A WINTER AT ST. PETERSBURG.
Pierre Olsdorf was perhaps, of all the candidates for her hand, the only
one that the beautiful Lise Barineff had remarked, not that she found
him in any way better than the other young men received by her mother,
but simply because the countess, in accord with General Podoi, seized
every occasion to sing the praises of this suitor, who was exactly the
son-in-law that the ambition of the ex-comedienne had pictured.
In truth, Prince Olsdorf was not merely a titled husband; he had many
other desirable qualities. In the first place, he had a large fortune.
His grandfather had been a field-marshal under the Empress Anne, after
serving her when she was only Princess of Courland. He had profited by
the generosity of his sovereign to enlarge his estates and to construct
on the right bank of the River Wandau the Chateau of Pampeln, which had
the reputation of being one of the handsomest noblemen's residences in
the country. The prince was an orphan too, which gave occasion to the
Countess Barineff to hope that she might have some hand in the direction
of her daughter's household.
Pierre Olsdorf was permitted then to pay his court, and Lise, although
her heart remained unmoved, was touched as well by the discretion as by
the gentleness of him who was to be her husband.
The prince was of a timid nature, at least as regarded women. Unlike the
greater part of the young St. Petersburg nobles, he had not seen much
"life." He was not a constant spectator at the Michael Theatre, nor a
hanger-on of the ballet. When he quitted the Institute of Nobles, where
he had been educated, instead of joining the corps of imperial pages, as
most youths of good family did, he took up his residence with his uncle
and tutor, Prince Alexis Olsdorf, at Pampeln, an old bachelor who was
rather out of sorts with the court. There he indulged his inborn taste
for horses and hunting. Only after the death of his relative he used to
visit St. Petersburg occasionally, but he never made a long stay there,
a free life in the open air seeming to him preferable to any other.
He owed his good health to this healthy mode of existence, for, born
puny and sickly, he would not have been able to live through the feasts
and pleasures in which he must have taken part if he had joined with the
young fellows of his rank. Pampeln, on the other hand, had saved him
from all excesses.
Though of medium height and delicate in look, he was really strong.
Bodily exertions had made him indefatigable and of a calm courage full
of audacity and coolness. Through his mode of life he had gained
premature gravity and the firmness of a middle-aged man. Kind to his
servants, he was worshiped by them, and the emancipated cultivators of
his estates preserved toward him the respect and obedience of serfs for
their lord. He neglected nothing that might conduce to their material
well-being or their moral elevation. Unhealthy and cramped dwellings had
disappeared from his vast estates, where he had established schools to
which he insisted that all children should be sent. There they not only
received primary, secular, and religious education, but were also taught
French. Everybody, or nearly everybody, for ten leagues around the
chateau spoke the French language.
It is easy to believe, then, that the prince lived from choice in
Courland, and it was precisely his liking for the active and honorable
life he led there that made him think one day of taking a wife. The
hospitality of the Olsdorfs was a tradition. He told his wish to General
Podoi, who had been one of his father's friends, and the middle-aged
lover of the Countess Barineff naturally thought at once of making Lise
the mistress of Pampeln.
She was, he thought, just the wife for Peter the Silent, as he liked to
call his young friend. Lise was serious, well-taught, and not given to
frivolity, as most of the young girls of the Russian nobility were. He
spoke of her to the prince, who came to St. Petersburg. After meeting
the daughter of the Countess Barineff two or three times, being struck
by her beauty and the look of distinction about her, he was soon
convinced that he could make no better choice. He asked for her hand,
and, as we have seen, he was accepted.
The aim of the ex-comedienne having been thus far attained, things
followed their regular course. Though he held no post at the court,
Prince Olsdorf, through deference and in accordance with tradition,
asked for the approval of the emperor to his marriage. The consent was
readily given, and Pierre hastened to hand over his mansion at St.
Petersburg, deserted for so many years, to the upholsterers. At this
time the countess won a second victory. Sure of her exquisite taste, the
prince begged her to take the matter in hand, so that nothing was done
in the house of the future bride and bridegroom except by her orders.
