderness of all impetuous men after bursts of anger: "Forgive me, mamma, I was very wrong again!" She smiled faintly and murmured some half inaudible words of affection--"I was odiously egotistical," he went on, "I had quite forgotten what a change my marriage will make in your life, what a trial it must be to you, you poor, foolish, jealous little mother! But whatever change there may be outwardly in our relations, we must always be the same in heart; and if I must deprive you of something," he added gaily, "my children shall requite you. It had to come sooner or later, mamma; or could you really wish me to renounce the fairest share of existence?"

She trembled in every limb, and suddenly taking his hand, before he could prevent it, she carried it to her lips, "No, you shall renounce no joy, my child, my noble child!" she exclaimed,--"but--leave me now for a while, for only a little while--I am tired!"

Chapter XIV.

Truyn had insisted that the betrothal of his daughter to Oswald Lodrin should be celebrated in Bohemia. Zinka had yielded with great reluctance and sorrow, and had at last resolved to bid farewell to her dear foreign home.

"Why," she persisted in asking him, "cannot the ceremony take place, as in our own case, at the Austrian Embassy?"

But Truyn would not hear of it. "Dear heart," he replied, "it would go against the grain. The betrothals of all my sisters and of my aunts were celebrated at Rautschin, why should I depart from the traditions of my family?"

"As if you had not already departed from them, and in the most vital regard," said Zinka, with arch tenderness.

"That is a very different thing,--if there were any good reason, then--then--!"

"Ah, dear friend, you have grown insufferably conservative, you would have shouted on the first day of the creation of the world: '_Conserves le chaos, seigneur Dieu, conservez le chaos!_'"

Whereupon Truyn, kissing her hand, made reply. "That comes of living in France, dear child."

And so the pretty house in the Avenue Labedoyere was deserted. The shutters were closed, the carpets rolled up, the bric-a-brac stowed away; only in some roundabout fashion did a bluish beam of light slip into the vault-like obscurity, and the restless motes pursue their fantastic dance among the shrouded shapes of the furniture.

The Truyn family were rapidly approaching their home. Nearly thirty hours had passed since Paris had faded from their eyes in the misty blue distance--since the last gigantic announcement of the '_Belle Jardiniere_,' and of the '_Pauvre diable_' had flitted past them. The Bavarian boundary, with its stupid Custom House formalities lay behind them. Truyn was reading a Vienna newspaper with great interest, Gabrielle was gazing abstractedly at the crimson coupe cushions opposite, with the far-away look in her eyes of young lovers. Zinka was leaning back in her corner, her veil half drawn aside, her hands folded in her lap, the latest impressions of her Paris life hovering kaleidiscopically before her mental vision, her heart oppressed by a strange melancholy.

"Ah, this defamed, delightful Paris! how it captivates the heart with its good-for-nothing beauty, and its corrupt, sickly sentiment!"

She was still mentally rehearsing the last days before her departure, the going to and fro from shop to shop, the interesting consultations with Monsieur Worth, the affected face with which that eminent artist put his finger to his lip, while attending the ladies to their carriage, and continued to 'compose' Gabrielle's wedding dress, murmuring to himself with his English accent: "_Oui, oui, une orginalite distahnguee c'est ce qu'il fant_," while sleek young clerks, and young girls faultless in figure, displayed to the best advantage the richest costumes, trailing about silks and satins of fabulous elegance.

"_Ce n'est pas cela, qui ferait votre affaire, Madame la Comtesse je le sais bien_," said Mons. Worth pointing to certain monstrosities devised for American parvenus, "ah, Madame la Comtesse cannot imagine, how hard it is for an artist to have to work for people of no taste! _Ah oui, une originalite distahnguee!_"

