Realising her loss, the Princess quickly informed one of the station
officials, who shouted loudly to the police at the exit barrier that a
theft had been committed, and next moment all was confusion.
Half a dozen police agents, as well as some gardes in uniform, appeared
as though by magic, and while the exit was closed, preventing the weary
travellers who had just arrived from leaving, an inspector of police
came up and made sharp inquiry as to her loss.
In a moment a knot of inquisitive travellers gathered around her.
"A man wearing a bright red cravat has taken my dressing-bag, and made
off with it. All my jewels are in it!" Claire exclaimed excitedly.
"Pardon, madame," exclaimed the police official, a shrewd-looking
functionary with fair, pointed beard, "what was the dressing-bag like?"
"A crocodile one, covered with a black waterproof cover."
"And the man wore a red tie?"
"Yes. He was dressed in black, and rather elderly. His red tie
attracted me."
For fully a quarter of an hour the iron gate was kept closed while,
accompanied by the inspector and two agents, she went among the crowd
trying to recognise the gallant old fellow who had assisted her to
alight. But she was unable. Perhaps she was too agitated, for
misfortune seemed now to follow upon misfortune. She had at the first
moment of setting foot in Paris lost the whole of her splendid jewels!
With the police agents she stood at the barrier when it was reopened,
and watched each person pass out; but, alas! she saw neither the man
with the red tie nor her dressing-bag.
And yet the man actually passed her unrecognised. He was wearing a neat
black tie and a soft black felt hat in place of the grey one he had worn
when he had taken the bag from her hand. He had the precious
dressing-case, but it was concealed within the serviceable pigskin
kit-bag which he carried.
She was looking for the grey hat, the red tie, and her own bag, but, of
course, saw none of them.
And so the thief, once outside the station, mounted into a fiacre and
drove away entirely unsuspected.
"Madame," exclaimed the inspector regretfully, when the platform had at
last emptied, "I fear you have been the victim of some clever
international thief. It is one of the tricks of jewel-thieves to wear a
bright-coloured tie by which the person robbed is naturally attracted.
Yet in a second, so deft are they, they can change both cravat and hat,
and consequently the person robbed fails to recognise them in the
excitement of the moment. This is, I fear, what has happened in your
case. But if you will accompany me to the office I will take a full
description of the missing property."
She went with him to the police-office on the opposite side of the great
station, and there gave, as far as she was able, a description of some
of the stolen jewels. She, however, did not know exactly how many
ornaments there were, and as for describing them all, she was utterly
unable to do so.
"And Madame's name?" inquired the polite functionary.
She hesitated. If she gave her real name the papers would at once be
full of her loss.
"Deitel," she answered. "Baroness Deitel of Frankfort."
"And to what hotel is Madame going?"
She reflected a moment. If she went to Ritz's or the Bristol she would
surely be recognised. She had heard that the Terminus, at the Gare St.
Lazare, was a large and cosmopolitan place, where tourists stayed, so
she would go there.
"To the Terminus," was her reply.
Then, promising to report to her if any information were forthcoming
after the circulation of the description of the thief and of the stolen
property, he assisted her in obtaining her trunk, called a fiacre for
her, apologised that she should have suffered such loss, and then bowed
her away.
She pressed the child close to her, and staring straight before her,
held her breath.
Was it not a bad augury for the future? With the exception of a French
bank-note for a thousand francs in her purse and a little loose change,
she was penniless as well as friendless.
At the hotel she engaged a single room, and remained in to rest after
her long, tiring journey. With a mother's tender care her first thought
was for little Ignatia, who had stood wondering at the scene at the
station, and who, when her mother afterwards explained that the thief
had run away with her bag, declared that he was "a nasty, bad man."
On gaining her room at the hotel the Princess put her to bed, but she
remained very talkative, watching her mother unpack the things she had
purchased in Lucerne.
"Go to sleep, darling," said her mother, bending down and kissing her
soft little face. "If you are very good Allen will come and see you
soon."
"Will she? Then I'll be ever so good," was the child's reply; and thus
satisfied, she dropped off to sleep.
Having arranged the things in the wardrobe, the Princess stood at the
window gazing down upon the traffic in the busy Rue Saint Lazare, and
the cafes, crowded at the hour of the absinthe. Men were crying "_La
Presse_" in strident voices below. Paris is Paris always--bright, gay,
careless, with endless variety, a phantasmagoria of movement, the very
cinematograph of human life. Yet how heavy a heart can be, and how
lonely is life, amid that busy throng, only those who have found
themselves in the gay city alone can justly know.
Her slim figure in neat black was a tragic one. Her sweet face was
blanched and drawn. She leaned her elbows upon the window-ledge, and
looking straight before her, reflected deeply.
"Is there any further misfortune to fall upon me, I wonder?" she asked
herself. "The loss of my jewels means to me the loss of everything. On
the money I could have raised upon them I could have lived in comfort in
some quiet place for years, without any application to my own lawyers.
Fate, indeed, seems against me," she sighed. "Because I have lived an
honest, upright life, and have spoken frankly of my intention to sweep
clean the scandalous Court of Treysa, I am now outcast by both my
husband and by my father, homeless, and without money. Many of the
people would help me, I know, but it must never be said that a Hapsbourg
sought financial aid of a commoner. No, that would be breaking the
family tradition; and whatever evil the future may have in store for me
I will never do that."
