"And supposing one of them were to talk?" asked Novoa. "Or if one of them were to make trouble?"
"They would banish him. It is a paternal despotism, and does not dare inflict harsher punishments. The police of the Prince make him go half way across the street, and put him on the French sidewalk.... Don't laugh; it is a cruel penalty. Exiles to other places finally grow accustomed to their misfortune, since they live at a great distance, and see their native land only in their mind's eye. But a man who is exiled here can almost reach out and touch his country with his hand; he has only to cross the width of the street. As the land slopes downward, he can see his house a few roofs beyond. He sees the smoke from breakfast coming out of the chimney, and yet he cannot sit down to his own table; the family is at the windows, and he has to talk to them by signs. Moreover, and worst of all, he sees that the rest who were prudent go on leading their pleasant lives in the shadow of the Casino, while he has to seek a new profession at muchharder work. His torment becomes unbearable, and he finally flees to some distant city, to let a few years go by, so he may be pardoned."
Don Marcos began to praise Monte Carlo again; "People who lose their money in the Casino always retain an unpleasant memory of it; but where can one find a quieter, cleaner, or more peaceful city, with its Spring-like climate in mid-winter?
"Everybody comes here sooner or later; lots of rogues, of course; but you find famous people too, and you can enjoy society of distinction. I scarcely ever gamble, and for that reason I appreciate the beauty of the scenery. And more than that: at times I have the satisfaction one feels in getting things for nothing; and when I gaze at the lovely walks, when I attend the concerts and operas, and enjoy the sweet tranquillity of a city in which there are no poor, and no desperate revolutionists, I say to myself: 'The gamblers pay for this, and you get the benefit of it. They lose so that you may enjoy life.'"
As Novoa smiled again, the Colonel expressed his admiration still more glowingly.
"It seems impossible that roulette should have performed so many miracles! And there must be others besides those which lie before our eyes. Gambling has paid the cost of this delightful harbor of La Condamine: a harbor for yachts, with elegant docks that are really promenades. It must have had a hand also in the restoration of the castle of the Prince. It even helps to develop the spiritual life of the place, and increase the prestige of religion. Before roulette came none of the clergy were of higher rank than priests. Since the triumph of the Casino there has been a Bishop, and canons; and a beautiful Byzantine cathedral has been erected, which, according to Castro, needs only to have Time darken it a bit. The Sunday masses are one of the chief attractions ofthe Principality. The Nice papers print the program of the music that will be sung by the choir, alongside the program of the concert at the Casino: 'Canto pianoof the most celebrated masters, the Italian Palestrina, or the Spanish Vitoria.'"
Novoa interrupted him.
"There is the Museum of Oceanography too. That alone is enough to remove any taint from the money which has come from the Casino."
He said this with the pleasing voice and the somewhat distracted expression that were natural to him; but in his words there was the mystic ardor of the firm believer.
The Colonel nodded assent. The Museum which roused the Professor's enthusiasm was the work of the Prince, and as for himself, Don Marcos felt a deep respect for "Albert," as he called the sovereign familiarly. "Albert" had been an officer in the Spanish navy. As a lieutenant commander he had sailed the coast of Cuba; in his books he had praised the old Spanish sailors, his first masters in the art of navigation. What more was needed to inspire veneration in Don Marcos?
"Whenever he attends a ceremony in his Principality he wears the uniform of a Spanish admiral. And he is a man of science: you know that better than I do."
He gave Novoa a chance to speak. Three-fourths of the earth were covered with water, and for centuries and centuries humanity took no interest in investigating the mysterious hidden life of the ocean depths. Navigators, skimming the surface, went their way, guided by routine methods or by fragmentary experience, without succeeding in embracing the fixed and regular laws of the atmospheric or ocean currents. Science, which has to its credit so many discoveries in a single century of existence, halted in dismay at the edge of the sea. The scientists inthe laboratories only need material for their work, and that is easily obtained; but to study the seas, to live on them for years and years, is another matter. For that, it was necessary to have ships and men at one's disposal, to construct new and costly apparatus, to spend millions, to cruise patiently and leisurely here and there over the ocean wastes, with no fixed goal, waiting for the great blue depths casually to reveal their secrets. That meant a great outlay, with slight returns. Only a sovereign, a king, could do that; and that was what the former officer in the Spanish navy, on becoming a Prince, had done.
"Thanks to him," Novoa proceeded, "oceanography, which scarcely amounted to anything, has become to-day an important study. His yachts have been floating laboratories, cruisers of science, which have gradually made the first conquests of the deep. With his drifting buoys he has been able to demonstrate in a conclusive manner the circular drift of the Atlantic currents; with his careful soundings he has brought to light the mysteries of deep sea life at various levels of the great body of water. Scientists have been enabled to sail the sea and study, with no material restrictions, thanks to him. Through his generosity handsome books have been published, museums have been opened, and excavations have been made in the earth which throw enlightenment on the origin of man."
"And all this," the Colonel interrupted, persisting in the admiration already expressed, "with the money from the Casino! Gambling has defrayed the expenses of the cruisers of science, the coal and men for far-off expeditions, the printing of books and journals, the subsidies for young men anxious to perfect their scientific training; the Institute of Oceanography in Paris; the Museum of Oceanography in Monaco, where you are working; the Museum of Anthropology and.... And you have tofigure that all this is merely a tip left by the stockholders of the gambling corporation. Just imagine what the Casino produces! And lots of people consider it terrible!"
"It doesn't make any difference where wealth comes from as long as it is put to useful purposes," said the Professor, with a note of hardness in his voice. "No one asks a government the origin of its funds, when they are used for some good purpose. Often they have been extorted with more cruelty and violence than those which come from here, where the people all flock of their own free will. It is a good thing that the money of scheming, foolish people, and of those who feel their lives are empty and don't know how to fill them, should be used for once to accomplish something great and human. Think what this Prince of a tiny State has done for science in the course of a few years. If only the great Emperors would devote the enormous forces at their command to similar enterprises! If only Kaiser Wilhelm had done the same, instead of preparing for war all his life, how humanity might have progressed!"
The Colonel, considering himself a warrior by profession, only half admitted the truth of the Professor's words. The sword, the glory won on the battle-field, were something after all, and the world would be ugly without them, it seemed to him. But he remained silent, not venturing to spoil his friend's enthusiasm.
"All the sins on the one hand are redeemed on the other." Saying this, Novoa pointed to the huge Casino, with its multi-colored domes and towers, rising from the table-land of Monte Carlo. Then tracing with his finger an imaginary arc above the harbor, he paused when it pointed to the eminence on the left, where, on the cliffs of Monaco, a large square edifice rose, the walls of which descended to the water's edge. It was the Museum ofOceanography, a fine new building in stone that, in that atmosphere so seldom streaked with rain, still retained its waxy whiteness.
Don Marcos smiled at the contrast. "Don Atilio says the same thing. Every time he gazes at the view from here, he looks at the two buildings separated by the mouth of the harbor, and occupying the two promontories. He says the one justifies the other, and adds: 'They are ...' What is it he says?—an antithesis. No; it's something else."
The metallic booming of a gong drifted through the trees from Villa Sirena, summoning the guests, who were scattered through the park, or had not appeared as yet from their rooms. The Colonel listened with pleasure: "Luncheon!"
