Prince Wiguniewski wrote to Cornelius Ermelang at Vaucluse in the South
of France:
“In your Petrarchan solitude you seem to have lost all touch with the
world, since you inquire so insistently after our diva. I thought you
were still in Paris and that you had seen Eva Sorel. For she returned
from there only a few weeks ago--returned like a general after a
victorious campaign of three weeks, full of fame and booty. Didn’t you
learn from the newspapers at least of the feverish enthusiasm which she
has recently created in international society?
“In your inquiry there is an undertone of anxiety. I understand the
reason for it, even though you are reserved on that point. Brief as
your visit to her during your stay in Petrograd may have been, your
eyes, which are so practised in reading the souls of men, must have
perceived the change that has come over her. I hesitate to call that
change one that should cause us anxiety, for doubtless it conforms
somehow to the law of her being. Yet to behold it means pain to us who
witnessed her beginnings and her rise--to those ten or twelve people
in Europe, the fairest experience of whose youth was her sweetness and
radiance and starry freedom from earth’s heaviness. She was timeless;
she was at each moment that very moment’s gift. I need not describe to
you what she was; you knew her. But is it for us to quarrel or mourn
because a given development does not correspond to our expectations?
However we may strive and cry, that which has become and now is
unquestionably holds the wiser and the deeper sense of life. We always
want too much, and so end by seeing and understanding too little. We
need more humility.
“It is a fact that she employs and stirs public opinion in our country
as scarcely any other human being does. Every one knows at all times
who is in her favour and who has fallen from grace. The luxury that
surrounds her generates the wildest fables, and does, indeed, surpass
anything ever known. Her monthly income runs into the hundreds of
thousands, and her fortune is estimated at between twenty and thirty
millions of rubles. Twice a week she receives a carload of flowers from
the Riviera, and twice from the Crimea.
“Concerning the castle which she is building at Yalta on the sea,
details are told that remind one of the Arabian Nights. It is to be
finished in a month, and magnificent festivities are planned for the
house-warming. I am among the guests invited. Every one is talking
about this castle. The park is said to cover an area of five square
miles. Only by a most extravagant expenditure of money and labour could
the whole thing have been completed within a year. I am told that the
central building has a tower from which one has a magnificent view of
the sea, and that this tower is a copy of the tower of the Signoria at
Florence. A gilded spiral staircase with a balustrade of costly enamel
leads upward within, and each window affords a carefully selected view
of the southern landscape. To adorn the walls of one of her great
rooms she desired the remaining paintings which the British had still
left in El Hira, the celebrated ruin in the Arabian desert. To obtain
them, extensive commercial and diplomatic negotiations were necessary.
Further large sums were spent and difficulties surmounted to fit out an
expedition which was in the desert for three months and has but just
returned. Its task was as dangerous as it was romantic, and seven of
its members lost their lives. When Eva was told of this, she seemed to
be frightened and to regret the boldness of her desires. But then she
saw the pictures, and was so entranced that her smile seemed almost to
express a satisfaction at the sacrifices they had cost.
“There is no exaggeration in this account. Such is her nature now.
Those inconceivably beautiful hands treat the world as though it were
possessed by slaves and meant and destined for her alone. I myself
beheld her one day crouching before the paintings of a strange, far
age, and I was shaken by the expression with which she regarded
the gestures of those archaic figures. It was an expression of
estrangedness and cruelty.
“It is quite by chance that I drifted to the subject of the ancient
paintings and how they were procured. But I see now that I could have
chosen no shorter path to the kernel of what I should like to tell you.
The events of the past few days actually start from that incident.
Few men, of course, can raise the veil that hides these events to-day
and will probably always hide them. Any one who has not, like myself,
gained some insight through a series of lucky accidents, is simply
groping in the dark. I must beg you, too, to observe the strictest
secrecy. This letter, which is being sent with especial precautions
and which a courier of the embassy is taking across the frontier, may
serve as a document entrusted to your care. By its help a later age
will be able to track the genesis of certain happenings to their most
distant roots.
“Scarcely had the paintings of El Hira arrived, than reclamations
on the ground of violated property rights were made by France.
The arrangements with England were asserted to have omitted all
consideration of the legal rights of a Parisian stock-company, and the
French government overwhelmed our ministry with notes and protests. The
leader of the expedition, a courageous and witty scholar named Andrei
Gabrilovitch Yaminsky, was accused of open robbery. The whole matter
was unpleasant and the consternation great, and the noise intimidated
even the old foxes of diplomacy. They feared that they had committed a
bad blunder, and thus promenaded into the trap set for them. Since this
affair, amusingly enough, actually threatened to darken the political
sky, the important thing, above all, was to keep it from the knowledge
of the Grand Duke Cyril, who holds the threads of foreign affairs in
his hands like a spider in the midst of its web, and who feels the
gentlest vibration. All efforts were directed to this end. Terror of
the Grand Duke’s rage created the most grotesque situations in the
responsible ministerial offices.
“The minister in person went to Eva Sorel. She declared proudly that
she would assume full responsibility and guard everyone concerned
from unpleasant consequences. But there were grave doubts as to that.
Similar cases were recalled, in which later on a malicious punishment
had, after all, been the portion of the subordinates. So Eva was
earnestly begged to give up the mural paintings. She resisted steadily,
asserted her right to them, and grew defiant. When the officials were
foolish enough to have Andrei Yaminsky, to whom she had taken a great
liking, arrested, she threatened to inform the Grand Duke, who happened
to be staying at Tsarskoye Selo. Thus terror rose to its utmost height.
