THE MEYRINS.
Things were passing at the home of the Meyrins less worthily and less
poetically than in the Rue Auber.
Faithful to the advice of his mistress, Paul had been careful to say
nothing of his brother and sister-in-law of the serious events of which
he was the hero. Neither Frantz Meyrin, however, nor his wife was
ignorant of his amours, but they affected, by one of those middle-class
hypocrisies that are so common, to suppose that the ties between the
artist and the princess were perfectly moral. Their vanity was flattered
at receiving the great Russian lady. If they had acknowledged that they
knew the truth they would have been obliged to confess they were playing
a degraded part, or to break with the noble foreigner, who was so
generous to each of them, and so charming.
For Lise Olsdorf, since her coming to Paris, had used every means to win
the Meyrins. She had played on all their weaknesses, good and bad;
pride, interest, and maternal love. If the Meyrins received a few
friends or gave a musical matinee, she was always there as an intimate
friend of the family, helping Barbe, as it were, to do the honors of the
house, and one may be sure the Meyrins spoke often enough of "their
friend, the princess." Moreover, she let slip no chance of making
presents to them all round. Now it would be a piece of jewelry for the
violinist, as a mark of her gratitude for the pleasure she had enjoyed
in hearing him play such or such a piece; now a dress for Mme. Meyrin, a
silver trinket, or a piece of lace for her saint's day, the beginning of
the new year, her birthday, or the anniversary of her marriage; while
Nadeje received all the finery that could delight the heart of a
coquettish young girl.
In exchange for some very paltry pictures by Paul she had adorned his
studio with arms, hangings, and costly objects of all sorts. When Frantz
gave a concert the princess undertook to dispose of tickets among her
Russian friends in the city, and whether they took them or not it is
certain the Meyrins pocketed the price of them. So that they all
worshiped Lise Olsdorf, and had arrived at the singular state of mind,
though without acknowledging it, of being proud that Paul had for his
mistress a fine lady whom they had made their friend. They did not say
to themselves that each of her presents was, in a manner, the price of
their complaisance; and they made a great to-do with the little Tekla,
whose real father they well knew, when the princess sent the baby by its
nurse to the Rue de Douai.
This was the footing the Meyrins were on with Lise when the prince,
coming suddenly to Paris and taking the tone we have seen, forced his
wife not to see her lover except in secret, and to restrict her visits
to the artist's family.
Mme. Meyrin very soon wondered why she did not see the princess as often
as usual; but when her brother-in-law told her that the prince was in
Paris she understood Lise's reserve, and was careful not to question
Paul, whose explanation might have been of a sort to alarm her modesty
as a mother. She was satisfied to tell the young painter each day to
give her kind regards, and her husband's and daughter's, to the
princess, whose departure for Russia she now began to fear.
Things might have gone on thus for a long time, for Paul, though well
posted by the princess in what was occurring, kept silence; when one
morning, toward the end of breakfast, which the family took together,
Frantz read in the St. Petersburg correspondence of the "Figaro" the
news of the coming divorce between the Prince and Princess Olsdorf. The
real cause of the separation had been kept so secret that the
correspondent of the journal stated, without comment, that a decree
would be pronounced against the prince, following upon a petition to the
Holy Synod by his wife, involving very grave charges.
"Well, here is a pretty thing!" the violinist could not help exclaiming.
"Just listen."
And as his young daughter had a moment ago left the room with her
grandmother, he read again, aloud this time, the paragraph in question.
Then, speaking to his brother, he added: "Well, the princess is a good
one. She is to petition for a divorce! What has the husband been up to?
Don't you know anything of the facts?"
"Yes, I know a good deal; all, indeed," Paul replied, embarrassed.
"Then why did you not tell us?" Mme. Meyrin asked, in a prim tone.
"Simply because the princess asked me not to say anything until the
thing was done with."
"Does her husband know nothing at all about her?"
"Most likely."
"And he lets his wife get a divorce against him like that? I have heard
you say yourself that he was a charming man, and had no vices. There is
something behind this. You know something more than you say."
"At any rate, what I do know I may not tell."