He gave a last look at the two enormous buildings, one of them bristling with sharp and many colored pinnacles, the other plain and square, of uniform whiteness. Between the promontories, at the water's surface, two new breakwaters meet, closing the mouth of the harbor. At the outermost extremity of each is a beacon: one red, the other green.
The Colonel tapped his brow and looked at his compatriot with a smile. "Oh, yes, I remember. He says the Casino and the Museum are a symbol."
The little group which Castro had labelled "Enemies of Women" had now been in existence two weeks with no disharmony and no obstacles to the perfect happiness of the members. Complete freedom was theirs! Villa Sirena belonged to them all, and the real owner seemed merely like an additional guest.
Arising late in the morning, Castro saw the Prince in a corner of the garden with his shirt open at the neck and his bare arms wielding a spade. The thing that made the new life complete for him was the cultivating of alittle garden, and having the gratification of eating vegetables and smelling flowers that were the product of his own toil. This man who had always been surrounded by a corps of servants to attend to all his wants, was anxious now to be self-dependent, and feel the proud satisfaction of one who relies entirely on his own hands. Vainly he invited Castro to join him in this healthy, profitable exercise, which was at the same time a return to primitive simplicity.
"Thanks; I don't care for Tolstoi. As far as the simple life goes this is all I want." And he stretched out on the moss, under a tree, while the Prince went on digging his garden. They talked for a while of their companions. Novoa was in the library, or wandering about the park. Some mornings he would take the early train for Monaco to continue his studies at the Museum. As for Spadoni, he never arose before noon, and often the Colonel would have to pound on his door so that he would not be late for lunch.
"He never gets to sleep until dawn," said Castro. "He spends the night studying his notes on the way the gambling has been going. He gets into my room sometimes when I'm asleep, to tell me one of his everlasting systems that he has just discovered; and I have to threaten him with a slipper. In his room, among the music albums, he keeps piles of green sheets that give each day's plays for a year at all the various tables in the Casino. He's crazy."
But Castro took care not to add that he often asked Spadoni to lend him his "archives" in order to verify his own calculations; and in spite of his making fun of the latter's discoveries, he used to risk a little money on them, through a gambler's superstition that attaches great value to the intuitions of the simple-minded.
After luncheon, Castro and Spadoni would both hurryoff to the Casino. The Prince, when not attending a concert, remained with Novoa and the Colonel in aloggiaon the upper story, looking out over the sea. The war had filled that part of the Mediterranean with shipping. In normal times the sea presented a deserted monotonous appearance, with nothing to arrest the eye save the wheeling of the gulls, the foamy leaps of the dolphins and the sail of an occasional fishing boat. The steamers and the large sailing vessels were scarcely ever to be seen even as tiny shadows on the horizon, following their course direct from Marseilles to Genoa, without following the extensive shore line of the Riviera gulf. But now the submarine menace had obliged the merchant ships to slip along within shelter of the coast. Convoys passed nearly every day; freighters of various nationalities, daubed like zebras to reduce their visibility, and escorted by French and Italian torpedo-boats.
These rosaries of boats so close to the coast that one could read their names and distinguish their captains standing on the bridge, caused the Prince and the Professor to talk of the horrors of war.
At times the Colonel entered the conversation, but only to lament the difficulties which such a war presented to the fulfillment of his duties as steward. Each day his task was becoming more difficult. He was no longer able to find anything worth serving at a table like that of the Prince, and even so, the prices that he paid roused his indignation when he compared them with those of peace times! And the servants! He had sent to Spain for some, now that all those from the district were in the army; but the hotel proprietors had immediately enticed them away. They all preferred to serve in cafés or in places where people are continually coming and going, tempted by the chance of getting tips and of associating with the white-aproned chamber-maids.
He had improvised dining-room service with the two Italian boys from the Brodhigera, whose families were living in Monaco. The older and livelier of the two had the name of Pistola, and treated his companion in despotic fashion, bullying him with kicks and cuffs when the Colonel's back was turned. Atilio, for the sake of the rhyme, had nicknamed Pistola's comrade, Estola, and every one in the house accepted the name, even the boy himself.
"When you think of the work it cost me to make decent respectable looking servants out of them!" groaned Toledo. "And now it seems that they are going to be called back to Italy as soldiers. More men off for the war! Even these young lads that haven't reached the age yet! What shall we do when Estola and Pistola go?"
Many evenings, at the dinner hour, the rules of the community were rudely broken. The first to desert was Spadoni. He arrived sometimes after midnight, saying that he had dined with some friends. At other times he did not return at all. After a few days had gone by he would quietly appear, with the serene ingenuousness of a stray dog, just as though he had gone out only a few hours before. No one could ever find out exactly where he had been. He himself was not sure. "I met some friends." And in the same half hour, these friends would be at one moment some Englishmen from Nice, or at another a family from Cap-Martin, as though he had been in both places at the same time.
Atilio also used to absent himself. A gambling companion had shown him, in the Casino, the little cards divided into columns, which are used to note the alternating frequency of "red" and "black." Various ladies had taken similar documents from their hand-bags, where they lay among the handkerchiefs, the powder boxes, the lip sticks, the banknotes, and the various colored chips,which are used as money in the gaming. The indications all agreed. During the morning and afternoon the "bets" were all lost, and the house was winning; but from eight o'clock in the evening on, undreamed-of fortune smiled on the players. The statistics could not be clearer; there was no possible doubt. And Castro would renounce the excellent food of Villa Sirena, satisfied with a glass of beer and a sandwich at the bar. Then at midnight he would return in a hired carriage, paying the astonished driver with prodigality. At other times he would stand in front of the gate fishing in his pockets to get together enough to pay for the cab. Fate had lied. Nor, on those occasions, would any of the prophets of the little cards have been able to lend him a cent.
Toledo muttered protests. This lack of orderly habits made him lament once more the scarcity of servants. The help always got up late on account of having to sit up and wait at night. For that reason, on the nights when all the companions of the Prince were present, the Colonel felt the satisfaction of the Governor of a fortress when he sees all the posterns locked and feels the keys in his pocket. After dinner they would listen to Spadoni. Seated at a grand piano, he would play according to his mood or according to the wishes of the Prince. Lubimoff was a melomaniac whose musical taste was cloyed, perverted, by an excessive refinement. He cared only for rare works, and obscure composers.
Castro, who was himself a pianist, at times was unable to hide his enthusiasm for the wonderful execution of the Italian virtuoso.
"And just think that after all he is an idiot!" he exclaimed, with the frankness of a man who is carried away by his feelings. "All his faculties are warped, and narrowed, concentrated on a single purpose, music, withoutleaving anything for anything else. However, what's the difference? He's an idiot—but a sublime idiot."
There were nights when Spadoni remained with his elbow on the keyboard and his brow resting in his right hand, as though completely absorbed in music. As a matter of fact, the visions that were then whirling in his head, beneath those long locks, were red and black squares, many cards, and thirty-six numbers in three rows beginning with a zero. The Prince, annoyed by the silence, turned to Castro.
"Tell us something about your grandfather, Don Enrique."