Her satisfaction while she was thus engaged was troubled only by a
letter that she received from Paris in reply to that which she had
addressed to her old comrade, Dumesnil.
Less reserved than his friend, the actor at the Odeon Theatre had
written to her:
"MY DEAR MADELEINE,--I am very happy and very proud at
Lise's marriage. I do not regret now the sacrifice I
made, when you became the Countess Barineff, in
allowing this dear child to be acknowledged by him who
gave you his name. I wished above all things to secure
the future of our daughter. Afterward, sacrificing my
own future, I did not rejoin you in Russia, where, it
may be, fortune and glory awaited me."
The old comedian continued his letter with a lamentation on the
decadence of the theater, the want of taste in the public, and the
isolation to which he was condemned. He concluded by charging his former
mistress to kiss, for an old friend, her whom he might not kiss as a
father.
The letter recalled to the Countess Barineff a crowd of disagreeable
memories, and she rather regretted having written to Dumesnil, while she
felt that it would have been difficult not to do so, for she had every
reason to praise the conduct of this good fellow.
It was Dumesnil, in fact, who had guided the first steps of Madeleine
Froment in her theatrical career, lifting her from the precarious and
doubtful life to which the _abandon_ of her relatives had consigned her
before she was twenty years old. Having made her a mother, he had no
thought of deserting her. On the contrary, he was anxious to acknowledge
his child, when an unhoped-for engagement at St. Petersburg was proposed
to Madeleine, who left Paris with the promise to obtain an engagement
for Dumesnil too at the Michael Theatre. We know what happened. Sought
after, courted, she soon forgot her comrade of the Odeon. Dumesnil did
not know of her marriage with Count Barineff until it was too late to
make any attempt at hindering it.
Mme. Froment touched adroitly the paternal fiber in Dumesnil's heart,
and the good fellow, as we have seen, had let his child become the child
of Count Barineff as much from affection as vanity. But all these
deceptions had sharpened his temper. He had remained an actor through
necessity rather than taste. Sad, discouraged, convinced that all was
over in dramatic composition, and only feeling pleasures when the old
stock pieces were in the bill, he played his parts in the dramas of the
writers of the past with a strict regard for tradition.
However, notwithstanding the cloud that had formed in her azure sky, the
Countess Barineff continued busying herself with the installation of the
future couple. On the appointed day the mansion only lacked its master
and mistress.
The two months' probation that Pierre Olsdorf had undergone had not
lowered him in the estimation of his sweetheart. Certainly Lise did not
feel her heart beat violently when the man whose name she was to bear
kissed her hand, for this grave cavalier, with his slight fair mustache
and half-closed blue eyes, was, perhaps, not the husband of whom she had
caught glimpses in her dreams; but he would make a princess of her, and
the Countess Barineff told her daughter that the happiest unions were
often those which love had not preceded.
The ex-comedienne had made up her mind that the house of the young
couple should become the liveliest place in the world. She would
introduce her friends there; all the artistes that she loved to receive,
all the foreigners who for years back had given her own house a deserved
reputation for wit and elegance.
The last unconscious hesitations of Lise vanished on seeing the marriage
present that the prince offered to her a few days before the ceremony.
There was a fortune in jewels and furs, which were marvels, too, of good
taste. Nevertheless, she slept that evening with her accustomed calm,
and her last nights of maidenhood were troubled by none of the dreams
that haunt the purest on the eve of the most important act of life.
So, too, on the next day but one, when she set out for the Church of
Isaac, where the ceremony was to take place, she was as fresh and
bright-looking, in her dress of white moire covered with wonderful lace
that had belonged to her husband's mother.
Her entry into the basilica, leaning on the arm of General Podoi, was an
undoubted triumph. The middle-aged lover of the countess would not, for
anything in the world, have delegated his right to lead to the altar, as
her "father of honor," her whom more and more he regarded as his
daughter. Lise, to gain the chair with armorial bearings that awaited
her, had to pass through a friendly crowd made up of all the nobility of
St. Petersburg. The frogged and decorated uniforms, the fine dresses,
the diamonds and their beautiful wearers, were a dazzling sight.
