PLEASURE TAKES LEAVE TO PROTEST.
During the months that followed the departure of the Sempachs I engaged
myself busily in public affairs, in the endeavour to gain better
acquaintance with the difficult trade which was mine. I do not throw off
impressions lightly, and I was disinclined for gaiety, or for more
society than the obligations of my position demanded. My mother approved
of my zeal; a convinced partisan, she enjoyed that happy confidence in
her own views which makes people certain that everybody can study their
opinions only to embrace them. Attention is the sole preliminary to
conversion. I will not speak further of this matter here than to say
that I was doomed to disappoint Princess Heinrich in this respect. I am
glad of it. The world moves, and although it is very difficult for
persons so artificially situated as I have been to move with it, yet we
can and must move after it, lumbering along in its wake more or less
slowly and awkwardly. We hold on this tenure; if we do not perform
it--well, we end in country-houses in England.
It was, I suppose, owing to these occupations that I failed to notice
the relations between Victoria and her husband until they had reached a
rather acute crisis. Either from a desire to re-enforce the number of my
guardian angels, or merely because they found themselves very
comfortable, the pair had taken up a practically permanent residence
with me. I was very glad to have them, and assigned them a handsome set
of apartments quite at the other end of the house. Here they lived in
considerable splendour, seeing a great deal of company and assuming the
position of social leaders. Victoria at least was admirably suited to
play such a part, and I certainly did not grudge it to her; for my
mother I can not speak so confidently. William Adolphus, having
abandoned his military pursuits, led an idle lounging life. In
consequence he grew indolent; his stoutness increased. I mention this
personal detail merely because I believe that it had a considerable
influence on Victoria's feelings toward him. Her varied nature included
a vivid streak of the romantic, and with every expansion in his belt and
every multiplication of the folds of his chin William Adolphus came to
satisfy this instinct in her less and less. She sought other interests;
she contrived to combine very dexterously the _femme incomprise_ with
the leader of fashion; she posed as a patron of letters and the arts,
indulging in intellectual flirtations with professors and other learned
folk. There was no harm in this, and William Adolphus would not have
been in the smallest degree disturbed by it. He had all the
self-confidence given by a complete want of imagination. Unhappily,
however, she began to treat him with something very like contempt,
allowed him to perceive that his company did not satisfy her spiritual
and mental requirements, and showed herself more than willing that he
should choose his own associates and dispose of his own time. He was not
resentful; he confessed that his wife's friends bored him, and availed
himself amply and good-naturedly of the liberty which her expressed
preferences afforded him. He devoted himself to his sport, his dogs, and
his horses; this was all very well. He also became a noted patron of the
lighter forms of the drama; this, for reasons that I shall indicate
directly, was not quite so well. Out of this last taste of William
Adolphus came the strained relations between his wife and himself to
which I have referred.
Among those who have crossed my path few have stamped themselves more
clearly on my memory than Coralie Mansoni. She was by no means so great
a force in my life as was the Countess von Sempach, but she remains a
singularly vivid image before my eyes. Born heaven knew where, and of
parents whom I doubt whether she herself could name, seeming to hail
from the borderland of Italy and France, a daughter of the Riviera, she
had strayed and tumbled through a youth of which she would speak in
moments of expansion. I, however, need say nothing of it. When I saw her
first she was playing a small part in a light opera at Forstadt. A few
weeks later she had assumed leading _rôles_, and was the idol of the
young men. She was then about twenty-three, tall, dark, of full figure,
doomed to a brevity of beauty, but at the moment magnificence itself.
Every intellectual gift she appeared to lack, except a strangely
persistent resolution of purpose and an admirably lucid conception of
her own interest. She was not in the least brilliant or even amusing in
general conversation. She worshipped her own beauty; she owed to it all
she was, and paid the debt with a defiant assertion of its supremacy.
None could contradict her. She was very lazy as regards physical
exertion, extremely fond of eating and drinking, a careful manager of
her money. All this sounds, and was, very unattractive. On the other
side of the account may be put a certain simplicity, an indolent
kindness, a desire to make folks comfortable, and (what I liked most) a
mental honesty which caused her to assess both herself and other people
with a nearness to her and their real value that was at times absolutely
startling. It seemed as though a person, otherwise neither clever nor of
signally high character, had been gifted with a _clairvoyance_ which
allowed her to read hearts, and a relentless fine sincerity that forced
her to declare what she read to all who cared to listen to her. Whatever
she did or did not in that queer life of hers, she never flattered man
or woman, and fashioned no false image of herself.
