A few days after the evening when Sempaly had given such brilliant proof of his talent as a caricaturist, General von Klinger was sitting in his studio on a divan covered with a picturesque Persian rug and endeavoring--having for the moment nothing better to do--to teach his parrot to sing the Austrian anthem--a loyal task which the bird, perched on the top of its cage, persistently refused to learn. It was a gorgeous studio, with a coved ceiling painted in fresco and arococoplaster cornice, the walls hung with old tapestry, eastern stuffs and other "properties." It was so large that men looked like dwarfs in it, and the general's works of art like illustrations cut out of a picture book. The scirocco brooded in the atmosphere and the general was out of sorts; he could not get on with his painting, and though it was now a quarter to five not a visitor had he seen. Usually by this hour he had a number--nay sometimes too many. The general often grumbled--to himself of course--at the interruption; but he always enjoyed the little dissipation; it made him melancholy to be left to himself.
He was thinking just now how difficult it was to get on as a painter; his coloring was capital--so all his artist friends assured him; but that his drawing left much to be desired he himself confessed. His two strong points were a harmonious effect of grey tone and horses seen from behind. All his pictures returned to him from the exhibitions unsold, excepting one which was purchased by the emperor in consideration of the general's former merits as a soldier rather than of his talents as an artist. The painters who came to smoke his cigarettes accounted for this by saying that his artistic aims were too independent, that he made no concessions to public taste and so could not hope for popularity.
He was in the very act of whistling the national anthem for the sixteenth time to the recalcitrant bird, when he heard a knock at the door; he rose to open it and Sempaly came in. He had called to inform the general that he had discovered a very fine though much damaged piece of tapestry in a convent, and had bought it for a mere song; he had in fact purchased it for the general because he knew that it was just such a specimen as he had long wished for. "But if you do not care to take it I shall be very glad to keep it," he added. No one had the art of doing an obliging thing with a better grace than he; it was one of his little accomplishments.
When they had settled their business Sempaly broke into loud lamentations that he was obliged to dine that day at the British embassy, and then to dance at the French ambassador's, and raved about the ideal life led by his friend--he only wished he could lead such a life--in which there were no evening parties, routs, balls or dinners. Next he wandered round the room looking at all the studies that hid their faces against the wall. "Charming!" "Superb!" he kept exclaiming in French, with his Austrian accent, from a sheer impulse to say something pleasant--he always tried to make himself pleasant. "Why do not you work that thing up?" he said at length, pointing to a sketch on canvas of a group of bashibazouks.
"It might sell," replied the artist whose great difficulty always lay in the 'working up,' "but you know I am independent in my aims, I set my face against making concessions to the vulgar; I must work on my own principles and not to pander to the public."
Sempaly smiled at this profession of faith.
"As it is a mere whim with you ever to sell at all," he answered, "my advice is that you should never attempt it, but leave all your works to the nation, so that we may have aMusée Wierzat Vienna."
The general assured him that he was quite in earnest in his desire to sell his pictures, but Sempaly smiled knowingly.
"There was once upon a time," he began, "a cobbler who was a man of genius, but he prided himself on his sense of beauty and his artistic convictions, and he heeded not the requirements of his customers--he would make nothing but Greek sandals. He died a beggar, but happy in the consciousness of never having made a concession to the vulgar."
The general was on the point of making an indignant reply to this malicious anecdote, when the loud rap was again heard which seems to be traditional at a studio door; it is supposed to be necessary to arouse the artist from his absorption in his work. The general went to admit his visitor.
There was a small ante-room between the studio and the stairs. The door was no sooner opened than in flitted a slender creature, fair and blooming, tall, slim, and bewitchingly pretty, in a dark dress and a sealskin jacket.
"What, you Zinka!" cried the old general delightedly. "This is a surprise! How long have you been in Rome?"
"Only since this morning," answered a gay voice.
"And are you alone?" asked the artist in astonishment, as Zinka shut the door and went forward into the atelier.
"Yes, quite alone," she said calmly. "I left the maid at home; she and mamma are fast asleep, resting after their journey. I came alone in a carriage--it was very nice of me do not you think?--Why, what a face to make!... And why have you not given me a kiss. Uncle Klinger?" She stood before him bright and confident, her head a little thrown back, her hands in a tiny muff, gazing at him with surprise in her frank grey eyes.
"My dear Zinka...." the general began--for, like all conscientious old gentlemen with romantic memories, he was desperately punctilious as to the proprieties when any lady in whom he took an interest was implicated, "I am charmed, delighted to see you.... But in a strange place, where you know no one, and in a strange house where...."
"Oh, now I understand," cried the girl. "It is not proper!... I shall live to be a hundred before I know exactly what is proper; it is very odd, but Uncle Sterzl used always to say that it was of no use to worry about it; that if people were ladies and gentlemen everything was proper, and if they were not why it was all the same. But he did not know what he was talking about, it would seem!" and she turned sharply on her heel and made for the door.
"But, my dear Zinka," cried the general holding her back, "tell me at least where you are living before you whisk off like a whirlwind. Do not be so utterly unreasonable."
"I am perfectly reasonable," she retorted. She was both embarrassed and angry; her cheeks were scarlet and her eyes full of tears. "It never would have occurred to me certainly that there was anything improper in calling on an old gentleman," and she emphasized the words quite viciously, "in his studio. Oh, the vanity of men! Who can foresee its limits!--But I am perfectly reasonable, I acknowledge my mistake--simpleton that I am!... And I have been looking forward all day to taking you by surprise. I meant to ask you to dine with us at the Hotel de l'Europe and to come with me first to the Pincio to see the sunset. And these are the thanks I get!... Do not trouble yourself to get your hat, it is waste of trouble; I do not want you now. Good-bye." And she flew off, her head in the air, without looking back once at the general who dutifully escorted her to the carriage.
