"After all," Count d'Avorsy said, stirring his tea with the slow
movements of a prelate, "what truth was there in anything that was said
at Court, almost without any restraint, and did the Empress, whose
beauty has been ruined by some secret grief, who will no longer see
anyone and who soothes her continual mental weariness by some journeys
without an object and without a rest, in foggy and melancholy islands,
and did she really forget Caesar's wife ought not even to be suspected,
did she really give herself to that strange and attractive corrupter,
Ladislas Ferkoz?"
The bright night seemed to be scattering handfuls of stars into the
placid sea, which was as calm as a blue pond, slumbering in the depths
of a forest. Among the tall climbing roses, which hung a mantle of
yellow flowers to the fretted baluster of the terrace, there stood out
in the distance the illuminated fronts of the hotels and villas, and
occasionally women's laughter was heard above the dull, monotonous sound
of surf and the noise of the fog-horns.
Then Captain Sigmund Oroshaz, whose sad and pensive face of a soldier
who has seen too much slaughter and too many charnel houses, was marked
by a large scar, raised his head and said in a grave, haughty voice:
"Nobody has lied in accusing Maria-Gloriosa of adultery, and nobody has
calumniated the Empress and her minister, whom God has damned in the
other world. Ladislas Ferkoz was his sovereign's lover until he died,
and made his august master ridiculous and almost odious, for the man, no
matter who he be, who allows himself to be flouted by a creature who is
unworthy of bearing his name and of sharing his bread; who puts up with
such disgrace, who does not crush the guilty couple with all the weight
of his power, is not worth pity, nor does he deserve to be spared the
mockery. And if I affirm that so harshly, my dear Count--although years
and years have passed since the sponge passed over that old story--the
reason is that I saw the last chapter of it, quite in spite of myself,
however, for I was the officer who was on duty at the palace, and
obliged to obey orders, just as if I had been on the field of
battle--and on that day I was on duty near Maria-Gloriosa."
Madame de Laumières, who had begun an animated conversation on
crinolines, admist the fragrant odor of Russian cigarettes, and who was
making fun of the striking toilets, with which she had amused herself by
scanning through her opera glass a few hours previously at the races,
stopped, for even when she was talking most volubly she always kept her
ears open to hear what was being said around her, and as her curiosity
was aroused, she interrupted Sigmund Oroshaz.
"Ah! Monsieur," she said, "you are not going to leave our curiosity
unsatisfied.... A story about the Empress puts all our scandals on the
beach, and all our questions of dress into the shade, and, I am sure,"
she added with a smile at the corners of her mouth, "that even our
friend, Madame d'Ormonde will leave off flirting with Monsieur Le
Brassard to listen to you."
Captain Oroshaz continued, with his large blue eyes full of
recollections:
"It was in the middle of a grand ball that the Emperor was giving on the
occasion of some family anniversary, though I forget exactly what, and
where Maria-Gloriosa, who was in great grief, as she had heard that her
lover was ill and his life almost despaired of, far from her, was going
about with her face as pale as that of _Our Lady of Sorrows_, seemed to
be a soul in affliction, appeared to be ashamed of her bare shoulders,
as if she were being made a parade of in the light, while he, the adored
of her heart, was lying on a bed of sickness, getting weaker every
moment, longing for her and perhaps calling for her in his distress.
About midnight, when the violins were striking up the quadrille, which
the Emperor was to dance with the wife of the French Ambassador, one of
the ladies of honor, Countess Szegedin, went up to the Empress, and
whispered a few words to her, in a very low voice. Maria-Gloriosa grew
still paler, but mastered her emotion and waited until the end of the
last figure. Then, however, she could not restrain herself any longer,
and even without giving any pretext for running away in such a manner,
and leaning on the arm of her lady of honor, she made her way through
the crowd as if she were in a dream and went to her own apartments. I
told you that I was on duty that evening at the door of her rooms, and
according to etiquette, I was going to salute her respectfully, but she
did not give me time.