This grandfather had married an aunt of General Saldaña, and although Atilio had never known him personally he often talked about him, as a curious sort of person who aroused either his admiration or his bitter irony, according to the mood he happened to be in. This ancestor was a man of warlike temperament and rather perverse enthusiasms, who had succeeded in depleting the family fortune, already undermined by his predecessors. Related to a great many nobles, he usually would deny the relationship if forced to the point, as though it were something of which to be ashamed. Other members of the family might take the title of nobility if they chose. The motto which had figured for centuries on the Castro shield was an accurate summary of the man's character: "To-morrow more revolutionary than to-day." For thirty years there had not been a successful or abortive insurrection in Spain in which this somber-looking gentleman had not had a hand. He was very sensitive to insult and a great swordsman. He treated men like a despot and at the same time he was ready to die for the liberty of mankind.
"A red Don Quixote!" said Castro.
He remembered having played with the old man's sword, as a child. It was a Toledo weapon, inlaid with golden arabesques copied from the old sword of the explorer andconquistador, Alvaro de Castro, who had been Governor of the Indies. But toward the hilt of the blade, where his ancestors had been wont to inscribe an expression of fidelity to their God and King, Don Enrique had had engraved: "Long live the Republic!" Without this knightly sword, he refused to take part in a revolution. He had carried it from Sicily to Naples, following Garibaldi to dethrone the Bourbons. "To-morrow more revolutionary than to-day!" His companions soon appeared to him unspeakable reactionaries, and this caused him to seek new doctrines which would fully satisfy his insatiable eagerness for destruction and innovation. Finally, this descendant of Governors and Viceroys wound up in the "First International." And the most extraordinary thing of all was that in his new life he never lost the traces of his early education, his arrogance and his knightly ways, which caused him to consider the slightest difference of opinion as "an affair of honor."
Over a discussion in a committee meeting, he had fought a "comrade" laborer in Paris. No sooner had they crossed swords than the workman received a cut across the head.
"It is quite just," said the wounded man, wiping away the blood. "The Marquis, who has been able to learn the use of weapons, ought of course to beat a mere man of the people."
Don Enrique turned pale at the irony, and to restore equality, and eliminate his traditional advantages, he raised his sword and gave himself a terrible cut across the skull, while the witnesses ran forward to seize him and prevent him from doing it again.
After accompanying Garibaldi once more, in the War of 1870, fighting the Prussians at Dijon, he was drawn to Paris by the revolutionary movement of the Commune.
"I think they made him a general," Atilio said. "He must have suffered heavily in that tragic farce. It is certain that he was executed by the government troops, and no one knows where he is buried."
Atilio's admiration for his grandfather, whose life had been so romantic, was dampened by the thought of his mother. Poor, an orphan, and forgotten by her relatives, she had been obliged to marry a man old enough to be her father, and led the wandering life, outside of Spain, that is forced upon the wives of consuls. Atilio was born in Leghorn, and was given the name of his godfather, an old Italian gentleman, who was a friend of the Spanish Consul. The memory of his grandfather, saddened from time to time the life of his poor, resigned, and devout mother. In Rome, visiting Spaniards, all persons of conventional ideas who came to see the Pope, would look askance on learning of her birth: "Oh, so you are the daughter of Enrique de Castro!" And she would seem to shrink, and beg their pardon with her sad, humble eyes.
"I don't disown my grandfather," Castro added. "I would like to have known him. The only thing I blame him for is that he left us so poor; though his forefathers had already done more than he to ruin us."
On days when Atilio had lost, he was more prone to complain, recalling the immense estates of the Castros, gained in the conquests in America.
"To-day there are large cities on the fields given by the king to my forefathers. One of my remote ancestors grazed horses, and built a colonial country house on land where at the present time you will find gardens, monuments, and big hotels. There were hundreds of millionsof square yards; at a franc a yard, imagine, Michael! I would be richer than you, richer than all the millionaires in the world. And I'm only a well-dressed beggar. Good God! Why didn't my ancestors keep their land, instead of devoting themselves to serving the king and the people? Why didn't they do like any peasant who keeps religiously what has been left him by his ancestors?"
Other evenings, seated in theloggia, the Prince listened to Novoa and gazed at the nocturnal scene of sea and sky. There was no light, save the veiled gleam from the distant drawing-room. The coast was dark. The silhouette of Monte Carlo stood out against the starry background, without a single dot of red. There were few street lights in the city, and besides, the glass of those few was painted blue. The lamps on the stairway of the Casino were shrouded like those of a hearse. The German submarine menace kept the whole Principality, as well as the French coast, in darkness. Only at the entrance to the harbor of Monaco, the two octagonal towers kept on their summit a red and a green beacon, which threw out over the water one shifting path of rubies, and another of emeralds.
In the darkness, standing and looking at the stars, Novoa talked about the poetry of space, about distances that defy human calculations. It was impossible for Spadoni to follow this talk with the same attention as the Prince and Castro. What did the so-called tri-colored star matter to him? The millions and millions of leagues that the scientist spoke of merely made him yawn; and through an association of ideas, he became absorbed in gambling, mentally, imagining that he was winning fifty times in succession, doubling each time.
He wagered a simple five franc piece—the smallest bet allowed in the Casino—and at the end of the twenty-fifth bet he stopped as though horror-struck. He had wonmore than a hundred and sixty-seven million francs. In only twenty-five minutes! The Casino was closing its doors, declaring the bank broken! But this was not enough to bring him out of his dream. The marvellous five franc piece remained on the green cloth beside a mountain of money which kept growing and growing. He must finish the fifty bets, always doubling. He continued for five more times and then stopped. He had already won more than five thousand million francs. They would have to hand over the entire Principality of Monaco to him, and even that would not be enough perhaps to pay the debt. The thirty-fifth time the simple "napoleon" had become a hundred seventy-one billions of francs. They wouldn't pay him; he was sure of that. It would be necessary for all the great powers of Europe to ally themselves as though for a great war, and even then perhaps, he, the pianist, Teofilo Spadoni, would not accept the credit they might offer him.
He could no longer make the calculations mentally. The twentieth time he had been obliged to have resource to the pencil which he used in the Casino to note results of the various plays, and to the cards divided in columns which were distributed by the employees. The back of the card was rather narrow for his winnings, which kept growing so tremendously that they had reached fantastic sums. He continued his triumphant playing. At the fortieth winning he stopped. Five million million francs. Decidedly neither Europe nor the entire world would be able to pay him. The nations would have to put themselves up for sale, the globe would be put on public auction, the women would all have to sell their bodies and give him the proceeds; and even so it would be necessary to ask him for several thousands of years in which to pay the debt to him, the creditor of the universe, seated on his piano stool as though on a throne.
But although he was certain that he was being deceived, since no one on earth or heaven could guarantee the bank, he went on playing. There were only ten more bets to be made. And when he had made the fiftieth he had a sudden stroke of generosity. In his mind he gave the employees of the Casino thousands, millions, and millions of millions. For himself he only kept the amount that figured at the head of his winnings, and wrote on his card:
5,000,000,000,000,000 francs.
Five thousand billions! For fifty minutes' work, that wasn't bad.
Suddenly his attention was attracted by the silence in which the Prince and Castro were listening to Novoa, and he fixed his visionary gaze on the latter, his eyes still dazzled by the golden whirl of the Vision.