And now the original instigators of the whole intrigue held their fit
time to have come. Suddenly there was calm and the storm had passed.
But what had been the hidden and ultimate occasion of it all?
“The initiated whispered of an unholy bargain; but their knowledge, it
seems to me, reaches no farther than mine. I sit near enough to the
loom to see the shuttles flying to and fro. But I can assert that it
is weaving an evil web. In what age have not the arts of a courtesan
served to drag nations into slaughter? Perhaps you think the twentieth
century too advanced for cabals in the style of Mazarin? I am not so
sure of it. And perhaps you also think that the great catastrophes and
revolutions use the wills and the actions of trivial mortals only in
appearance, and that both accusation and guilt lose their validity when
we become aware of the impersonal march of fate? But we do not grasp
that march. We are human and we must judge, even as we must suffer,
just because we must suffer.
“The unholy bargain involved in this instance concerns the building of
fortresses on our Polish and Volhynian frontiers. For unknown reasons
the Grand Duke opposed this plan until now. But during the past few
days there has been talk of a new government loan. Well, there is one
human being and only one capable of having inclined his rigid will
toward this project. Why say more? One shudders at the thought of a
connection between mural paintings five thousand years old and the
springs of modern diplomatic trickery; between the bought complaisance
of that incomparable body, that true adornment of the world, and the
erection of fortress walls and casemates. The comedy rends one’s heart.
“But that is not all my story. Connected with these events is the death
of Andrei Gabrilovitch Yaminsky. I have indicated the fact that Eva
was markedly attracted toward him. The courage and energy he had shown
in that expedition to the desert, his mind, and not least of all his
physical advantages dazzled her. She distinguished him in every way.
Since she admits the existence of no barriers and gives her impulses
complete expression in action, she did not hesitate in this instance,
and Yaminsky was granted a happiness of which he had not dared to
dream, and which seems to have robbed him of all moral equilibrium.
It filled him to overflowing; it crazed him. Among his friends one
evening, over the wine, of course, he began to chatter and boasted of
his conquest. He realized his frightful error too late. What would have
been contemptible weakness in any instance was sheer crime here. Too
late he besought his witnesses to forget his words, to be silent, to
consider him a liar and a boaster. Nor did it help him to seek them
out singly and persuade them to secrecy. The rumour was started. A
discreet and suspected affair would not have caused more than silent or
whispered curiosity. The thing openly acknowledged became a topic of
general talk. Punishment did not delay long, and Fyodor Szilaghin was
the executioner.
“It is not easy to define the rôle which Szilaghin plays in Eva’s
present life. Now he seems to be her warder, now her seducer. No one
knows whether he desires to please and win her, or whether he is but
the servant and Argus of his sombre lord and friend. I believe that
Eva herself is in the dark on this point. His enigmatic character, his
masterly subtlety and impenetrable faithlessness seemed to me like
the visible symbols of the darkening and disquietude of Eva’s soul.
There is no doubt that he acted with her knowledge and consent when he
undertook to punish Yaminsky. But I dare not decide whether they ever
actually spoke of the matter, whether it was done at his or her demand,
whether her disappointment made her yield to him or her anger made her
revengeful for herself, whether he acted in defence of her honour or
that of his master. At all events, the punishment was accomplished.
“The deed itself is hidden in mystery and twilight, and is described
with rather repulsive details. Last Wednesday evening Yaminsky was
dining with friends in a side room at Cubat’s on the great Morskaia.
Shortly before midnight the door was torn open, and four young men,
muffled in furs to their eyes, made their way in. Three of them
surrounded Yaminsky, and one turned out the lights. Immediately a
shot resounded, and before Yaminsky’s friends had recovered from their
amazement, the strangers were gone. Yaminsky lay on the floor, soaking
in his blood. Szilaghin was definitely recognized as one of the four.
“The boldest stroke came later. In the tumult that arose among the
guests of the restaurant, the body of the murdered man had been
forgotten. People called for the police and ran and shoved and asked
questions. In the meantime a cab stopped at the door. Two men made
their way through the crowd to where the dead man lay, and carried him
past the staring bystanders into the cab. No one prevented them. The
cab raced down the Nevski to the Palace Bridge and stopped. The two
dragged the body to the shore, and flung it down among the ice floes of
the wintry Neva.
“That same evening I was at Eva’s, together with Caille, Lord Elmster,
and some Russian artists. She was entrancing, and of a sparkling
gaiety that made one feel loth to lose a breath of it. I no longer
remember how the conversation happened to turn to sidereal phenomena
and solar systems. For a while in the usual light way, the question
was considered whether other planets might not be inhabited by men or
man-like beings. And Eva said: ‘I have read, and wise men have told
me, that Saturn has ten moons and also a ring of glowing fire that
surrounds the great star with purple and violet flame. The planet
itself, I am told, is still composed of red-hot lava. But on the ten
moons there might be life and creatures like ourselves. Imagine the
night in those regions--the dark glow of the great mother star, the
purple rainbow forever spanning the whole firmament, and the ten
moons circling beside and above one another, so near perhaps that
those beings can speak and communicate from world to world. What
possibilities! What visions of happiness and beauty!’ Such, or nearly
such were her words. One of us replied that it was quite as easy to
conceive of moon at war with moon, even as here land wars with land,
despite the glory of the heavens, and that experience made us fear
that nowhere in the universe would the wonders of a sky save restless
creatures like ourselves from robbery and violence. But she said: ‘Do
not destroy my faith; leave me my Saturnian Paradise.’
“And she knew, she could not but have known, that in that very hour
Yaminsky, whom she had loved, was dying an ugly and a murderous death.
“It is difficult to have humility.”