The man-milliner's, monotonous refrain kept sounding on in Zinka's ears. Then she thought of the farewell visits, the daily heap of cards filling the great copper salver in the vestibule, the wearisome farewell entertainments, and of her husband's toast--the toast which he proposed at the magnificent banquet, given in his honour, by the Austrian Hungarians in Paris. Unutterably distasteful as it always is to men of his stamp, to be conspicuous, he at last made up his mind to propose this toast; he worked at it for an entire week, and subjected it to the criticism, not only of his wife and of his daughter, but of every one whose judgment he respected in Paris. It was a masterpiece of a toast, a toast designed to unite in brotherly affection all the Austrians in Paris, and which ultimately, with its well-meant, many-sided compliments gave occasion for dissatisfaction to every member of the Austrian-Hungarian colony, whether conservative or liberal. Zinka laughed to herself as she recalled that poor misunderstood toast. She laughed outright, started, and--awoke--rubbed her eyes and looked out.

Yes, Paris lay far behind her, very far. She was in Austria, beautiful, dreamingly-drowsy Austria, and, in spite of the reluctance with which she returned to her fatherland, it affected her.

A low blue chain of hills lay on the western horizon like a vanishing storm-cloud. The landscape around was level and extended. Large, quiet pools, surrounded by tall rushes, and covered with a network of fragrant waterlilies, gleamed here and there among the emerald meadows.

The sun was near its setting. The shadows of the telegraph poles stretched out indefinitely. Little towns contentedly sleeping away their dull lives among green lindens, showed their old-fashioned silhouettes, black against the sunlit evening clouds.

Truyn laid aside his newspaper, and his face grew eager and animated, every knotted gnarled willow, every half-ruinous garden wall here interested him.

A forest of firs, their trunks glowing red in the last rays of the sun, bordered the railway. "There, just by that stunted fir, I shot my first deer," Truyn exclaimed, and in his eyes sparkled the memory of a happy boyhood; then, drawing Zinka to him, he whispered tenderly: "You are at home, Zini; we are travelling upon our own soil."

"Ah," replied Zinka, nestling close to him, timid as a child afraid of ghosts.

"How nervous you are!" he said, gently stroking her cheek--"you silly little goose you!"

"It is not for myself," she whispered, "so long as you love me, you and Ella, I can bear anything. But I know you--it would grieve you to the very heart, if ...."

"Tickets, if you please!"

A breathless panting--a shrill whistle.

"Rautschin--five minutes stay!"

"Aunt Wjera!" Gabrielle exclaimed, joyously hurrying out of the coupe.

There was something like defiance in Zinka's heart, but when she saw the woman, who in all her exquisite beauty, all the distinguished grace of manner inspired by kindness and cordiality, advanced to meet them, her defiant mood vanished in admiration, and with a feeling of almost childlike reverence, she bowed to the superiority of the elder lady, who greeted her most cordially.

After the first excitement of meeting was over, Countess Wjera's attention was naturally concentrated upon her son's betrothed.

"I can but congratulate you from my heart, Ossi," she said earnestly, looking full into the young girl's eyes--eyes that shone like two blue violets under the clearest skies--violets that had suffered nothing from late frosts or too ardent sunshine. "You are a favourite of fortune, my child."

Gabrielle blushed, and buried her face in the bunch of white roses, which Oswald had brought her; and Oswald was touched, and smiled his thanks to his mother, as he whispered a tender word to his betrothed.

"Do you know who came in the same train with us?" Truyn suddenly asked, interrupting the happy moment.

"Capriani, father and son, I saw them," said Oswald, "look at him, mamma, there is my rival, the enterprising young spark, who sued for Gabrielle's hand. A mad idea, was it not? Gabrielle, and a son of Capriani!--we shouted with laughter, when the Melkweyser announced the proposal."

The flurry of the arrival had subsided, and the Countess leisurely inspected through her eyeglass the sallow young man who was talking with Georges Lodrin. Gabrielle said something about his dark blue travelling-suit, shot with gold; Zinka made inquiries, all in a breath, of her husband, and of the two lady's-maids, whether this or that article of luggage had not been left in Paris or in the railway coupe.

When at last all her anxieties on this point had been relieved, and they had passed through the station to the carriages, they observed a magnificent four-in-hand, the harness decorated with a coronet.