The old man came back much crest-fallen. A voice greeted him cheerfully:
"Quite in disgrace, general!"
It was Sempaly, who had witnessed the whole scene from a recess, and whom the general had entirely forgotten.
"So it seems," said he shortly, beginning to scrape his palette.
"But tell me who is this despotic little princess?"
"Who? My god-daughter, Zinka Sterzl."
Thunderbolts are out of date, no one believes in them now-a-days; nevertheless it is a fact, which Sempaly himself never contradicted, that he fell in love with Zinka at first sight. And when a few days after Zinka's irruption into the general's studio the old gentleman accepted an invitation to dine with the Baroness Sterzl at the Hotel de l'Europe, on entering the room he found, eagerly employed in looking over a quantity of photographs with the young lady--Count Sempaly.
The two gentlemen were the only guests, and yet--or perhaps in consequence--the little party was as gay and pleasant as was possible with so affected and formal a hostess as the "Baroness."
This lady, a narrow and perverse soul as ever lived, was the very essence of vanity and affectation. She imagined--Heaven alone knows on what grounds--that the general had formerly loved her hopelessly, and she always treated him accordingly with a consideration that was intolerably irritating. She had made great strides in the airs of refinement since she and the general had last met--at a time before she, or rather her children, had become rich through an advantageous sale of part of their land, and this of course added to the charms of her society. She was perpetually complaining in a tone of feeble elegance--the sleeping-carriages were intolerable, the seats were so badly stuffed, Rome was so dirty, the hotels were so bad, the conveyances so miserable; she brought in the names of all the aristocratic acquaintances they had made at Nice, at Meran, and at Biarritz, and asked--the next day being a saint's day--which church was fit to go to. The vehement old general answered hotly that "God was in them all." But Sempaly informed her with the politest gravity that Cardinal X---- read mass in the morning at St. Peter's and that the music was splendid. "I advise you to try St. Peter's."
"Indeed, is St. Peter's possible on a saint's day?" she asked. "The company is usually so mixed in those large churches."
The general fairly blushed for her follies on her children's account.
"Have you forgiven me, Zinka?" he said to change the conversation.
"As if I had time to trouble myself about your strait-laced proprieties!" exclaimed she, coloring slightly; she evidently did not like this allusion to her little indiscretion: "I have something much worse to think about."
"Why--what is the matter, sweetheart?" asked her brother, who took everything seriously.
"I have lost something," she said in a tone of deep melancholy which evidently covered some jest.
"Not a four-leaved shamrock or a medal blessed by the pope?" asked the general.
"Oh, no! something much more important."
"Your purse!" exclaimed the baroness hastily. But Zinka burst out laughing. "No, no, something much greater--you will never guess: Rome."
On which Sterzl, who could never make out what his fascinating little sister would be at, only said: "That is beyond me."
But Sempaly was sympathetic. "I see you are terribly disappointed," he said, and Zinka went on like a person accustomed to be listened to.
"Yes, ever since I could think at all I have dreamed of Rome and longed to see it. My Rome was a suburb of Heaven, but this Rome is a suburb of Paris. My Rome was glorious and this Rome is simply hideous."
"Do not be flippant, Zinka," said the general, who always upheld traditional worship.
"Well, as a city Rome is really very ugly," interposed her brother, "it is more interesting as a museum of antiquities with life-size illustrations. Still, you do not know it yet. You have seen nothing as yet...."
"But lodgings, you mean," retorted Zinka, casting down her eyes with sanctimonious sauciness.
"It is dreadful!" the baroness began, "we have been here five days and cannot find an apartment fit to live in. Wherever we go there is some drawback; the stairs are too dark, or the entrance is bad, or there is only one door to the salon, or the servants' rooms...."
"But my dear Zinka," interrupted the general, "if you really have seen nothing of Rome excepting the lodgings in the Corso, of course...."
"Oh! but I have seen something else," cried Zinka, "indeed, I know my way about Rome very well."
"In your dreams?"
"No, I went yesterday; mamma had a sick headache."
"Oh! those headaches!" sighed the baroness putting her salts to her nose, "I am a perfect martyr to them!"
To have sick headaches and be a strict Catholic were marks of good style in the baroness's estimation. Sempaly put on a sympathetic expression, but returned at once to the subject in hand.
"Yes, I know Rome very well," Zinka went on: "You have only to ask the driver of the street cab No. 1203, and he will tell you. I drove about with him for three hours yesterday. You see, to have been in Rome a whole week and to have seen nothing but furnished lodgings was really too bad, so I took advantage of the opportunity when mamma was in bed; I slipped out--you need not make that face, Uncle, I took the maid with me--we meant to walk everywhere with a map. Of course we lost our way,cela va sans dire, and as we were standing helpless, each holding the map by a corner, a driver signed to us--so, with his first finger. In we got and he asked us where we wished to go, but as I had no answer ready he said with the most paternal air: 'Ah! the signora wants to see Rome--good, I will show her Rome!' And he set off, round and round and in and out, all through the city. I was positively giddy with this waltz round all the sights of Rome. He showed me a perfect forest of fallen pillars, with images of gods and fragments of sculpture carefully heaped round them, like Christmas boxes for lovers of antiquities--'theCampo Vaccino,' he called it--I believe it was the Forum; then he pointed out the palace of Beatrice Cenci, the Jews' quarter, the Theatre of Marcellus, the Temple of Vesta; and every time he showed me anything he added: 'Now am I not a capital guide? Many a driver would only take you from place to place, and what would you see? Nothing ... a heap of stones ... but I tell you: that is the Colisseum, and this is the Portico of Octavia, and then the stones have some meaning.' And at last he set me down at the door of the hotel and said quite seriously: 'Now the signora has seen Rome.'"
