_PROEM:--In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between
Acts_
Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de
Gâtinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less
enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled
mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France
wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time
to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who
until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite
grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for
indolence and dissipation.
At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had
spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some
pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de
Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke
you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite
dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the
moment of Nelchen's death. Hé, the poor children! his Highness meditated.
Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme
yonder.... Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy.
So his Highness amused himself,--not very heartily, but at least to the
last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling
subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his
mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most
hideously bored himself. But I spare you a _chronique scandaleuse_ of Duke
Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the
matter I have now in hand.
Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what
was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was
expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened
daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg--not
excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,--was beyond doubt
possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness
lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the
Baroness was in season moved to comment.
I
"The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!"
"Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first
thing in the morning."
"--and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau--"
"And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay,
I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was
hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose
between the sceptre and a tooth-brush."
"Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be
serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a
school-boy."
"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens;
"as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is
about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication,"
he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete
accord."
The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any
such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest
scheme.
He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the
summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the
Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en
tête-à-tête explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there
was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the
world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the
discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from
office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot,
could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to
her native land.
Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company
with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and
remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or
disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him
with morality.
She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example
you set your subjects is atrocious."
"And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,--"though I swear to you I
have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread
the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand
duke?"
"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady.
"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are
adorable."
"--and that injures your popularity--"
"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist."
"--and moreover you create scandals--"
"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively,
"Amalia, it is very singular--"
"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously
plural."
But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I
could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade."
The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went
on, with some severity, "Your reputation--"
"_De mortuis_--" pleaded the Grand Duke.
"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse."
"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--"
"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg.
"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a
fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--"
"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of
grandchildren."
"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity.
"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--"
"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all
typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna."
"But I am not going to Vienna."
"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his
feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!"
"I am not afraid, your Highness,--"
"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists
moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and
heaven?"
"Or--" the Baroness helpfully suggested.
"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all
things behind save happiness."
"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy."
"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in
the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen."
"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are
hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--"
"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before
the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration."
"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a
husband--"
"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone
implying that he knew whereof he spoke.
"--and if the Grand Duchess loved you--"
"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in
his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances."
"Nevertheless--"
"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St.
Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the
virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational
food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce
take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an
example to his children!"
"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take
this trip to Vienna--"
"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself."
"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?"
"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the
confidence of my wife."
Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your
Highness."
"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were
cast out of Magdalene--"
"Which means--?"
"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I
deduce that in all other women must remain--"
"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!"
"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion
so early in the forties."
"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?"
"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone."
"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of
moonlight she looked incredibly so.
"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace
to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the
ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de
Châteauroux now--"
"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Châteauroux is not the
sort of person--"
"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that
sort of person."
"Phrases, your Highness!"
"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets."
"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers."
"You shall ensnare no more admirers."
"My milliner will be inconsolable."
"In short, you must leave Noumaria--"
"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!"
"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should
never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always
to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at
dawn."
The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had
reason, for there was about this slim white woman--whose eyes were colossal
emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,--so much
of the _baroque_ that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of
Faëry dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it--the mislaid
abracadabra.
"I knew that I had some obstacle in mind--Thou shalt not commit adultery.
No, your Highness, I will not go."
"Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared
happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau."
"I have not the least intention of going--" the Baroness iterated, firmly.
"Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a
portmanteau, in case of an emergency--"
"--although--"
"Why, exactly."
"--although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of
Breschau."
"It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain
days--particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on
Thursdays."
"By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday."
"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is."
"And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the
sunrise--"
"Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,--but with a
portmanteau!"
The Baroness was silent.
"With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of
portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia."
The Baroness was silent.
"Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word
portmanteau--"
The Baroness bent toward him and said:
"I am sorry to inform your Highness that there is some one at the door of
the summer-house."