And they dropped the subject.
The Prince wanted to break the confinement which he had voluntarily imposed upon himself. Why should he stay there at Villa Sirena, near certain people who constantly occupied his thoughts yet whom he did not wish to see? The best thing would be for him to return to Paris as soon as possible. The long range cannon was continuing to fire on the Capital; almost every week squads of German aeroplanes made night excursions about it, dropping explosives. Such a trip offered the inducement of danger and excitement to the lonely man, tormented in his perfect health by an inactive and monotonous life, which offered nothing more stimulating than the irritations to be derived from his recent experiences.
Every morning, when he got up, he formulated thesame plan: "I am going to Paris." But the trip kept being put off from week to week. It was a case of abulia, the loss of will power of an invalid, who makes projects of active life, and no sooner attempts to carry them out, than he loses his strength again, and postpones them indefinitely.
The most insignificant details loomed gigantically before his diseased will. He had to go to Nice to make reservations at the Sleeping-car Office. He thought of sending Don Marcos; then refrained, considering it preferable to go himself. And days went by without his taking the short ride preliminary to his Paris trip. Both of them seemed equally long. He, who had thrice circumnavigated the globe, wearily shrunk at the thought of the slowness of travel due to the war. Just imagine sixteen hours on a train!
One afternoon, bored by his splendid gardens,—now so monotonous!—by the silence of his house,—now so deserted!—and by the increasing absent-mindedness of the Colonel, who was always having something to do either in Monte Carlo, or in the gardener's pavilion, Lubimoff started out on foot toward the City. And he met some one.
He had turned quite mechanically and without thinking in the direction of the upper boulevards, near the street in which Villa Rosa was situated. When he realized this, he decided to turn back. Just then he saw Lieutenant Martinez coming along on the opposite sidewalk, in the direction that he himself had been going a few moments before.
The soldier seemed to him taller, stronger, and as it were, surrounded by a halo of glory. His uniform was the same, frayed and old looking after some years of service; but to the Prince it seemed entirely new, even dazzling in its freshness. Everything about the Lieutenantlooked magnificent and he seemed to illumine the objects about him by mere contact. His features perhaps were paler and more angular; but Michael imagined that he radiated a certain inner splendor, composed of pride and satisfaction. A sort of ethereal mask, enveloping him in astral light, made him appear handsome and gave him a new physiognomy, Apollo-like and triumphant.
They passed without speaking. The Lieutenant pretended not to see him, as Lubimoff's eyes followed him with a questioning glance. What was there that was new in this man? The Prince doubted that lack of sound health, that perilous condition which worried the doctors so much. It was all a lie made up to impress the ladies! He noticed the proud firmness of the soldier's step, the jaunty, boyish air with which he swung the rattan he used as a cane.
On losing him from sight, he could see him even more clearly. His imagination kept vividly recalling certain details over which his eyes had wandered carelessly. There was something that stood out in painful relief in his memory: a few roses, a little bunch of roses, which the soldier was wearing on his breast, between two buttons of his uniform. An officer with flowers seemed rather strange! That was what had shocked the Prince at the first glance, shocked him so violently that his whole vision had been deeply disturbed. Yes, those flowers!...
He spent the rest of the day thinking about them. As he stretched out in his bed that night, darkness clarified the maze of thoughts and doubts whirling in his brain. He could see it all in a cold clear light. "It has happened already!"
He jumped out of bed and turned on the light, pacing up and down his bedroom in a fury.
"It has happened already!"
He kept repeating the words with anguished obsession;he repented his generosity, as though it were a crime. "Why didn't I kill him?" Then in plaintive tones he would repeat his original affirmation, concluding that what had happened was irreparable. Then he put out the light again; and for a long time, in the darkness, which once more filled the bedroom, the curses of the Prince resounded, alternating with fierce exclamations of wounded pride and sobs of rage.
The following day his conviction still persisted. The childlike beauty of the morning, which always inspires optimism, meant nothing to him. How was he to know the truth about that thing which he had suspected and feared, but which he never imagined would really come to pass?
A desperate curiosity caused him to spend the entire day in Monte Carlo. He met Martinez again. The officer kept on walking, turning his glance away in order not to see him; but the Prince imagined he caught a fleeting look of generous pity in his eyes, an expression of compassion for an unfortunate and inoffensive rival. Again he was wearing flowers; doubtless different from those of the day before.