They were now at dessert; the baroness looked anything rather than pleased.
"Allow me to request," she said, "that for the future in the first place you will not make friends with a common driver and in the second, that you will not drive about Rome in aBotta(a one horse carriage); it is not at all the thing. You have no sense of fitness whatever."
Zinka, who was both sensitive and spoilt, colored.
"Let her be, mother, why should she not learn a little Italian and ride in aBotta? said Sterzl, who rubbed his mother the wrong way from morning till night. Sempaly took prompt advantage of the situation to whisper to Zinka:
"I cannot promise to be as good company as yourBottadriver, but if you will allow me, I will do my best to help you to find the Rome you have lost."
"Are you sure you know your way about?" asked the girl with frank incivility.
"I am thelaquais de placeof the Embassy I assure you," replied Sempaly laughing; "my only serious occupation consists in showing strangers the sights of Rome."
After this the evening passed gaily; the baroness made a few idiotic speeches but Sempaly forbore to be ironical; he was on his very best behavior, and the baroness was quite taken in by his elaborate reserve. Not so Sterzl, who was himself too painfully alive to her aristocratic airs and pretensions. However, the society of his sister, whom he adored, had put him into the best of humors; he launched forth a few bitter epigrams against the priesthood, and was satirical about the society of Rome, but Zinka stopped him every time with some engaging nonsense, and in listening to her chatter he forgot his bitterness.
At last he asked her to sing a Moravian popular song; she seated herself at the hotel piano and began. There was something mystical in the low veiled tones of her voice like an echo of the past, as she sang the melancholy, dreamy strains of her native land. Sterzl, who always yawned all through an opera, listened to her singing, his head resting on his hand, in a sort of ecstasy. In Sempaly too, who in spite of his Hungarian name was by birth a Moravian, Zinka's simple melody roused the half-choked echoes of his youth, and when she ceased he thanked her with genuine feeling.
Zinka's was an April weather nature. After bringing the tears into the eyes of her hearers, nay into her own, with her song, she suddenly struck up an air by Lecocq that she had heard Judic sing at Nice. The words, as was perfectly evident to all the party, were Hebrew to the girl, but the baroness was beside herself.
"Zinka!" she exclaimed in extreme consternation, "you really are incredible--what must these gentlemen think of you!"
"Do not be in the least uneasy," said the general. But Zinka stopped short; her face was pale and quivering; Sterzl interposed:
"It is often a little difficult to follow my sister's vagaries," he said turning to Sempaly; then he tenderly stroked her golden head with his large, firm hand, saying: "Do not be unhappy, sweetheart; but you are a little too much of a goose for your age."
When presently Sempaly had quitted the hotel with the general his first words were: "Tell me, how is it that with such a fool of a mother that child has remained so angelically fresh--soBotticelli?"
A mine somewhere in Poland or Bohemia came to grief about this time by some accidental visitation, and five hundred families were left destitute through the disaster. Of course the opportunity was immediately seized upon for charitable dissipations, for qualifying for Orders of Merit by liberal donations, and for attracting the eyes of Europe by the most extravagant display of philanthropy. After much deliberation Countess Ilsenbergh had arrived at the conviction that, as both the ambassadors' families were hindered by mourning from giving any public entertainment, the duty of taking the lead devolved upon her. The rooms in her Palazzo were made on purpose for grand festivities, and after endless discussion it was decided that the entertainment should be dramatic. An Operetta, aProverbeby Musset, and a series ofTableaux Vivantswere finally put in rehearsal and a collection was to be made after the performance.
Madame de Gandry threw herself into the undertaking with the most commendable ardor. She was on intimate terms with the leading spirits at the Villa Medici--the French Academy of Arts at Rome--and she interested herself in the painting of the scenes, and in the artistic designing of the dresses in which she proved invaluable. Up to a certain point all went smoothly. The operetta--an unpublished effort of course--by a Russian amateur of rank who was very proud of not even knowing his notes, was soon cast. It needed only three performers and led up to the introduction of an elaborate masquerade and of certain suggestive French songs. Mrs. Ferguson, who never let slip an opportunity of powdering her hair and sticking on patches, was to sing the soprano part; Crespigny took that of a husband or a guardian in a nightcap or flowered dressing-gown, and a young French painter, M. Barillat, who was at all times equally ready to sketch or to wear a becoming costume, was to fill that of the lover. The cast of the little French play was equally satisfactory; but when the arrangement of the tableaux came to be considered difficulties arose. In the first place all the ladies were eager to display their charms under the becoming light of a tableau vivant; and the number of volunteers was quite bewildering to the committee of management that met every day at the Ilsenberghs' house. Then squabbles and dissatisfaction arose; the ladies did not approve of the choice of subjects, they thought their dresses unbecoming, their positions disadvantageous; each one to whom a place at the side was assigned was deeply aggrieved; an unappreciated beauty who prided herself on her profile from the left would not for worlds be seen from the right, etc., etc. And above all--an insuperable difficulty--almost all the available men of the set manifested the greatest objection to 'making themselves ridiculous' and positively rejected the most flattering blandishments of the ladies' committee. Sempaly, who had been asked to appear as a Roman emperor, would not hear of putting on flesh-colored tights and a wreath of vine; and Truyn had shrugged his shoulders at the proposal that he should don a wig with long curls.