"'Captain,' she said excitedly and vehemently, 'give orders for my own
private coachman, Hans Hildersheim, to get a carriage ready for me
immediately,' but thinking better of it immediately she went on: 'But
no, we should only lose time, and every minute is precious; give me a
cloak quickly, Madame, and a lace veil; we will go out of one of the
small doors in the park, and take the first conveyance we see."
"She wrapped herself in her furs, hid her face in her mantilla, and I
accompanied her, without at first knowing what this mystery was, and
where we were going to, on this mad expedition. I hailed a cab that was
dawdling by the side of the pavement, and when the Empress gave me the
address of Ladislas Ferkoz, the Minister of State, in a low voice, in
spite of my usual phlegm, I felt a vague shiver of emotion, one of those
movements of hesitation and recoil, from which the bravest are not
exempt at times. But how could I get out of this unpleasant part of
acting as her companion, and how show want of politeness to a sovereign
who had completely lost her head? Accordingly, we started, but the
Empress did not pay any more attention to me than if I had not been
sitting by her side in that narrow conveyance, but stifled her sobs with
her pocket handkerchief, muttered a few incoherent words, and
occasionally trembled from head to foot. Her lover's name rose to her
lips as if it had been a response in a litany, and I thought that she
was praying to the Virgin that she might not arrive too late to see
Ladislas Ferkoz again in the possession of his faculties, and keep him
alive for a few hours. Suddenly, as if in reply to herself, she said: 'I
will not cry any more; he must see me looking beautiful, so that he may
remember me, even in death!'
"When we arrived, I saw that we were expected, and that they had not
doubted that the Empress would come to close her lover's eyes with a
last kiss. She left me there, and hurried to Ladislas Ferkoz's room,
without even shutting the doors behind her, where his beautiful,
sensual, gipsy head stood out from the whiteness of the pillows; but his
face was quite bloodless, and there was no life left in it, except in
his large, strange eyes, that were striated with gold, like the eyes of
an astrologer or of a bearded vulture.
"The cold numbness of the death struggle had already laid hold of his
robust body and paralyzed his lips and arms, and he could not reply even
by a sound of tenderness to Maria-Gloriosa's wild lamentations and
amorous cries. Neither reply nor smile, alas! But his eyes dilated, and
glistened like the last flame that shoots up from an expiring fire, and
filled them with a world of dying thoughts, of divine recollections, of
delirious love. They appeared to envelope her in kisses, they spoke to
her, they thanked her, they followed her movements, and seemed delighted
at her grief. And as if she were replying to their mute supplications,
as if she had understood them, Maria-Gloriosa suddenly tore off her
lace, threw aside her fur cloak, stood erect beside the dying man, whose
eyes were radiant, desirable in her supreme beauty with her bare
shoulders, her bust like marble and her fair hair, in which diamonds
glistened, surrounding her proud head, like that of the Goddess Diana,
the huntress, and with her arms stretched out towards him in an attitude
of love, of embrace and of blessing. He looked at her in ecstacy, he
feasted on her beauty, and seemed to be having a terrible struggle with
death, in order that he might gaze at her, that apparition of love, a
little longer, see her beyond eternal sleep and prolong this unexpected
dream. And when he felt that it was all over with him, and that even his
eyes were growing dim, two great tears rolled down his cheeks....
"When Maria-Gloriosa saw that he was dead, she piously and devoutly
kissed his lips and closed his eyes, like a priest who closes the gold
tabernacle after service, on an evening after benediction, and then,
without exchanging a word, we returned through the darkness to the
palace where the ball was still going on."
* * * * *
There was a minute's silence, and while Madame de Laumières, who was
very much touched by this story and whose nerves were rather highly
strung, was drying her tears behind her open fan, suddenly the harsh and
shrill voices of the fast women who were returning from the Casino, by
the strange irony of fate, struck up an idiotic song which was then in
vogue: "_Oh! the poor, oh! the poor, oh! the poor, dear girl!_"