"By Jove!" Truyn exclaimed with delight, "superb, Ossi, superb! I have rarely seen four such beauties together!"

"Nor have I," said Oswald, examining the horses critically, "unfortunately they are not mine--they belong to Capriani."

"Impossible!" Truyn said disdainfully, "speculator that he is, he may bore through the isthmus of Panama, for all I care, but he cannot get together such a four-in-hand as that."

"Fritz Malzin selected and arranged it for him," Oswald explained. "Poor Fritz!"

"I cannot understand him," Truyn said in an undertone, and hastily changing the subject, he asked: "Have you come to terms with Capriani, about the Kanitz affair, Ossi? Could not the sale be revoked?"

"The matter would have been very difficult to adjust, I am told--of course I understand nothing of such things,--" replied Oswald, "but Capriani--what will you say to this, uncle?--yielded the point, 'out of special regard' for me, as his lawyer informed Dr. Schindler. Between ourselves, it was--what word shall I use?--audacious, for I have never spoken to him in my life, and yet I had to accept his uncalled-for courtesy, for Schmitt's sake."

"Remarkable, very!" said Truyn, "We usually have to pay dear for the courtesies of a Capriani and his kind!"

"Have you everything, Ella?" asked Zinka, "shall we start?"

"I should like to have my hand-bag, Hortense has left it with the large luggage."

Meanwhile, with an unpleasant smile and hat in hand, a sallow-faced, grey-haired, elderly man, with the look of a bird of prey, approached the Countess Wjera, and held out his right hand. "I am immensely gratified, your Excellency, after so long a time ....!"

The Countess, her eyes half closed, measured him haughtily. "With whom have I the pleasure ...?"

"Conte Capriani."

The Countess silently shrugged her shoulders, and turning half away, called in an irritated tone, "Are we ready to go at last, Ossi?...."

A whirling cloud of dust was soon the only trace left of the bustle of the arrival.

The short drive was spent by Truyn in reminiscences, by the betrothed pair in sentiment.

At the tea, which was awaiting the travellers, and of which the Lodrin's stayed to partake, there was much laughter over the _chic_ of the Caprianis, over their wealth, and--their obtrusiveness. Oswald suddenly grew thoughtful.

"Did you ever before meet these people, mamma?" he asked.

"I never knew any Conte Capriani in my life,--who are these Caprianis?" asked the Countess.

"Nobody knows," said Oswald. "Some say he is a Greek, some that he comes from Marseilles, and others that he is a Turk."

"They are all wrong," Georges said drily, "he comes originally from Bohemia; he was formerly a physician, and his name was Stein."

Book Second.

Chapter I.

Rautschin, still Rautschin!--the tiny town lying at the feet of the huge castle on the tower of which the clock has stopped for twenty years--but no longer in pouring rain with thunder and lightning, but Rautschin beneath skies of sapphire blue, upon a hot July afternoon.

The sun was still high in the heavens. The crooked little row of houses on one side of the Market Square, cast short, black shadows, the national red kerchiefs, with broad borders of gay flowers hanging at the door of the principal shop, fluttered gently in the summer breeze. A melancholy hubbub of discords, struggling in vain for a solution, was heard through the open window of one of the newest and ugliest houses. Eugene Alexander Cibulka, and the wife of the district commissioner, were playing Wagner's 'Walkuere,' arranged for four hands, and each had again 'lost the place.' They regularly lose the place every time a leaf is turned, and so the one who gets first to the bottom of the page, very kindly waits for the other.

Rautschin Castle stands proudly superior to every structure about it, ensconced behind all kinds of farm-buildings and additions, at the extreme end of the Market Square, to which it turns its shoulder, as it were. Except for its imposing dimensions, it is in no wise remarkable.

Standing at the entrance of a very extensive park, it dates from the time of Maria Theresa, when the present clumsy edifice, its prim facade defaced by grass-green shutters, was built upon the remains of a feudal fortress. The court-yard is not perfectly square, and the arches of the arcade rest upon granite pillars. Its interior is quite in accordance with its exterior; it is anything but splendid, and has an air of empty, dignified distinction.