"But, after all, what does she want with a divorce? What reason could
she give? Is she not as free as a woman need wish to be? Will she be any
freer when she hasn't a husband? Frantz, your brother must have told you
something of all this."
"Not a word," said the worthy Frantz. "Five minutes ago I knew no more
about it than you did. The deuce! The princess no doubt has got a
divorce because she is more and more infatuated with this fine fellow
here."
"My dear," said Mme. Meyrin, shocked.
"Oh, we need not be so particular between ourselves. I dare say you know
well enough what is what in the matter. Very likely she wants to marry
Paul."
"Marry Paul!" exclaimed the musician's wife, furious because her husband
spoke of the thing in laughing at it.
The painter, ill at ease during the discussion, rose from the table, and
was making off.
But there was no escaping Mme. Meyrin in this way.
"Come, don't run away like that," she said, catching her brother-in-law
by the arm. "You know very well that all this is of the greatest
interest to us. If the princess is getting a divorce that she may marry
you, you must have agreed to marry her."
"It is no use asking me questions," said the young man, freeing himself.
"So you are going to marry your mistress, are you?"
Frantz's wife was so vexed at not having been consulted that she lost
her usual self-command.
"My mistress?" repeated the painter. "You are deucedly outspoken. Well,
what if I do marry the Princess Lise, what harm would there be in it?"
"What harm? Do you hear him, Frantz? What harm! Do you suppose that your
mother and your brother would ever let you make such a marriage? A
divorced woman!"
"If she were not divorced I could not marry her."
"So much the better."
"What! You who are so strait-laced would rather that she should remain
my--my-- What you say--than that she should become my wife?"
Seeing that the change of ground was not in her favor, Mme. Meyrin did
not know what to answer. Frantz, a good sort of fellow, caring most of
all for peace and quietness, did not wish to carry the discussion
further. With a look he advised his brother to remain cool.
"Well, for that matter, let us wait; there is no harm done yet." He
ended by saying like a coward, "When the princess is divorced, we shall
see."
So saying, he left the room abruptly, and his sister-in-law in her
astonishment.
Husband and wife kept silence for some moments; then Barbe said to her
partner, who had prudently buried himself again in his paper:
"You make very little of this, do you? You may be sure your mother will
look at it very differently."
"My dear," Frantz ventured to say, "the case is a delicate one. Here is
a woman who has been visiting us for nearly a year back, from whom we
have accepted all sorts of favors, and whom we knew very well to be my
brother's mistress. Would you now shut the door in her face simply
because she thinks of becoming his wife, as we suppose? That seems
rather difficult to do."
"But think of Paul marrying a woman older than himself, accustomed to
live in luxury, and already the mother of two children."
"One of which is his whom she wants to make her husband."
"It may be so; and it may not. There is no certainty."
"Oh Barbe, Barbe! I can't see anything so dreadful for my brother in all
this. The princess is older than he, but by a few months only; and she
certainly won't be dependent on him. I have heard him say that she has a
good private fortune. Besides, her mother, still alive, is rich."
The worthy fellow emphasized these particulars, for he knew that what
angered his wife more than the marriage of her brother-in-law was the
change that it would cause in the household.
Paul gone, the income of the family would be greatly reduced. As a
husband and the father of a family, the painter would necessarily cease
to be the prospective rich uncle that they had hoped for Nadeje. And
lastly, the princess herself when once she was Paul's wife would
probably not be so open-handed with the Meyrins as she had been in the
past.
As, without daring to acknowledge them, these were the thoughts that had
moved the artist's sister-in-law, she blushed at finding them so well
guessed by her husband.
She said no more for the moment, but as soon as her mother-in-law came
in she told her all that had passed, and Frantz's mother, who worshiped
her younger son, though rather egotistically, at once agreed with her
daughter-in-law that Paul ought not to marry.
Meanwhile the inquiry before the Holy Synod was going on, the prince was
still living at Paris with Vera whom he loved deeply, though he had not
yet told her so; and Lise Olsdorf, more infatuated than ever, was eager
for the marriage with her lover, who had not been able to hide from her
the opposition the idea met with in his family.