Siegburg--little Siegburg, as he was always called, though he was nearly six feet high--after defending himself with considerable humor, good-naturedly agreed to stand asPierrot, in a Watteau scene in which the Vulpini children were to appear; and Sterzl, being personally requested by his ambassador, submitted, though with an ill grace, to be the executioner in Delaroche's picture of Lady Jane Grey. This tableau was to be the crowning glory of the performance; Barillat had taken infinitely more pains with it than with any other; the part of Lady Jane was to be filled by a fair English girl, Lady Henrietta Stair; and then, within a few days of the performance, Lady Henrietta fell ill of the measles.
The committee were in despair when this news reached them, and all who were concerned in the performance were summoned to meet at the Palazzo that evening to talk the matter over. Hardly any one was absent; only Sterzl, who detested the whole charity scramble, as he called it, sent his excuses. Every lady present expected to find herself called upon to stand--or rather to kneel--as Lady Jane Grey; but Mrs. Ferguson was the first to give utterance to the thought, and to offer herself heroically as Lady Henrietta's substitute. To the astonishment of all the company Sempaly, whose interest in the work of benevolence had hitherto displayed itself only in satirical remarks, and suggestions as to the representation of Makart's 'entrance of Charles V.' or of Siemiradzky's 'living torches,' took an eager part in the discussion.
"Your self-sacrifice, Mrs. Ferguson," said he, "is more admirable every day."
"Dear me," replied the lady innocently, "where is the self-sacrifice in having an old gown cut up into a historical costume?"
"That, indeed, would be no sacrifice," said Sempaly coolly. "But it must be a sacrifice for a lady to appear in a part that suits her so remarkably ill."
Mrs. Ferguson smiled rather like some pretty little wild beast showing its teeth.
"Ah!" she said, "I suppose you think I have none of that pathetic grace that M. Barillat is so fond of talking about."
"No more than of saving grace," said Sempaly solemnly. Then, while the women were disputing over the matter, he found an opportunity of whispering a few words to Barillat; Barillat looked up delighted. At this moment they were joined by Countess Ilsenbergh.
"I have another suggestion to offer Madame la Comtesse; I have thought of some one...."
"Some newly-imported American," laughed Madame de Gandry, "or a painter's model with studied grace and yellow hair?"
"You may rest assured that I should not for an instant think of proposing to employ a model," Barillat emphatically declared; "no, the lady in question is a very charming person: Fräulein Sterzl. I saw her the day before yesterday at Lady Julia Ellis's; she is an Austrian--you must know her surely?"
"I have not that pleasure," said the countess drily.
"You do not think she will do?" murmured the artist abashed. The countess cleared her throat.
"Bless me!" cried Madame de Gandry furious at the pride of her Austrian friend, "you take the matter really too much in earnest. Why on earth should not the girl act with us? On these occasions, in Vienna, as I have been informed, even actors are invited to help."
"That is quite different," said the countess.
Madame de Gandry shrugged her shoulders and turned away and the countess beckoned to her cousin Sempaly. "I am heartily sick of the whole business," she exclaimed. "At home I have got this sort of thing up a score of times, and everything has gone well ... while here...."
"Yes, there is more method among us," replied Sempaly sympathetically.
"The people here are so unmanageable; every one wants to play the best parts," said the countess.
"That is the result of the republican element," observed Sempaly.
"And now there is all this difficulty about the Lady Jane Grey tableau," sighed the countess. "Why need that English girl take the measles now, just when she is wanted."
"The English are always so inconsiderate," said Sempaly gravely.
"Do you happen to have met this little Sterzl girl?"
"Yes."
"What does she look like?"
"Well, she looks like a very pretty girl...."
"And besides that?"
"Besides that she looks very much like our own girls; it is really a most extraordinary freak of nature! She seems to be very presentable on further acquaintance; Princess Vulpini is quite in love with her."
"Indeed!--Well, Barillat is possessed with the idea of having her to play the part of Lady Jane Grey and in Heaven's name let him have his own way!" cried the countess. "If Marie Vulpini will bring her here I will make the best of it."
"What, you mean to say that you will let her figure in your tableau and not invite her mother?" laughed Sempaly.
"Invite her!--to the performance of course. I invite Tom, Dick, and Harry, and all the English parsons and all the foreign artists."
"And all their families. Fritzi, you are an admirable woman!" retorted Sempaly ironically.
"But the rehearsals are so perfectly intimate," she murmured. Time pressed however. "Well, have it so for all I care;" said the countess resignedly and next morning she paid a polite call on the Baroness Sterzl to request Zinka's assistance; and as she had as much tact as pride she had soon reconciled not only Zinka, but her sensitive thin-skinned brother, to the fact that the young girl had only been asked at the last moment and under the pressure of necessity to take part in the performance. Cecil did not altogether like the idea of displaying his pretty sister in a tableau and only consented because he did not like to deprive Zinka of the pleasure which she looked forward to with great delight. He adored the child and could refuse her nothing.
The evening of the festival arrived; the performances took place in a vast room almost lined with mirrors and lighted by wonderful Venetian chandeliers that hung from the decorated ceiling where frescoes were framed in tasteless gilt scroll work. In spite of its size the room was crowded; the most illustrious of the company sat in solitary dignity in the front row, and behind them was packed a fashionable but somewhat mixed crowd. Manly forms of consummate elegance were squeezed against the walls, and the assembly sparkled like a sea of sheeny silks and glittering jewels. Princess Vulpini, who was helping the countess to do the honors, hovered on the margin, graceful and kindly, but a little pale and tired, and the countess herself reigned supreme in that regal dignity which she could so becomingly assume on fitting occasions. There were very few women who could wear a diamond coronet with such good grace as Fritzi Ilsenbergh--even her intractable cousin Sempaly did her that much justice.