The scientist too was talking about millions of millions, figures which words would not express, and was going into detail, repeating dozens of ciphers one after the other. He thought he heard the professor surmising the age which the sun would reach in time—here an interminable figure—the disappearance of the present forms of life, the recession of the heavenly body towards an exceedingly remote constellation, and its final extinction and death—here another appalling sum.
Spadoni smiled disdainfully. The sun, the constellation of Hercules, the hundred million years that it would take for the former to reach the earth, the seventeen million years that it would require to lose its incandescence, and cease furnishing warmth for life on earth, and all the other calculations of the scientist were as nothing, mere nothing! If he were to put his money on the green table fifty times more, the figures obtained by astronomy would appear paltry and ridiculous beside the winnings obtained in an hour and forty minutes. God alone couldbe the banker, and pay with stars as though they were money; and who knows if God himself would be able to withstand the hundredth time the five franc piece was wagered, always doubling, and if he would not have to declare his bank was broken?
Spadoni remained for some time absorbed in inner contemplation of his greatness. Coming out of his revery he became aware of Novoa's voice which still sounded a note of mystery, before that dark horizon, dotted above with the points of light from the stars, and undulating below with the phosphorescence of the waves.
The Prince urged him to talk of the sea as the regulator and origin of life. The pianist heard it said that the sea covers three-fourths of the globe, and, as it represents a large preponderance over the continents, the latter, though they consider themselves superior, are dominated by the former, just as governments are obliged to yield to universal suffrage and respect the strength of majorities. All the great atmospheric laws are established, not on the lesser surface of the land, which is rough and broken, but on the vast ocean spaces, which allow the molecules freely to obey the mechanical laws of fluids.
Spadoni touched Castro on the elbow, and tried to tell him in a low voice about the unheard-of winnings that he had just made. But Atilio, without turning around, brushed the interrupting hand aside, and went on listening.
Novoa was talking about the hot waters which condensed on the globe in the primordial atmosphere, and had been precipitated on the crust of the earth which was then in formation, dissolving and tearing down everything in their way on the new-born surface.
"With the salt that there is in the ocean," Novoa said, "one could reconstruct the entire African continent."
The pianist stirred once more in his seat. An Africa made of salt! What could you do with it?
"Castro, listen to me," he said in a low voice. "I put five francs on a certain bet, fifty times in succession, doubling each time, do you know?"
But the latter was not interested, and rejected the piece of cardboard held out to him.
Spadoni, offended, shut his eyes, deciding to isolate himself from the rest, and not listen to what did not seem to him of any importance. If the scientist was going to talk every evening, he would dispense with the hospitality of the Prince, and go in search of other friends.
Suddenly, a word caught his ear and drew him from his shell, causing him to open his eyes. The Professor was talking about the gold that had been washed away by the boiling rains at the creation of the globe, and was still present in solution in the sea.
"There are only a few milligrams in each ton of water, but with all that there is in the ocean one could form a heap so immense, that, if it were divided equally among the thousand five hundred million inhabitants of the earth, we would each get an eighty-five thousand pound ingot, or some forty tons of gold."
The pianist craned his neck in amazement. What was the Professor saying?
"And," Novoa continued, "according to the value of gold before the war, each person's ingot would represent some hundred and twenty million francs."
The silence was broken by a whistling sound. Castro turned his head, thinking that Spadoni was snoring. Observing the pianist's staring eyes, he realized that this was a sigh, of real emotion, an exclamation of surprise.
"I'll give my share for a hundred thousand francs in bank-notes," he said in solemn tones.
And as the others laughed, he remained with his eyes fixed on Novoa. The sea! Who would have thought that the sea!... That scientist knew a great deal; and as for himself, with sudden awe and respect, he determined that hereafter he would always listen to him.
One night, Atilio and the Prince were eating alone. On leaving the Casino, the pianist had gone off to Nice with some English friends of his, who played poker in their landau. Novoa had been invited to dine with a colleague from the Museum and would not be back until midnight.
Michael was thinking of his impressions of that afternoon. He had gone to the Casino to attend a classical concert, determined to face the obsequious curiosity of the employees, and take the risk of running across former friends. From the outer stairway to the door of the theater he had been obliged to reply to the series of deep bows from the various functionaries, some with military caps and gold buttons, others in solemn frock coats, stiff and dignified like lawyers in a play. The people who were passing through the portico noticed him immediately. "Prince Lubimoff!" They all remembered his yacht, his adventures, and his parties, and repeated his name like the glorious echo of a resurrected past. He had been obliged to hurry through the groups at top speed, with a vague stare, feigning absentmindedness, so as not to see certain well-known smiles, and certain inviting faces which evoked sweet visions of by-gone days.
In the auditorium he looked for a seat where he would be entirely inconspicuous, some corner divan, close to the wall; but even there he was annoyed by the curiosity of the crowd. Around the leader of the orchestra were the most famous musicians, those who prided themselves on the title of "Soloists to His Most Serene Highness thePrince of Monaco." Some of them had sailed with Prince Michael on his yacht, as members of the orchestra. During a pause in the music, the first violin, in looking around the room to see if he could recognize any of his admirers, discovered Lubimoff, and communicated his surprise at once to the other soloists. They all smiled in his direction, and showed on their faces that they were dedicating to him alone the music which was rising from their instruments. Finally the public began to notice the gentleman who was half hidden, and who was gradually attracting the attention of the entire orchestra.
When the concert was over Lubimoff left hurriedly, afraid of being stopped by certain former women friends whom he had observed in the audience. He crossed the portico brusquely, elbowing his way through the crowd that barred the way. Here his attention was caught by a person of majestic bearing and exclusive showy appearance, with a derby of smooth gray silk, a honey colored overcoat with velvet sleeves of the same shade, and white gloves and shoes. His gray side-whiskers joined his mustache; his hair was parted away down to his neck, and over his ears strayed two locks of hair, cut short and dyed and shining with cosmetics.
"I thought it was a Russian general or some Austrian of note dressed for winter, with an elegance worthy of the Riviera, and I find it's you, my dear Colonel. I hadn't seen you outside of Villa Sirena before."
Toledo blushed, not knowing whether to feel proud or annoyed, at these words.
"Your Excellency, I always liked to dress well, and...."
"Who was the lady you were talking with?"
"It was the Infanta. She was telling me that she had lost seven thousand francs that were sent to her fromItaly, and that she hasn't the money to pay her living expenses, and...."
"The tall, thin one, with the big cow-boy hat? No, not that one. I was asking you about the other."
He had only seen "the other" from behind, but she had attracted his attention for the moment because of her svelte figure and her queenly carriage.
"Your Excellency," said Don Marcos, hesitatingly, "that was the Duchess de Delille."
There was a moment's silence, and as though the Prince had caught him doing something wrong, that he must apologize for, he hastened to add:
"She is very kind to the Infanta. She gives her children clothes, and I think she even lends her dresses. The daughter of a King! The grand-daughter of San Fernando! I am an old legitimist soldier, and the least I can do is be grateful that...."
Michael cut his excuses short with a gesture. That was enough: he did not want to hear any more. And he turned to Castro. He had seen him too, near the entrance to the Casino, talking to another lady.