William Adolphus made her the rage, so strangely things fall out. He
went five nights running to see her. Next week came a new piece, with
Coralie in the chief part. My brother-in-law had sent for her to his
box. He was a Prince, a great man, exalted, of what seemed boundless
wealth. Coralie was languidly polite. William Adolphus' broad face must
have worn a luxurious smile. He did Coralie the honour of calling on her
at her pretty villa, where she lived with her aunt-in-law (oddly
selected relationship!), Madame Briande. He was received with
acquiescence; enthusiasm was not among Coralie's accomplishments.
However, she lazily drawled out the opinion that _Monseigneur_ was _bon
enfant_. William Adolphus mounted into the seventh heaven. He came home
and did not tell his wife where he had been. This silence was
significant. As a rule, if he but visited the tailor or had his hair
cut, he told everybody all about it. He had really no idea that some
things were uninteresting. I do not mean to say that this trait
constitutes exactly a peculiarity.
My brother-in-law and I were very good friends. He proposed that I
should accompany him to the theatre, and afterward be his guest, for he
was to entertain Coralie at supper.
"But where?" I asked with a smile.
"There is an excellent restaurant where I have a private room," he
confessed.
"And they don't know you?"
"Of course they know me."
"I mean, where they would be willing to know neither you nor me."
"Oh, I see what you mean. That's all right."
So I went with William Adolphus. Several men whom I knew were present,
among them Wetter and M. le Vicomte de Varvilliers, second secretary of
the French Embassy and a mirror of fashion. We were quite informal.
Varvilliers sat on my left and employed himself in giving me an account
of my right-hand neighbour Coralie. I listened absently, for the sight
of Wetter had stirred other thoughts in my mind. I had not yet spoken to
Coralie; my brother-in-law monopolized her.
"I ought to speak to her, I suppose?" I said to Varvilliers at last.
"A thousand pardons for engrossing your Majesty!" he cried. "Yes, I
think you should."
William Adolphus' voice flowed on in the account of a match between one
of his horses and one of somebody else's. I turned to follow
Varvilliers' advice; rather to my surprise, I found Coralie's eyes fixed
on me with an appearance of faint amusement. She began to address me
without waiting for me to say anything.
"Why do you listen to what Varvilliers says about me instead of finding
out about me yourself?" she asked.
"How do you know he talked of you, mademoiselle?"
She shrugged her shoulders and returned to her salad. William Adolphus
asked her a question; she nodded without looking up from the salad. I
began to eat my salad.
"It's a good salad," I observed, after a few mouthfuls.
"Very," said Coralie; she turned her great eyes on me. "And, _mon Dieu_,
what a rare thing!" she added with a sigh.
Probably she would expect a touch of gallantry.
"The perfection of everything is rare," said I, looking pointedly in her
face. She put up her hand, lightly fingered the curls on her forehead,
smiled at me, and turned again to her salad. I laughed. She looked up
again quickly.
"You laugh at me?" she asked, not resentfully, but with an air of frank
inquiry.
"No, at the human race, mademoiselle. It is we, not you, who excite
laughter."
She regarded me with apparent curiosity, and gradually began to smile.
"Why?" she asked, just showing her level white teeth.
"You haven't learned yet?"
William Adolphus began to speak to her. You would have sworn she had a
deaf ear that side. She had finished her salad and sat turned toward me.
If a very white shoulder could at all console my brother-in-law, he had
an admirable view of one. Apparently he was not content; he pushed his
chair back with a noise and called to me:
"Shall we smoke? I have eaten enough."
"With all my heart," I answered.
"In fact he has eaten too much," observed Coralie, by no means in an
"aside." "He and I--we both eat too much. He is fat already. I shall
be."
"You are talkative to-night, mademoiselle," said Varvilliers, who was
offering her a cigarette.
"I believe there is to-night some one worth talking to," she retorted.
"Alas, and not last night?" he cried in affected despair.
I, however, thinking that it would ill become me to eat my
brother-in-law's supper and then spoil his sport, bowed to the lady and
crossed over to where Wetter was standing. Near him was a group of young
men laughing and talking with Madame Briande; he seemed to pay little
heed to their chatter. Varvilliers followed me, and William Adolphus sat
down by Coralie. But I had not been talking to Wetter more than two
minutes when the lady rose, left my brother-in-law, and came to join our
group. She took her stand close by me. Half attracted and half repelled
by her, young enough still to be shy, I was much embarrassed; the other
men were smiling--I must except William Adolphus--and Varvilliers
whispered to me:
"_Les beaux yeux de votre couronne, sire._"
Coralie overheard his warning; she was not in the least put out.