The great success of the evening was not the little French play, in which Madame de Gandry and the all-accomplished Barillat made and parried their hits after the accepted methods of theThéatre Français; it was not the operetta, in which Mrs. Ferguson looked bewitchingly pretty and sang 'le Sentier convert' to admiration; it was not even the children's tableau, in which the little Vulpinis looked like a bunch of freshly-gathered roses; the great success of the evening was the tableau of Lady Jane Grey. Sterzl's face in this scene was a perfect tragedy, all the misery of an executioner who adores his victim was legible there. And Zinka!--gazing up to heaven with ecstatic pathos, her whole attitude expressive of sacred resignation and childlike awe, she was the very embodiment of the hapless and innocent being before whom the executioner lowers his gaze. A string quartet played theallegrettofrom Beethoven's seventh symphony and the melancholy music heightened the effect of the poetical tableau, thrilling the audience like a lullaby sung by angels to soothe the struggling, suffering human soul.
The whole artistic corps who had been invited from the Villa Medici, with the director at their head, unanimously decided that this performance far excelled all that had gone before, and Countess Ilsenbergh forgot in its success all the annoyance it had occasioned her. After the collection, which produced a magnificent sum, most of the company dispersed. Ilsenbergh, with his most feudal smile, expressed his thanks to all the performers in turn and presented elegant bouquets to the ladies. The entertainment lost its formal character and became a social gathering.
Zinka was sitting in a side room, surrounded by a host of young Romans and Frenchmen. As she was one of those rare natures who derive not the smallest satisfaction from the homage of men for whom they have no regard, she listened to their enthusiastic compliments with absolute indifference.
She had asked for an ice and Norina had offered it to her on his knees, remaining in that position to pour out a string of high-flown compliments. Zinka, unaccustomed to this Southern effusiveness, was remonstrating with some annoyance but without the slightest effect, when Sempaly came in and exclaimed in the abrupt tone he commonly used to younger men: "Get up, Norina, do you not see that your devotion is not appreciated."
The prince rose with a scowl, Sempaly drew a seat to Zinka's side and in five minutes had, as usual, entirely monopolized her.
"My cousin the countess owes everything to you," he said in his most musical tones; "you saved the whole thing. I detest all amateur performances, but that tableau of Lady Jane Grey was really beautiful."
"I liked the French play very much. Madame de Gandry's acting was full of spirit."
"Bah! I have had more than enough of such spirit."
"Indeed!" laughed she, "it seems to me that you are suffering from general weariness of life. You are blasé."
"What do you understand by being blasé?" he asked.
"Why, that exhaustion of heart and soul which comes of the fatigue produced by a life of perpetual enjoyment; it is I believe an essential element in the character of a man of fashion."
"Something between a malady and an affectation," remarked Sempaly.
"Just so; in short, to be blasé is the heartsickness of a fop."
Sempaly glanced at her keenly. "Your definition is admirable," he said, "I will make a note of it; but the cap does not fit me. I am not blasé, I am not indifferent to anything. Shams, hypocrisy, and meretriciousness irritate me, but when I meet with anything really good or lovely or genuine I can recognize it and admire it--more perhaps than most men."
Meanwhile the winner of the musical prize from the Villa Medici had sat down to the piano and plunged straightway out of a maundering improvisation into a waltz by Strauss. The countess had no objection if they liked to dance, and several couples were soon spinning under the flaring candles.
Sempaly rose: "May I have the honor?" he said to Zinka, and they went together into the dancing-room.
Zinka had the pretty peculiarity of turning pale rather than red as she danced; her movements were not sprightly, but gliding and dreamy; in fact she waltzed with uncommon grace. Sempaly had long since lost the subaltern's delight in a dance; he only asked ladies who had some special interest or charm for him, and every one knew it.
"Hm!" said Siegburg, shaking his head as he went up to General von Klinger who was watching the graceful couple from a recess, "my little game has come to nothing it seems to me."
"Have you retired then?" asked the general.
"By no means--quite the contrary; but my chances are small enough at present I fancy; what do you say?" He looked straight into the old man's eyes; he understood and said nothing.
"She dances beautifully, I never saw a girl dance better. How well she holds her head," he murmured. Suddenly a flash of amusement lighted up his eyes. "Look at Fritzi's face!" he exclaimed: "What a horrified expression! a perfect Niobe."
Sempaly's intimacy with the Sterzls grew daily; he did the honors of Rome to Zinka, and dined with them as a fourth two or three times a week. After the tableaux at the Ilsenberghs' Zinka was asked everywhere; all the men were at her feet, and all the ladies wanted to learn her songs. The men she treated with the utmost indifference and to the ladies she was always obliging, particularly to those whom no one else would take the pains to be civil to, all of which greatly added to her popularity. Truyn's little girl--a spoilt, shy thing, who quarrelled with her maid three times a week regularly and insisted on learning everything from Latin to water-color drawing, though she would submit to no teacher but her father, perfectly worshipped Zinka and to her was as docile as a lamb. Princess Vulpini was delighted at her influence on her little niece and declared that Zinka was a real treasure; and Lady Julia Ellis, who had made the young girl's acquaintance two years since at Meran, was proud to take her out. Whenever the baroness could not go the English lady was always ready to chaperon Zinka, and when Lady Julia was 'at home' Zinka had to help her to receive her guests and to make tea.
Countess Schalingen, a Canoness devoted to painting, full of sentimentality and romance, whose ideas had not yet got beyond Winterhalter, called Zinka 'quite delicious,' took her on excursions, dragged her to all the curiosity-dealers, and finally painted her portrait on a handscreen for Princess Vulpini--her head and shoulders in gauzy drapery coming out of a lily. Before the end of a fortnight a rich American had enquired about her rank and extraction, and the handsome Crespigny had learnt all about her fortune. Norina paid his court to her when his tyrant's back was turned and Mrs. Ferguson did her the honor of being madly jealous.