Lubimoff repeated to himself the laments of the previous night: "Yes, it had already happened." It was impossible to doubt it. But the thought of killing him did not recur, nor did he repent of his generosity. That was all so useless now! He merely thought with envy of people in the submerged classes of society, who feel the impulses of passion very simply, without any disturbing sense of honor and solemn promises. They were men who could act regardless of laws and customs. When they wanted to kill some one, they went and did so!
He saw that Martinez was thinner than ever, with a feverish look in his eyes. Oh, that indefinable something,that suggestion of youthful vanity, of triumph and satisfaction, which seemed to radiate from his features like a halo of glory!
That evening, Toledo found himself brusquely repelled by his Prince, when he tried to tell him about a letter which he had received from Paris. The Administrator of the Prince's estate was getting impatient; he was asking for a reply from his Highness in regard to the sale of Villa Sirena.
"I don't know; leave me alone. The best thing is for me to arrange the matter myself. I'll go to Nice to-morrow and see about my trip to Paris.... No, not to-morrow: day after to-morrow."
He could not explain to himself why he had conceded that additional day to his idleness: it was an instinctive postponement, without any motive whatsoever. The following day, after breakfast, he regretted it; but it was already too late to find the chauffeur he had gotten the afternoon of the duel, and whom Don Marcos had just promoted to the rank of "purveyor to his Highness."
Where could he go, and be sure of not coming across the persons present so bitterly in his thoughts? Toward the end of the afternoon he went to the Casino terraces. There was an open air concert which was attracting a huge crowd. It was improbable that Martinez and the woman should show themselves in such a gathering.
It seemed as though he were living in peace times; as though he had gone back to one of those rare winters which used to attract all the wealthy people of the globe to the Riviera. Both terraces were filled with well-dressed people. The bombardment of Paris and the attacks of the GermanGothaswere keeping a great many elegant ladies in Monte Carlo who formerly would have felt they were losing caste if they stayed on the warm coast when winter was over.
Chairs were lacking. A large part of the audience was seated on the balustrades and steps. Around the orchestrakiosquethere was a mass of pleasant colors, formed by women's hats, spring dresses, and fluttering fans. Opposite the terraces the sea stretched away between the rose-colored promontories. The far-away sails reddened by the setting sun seemed like so many flames. Across the violet surface of the Mediterranean and the crystal opalescence of the evening sky the music fell voluptuously.
Nobody was thinking about the war: that was a calamity that belonged to another world, to other skies. Even the convalescent soldiers in uniform, who were living entirely in the present moment, breathing the salt air, listening to the wail of the violins, and surrounded by gayly dressed women, did not seem to remember it. Many eyes were following the progress, along the horizon line, of a string of ships strangely painted like fabulous monsters, and escorted by several torpedo boats. But the lulling music that rang in the ears of the idlers took all significance away from the fearful disguise of the boats, and from the cautious slowness with which they were gliding along off the Shores of Pleasure.
When, after seven o'clock, the concert was over, the terraces gradually emptied. On the benches only a few couples remaining, putting off the time of parting by conversing quietly in the silence of the blue twilight.
The Prince succeeded in walking from one end to the other of the lower promenade without once having to submit to contact with the crowd.
Suddenly he stopped, with a feeling of surprise and pain, as though he had just received a blow in the breast. Down the wide steps which joined the two terraces, a couple were descending. His instinct recognized themeven before he could see them clearly. It was a soldier. It was Lieutenant Martinez ... and she!
Alicia was dressed in mourning, just as he had seen her near the church; but she was walking less resolutely, shrinking and timid, on finding herself on that spot which shortly before had been occupied by all her neighbors from the city.
They were talking as they slowly descended. Absorbed in the view out upon the sea, they did not turn their eyes toward the spot where Lubimoff was standing motionless. At the bottom of the stairs they chose to walk in the opposite direction, and the Prince was able to follow them.
He felt that some extraordinary power of divination was sharpening his faculties; a sort of second sight which was enabling him to see and study both their faces, in spite of the fact that their backs were turned toward him.