"And I saw you, too," said Atilio, "but you were in such a rush, going along with your head down, making your way like a mad bull. Do you want to know who the lady is? Does she interest you?"
Lubimoff shrugged his shoulders; but his indifference was feigned. As a matter of fact she had interested him, although slightly. The unknown woman was tall and blond, with an air of lithe strength, with the freedom of movement of a gymnast or an amazon.
"Well, that's the'Generala,'" Castro continued without observing that his friend was not paying much heed. "The title of 'Generala' isn't to be taken seriously. It's a pet name. I think the Duchess invented it, for I warnyou the two are very good friends. She's a 'General' in the same way that certain other people are Colonels."
Don Marcos overlooked this bit of irony. Atilio was evidently in a bad humor that evening. His nerves were on edge, and he seemed ready to snap at any one. He must have lost in the gambling.
"They call her the 'Generala' because of her somewhat masculine character, and the brusque way she has of treating people at times. An extraordinary woman! A real amazon! She shoots, does gymnastics, swims in the rivers in mid-winter, and what's more she has a voice like the sighing of the breeze, and looks as though she were going to faint at the least emotion, like a timid girl. Do you want to know who she is? Her name is Clorinda, a name of ancient poetry, or ancient comedy. I always call her Doña Clorinda; it seems as though it would be disrespectful if I didn't, in spite of the fact that she is still young. Perhaps two or three years younger than her friend Alicia. The two hate each other, and they can't live apart. One week each month they clash, call each other names, and tell the most horrible tales about each other; then they look each other up; 'How are you, my dear?' 'Are you angry with me, angel?'"
The Prince smiled at Atilio's imitation of the words and gestures of the two ladies.
"Clorinda is an American," Castro continued, "but from South America, from a little Republic where her grandfathers and great-grandfathers were Presidents, and fighters, and fathers of their country. Her title of 'Generala' has a certain basis. Over there in her native land they admire her for her beauty and for the great sensation she is supposed to have caused in Europe. At a distance, you see, everything is changed and seems much greater. Her picture is public property, and figures on every package of coffee, and every advertising prospectusin the country. She is a national beauty; and when she gets old, there will always be a spot in the world where she will be considered eternally youthful. She got married in Paris to a young Frenchman, a dreamer, rather ill with tuberculosis. That was the very reason why the 'Generala' loved him. If she had married a strong, fiery sort of man, they would have killed each other in a few days. She is a widow now. I don't think she is very rich; the war must have diminished her income, but she has enough to live comfortably. I even imagine she must suffer fewer hardships than does the Delille woman. She is an exceedingly well-balanced person."
He remained silent for a moment.
"But she has such queer ideas! She is so used to dominating! I met her in Biarritz some years ago. I have seen her here often in the gaming rooms; we have bowed to each other and had a few conversations which did not amount to much. When a woman is placing her stakes she doesn't allow compliments that might distract her attention. To-day is the first time that I have talked with her at any length. Do you know what she asked me, the very first thing? Why I wasn't in the war. It didn't make any difference when I told her that I'm neutral, and that the war doesn't interest me. 'If I were a man, I would be a soldier,' she said. And if you had only seen the look she gave when she said it!"
Lubimoff smiled a bit scornfully at the woman's words.
"In her opinion," Castro went on saying, "every man ought to work at something, produce something, be a hero. She adored her poor husband, gentle as a sick lamb, because he painted a few pale, washed-out pictures, and had been rewarded in some slight degree at various expositions. Men like you and me, in her eyes, are a variety of 'supers' hired to give life to the drawing-rooms, casinos, and bathing resorts, to keep the conversationgoing, and be nice to the ladies; but we don't interest her. She told me so this afternoon once again."
"Does her opinion bother you?" asked the Prince.
Atilio paused for a moment, as though to weigh his words before replying.
"Yes, it does bother me," he resolutely answered at last. "Why should I deny it? That woman interests me. When I don't see her, I forget all about her. Months and years have gone by without my giving her a thought. But as soon as I meet her she dominates me.... I want her. I know I can't come up to you in such matters, but I've had successful love affairs too. But she is so different from the others! Besides, there's the joy in conquering, the need of dominating, that you find at the bottom of all our amorous desires! Every time we talk together, and she makes quite evident, with her bird-like voice and her smile of compassion, the distance that separates us, I come away sad, or rather, discouraged, as though I had to climb a great height, of which I would never reach the top, no matter how hard I tried. To-day I ought to be happy; it has been months since I've had an afternoon like this. I've played, and look ... look! Seventeen thousand francs!"
He had taken from his inner pocket a bundle of blue bank-notes, throwing it on the table with a certain fury.
"I succeeded in winning as high as twenty-six thousand. If there is anything in the saying, 'Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,' I was as lucky as a despairing lover or a deceived husband. And yet, I'm not happy."
The Prince smiled again, as though a self-evident truth had just been completely demonstrated. Woman! That Clorinda, that devil of a "Generala," was a real "woman." With a few short minutes of conversation only, she had turned Castro topsy-turvy, and perhaps would end by breaking up the peaceful life—without exciting pleasuresbut without desperate sorrows as well—that the guests at Villa Sirena were leading.
"And you, Atilio," he said in a reproachful voice, "are moved by that smooth-voiced virago. You believe in love like a school-boy."
Castro replied in a cold, aggressive tone. The Prince might say whatever he liked about him; but to call her a virago!... What right had he? Nevertheless he hid the real cause of his annoyance, pretending to be hurt by the allusion to his credulity.
"I don't believe in anything; I'm more skeptical than you perhaps. I know that everything about us is false, and conventional—all a matter of lies that we accept because they are necessary to us for the moment. You love music and painting as though they were something divine and eternal. Very well; if the structure of our ears were to be modified a little, the symphonies of Beethoven would be a regular din; if the functioning of our retinas were to change, we would have to burn all the famous pictures, because they would seem like so many canvases dirtied by a child's play; if our brains were to be modified, all the poets and thinkers would become childish idiots for us. No, I don't believe in anything," he insisted angrily. "In order to live and understand one another, we have to agree upon a high and a low, a left and a right; but even that is a lie, since we live in the infinite which has no limits. Everything we consider fundamental is simply a matter of lines that have been laid down on the canvas of life to mark off our various conceptions."
The Prince shrugged his shoulders, giving him a look of surprise. Why all this, apropos of a woman?
"Everything is a lie," Castro went on; "but that is no reason why I should live like a stone or a tree. I need sweet falsehoods to sing my mind to sleep until the hour of my death. Illusions are a lie, but I want them nearme; hope is another lie, but I want it to walk before me. I don't believe in love, since I don't believe in anything. Everything you say against it I have known for years; but should I give it a kick if it comes my way, and wants to go with me? Do you know any dream that fills the emptiness of our lives better—even though it lasts only a short time?"
Michael greeted his friend's enthusiasm with a sardonic gesture.