But all this did not turn her head, it did not seem even to astonish her; she had always been spoilt and wherever she had gone she had found friends and admirers. When people were kind to her she was delighted, but she would have been much more astonished if they had not been kind. Sempaly had called her "a Botticelli," but the word was only applicable to her mind; in appearance she had none of the ascetic grace of the pre-Raphaelites. She was more like the crayon figures of Latour, or that typical beauty of the eighteenth century, la Lamballe. She had not the bloom of pink and white, but was pale, even in her youthful freshness with soft shadows under her eyes; and her hair, which was thick and waved naturally had reddish lights in the brown. A tender down softened its outline on her temples without shading her forehead, and gave her face a look of peculiar innocence. She was slight but not angular, her arms were long and thin, her hands small and sometimes red. Her moods varied between dreamy thoughtfulness and saucy high spirits, her gait was usually free and light but occasionally a little awkward, "like an angel with its wings clipped," Sempaly said. She had a low veiled voice in speaking that reminded one of the vibrating tones of an Amati violin. She was as wild as a boy, as graceful as a water nixie, and as innocent as a child--with the crude innocence of a girl who has been brought up chiefly by men--and all her ideas had the stamp of dreamy seclusion and fervid sentiment.
She had had French and English governesses and had even been to school in a convent for a year; still, the ruling influence in her life had been that of her guardian. General Sterzl--an eccentric being with an intense horror of sentimental school-friendships and of the conventional propriety that comes of too early familiarity with the world. It was to him that Zinka owed the one good word which Countess Ilsenbergh spoke in her favor:
"One thing must be admitted; she is not affected, she is as natural as one of our own girls."
"Poor Coralie!" the baroness would frequently exclaim, "what a pity that she is not here; what a treat it would be for her!"
"Yes," Sterzl would answer in his dry way, "she was in too great a hurry." And the baroness would cast her eyes up to heaven.
Coralie was her eldest and favorite daughter. Disappointed in her love of some hard-hearted gentleman she had renounced the vanities of the world some three years since, but--like her mother's worthy daughter--even in the depth of her disappointment and despair she had taken care to choose a convent where the recluses were divided into ladies and sisters, where the children who came to school there played hide and seek under a French name, and where being a boarder was called beingen pension.
"Poor Coralie!" the baroness would sigh; and then seating herself at her writing-table she would scribble endless letters about the delights of a residence at Rome to all her friends in Austria, and especially to her sister, the Baroness Wolnitzka.
Baroness Sterzl was a typical specimen of a class of nobility peculiar to Austria, and called there, Heaven knows why, "the onion nobility" (zwiebelnoblesse). It is a circle that may be described as a branch concern of the best society; a half-blood relation; a mixture of the elements that have been sifted out of the upper aristocracy and of the parvenus from below, who find that they can be reciprocally useful; a circle in which almost every man is a baron, and every woman, without exception, is a baroness. Its members are for the most part poor, but refined beyond expression. The mothers scold their children in bad French and talk to their friends in fashionable slang; they give parties, at which there is nothing to eat--but the family plate is displayed, and where the company always consists of the same old bachelors who dye their hair and know theAlmanack de Gothaby heart. Everyone is well informed about the doings of the world--how many shifts Minnie N. had in her trousseau, why the engagement between Fritz O. and Lori P. was broken off, and much more to the same effect. Of late years the 'onion-nobility,' with various other offshoots of the higher culture, has been swamped by the advance of the liberals, that is to say, by the progress of the financial classes.
Only a year since the baroness herself had stood on the stairs of the opera-house to watch the occupants of the grand tier--at that time appropriated to the cream of the aristocracy--to take note of aristocratic dresses, and to hear aristocratic nothings from aristocratic lips. Now, in Rome, she was living in the whirl of society. Her satisfaction knew no bounds, and she made daily progress in exclusiveness; the Countess Ilsenbergh, as compared to her, was a mere bungler. But she was never so amusing to watch as when she met some fellow-countrymen of untitled rank. It happened that this winter there was in Rome a certain Herr Brauer, an old simpleton with a very handsome wife who laid herself open for the admiration of all the young men of any pretensions. Being furnished with a few letters of introduction he and his fascinating partner disported themselves very contentedly in the outer circle--the suburbs, so to speak--of good society without having a suspicion how far they were from the centre. Baroness Sterzl could never cease wondering "how those people could be tolerated."
She was always well dressed, she gave capital little dinners, she had the neatest coupé and the most comfortable landau, and her coachman had the cleanest shaved imperial face and the smartest livery in Rome. Her manners were somewhat changeable, since she was constantly endeavoring to appropriate the airs and graces of the most fashionable women she met. She was extremely unpopular and consequently bored to death wherever she went; she was never quite easy as to her footing in society and lived in the discomfort of a person who is always trying to walk on tiptoe.
Her sole unqualified pleasure during this period--which, however, she always spoke of as the happiest of her life--was the writing of the above-mentioned letters home, and especially as has been said, to her sister the Baroness Wolnitzka in Bohemia.
She craved a public to witness her success and, like all mean natures, she knew no greater joy than that of exciting envy; she would often read these epistles to Zinka, for she was very proud of her wordy style. Zinka was somewhat disturbed by these flowery compositions which always ended with these words: "What a pity it is that you should not be here. It would give us the greatest pleasure to have you with us."
"Take care, mamma," said the girl, "they will take you at your word and descend upon us."
"What are you dreaming of?" said the baroness folding her letter with the utmost philosophy; "they have no money."