Before the western side of the Castle, Count Truyn with his young wife was sitting beneath the shade of a red and gray striped marquee; behind them in a garden-room, the glass doors of which were wide open, Oswald, standing on a step-ladder, was busy hanging on the wall a piece of gold-embroidered Oriental stuff, and Gabrielle was handing him the nails.

"Well Zini, are you beginning to like our home?" said Truyn, propping his elbows upon the white garden table, between himself and his wife. He looked so contented, so proud of his possessions, so triumphant, that Zinka could not refrain from teasing him a little.

"Taken all in all, yes," she said indifferently, "but then taken all in all, I should like Siberia, with you and Ella."

"Zinka! I must confess,"--Truyn's face assumed a disturbed and almost offended expression, "I must say that I cannot understand how any one can compare Rautschin to a place of exile!"

"I did not mean to do so, rest assured," Zinka said, "I think your Rautschin very delightful, I should only like to alter a few details."

"I cannot abide improvements," growled Truyn, "it is only the Caprianis and Company, who must always be beautifying everything old--that is destroying it. I think an old place should be left as it is, with all its characteristic defects--to try to improve them, seems to me like trying to correct the drawing of a Giotto or a Cimabue."

"I can understand a respect for the old mis-drawings," Zinka rejoined quietly, "but does one owe the same respect to modern retouching, to the vandalism that has made clumsy additions to an old picture?"

"Hm!" Truyn gazed thoughtfully around him--"no, in fact. It is remarkable that you are always right, you little witch. Now be frank Zini; what exactly would you like to have different? So far as my veneration and my finances permit, you shall have your will."

Zinka pointed to the lawn that lay before them, terribly disfigured by bright red and yellow arabesques. "I think that confectioner's ornamentation there almost as ugly as the carpet-gardening at the Villa Albani," she said, "don't you?"

Truyn ran his hands through his hair, "Well, yes,"--he meekly admitted after a pause, "but I cannot possibly alter that. Old Kraus, to surprise me, has taken infinite pains to portray our crest on the lawn--I had to praise him for his brilliant idea, however hideous I thought the thing, don't you see, Zini?"

"That alters the case entirely," Zinka admitted. "I would not hurt faithful old Kraus for the world. But"--she pointed to the basin of a fountain, the shape of which was particularly ugly--"old Kraus could not have designed that basin--that might be cleared away!"

Truyn looked thoroughly discomfited. "The basin is a horror," he confessed, "but I cannot help saying a good word for it. It is endeared to me by youthful associations--if only because when I was a boy of twelve, I was very nearly drowned in it."

"Oh then indeed ...." Zinka shrugged her shoulders, with a humourous air of resignation. "I now hardly dare to object to the green shutters," she went on, "for if, as in view of their colour is highly probable, they gave you opthalmia, some thirty years ago--it would ...."

"No, no, no, I give up the shutters," exclaimed Truyn laughing, "let them go. And now I have something to tell you that you will not relish--no need to change colour, the matter is an inconvenience, not a trial. While I have been away--for the last ten years in fact--the park has been open to the public. The little town has no other public garden. I have, indeed, in view of this, placed an extensive tract of land at the disposal of the town Council, but it is not yet laid out, and until it is, I should not like entirely to deprive the public of the freedom of the Park. Therefore I should like to have you point out as soon as possible what part you would prefer to have reserved entirely for yourself, that it may be portioned off. Indeed I cannot help it, Zini."

"You will be as condescending at last as a crowned head," Zinka said laughing. "You have already relinquished a corner of the park, because the new road, laid out for the convenience of the public, must run directly beneath your windows--and ..."

"I know--I know," Truyn interrupted her impatiently, "but one owes something to the people. Of course you think 'my husband is a perfect simpleton, he'll put up with anything'--but ...."

"Have you really no better idea of what I think of my husband, than that?" Zinka asked in a low tone, looking at him with tender raillery in her eyes.