"Don't disturb yourself," she said to Varvilliers. "The King is not a
fool; he doesn't suppose that people forget what he is."
"You've judged him on short acquaintance," said Varvilliers, rather
vexed.
"It's my way; and why shouldn't I give my opinion?"
Wetter laughed, and said to the Frenchman:
"You had better not ask for your character, I think, Vicomte."
"Heavens, no!" cried he. "Come, I see Monseigneur all alone!"
"You are right," said Coralie. "Go and talk to him. The King and I will
talk."
They went off, Wetter laughing, Varvilliers still a little ruffled by
his encounter. Coralie passed her arm through mine and led me to a sofa.
I had recovered my composure, was interested, and amused.
"Briande," she said suddenly, "is always deploring my stupidity. 'How
will you get on,' she says, 'without wit? Men are ruled by wit though
they are won by faces.' So she says. Well, I don't know. Wit is not in
my line." She looked at me half questioningly, half defiantly.
"I perceive no deficiency in the quality, mademoiselle," said I.
"Then you have not known witty women," she retorted tranquilly. "But I
am not altogether dull. I am not like Monseigneur there."
"My brother-in-law?"
"So I am told."
As she said this she looked again at me and began to laugh. I laughed
also. But I could not very well discuss William Adolphus with her.
"What man do you desire to rule with this wit?" I asked.
"One can't tell when it might be useful," said she, with a barely
perceptible smile.
"Surely beauty is more powerful?"
"With Monseigneur?"
"Oh, never mind Monseigneur."
"But not with men of another kind."
"Some men are not to be ruled by any means."
"You think so?"
"Take Wetter now?"
"I would give him a week's resistance."
"Varvilliers?"
"A day."
I did not put the third question, but I looked at her with a smile. She
saw my meaning, of course, but she did not tell me how long a resistance
she would predict for me. I thought that I had talked enough to her,
and, since she would not let me alone, I determined to take my leave. I
wished her good-night. She received my adieu with marked indifference.
"I am very glad to have made your acquaintance," said I.
"Why, yes," she answered. "You are thinking that I am a strange
creature, a new experience," and with this she turned away, although I
was about to speak again.
Varvilliers' way lay in the same direction as mine, and I took him with
me. He chatted gaily as we went. What I liked in the Vicomte was his
confident denial of life's alleged seriousness. He seemed much amused at
the situation which he proceeded to unfold to me. According to him,
Wetter was passionately, my brother-in-law inanely, enamoured of
Coralie. Wetter was ready to ruin himself in purse and prospects for
her, and would gladly marry her. William Adolphus would be capable of
defying his wife, his mother-in-law, and public opinion. But Coralie, he
explained, cared little for either. Wetter could give her nothing, from
William Adolphus she had already gained the advancement which it was in
his power to secure for her.
"She wanted something new, so she made him bring your Majesty," he
ended, laughing.
"Was my brother-in-law unwilling?"
"Oh, no. He didn't understand," laughed Varvilliers. "He was proud to
bring you."
"It's rather awkward for me. I suppose I oughtn't to have come?"
"Ah, sire, when we have enjoyed ourselves, let us not be ungrateful. She
amused you?"
"She certainly interested me."
He shrugged his shoulders. "What more do you want?" he seemed to ask.
But I was wondering whether I should be justified in lending countenance
to these distractions of William Adolphus. The Frenchman's quick wit
overtook my thoughts.
"If you wish to rescue the Prince from danger, sire," he said, laughing,
"you can't do better than come often."
"It seems to me that I'm in danger of quarrelling either with my sister
or with my brother-in-law."
"If I were you, I should feel myself in a danger more delightful."
"But why not yourself equally, Vicomte? Aren't you in love with her?"
"Not I," he answered, with a laugh and a shake of his head.
"But why not?" I asked, laughing also.
"Can you ask? There is but one possible reason for a man's not being in
love with Coralie Mansoni."
"Tell me it, Vicomte."
"Because he has been, sire."
"A good safeguard, but of no use to me."
"Why, no, not at present," answered Varvilliers.