Hovels deep sunk in the ground, moss-grown thatched roofs, here and there an old lime-tree or a tall pear-tree with crabbed branches standing out black and bare against the wintry sky, slimy puddles, a pond full to the brim in which three forlorn-looking geese are sadly paddling, a swampy road along which a procession of ploughs are splashing their way at the heels of the muddy, unkempt teams--in short, a Bohemian village, with a shabby manor-house beyond. Over the tumble-down gate-way, with a pigsty on one side and a dog-kennel on the other, hangs a coat of arms. The mansion--a square house with a steep shingle roof--stands, according to the unromantic custom of the country, with one side looking on to the farm-yard; and the drawing-room windows open exactly over an enormous dung heap which a party of women are in the very act of turning with pitch-forks, under the superintendence of a short stout man in a weather-beaten hunting-hat and shooting-coat with padded silk sleeves out of which the wadding is peeping at a hundred holes. He is smoking a pipe with a china bowl decorated with a mincing odalisque. His face is broad and red, his ears purple, and his aspect is anything rather than aristocratic as he stands giggling and jesting with the damsels of the steaming midden.
This is Baron Wolnitzky, a man who, like a good many others, got himself a good deal talked about in 1848 and then vanished from the scene without leaving a trace behind.
Often when we see some dry and barren tree shedding its sere and mouldy leaves in the autumn we find it hard to believe that it bore blossoms in the spring; and the baron was like such a tree. In the spring-tide of 1848--an over-teeming spring throughout Europe--his soul too had blossomed. He had had patriotic visions and had uttered them in rhyme, and his country had hailed him as a prophet--perhaps because it needed an idol, or perhaps because in those agitated times it could not tell black from white. In those days he had displayed himself in a magnificent national costume with sleeves of the most elaborate cut, had married a patriotic wife who always dressed in the Slav colors: blue, white, and red, and who got two young men, also dressed in Slav costume, to mount guard at the door of her house. He was descended from a Polish family that had immigrated many generations since and his connections were as far as possible from being aristocratic, while he owed his little fortune entirely to his father who had put no 'baron' before his name, and who had earned it honestly as a master baker. In feudal times it would hardly have occurred to him to furbish up this very doubtful patent of nobility; but in the era of liberty it might pass muster and prove useful. A very shy pedigree serves to shed glory on a democratic martyr.
During the insurrection of June he fled with his wife in picturesque disguise; at first to Dresden, and then to Switzerland where he lived for some time in a boarding-house at Geneva, receiving homage as a political refugee, and horrifying the mistress by his enormous appetite. At length he returned to Bohemia where the events of forty-eight and its picturesquely aparelled leaders had fallen into oblivion. He retired to his little estate and turned philosopher--philosophy, ever since the days of Diogenes, has been the acknowledged refuge of shipwrecked hopes and pretensions.
There he went out walking in his shirt sleeves, played cards with the peasants and grew more vulgar, fatter, and hungrier every day; and if he ever had an idea it was unintentionally, in a bad dream after eating too much of some national delicacy.
His wife, a robust and worthy soul, though full of absurdities, bore a strong resemblance to the mother of the Regent Orleans in as much as she had a sound understanding combined with a very sentimental nature, was utterly devoid of tact, bitter to the verge of cynicism, thoroughly indiscreet and a great chatterbox.
She resigned herself without demur to the new order of things and brought a new tribe of children into the world, most of whom died young. Three survived; two sons, who so far broke through the traditions of the family as to become infantry officers, and one daughter, in whom patriotic romance once more flickered into fanaticism. This girl had been christened Bohuslawa, a name which was commonly shortened into Slawa, which in the more important dialects of the Slav tongue means Fame. She, like her mother, was of stalwart build, but her features were regular though statuesque and heavy--she was said to be like the Apollo Belvedere. She had already had four suitors but neither of them had met her views and now at twenty--having been born in forty-eight--she was spending the winter, unmarried and sorely discontented, in the country, where she occupied herself with serious studies and accepted the attentions of a needy young Pole who was devoted to her and in whom she condescended to take some slight interest.
But Baron Wolnitzky is still standing by the midden; the great black dog, which till this moment has never ceased barking at the door of his kennel, now, to introduce some variety into the programme, jumps on to its roof, from which advantageous standpoint he still barks without pause. Everything is dripping from the recently-thawed snow, and the air is full of the splash and gurgle of dropping and trickling water; the grey February twilight sinks upon the world and everything looks dingy and soaked.
A sound of creaking wheels is heard approaching, and a dung-cart appears in the gate-way.
"Well, what is going on in the town?" says the baron to the man who comes up to him, wrapped in an evil-smelling sheepskin and with the ears of his fur cap tied under his chin, to kiss his master's elbow. "Have you brought the newspapers?"
"Yes, your Grace, my Lord Baron," says the man, "and a letter too." And he draws a packet tied up in a red and white handkerchief out of a pocket in his sheepskin. The baron looks at the documents. "Another letter from Rome already," he mutters, grinning; "I must take it in at once that the women may have something to talk about."
The women, that is to say his wife and daughter, were sitting in the dining-room at a long table covered with a flowered cloth, on which stood the tea things, a paraffine lamp, and a breadbasket of dull silver filagree work. The lamp was smoking and the table looked as uncomfortable and dingy as the village outside, half-buried in manure. The baroness, in a tan-colored loose gown, in which she looked squarer than ever, without a cap, her thin grey hair cut short, was hunting for the tenth time to-day, on and under every article of furniture, for the key of the storeroom. Bohuslawa, meanwhile sat still, with a volume of Mickiewicz in her hand, out of which she was reading aloud in rather stumbling Polish, with a harsh voice. A young man with a sharp-cut sallow face and long black hair, in a Polish braided coat, wide collar and olive-coloured satin cravat, corrected her pronunciation now and then. He was her Polish adorer. He was one of that familiar species, the teacher of languages with a romance in the background; he lived in the neighouring town and came every Saturday to the village, four railway stations off, to instruct Bohuslawa in Polish and spend Sunday with the family.