"I wonder," she continued after a pause--"I wonder if the thief who took
my jewels knew of my present position, my great domestic grief and
unhappiness, whether he would not regret? I believe he would. Even a
thief is chivalrous to a woman in distress. He evidently thinks me a
wealthy foreigner, however, and by to-night all the stones will be
knocked from their settings and the gold flung into the melting-pot.
With some of them I would not have parted for a hundred times their
worth--the small pearl necklace which my poor mother gave me when I was
a child, and my husband's first gift, and the Easter egg in diamonds.
Yet I shall never see them again. They are gone for ever. Even the
police agent held out but little hope. The man, he said, was no doubt
an international thief, and would in an hour be on his way to the
Belgian or Italian frontier."
That was true. Jewel-thieves, and especially the international gangs,
are the most difficult to trace. They are past masters of their art,
excellent linguists, live expensively, and always pass as gentlemen
whose very title and position cause the victim to be unsuspicious. The
French and Italian railways are the happy hunting-ground of these wily
gentry. The night expresses to the Riviera, Rome, and Florence in
winter, and the "Luxe" services from Paris to Arcachon, Vichy, Lausanne,
or Trouville in summer, are well watched by them, and frequent hauls are
made, one of the favourite tricks being that of making feint to assist a
lady to descend and take her bag from her hand.
"I don't suppose," she sighed, "that I shall ever see or hear of my
ornaments again. Yet I think that if the thief but knew the truth
concerning me he would regret. Perhaps he is without means, just as I
am. Probably he became a thief of sheer necessity, as I have heard many
men have become. Criminal instinct is not always responsible for an
evil life. Many persons try to live honestly, but fate is ever
contrary. Indeed, is it not so with my own self?"
She turned, and her eyes fell upon the sleeping child. She was all she
had now to care for in the whole wide world.
Recollections of her last visit to Paris haunted her--that visit when
Carl had so very indiscreetly followed her there, and taken her about
incognito in open cabs to see the sights. There had been no harm in it
whatsoever, no more harm than if he had been her equerry, yet her
enemies had, alas! hurled against her their bitter denunciations, and
whispered their lies so glibly that they were believed as truth. Major
Scheel, the attache at the Embassy, had recognised them, and being
Leitolf's enemy, had spread the report. It had been a foolish caprice
of hers to take train from Aix-les-Bains to Paris to see her old French
nurse Marie, who had been almost as a mother to her. The poor old
woman, a pensioned servant of the Archducal family, had, unfortunately,
died a month ago, otherwise she would have had a faithful, good friend
in Paris. Marie, who knew Count Leitolf well, could have refuted their
allegations had she lived; but an attack of pneumonia had proved fatal,
and she had been buried with a beautiful wreath bearing the simple words
"From Claire" upon her coffin.
As the sunset haze fell over Paris she still sat beside the sleeping
child. If her enemies condemned her, then she would not defend herself.
God, in whom she placed her fervent trust, should judge her. She had
no fear of man's prejudices or misjudgment. She placed her faith
entirely in her Maker. To His will she bowed, for in His sight the
pauper and the princess are equal.
That evening she had a little soup sent to her room, and when Ignatia
was again sleeping soundly she went forth upon the balcony leading from
the corridor, and sitting there, amused herself by looking down upon the
life and movement of the great salon below. To leave the hotel was
impossible because of Ignatia, and she now began to regret that she had
not brought the maid with her from Wartenstein.
Time after time the misfortune of the loss of her jewels recurred to
her. It had destroyed her independence, and it had negatived all her
plans. Money was necessary, even though she were an Imperial
Archduchess. She was incognito, and therefore had no credit.
The gay, after-dinner scene of the hotel was presented below--the
flirtations, the heated conversations, and the lazy, studied attitudes
of the bloused English girl, who lolls about in cane lounge-chairs after
dining, and discusses plays and literature. From her chair on the
balcony above she looked down upon that strange, changeful world--the
world of tourist Paris. Born and bred at Court as she had been, it was
a new sensation to her to have her freedom. The life was entirely fresh
to her, and would have been pleasant if there were not behind it all
that tragedy of her marriage.
Several days went by, and in order to kill time she took little Ignatia
daily in a cab and drove in the Bois and around the boulevards,
revisiting all the "sights" which Leitolf had shown her. Each morning
she went out driving till the luncheon-hour, and having once lunched
with old Marie upstairs at the Brasserie Universelle in the Avenue de
l'Opera, she went there daily.
You probably know the place. Downstairs it is an ordinary _brasserie_
with a few chairs out upon the pavement, but above is a smart restaurant
peculiarly Parisian, where the _hors d'oeuvres_ are the finest in
Eurorie and the _vin gris_ a speciality. The windows whereat one sits
overlook the Avenue, and from eleven o'clock till three it is crowded.
She went there for two reasons--because it was small, and because the
life amused her. Little Ignatia would sit at her side, and the pair
generally attracted the admiration of every one on account of their
remarkably good looks. The habitues began inquiring of the waiters as
to who was the beautiful lady in black, but the men only elevated their
shoulders and exhibited their palms. "A German," was all they could
answer. "A great lady evidently."
That she attracted attention everywhere she was quite well aware, yet
she was not in the least annoyed. As a royalty she was used to being
gazed upon. Only when men smiled at her, as they did sometimes, she met
them with a haughty stare. The superiority of her Imperial blood would
on such occasions assert itself, much to the confusion of would-be
gallants.
Thus passed those spring days with Paris at her gayest and best. The
woman who had renounced a crown lived amid all that bright life, lonely,
silent, and unrecognised, her one anxiety being for the future of her
little one, who was ever asking when Allen would return.