"Do you know why I look younger than I am?" Atilio continued, more and more excitedly. "Do you know I shall be young when others of my own age have become old men? I pretend to be ironical. As a matter of fact I'm a skeptic. But I have a secret, the secret of eternal youth, which I keep to myself. Let me tell you what it is. I have discovered that the greatest wisdom in life, the most important thing, is to 'while away the time'; and I fill the emptiness that every man carries inside him with an orchestra; the orchestra of my illusions. The great thing is that it play all the time, that the music rack never be empty; once one piece is played, another must take its place. At times it is a symphony of love. Mine have been beautiful but brief. For that reason I have replaced them with another which is endless—that of ambition and the desire for gain, whose orbits are infinite like those of the stars in the heavens, and like the possible combinations of cards. I gamble. In the whirl of the roulette wheel I see a castle that may be mine, a more sumptuous castle than any in existence; a finer yacht than the one you used to have; endlessfêtes. Through a pack of cards I can contemplate things more magnificent than were dreamed of by the Persian story-tellers. Its suites are so many piles of precious gems. Most of the time I lose, and the orchestra plays an accompaniment on muted strings, with a funeral march of wondrous wild sadnessand beauty; but after a few measures, the march becomes a hymn of triumph, the dawning of a new day, the resurrection of hope."
And now there was a look of pity in the eyes of the Prince. "He is mad," it seemed to say.
"This afternoon," Castro continued, "my orchestra made me acquainted with a new symphony, something I had never heard before. While I was winning money I did not think a single time about myself, nor about palaces, nor yachts, nor parties. I was thinking only of the 'Generala,' and thinking of her with real hate, wanting to get revenge. I wanted to win a hundred thousand francs—who knows, I may win it to-morrow—and spend the whole hundred thousand on a pearl necklace, on leaving the Casino, and send it to her anonymously with something like this: 'As a tribute of dislike from a worthless, miserable man.'"
A burst of laughter from the Prince woke the Colonel with a start. As a good early riser, the latter had gone to sleep in his chair. Observing that His Excellency was not paying any attention to him, he slipped out of the Hall, as though he had something of more importance to attend to than the conversation of the two friends who seemed to ignore his presence.
"But what do you find in love?" Michael asked. "For I think you know what love really is. All the illusions of adolescence, and all the idealism of poetry, are merely winding paths which lead to the same, the only goal; the physical act. And aren't you tired of that? Aren't you never daunted by the monotony of it?"
There was a certain gloomy intonation in the Prince's voice, as though he were lamenting over the ruin of all his own life. He had met hundreds of women of the sort that cause a sudden burst of mute desire as they pass. Feminine resistance was something unknown tohim. More than that: women had sought him, coming half-way of their own free will, pursuing him with no regard for the conventions and modesty, obliging him, as a matter of masculine pride, to overtax his powers with a prodigality that made pleasure almost painful. And they were all alike! He understood the mirage of illusion in the things that one admires from afar, and has no hope of obtaining. It is our curiosity for what is hidden, the desire which is aroused by an obstacle, the inner fancies inspired by clothes, ornaments, everything which covers the feminine body, giving to its sameness the charm of a mystery which is ever renewed. As for him, alas, it was as though they all went nude. Nothing could stimulate his interest; it was all too familiar.
"Besides," and here his voice grew quieter, "I wouldn't confess it to any one else; but love and women make me think of the miserableness of human life, the inevitable end, death. Since I've been freed from their false seductions, I feel gayer, more sure of myself; I enjoy more frankly the passing moment. I don't want to talk to you about the shame of those bodies which we claim to be divine. Women are less wholesome than men. It was Nature's will. But that isn't what makes me flee from them."
He was silent for a moment, but then added shortly after:
"Whenever I am near a woman I can't help but see the image of death. When I caress her silky hair, I suddenly seem to feel a smooth, hard yellow skull, like those one sees protruding from the ground in abandoned cemeteries. A kiss on her mouth, or a nibble at her chin, rouses in me a vision of the bony jaw with its teeth, not so different from those of the anthropoids in the museums. Those eyes will fade; that nose with its graceful curves and rosy quivering nostrils will dissolve likewise;the only solid and permanent parts are the black sockets, and the grotesque grin of the skull, with its flattened nose. Those swelling breasts are nothing more than false padding to hide the ghastly cage of the ribs; those legs, which seem to us such wonderful columns, are stringy flesh and water that will waste away, leaving bare two long calcareous pipe-stems. We imagine we are adoring supreme beauty, and we are embracing a skeleton. The image of death fills us with horror, and every woman carries one within her, and compels us to worship it."
Now it was Castro's turn to gaze in astonishment. His eyes, fixed on the Prince, seemed to say: "He is mad."
"The trouble with you, Michael, is that you've over-enjoyed," he said after a long pause. "You make me think of the people who, when they sit down to the table, hide their lack of appetite with nausea. The most succulent meat for them suggests the horrors of the slaughter house. Bread reminds them of the hands that kneaded it, and wine calls up a picture of feet reeking with juice in the vintage-troughs. But just let their senses awaken, and their physical needs reassert themselves, and they see everything in a different light, as though the sun had just risen, and they find an indescribable charm in the very things that disgusted them. What difference is it to me if a woman has a skeleton inside? I have one too, and that doesn't prevent me from taking a great deal of joy in the pleasures of life, and considering love as the most interesting of all those pleasures."
Castro laughed with affectionate compassion as he looked at his friend.
"Let me say it again, you are satiated; you have the lack of appetite and the gloomy vision of a person suffering from a painful indigestion. You are still too young for this debility to last. You will recover. Your appetite will come back. I hope you won't find the tableset exactly as in the past, that you will be swept off your feet by some obstacle, in other words, that unrequital will make you suffer; and then... well, just wait till then!"
DONMARCOShad never seen the Prince so vexed as he was that morning, when he announced that the Duchess de Delille was waiting for him down-stairs in the hall.
"You should have told her I'd gone out; any sort of a pretext—a lunch at Nice.... There must be some understanding between you. You certainly look out for your Infanta!"
The Colonel, flushed with emotion, made an effort to reply to these accusations. If the Duchess had now suddenly presented herself, it was perhaps because he had refused to take any of her messages for the Prince.
As the latter went down to the hall, he ran straight into Alicia, who was standing close to a window, and looking at the gardens and the sea. Her back was towards him, just as he had seen her coming out of the concert. When she turned her head, Michael thought to himself that he would surely never have recognized her had he met her anywhere else. She was a beautiful woman, but scarcely like the person he had seen that last time in the "study" on the Avenue du Bois, with its weird oriental nick-nacks and unwholesome perfumes. Several years of her life had passed away since then, and yet she seemed fresher, and younger. Her eyes had lost the veiled disturbing fire, that made them look larger, and gave them a fixed, unnatural stare. The dull, sickly whiteness of her skin had taken on color from the sun and the open air. Her airy, undulating litheness had become less willowy, giving her person the calm tranquillity of bodies that are beginning to crystallize in their definitive form.
The Prince, interrupted by Alicia's smiling glance, was unable to continue his scrutiny. It seemed from her quiet easy manner as though she had been there in that very place only the day before. Moreover, Michael suddenly began to wonder how he should start the conversation. Should he talk English or French? Should he speak informally as before?... She put an end to his hesitation, speaking familiarly in Spanish, just as when they were children.
"How hard it is to get in touch with you! Practically impossible," Alicia said as she sat down, after shaking hands with him. "So I decided to pay you this visit. It isn't exactly proper for a lady to call on a person with such a terrible reputation as you have; but I'm not the first one who has come here. There have been lots of others!"