Alas, that walk! It was the desire for light and open air, which people feel after a sweet confinement. It was the insolent need lovers have of displaying their happiness in public, when the joyous hours, through monotonous repetition, begin to weigh on them. It was the desire of prolonging in the sight of every one the sweet intimacy enjoyed in secret and now spiced with the added incentive of being obliged to feign, and to hide all real feelings.
Michael considered his intuitions as beyond all question. Of course! It was the officer who had proposed that walk. How proud he would be to walk in a public place with a celebrated lady, and in full consciousness of the new rights he had acquired over her! It was no longer possible for him to question the visualization which had made him groan in the silence of the night.... It had taken place! It had taken place!
Alicia's appearance dispelled all doubts in advance. She was walking along with a certain dismay like a person obliged to go on in spite of herself. He could see her invisible features. They were sad, profoundly sad, with a melancholy look of the woman who has fallen and is conscious of her abasement, but considers it irremediable, the result of an irresistible destiny, of a cause beyond the radius of the will's action.
Her head kept bending down to one side toward her companion, for her eyes to gaze on him. It must have been the gaze of a willing prisoner anxious to forget the pangs of remorse and taking a sensuous satisfaction in her shameful slavery. While her soul shrank away at the memory, her body was bending under physical attraction to that other body, instinctively seeking the contact that was causing her youth to bloom again in a new spring-time; a sad spring-time, like all the surprises of fate, but sweeter far than the dull gray hours of solitude.
Hate, repugnance, and indignant jealousy caused the Prince to stop. Why should he follow them? They might turn their heads and see him. He was ashamed at the thought of meeting them. The wretches! There must be Some One above to punish such things!
And he left them, walking toward the other end of the promenade in order to descend to the harbor of La Condamine.
He was just leaving the terrace when something happened behind his back which brought him to a stop. The couples seated on the benches suddenly rose and ran shouting in the direction whence he had come. He could hear people calling to one another. Some news seemed to be circulating through both levels of the garden, bringing people forth from the walks, from the clusters of palm trees, and the walls of vegetation.
Lubimoff allowed himself to be carried along by thisalarm, and retraced his steps. He saw in the distance a noisy mass of people ever increasing in size, a group which was being joined by the winding lines of curiosity seekers running down the steps. The garden, which a moment before had been deserted, was pouring forth people from every opening.
As he drew near the crowd, he could hear the comments of various detached onlookers, who were telling the news to the new arrivals.
"A convalescent officer.... He was taking a walk with a lady.... Suddenly he fell in a heap, as though struck by lightning. There he is."
Yes; there was Martinez, in the center of that human mass, a pitiful object, lying on the ground, with his body bent into the shape of a Z: his head made a right angle with his breast, and his legs were doubled, making another angle. Lubimoff came forward until he could look over the shoulders of the first row of stupefied onlookers. A constant sound of hard breathing, a rattle like that of some poor beast in the death agony kept coming from his foaming lips. In his motionless body, the only sign of life was that moan, repeated with clock-like regularity, with no change in the tone.
Officers were leaving their women companions to force their way into the center of the crowd. On recognizing Martinez, their surprise assumed a caressing brotherly expression.
"Antonio! Antonio!"
They bent over him to talk in his ear, as though he were asleep; but Antonio did not hear them. One of his eyes was hidden in the dirt of the walk; a small pebble was clinging to the eyelid of the other. All one side of his uniform was white with dust. The terrible harsh breathing was the only reply to their words of endearment.
A military doctor stepped through the crowd. He took hold of Martinez's hands, and felt his pulse. A look of helplessness came over the doctor's face. The Lieutenant had had many attacks like this one. They could only hope that it was not to be his last....
Lubimoff could see Alicia kneeling on the ground, stunned by the shock, showing the sinuous curves of her back, under her mourning garments, oblivious of everything about her, with her eyes fixed on the man who a few minutes before had been walking at her side, talking and smiling, convinced that life is happiness, and who now lay stretched in the dust, convulsed and inert, a pitiable vessel slowly emptying itself in dying gasps.
Suddenly she stood up, with an instinctive sense of danger. She did not care to remain in that posture before everybody's gaze. Her large eyes, with a blank, frightened look, began to move about over the crowd, without however recognizing any one. For a moment they rested on Michael and her gaze met his with an expression of anguished entreaty. But the Prince, lowering his head, concealed himself behind the front row of onlookers, and her eyes went on in their search about the circle, with a look that became dull and gray again. She believed, doubtless, that it had been an hallucination.