The carriage drew up at his lodgings. I was not inclined for sleep, and
readily acceded to his request that I should pay him a visit. Having
dismissed the carriage (I was but a little way from my own house), I
mounted the stairs and found myself in a very snug room. He put me in an
armchair and gave me a cigar. We talked long and intimately as the hours
of the night rolled on. He spoke, half in reminiscence, half in merry
rhapsody, of the joys of living, the delight of throwing the reins on
the neck of youth. As I looked at his trim figure, his handsome face,
merry eyes, and dashing air, all that he said seemed very reasonable and
very right; there was a good defence for it at the bar of nature's
tribunal. It was honest too, free from cant, affectation, and pretence;
it was a recognition of facts, and enlisted truth on its side. It needed
no arguing, and he gave it none; the spirit that inspired also
vindicated it. I could not help recalling the agonies and struggles
which my passion for the Countess von Sempach had occasioned me. At
first I thought that I would tell him about this affair, but I found
myself ashamed. And I was ashamed because I had resisted the passion; it
would have been very easy to tell him had I yielded. But the merry eyes
would twinkle in amusement at my high-strung folly, as I had seen them
twinkle at my brother-in-law's stolidity. He said something incidentally
which led me to fancy that he had heard about the Countess and had
received a mistaken impression of the facts; I did not correct what
appeared to be his idea. I neither confirmed nor contradicted it. I said
to myself that it was nothing to me what notion he had of my conduct; in
reality I did not desire him to know the truth. I clung to the
conviction that I could justify what had seemed my hard-won victory,
but I did not feel as though I could justify it to him. He would laugh,
be a little puzzled, and dismiss the matter as inexplicable. His own
creed was not swathed in clouds, nor dim, nor hard clearly to see and
picture; it was all very straightforward. Properly it was no creed; it
was a course of action based on a mode of feeling which neither demanded
nor was patient of defence or explanation. The circumstances of my life
were such that never before had I been brought into contact with a
similar temperament or a similar practice. When they were thus suddenly
presented to me they seemed endowed with a most attractive simplicity,
with a naturalness, with what I must call a wholesomeness; the
objections I felt to be overstrained, unreal, morbid. Varvilliers' feet
were on firm ground; on what shaking uncertain bog of mingled impulses,
emotions, fancies, and delusions might not those who blamed him be found
themselves to stand?
I am confident that he spoke without premeditation, with no desire to
win a proselyte, merely as man to man, in unaffected intimacy. I think
that he was rather sorry for me, having detected a gloominess in my view
of life and a tendency to moody and fretful introspection. Once or twice
he referred, in passing jest, to the difference of national
characteristics, the German tendency to make love by crying (so he put
it) as contrasted with the laughing philosophy of his own country. At
the end he apologized for talking so much, and pointed out to me a
photograph of Coralie that stood on the mantelpiece more than
half-hidden by letters and papers, saying, "I suppose she set me off;
somehow she seems to me a sort of embodiment of the thing."
It was three o'clock when I left him; even then I went reluctantly,
traversing again in my mind the field that his tongue had easily and
lightly covered, and reverting to the girl who, as he said, was a sort
of embodiment of the thing. The phrase was definite enough for its
purpose, and struck home with an undeniable truth. He and she were the
sort of people to live in that sort of world, and to stand as its
representatives. A feeling came over me that it was a fair fine world,
where life need not be a struggle, where a man need not live alone,
where he would not be striving always after what he could never achieve,
waging always a war in which he should never conquer, staking all his
joys against most uncertain shadowy prizes, which to win would bring no
satisfaction. I cried out suddenly, as I walked by myself through the
night, "There's no pleasure in my life." That protest summed up my
wrongs. There was no pleasure in my life. There was everything else, but
not that, not pure, unmixed, simple pleasure. Had I no right to some? I
was very tired of trying to fill my place, of subordinating myself to my
position, of being always Augustin the King. I was weary of my own
ideal. I felt that I ought to be allowed to escape from it sometimes, to
be, as it were, _incognito_ in soul as well as in body, so that what I
thought and did should not be reckoned as the work of the King's mind or
the act of the King's hand. I envied intensely the lot and the temper of
my friend Varvilliers. When I reached the palace and entered it, it
seemed to me as though I were returning to a prison. Its walls shut me
off from that free existence whose sweetness I had tasted, and forbade
me to roam in the fields whither youth beckoned and curiosity lured me.
That joy could never be mine. My burden was ever with me; the woman I
had loved was gone; the girl I must be made husband to was soon to come.
I was not and could not be as other young men.
That all this, the conversation with Varvilliers, its effect on me, my
restless discontent and angry protests against my fate, should follow on
meeting Coralie Mansoni at supper will not seem strange to anybody who
remembers her.