She laughed teasingly as she said this. Immediately she became serious, and said timidly:
"I came here on business—a money matter."
Not wanting to take up such a subject at once, she talked about the obstacles which had obliged her to come unannounced to Villa Sirena. The Prince could have absolute confidence in the fidelity with which his "chamberlain" carried out his orders. This Colonel was a nice fellow, but there was no approaching him, any more than a ferocious dog, when some one tries to make him disobey his master. She had vainly asked him to announce her visit; and he had even refused to accept her card for his Prince.
"I might have written you; but I was afraid you wouldn't reply, or would simply tell me to deal with your agent in Paris. It has been such a long time since we've seen each other! Our friendship has been so intermittent! So that is why I finally decided last night to comeand surprise you in your den, with the hope that you wouldn't show me the door."
Michael smiled, making a gesture of indignant denial.
"I came about my debt ... the loans your mother made me some time ago. I didn't know how much they amounted to. Your agent now says they are over four hundred thousand francs. It must be so, if he maintains it. At times when I was in straits I asked for something, and the Princess, who was such a great lady, kept giving and giving, without either of us paying any attention to the amounts. Now I see how tremendously generous she must have been."
This was surprising news for Lubimoff. Then he gradually recalled that when his mother died she had left a long memorandum of all the loans she had made, and that Alicia's name figured among the debtors. But he had left the papers in the hands of his administrator, without thinking any more about the matter.
He immediately understood the reason for Alicia's visit. His agent had wanted to raise some money, and owing to the lack of funds from Russia, he was raising all he could in the West: credits ... advances made to friends or dependents, guaranty deposits, and even the loans made by the Princess, which, according to his express orders, were not to be demanded except in case of strict necessity.
The general pressure of circumstances had reached Alicia. For the last four months the Lubimoff estate had been sending her letter after letter, demanding the payment of her enormous debt. Already the agent's last note had become threatening because of her silence. It notified her that action would be brought against her in court. The estate was holding many of her letters thanking the Princess for the latter's generosity. Besides, all themoney had been paid by checks cashed by the Duchess herself.
"Your administrator is certainly an insolent fellow. The other day I saw you in the Casino,—I saw you from behind as you were running away from people. You frightened me: I imagined then that you had changed, that you were very different from the man I knew, and that we would never come to an understanding. Later I thought you mustn't be quite so terrible as you seem ... and I came."
Michael, remaining silent, seemed to be saying something with his eyes, which were fixed on Alicia. Well, why had she come? What was it she wished to propose to him?
She smiled with an expression of cynical amusement.
"I came to tell you that I can't pay now—and perhaps never; to beg you to wait, I don't know how long, and to ask you to see that that disagreeable fellow who is managing your estate doesn't annoy me with his insolence."
And as the Prince made no move, she continued,
"I'm ruined."
"So am I," said Michael. "We're all ruined. The munition makers are the only people with any money now."
"Oh! You ruined!" Alicia protested. "With you it is simply a question of being hard pressed for the moment. Things in Russia will be straightened out some time or other. Besides, you are Prince Lubimoff, the famous millionaire. If I had your name, who would refuse me a loan?"
Suddenly she lost the audacious smile which she had worked up for the interview. Her eyes grew darker; the corners of her mouth drooped.
"I am really ruined. Look."
She pointed to the triangle of bare flesh visible at thethroat of her low cut dress. A pearl necklace rested on her white bosom. Michael, as she insisted, finally looked at the pearls. False, scandalously false; all the luster gone, opaque and yellow as drops of wax. He knew something about pearls; he had given away so many necklaces! Then Alicia showed him her hands. Two artistically made finger rings, but without any jewels, and of slight intrinsic value, were all that adorned her fingers.
"This is a last year's dress," she added in a mournful voice, as though confessing something most shameful. "They won't trust me any more in Paris. I owe so much! Nothing but the hat is new. What woman, no matter how poor she might feel, wouldn't buy a hat! It is the most conspicuous thing about one,—something that changes all the time; and must be looked after at all costs. Luckily, on account of the war, they are not using plumes.... I'm poor, Michael, poorer than any woman you ever knew."
"And your mother?"
The Prince asked this instinctively, without thinking. A moment later he suspected that he had read, some years before, he didn't know where, perhaps while he was roving the seas, the news of the death of Doña Mercedes. He was not sure; but her daughter removed all doubt.
"Poor señora! Let's not talk about her."
But nevertheless Alicia did talk, but only to lament her mother's devout prodigality. She had given millions for the construction of an enormous hospital in Spain, on the advice of her Aragonese chaplain, the astronomer of the Champs-Élysées. Marble was used in the construction for the mere masonry; the garden fence was forged by a celebrated Parisian artist who devoted himself to molding bronze statues for drawing-rooms. But when the vicar left, tired of such generosity, the monster building remained unfinished, and the precious fence lay on theground in pieces, like so much old iron. Later, the "Monsignor" directed the worthy lady's funds into other channels. It was necessary to spread the faith by means of the "good book," and a new publishing house arose in Paris, which was most extraordinary and unheard of. Packages of books were stored on mahogany shelves, and the leaves were folded on lacquer tables.
"The priests got everything that belonged to me," Alicia continued. "At times they egged mamma on to the most absurd outlays of money just for the sake of collecting commissions from the contractors. From numerous belfries in both hemispheres chimes rang thanks to Doña Mercedes. One entire bell foundry was kept going just on mamma's gifts. Besides, she was often carried away by a sort of loving weakness for all the saints who were not especially famous.
"In her last years she devoted herself to 'launching' saints. Every one in the calendar who was little known, or of some unusual name, aroused in her the desire to repair a great injustice. She had their lives written, churches dedicated to them; and corresponded with the high dignitaries of Rome to push many a dead man, who had waited centuries in vain for the hour when he should become a Saint."
Lubimoff finally began to laugh at the resentful tone in which Alicia spoke of her mother's mystic pleasures. Doña Mercedes was a great one! And finally she began to laugh likewise.
"In that way all our income, which was enormous, was spent. She should have left me a real fortune, unencumbered, in the bank. A lady that spent so little on herself! And nevertheless, I had to pay out huge sums for all the orders she had contracted before her death. You can be sure the Monsignor and the rest of them are much richer than I."
"How about your mines? And your lands in Mexico?"
The Duchess repeated the same gesture of despair. It was as though they did not exist! She was poor, absolutely poor.
"You say you are ruined, and you haven't suffered from the money shortage for more than the last two years, perhaps less. I haven't seen a cent of my fortune for some time before the war. Every one is talking about Russia, and Bolshevism, because it is something that concerns the Old World directly. But how about Mexico, and the situation there which goes back to the time when Europe was at peace?"
Her lands had been lost as though they were so much personal property, that could be transported and hidden. An agrarian revolution, the echoes of which had scarcely reached the Old Continent, had swallowed them up, suppressing all traces of her former property rights. The half-breeds had divided them to suit themselves, to work them, or leave them more unproductive than before. To whom could she appeal, if these lands were in provinces that were constantly changing hands, and the Mexican government had no authority over them?
The silver mines, which for three generations of Barrios had been the basis of their fortune, were in a still worse situation.