When the union of these two patriots--which had already been secretly discussed--was to take place, depended on a mysterious law-suit that the young Pole was carrying on against the Russian government. His name was Vladimir de Matuschowsky, his grandmother had been a Potocka, and when he was not giving lessons, he was meditating conspiracies.
"Is there nothing else for tea?" asked the baron, casting a doubtful eye on the stale-looking rolls in the bread-basket.
"No, the dogs have eaten up the cakes," replied the baroness coolly. She was at the moment on all-fours under the piano, hunting for the key behind the pedal.
"You will get an apoplexy," said Bohuslawa crossly but without anxiety, and without making the smallest attempt to assist the old lady. But at this instant a housemaid came in with the sought-for key on a bent and copper-colored britannia-metal waiter.
"Oh, thank Heaven!" cried the baroness, "where was the wretched thing?"
"In the dog kennel,--your grace, my lady baroness, the puppy had dragged it there."
In her love for dogs again the baroness resembled the Duchess of Orleans; she always had a litter of half a dozen puppies to bring up, and the kennel was a well-known hiding place for everything that could not be found in its right place.
"The little rascals!" she exclaimed, with an admiring laugh at the ingenious perversity of her mischievous pets. "Bring the sugar then, Clara."
"I have a surprise for you," growled her husband, "a letter from Rome," and he produced the document, with its mixed odors of patchouli and damp sheepskin, and pushed it across to his wife, while he took up the rum bottle to flavor his tea.
"From Rome!" exclaimed the baroness, "that is delightful. Where, oh where are my spectacles?" And she felt and patted herself all over till the superfluous substance shook like a jelly.
"Ah, here they are--I am sitting on them--now then, children," and she began to read the letter aloud.
"Dear Lotti, you must not take it ill that I so seldom write to you"--the baroness looked up over her spectacles--"so seldom!... she never in her life wrote to me so often as from Rome"--"but you cannot imagine the turmoil in which we live. A dinner-party every day, two evening parties and a ball. We are spending the carnival with thecrême de la crêmeof Roman society. To-morrow we dine with Princess Vulpini--she was a Truyn and is the sister of Truyn of R. The next day we have theatricals, etc., etc. Zinka is an immense success. Nicki Sempaly among others--the brother of Prince Sempaly, the great landed proprietor--is very attentive to her...."
Here she was interrupted by her husband. "Well, I never thought the old goose was quite such a simpleton!" he exclaimed, drumming his fingers angrily on the red and white flowered cloth.
"I cannot imagine how Clotilde allows it!" cried the baroness--"and still less do I understand Cecil."
"Take my advice, Lotti, go to Rome," observed the baron ironically; "go and set their heads straight on their shoulders."
"With the greatest pleasure," replied his wife, taking his irony quite seriously, "but unfortunately we have not the money."
Then she read the letter to the end; like all Clotilde's epistles it ended with the words; "What a pity it is that you should not be here too; it would give us the greatest pleasure to have you with us."
Tea was done; the maid servant cleared the table with a great clatter of cups and spoons, the baron retired to playBulkawith his neighbors in the village inn-parlor; the three who were left sat in meditative mood.
"I must confess that I should like to go to Rome," said the baroness, as she swept the crumbs off her lap on to the floor, "and it would be pleasant, too, to have relations there--for their grand acquaintance I own I do not care a straw."
"I do not see why we should avoid all society if we were there," exclaimed Slawa hotly.
"Well, you could do as you liked about it, of course," said the baroness, who held her daughter in the deepest respect, "I could stay at home; you see, my dear Vladimir," she added almost condescendingly to her son-in-lawin spe, "I am uncomfortable in any company where I cannot get into my slippers in the evening...."
"Mamma!" cried her daughter beside herself, "you really are!..."
The baroness sat abashed and silent--no one spoke. There was not a sound in the room but the crackling of the fire in the huge tiled stove and the snoring of the big hunting-dog that lay sleeping on the tail of his mistress's skirt.
"If we only could sell the Bernini!" murmured the baroness presently, resuming the thread of their conversation.
The Bernini was a bust of Apollo that the baroness had inherited from her mother's family--said to be an adaptation by Bernini from the head of the Apollo Belvedere. Whenever the Wolnitzkys were in any financial straits the Bernini was packed off to some dealer in objects ofvertu, from which excursions it invariably returned unsold. Not many days previously the travelled Apollo--he had seen New York, London, and St. Petersburg--had come home from a visit to Meyer of Berlin.
"By the bye, Vladimir, you have not seen it yet," said Slawa, "I must show you the bust."
"Is it the head that is said to be so strikingly like you?--that will interest me greatly," said the young Pole, casting an adoring eye on Slawa.
"Bring the lamp, the bust is in the drawing-room."
Vladimir, carrying the lamp, led the way into the drawing-room, a large, scantily-furnished room which was never dusted more than once a month. There, on a marble plinth in a corner, stood the radiant god--a copy from the Belvedere Apollo no doubt--but by Bernini...?
"The likeness is extraordinary!" cried Vladimir ecstatically, and gazing alternately at the bust and at Slawa. "Oh, it is a gem, a masterpiece! you ought never to part with it."
"Well, but I must say I should very much like to go to Rome," sighed the baroness; but Slawa only bit her lips.