"Oh you sweet-natured little woman!" he said, attempting to chuck her under the chin.

"What are you about?" she exclaimed, thrusting his hand away, "this wall here on the street is so low, that every little ragamuffin can see us. And let me tell you that this wall has seemed more odious than anything else to-day. Between ourselves--move your chair a little nearer, Erich--I have been all this while tormented by a desire to throw myself into your arms--you dear, good, whimsical fellow--but the wall!"

"Confound the wall!" Truyn exclaimed, angrily clinching his fist.

"Tell me," Zinka asked caressingly, "is the lowness of the wall also a question of humanity? Do you find it impossible to deny the townsfolk the satisfaction of conveniently observing the castle-folk?"

"Pshaw! I was vexed about the height of the wall ten years ago--that is when the road was laid out, but--well, I cannot myself say why it is--but unless we have a rage for building, nothing is done. We complain for ten years about the same evil, and ..."

"And to part with an evil about which one has complained for ten long years," interrupted Zinka laughing, "would be almost as distressing as to clear away the basin of a fountain, in which one had been nearly drowned, thirty years before, eh, Erich?"

The broad July sunshine lay upon the red and yellow splendour of the Truyn escutcheon, shimmered brilliantly about the foremost of the mighty trees, whose dark foliage contrasted with the emerald of the lawn where they stood, beyond the open, flower-decked portion of the park, and penetrated boldly into their thick shades, limning fanciful arabesques of light upon the darker green.

From the garden-room floated Gabrielle's sweet, childlike voice, "_Io so una giardiniera_," she sang. Oswald had finished his upholstering, and was bending over the piano. He combined a sincere enjoyment of music with a deplorable preference for sentimental popular ballads.

The creaking of wheels intruded upon the dreamy monotony of the hour. Truyn leaned forward and started to his feet. "Ah, old Swoboda, the doctor who attended Ella with the measles," he exclaimed joyfully, recognising Dr. Swoboda, in his comical little vehicle drawn by a white horse spotted with brown. "Is he still alive? I must call him in. Holla! Doctor, how are you?"

The doctor started, looked round, and took off his hat with a smile of delight, "your servant, Count Truyn."

"Come in and have a chat," said Truyn, "it was hardly fair not to have been to see us before."

"But, my dear Count, how could I suppose ..."

A few minutes later, the old doctor was seated opposite to Truyn, underneath the marquee, imparting to the Count exact information as to the weal and woe of a multitude of people belonging to the town, and to the country round, whom the proprietor of Rautschin remembered with wonderful distinctness.

Some had died, one or two were insane--a couple were bankrupt.

"Infernal swindling speculations! is my dear old Rautschin beginning to be carried away by them?" said Truyn, "certain epidemics cannot be arrested. Sad--very sad! And now the _phylloxera_ has taken up its abode in Schneeburg."

"Is there much illness about here?" Zinka asked the doctor, in hopes perhaps of staving off a conservative outburst from her husband.

"None of any consequence. My business is at a low ebb, your Excellency."

"Where have you just been, doctor?" Truyn asked.

"I have just come from Schneeburg."

"Ah? anything seriously amiss in the Capriani household?--I could not shed a tear for King Midas."

"The Herr Count cannot suppose that those magnificoes would call in a poor country doctor, like myself."

"My dear Swoboda, we all have the greatest confidence in you!" Truyn said kindly.

"I thank you heartily, Herr Count, but this confidence is an old custom, and the Caprianis consider old customs as mere prejudices, and propose to do away with them. I have just come from our poor Count Fritz."

"Indeed? are the children ill?"

"No, not ill, but ailing; there is something or other the matter with them all the time--they are city children;--however, I am not really anxious about them, they'll come all right. But I am sick at heart for poor Count Fritz, he is far from well."

"Ah, indeed? what is the matter with him?" Truyn asked in a tone of evident irritation.

"His unfortunate circumstances are killing him," the doctor replied gloomily.

"Ah--hm,--I must confess to you--er--my dear doctor, th