"One of the so-called 'Generals,' an Indian, has fortified himself in the territory where my mines are, and from there he defies the rulers in the Capital. They tell me that every month he takes out half a million francs in silver bars. He cuts them up in disks, puts his stamp on them and makes money thus to pay his men. You can imagine he has plenty of followers, with pure silver money, worth more than that of civilized countries! They will never be able to put him out; all he has to do to create armies for himself is to dig down into whatbelongs to me. This bad joke has gone on now for several years; I, who live in Europe, getting poorer and poorer every day, am paying for an endless war on the other side of the earth."
In spite of the fact that the Prince had never taken care of his own business he wanted to give her some advice. She ought to go over there and ask for assistance; she was born in the United States.
"I've already seen to that," she replied. "I have some one in New York who looks after my affairs. But would they go to war just on my account? Perhaps I shall take the trip later. Not now: I haven't the strength. There is something that is bothering me terribly just now, and it would be even worse if I were to leave France."
Her eyes began to fill with tears. Her face contracted with an expression of pain, and her hand moved toward her purse for a handkerchief. Michael recalled the young man that Castro had been noticing at Alicia's side during the last few years. Perhaps he was the cause of her emotion, and inability to make the trip.
"Love!" he thought to himself. "Love, even now when she's growing old."
He tried to change the conversation and asked about the Duke de Delille. He knew that he was at the front; and even thought he remembered a report of his being wounded in one of the early battles. Was he still alive?
In speaking of her husband, Alicia looked grave, to Michael's great surprise. Formerly she used to treat him with a certain scorn. He had accepted his wife's freedom, with all its consequences, in exchange for an enormous allowance. They lived apart, and although she found her independence very sweet, she could not help but feel a sort of feminine dislike for her accommodating husband, so little given to tragic jealousy. But at presenther ideas seemed to have changed, and she spoke rapidly as though afraid of noticing Lubimoff smile as she used to smile herself, in mentioning the Duke.
"Yes; he joined the service. You know of course that he is some twenty years older than I. He was exempted from bearing arms on account of his age; but he remembered that he had been an officer in his youth, and was one of the first to go. Who would have thought it of a man who didn't seem to have any cares, and made fun of everything that didn't affect his own selfish pleasures!"
The Germans had picked him up in a dying condition during one of their victorious advances at the beginning of the war. He was covered with wounds. After two years as a prisoner they had exchanged him as useless, and he was living interned in Switzerland, with one arm gone.
"Poor man! He writes me every month. He fishes in Lake Geneva, and thinks of me more than he ever thought before. His epistles are almost love letters. What a transformation misfortune can make in a character. He says that he sees life from a different angle; and hopes that after the cataclysm, which will have made us better, we shall be able to come together again, and be happy. Oh, if only I could want to!..."
Her tone was ironical as she spoke of this illusionary happiness, but at the same time there was in it a note of respect and admiration. The Duke whom she had known as a great dowry hunter, accommodating and unscrupulous, was forgotten. At present she saw in him only the white-haired warrior, the invalid, who according to the doctors, would not live long, owing to the operations he had undergone. And she was trying to keep up the exile's hopes, replying to his long letters, with brief, affectionate notes.
"So it's on account of your husband that you don't take the trip?" Michael asked, pretending that he was inquiring in good faith.
Alicia was ruffled by such a supposition. Poor Delille! It was something else that was troubling her. Her husband wasn't the only one who had gone to war. There were others, who were younger, and had better reasons to love life, but who had suffered the same fate. How many hidden griefs there were these days!
The Duchess's eyes moistened, and her eyes and lips frankly expressed her sorrow.
"It's the little lover; there's no doubt of it," Michael said to himself. "It's the young chap Castro saw."
As though she read his thoughts and were anxious to switch them, Alicia began to talk once more about the reason for her visit, and about her situation.
The Prince nodded when she described to him her amazement at finding that wealth was not something infinite and immutable, and that it was slipping from her grasp ... slipping and slipping, without her being able to do anything to avoid the gradual ruin.
"I sold inopportunely; I took the money they cared to give me, without paying any attention to the conditions. All my jewels went; I sold some in Paris, others here in this very place. You say you are ruined. No, you don't know what it means; but I know all right! I've been shipwrecked longer than you; my boat was smaller. I don't want to bore you with an account of my poverty. I haven't a house in Paris any more. I shall never go back there again, unless my affairs are straightened out. The only house I have is a villa here, which I bought in the good old days. Don't smile; there are two mortgages on it. Almost any day they may put me out of it. It was a very pleasant sort of house before, when I had money; but now, with everything so scarce on account of thewar! There's no coal, and wood is dear; it gets cold at night, and it takes a fortune to keep the old furnace going. Besides, I haven't any servants except my former lady's maid, the gardener, and his wife who does the cooking. For that reason all the rooms are closed, and Valeria and I live our lives in two rooms on the first floor. We eat there, and sleep there. Valeria is a girl from Paris, a señorita whom I am 'protecting.' Imagine how poor she must be if she trusts her future to me!"
"But you gamble," said the Prince.
Alicia seemed shocked at these words. They sounded like an accusation.
"I play, but what can you expect me to do? I have to do something to keep body and soul together, to earn my living. How else could a woman like myself do it? I know what you're going to say to me: that I've lost a great deal. True; I sold my pearl necklace here, the real one, and a great many other jewels; I have lost large amounts, more than I care to think of. But at that time I didn't know all I know to-day.... When as luck will have it, I haven't much money to play!"
Lubimoff was astonished at the way this woman spoke in all seriousness of her present adeptness.
"Besides," she added in a tone of sadness, "what would become of me if I didn't play? Surely you haven't forgotten how I was when we saw each other last. You must have noticed certain tastes of mine."
Michael recalled the invitation to smoke "the pipe," and the odor that filled the "study" in the palace on the Avenue du Bois.
"I put a stop to all that: gambling and something else made me give it up. Now I think of it with disgust. That's why I live in Monte Carlo. I have a feeling deep down in my heart that fortune will come back in search of me here, and nowhere else. Don't you play?"
Michael was annoyed at this question. Hadn't he told her that he was ruined? Was he going to follow her example, and make his situation still worse by losing the remnants of his fortune?
"Ruined!" exclaimed Alicia. "Your hard times can't last long. This Russian business will finally be settled. The great powers have too large interests at stake there, not to take a hand in straightening everything out. It's this affair of mine that won't be arranged for years. The only hope I have is to enjoy a run of luck in the Casino and win some two or three hundred thousand francs, and, with that amount, wait for things to change."
The Prince shrugged his shoulders. He knew gamblers. This woman, dominated by her wild dream, would forget the object of her visit, and go raving on about the possible whims of fortune, like Spadoni, or like Castro himself.
"And what do you want of me?"
Alicia seemed to wake up, and once more her smile became bold, and engaging, as it had been at the beginning of the interview; the smile of a petitioner who comes with the firm determination to get what he wants. She had already told him at the very beginning what her object was; that the Prince's agent shouldn't bother her any more in regard to that forgotten debt.
"I shall pay it some day, if it is possible for me.... But you had better count on my never paying it at all. Give it up as lost, and tell that horrid gentleman not to write me any more."