The prince offered his arm to one of the greatest ladies of the court,
the Princess Iwacheff, who acted as "mother of honor" to him, but was
not a relative, as the custom usually requires.
Then came the Countess Barineff. Gratified as her pride was, she still
wore a calm and dignified air. She might have been by right of birth of
the world into one of the first ranks of which her daughter was
entering.
The emperor was represented by one of his _aides-de-camp_. The
arch-priest himself officiated, and when the daughter of the actor
Dumesnil had become a princess, she received with perfect good-breeding
the compliments of those who defiled before her.
A few hours later a princely dinner was served to more than a hundred
guests at Pierre Olsdorf's mansion. Next day the Princess Lise entered
on the noble life for which she had been so long under preparation.
The prince had intended to quit the city for Pampeln immediately after
his marriage; but the season was far advanced, the winter was coming on
rapidly, and the Countess Barineff pointed out that he ought not to
deprive his young wife of the entertainments to which she would be
invited in St. Petersburg, in order to shut her up in a chateau at a
season of the year when it must necessarily be lonely.
Pierre, as much out of deference to his mother-in-law as from affection
for Lise--of whom he seemed very fond--put off the departure for his
estate until the following spring. His house--as the countess had
promised herself it should--soon became one of the most brilliant in St.
Petersburg.
The fact was not altogether pleasing to the prince. He had never cared
much for the world, and he would rather have had his wife more for
himself alone; but he gave way with a good grace, and balls and
receptions succeeded each other at his house throughout the first six
months of his marriage. The Princess Olsdorf had her box at the Michael
Theatre and at the Italian opera; she was to be seen at all the court
balls; no sledge was horsed like hers; the greatest ladies of the
Russian nobility became her friends; she was famed in all the gossip of
the day for her elegance, wit, and beauty.
As for the prince, he was always rather too grave. He was away only once
during all this bustling six months, and that was in order to pay a
short visit to Courland that he might see for himself that Pampeln would
be worthy to receive its mistress in the spring.
Pierre Olsdorf loved his wife; but with his serious character, and the
temperament of a man born in northern latitudes, he knew nothing of
trouble and fierce passions. It seemed, too, that it was well he was not
otherwise, for Lise was still the woman General Podoi had described her
as--gentle, amiable, free from inquietude and jealousy. Her husband was
for her, above all, a friend. Neither her heart nor her passions seemed
to require more from him. So that all was for the best, and the Countess
Barineff, justly proud of her work, was feeling the satisfaction its
contemplation gave her when one day the good fellow Podoi reminded her
of the promise she had made to accept his name after her daughter's
marriage.
"Do you, then, still think of making me your wife?" asked Lise's mother.
"More than ever," replied the general, in a feeling voice. "Come, now,
have not I, too, worked for your daughter's happiness, and do not I
deserve a reward? What is the only one I covet? Reflect, my dear
Madeleine; I have loved you for fifteen years."
"True; and that has aged us both, eh?"
"You are still young and beautiful. As for me, you will give me back my
youth."
The general had spoken those words with so dandified an air that the
countess could not help smiling in offering him her hand.
"You give it me?" exclaimed Podoi, seizing the hand and covering it with
kisses.
"I can not do otherwise," said Madeleine. "Will not people laugh at us a
little, though? I shall soon be a grandmother."
"Well, well, we will begin by having grandchildren, that is all."
And the general straightened himself proudly, while the ex-actress tried
to summon a faint blush at this freedom of speech in her old lover.
Within a fortnight, very quietly, the marriage of the Countess Barineff
and General Podoi was celebrated at the Church of Isaac. The general, in
truth, seemed younger than he was by the fifteen years of his constancy
and devotion.
The same day, by a strange coincidence, Dumesnil appeared anew in the
character of Georges Dandin at the Odeon.