As Alicia remained standing there, people began to point her out. That was the lady who was with the officer. Some of them recognized her, and repeated her name: "The Duchess de Delille." Through an instinctive feeling of repulsion, or a cowardly desire not to get mixed up in any "affair," no one spoke to her. She was left alone in the center of the crowd, with a look of stupefaction in her eyes, that seemed to ask for help, though without knowing just what help.
Willing souls began to take the initiative with an air of authority.
"Air! Give him air!" They began to shove the crowd back in order to increase the circle around the fallen man. But the people immediately pushed forward again with useless suggestions of aid; and once more the space was narrowed, until the feet of the nearest spectators grazed the panting lips of the dying man.
A young girl had run of her own accord to the bar at the entrance of the Casino and was coming back with a glass of water.
"Antonio! Antonio!" his kneeling comrades vainly called the Lieutenant, using all their strength to open his jaws and force him to drink. His lips repelled the liquid, and went on repeating the painful moans.
Ladies, attracted by the news, began to arrive from the gambling rooms. They all knew the Duchess; and looked at her with a certain hostility, after gazing at the dying man. The Prince heard fragments of their comment: "A poor fellow rescued from death by a miracle.... The slightest emotion.... That woman...."
Beyond the group, park policemen were running about giving orders. The stretcher bearers had arrived; the same ones who, according to public rumor, were passed by magic through the walls of the Casino to carry away the gamblers dying in the play-rooms.
This time the stretcher was absent. The onlookers were separating to open the way for an extraordinary novelty. A hired carriage was coming across the terraces, which were forbidden to vehicles.
Suddenly Lubimoff saw the Duchess rise above the heads of the crowd. She had just gotten into the carriage and was standing in it, with a dazed look and the inexpressive features of a person walking in her sleep. Perhaps she had done it without thinking; perhaps the military doctor had invited her to get in, thinking shewas a relative of the patient. Several men in uniform lifted the inert body of the officer.
The harsh breathing that rent his chest continued.
And then, in the presence of the crowd, whose eyes were sightless with stupefaction, the Duchess proceeded as though she were alone. She had just dropped to the seat. She had them lay the corpse-like body across her knees, and she herself, as she held Martinez with one arm, laid his panting head against one of her shoulders.
The carriage slowly started off in the direction of the officers' hotel, followed by a large part of the crowd. The doctor went along on foot, telling the driver to go slowly.
Michael saw Alicia pass, upright and rigid in her seat, her eyes wide open, with terror, her mouth tense with grief, and holding the dying man on her knees. Her attitude reminded him of the Divine Mother at the foot of the cross; but there was something impure and shameful in Alicia's sorrow that made the comparison inadmissible.
"Oh, Venus Dolorosa."
The Prince was interrupted in his reflections. He felt himself rudely shoved aside by a woman in uniform. It was Mary Lewis, running, as fast as her legs could carry her, to overtake the carriage. The Amazon of Good Deeds always arrived in time to catch up with suffering.
Lubimoff saw how the vehicle slowly drove away with its embroidery of people. Its journey as far as the hotel would be endless; all Monte Carlo would see it go by.
He felt sad, very, very sad. That officer was his enemy; but death!...
He was not so sorry for Alicia. He smiled a malicious smile as he looked for the last time at the carriage and its following, which was constantly increasing.
In the line of scandals there was nothing commonplace about this latest of the Duchess de Delille.
TWOdays later, in the morning, Lubimoff saw the Colonel go out dressed in black.
He was going to the funeral of Martinez. He and Novoa felt it was their duty, as Spaniards, to accompany the hero on his last earthly journey.
On his return he told his impressions, with painful conciseness, to the Prince. A few convalescent officers had followed the bier. The Professor and he were the only ones in civilian clothes present. In spite of his garb, those kindly heroic boys, seeing that he was a Colonel and a compatriot of the dead man, had obliged him to preside over the funeral services.
The Beausoleil Cemetery lay half way up the slope of the mountain on the crest of which La Turbie is situated. On account of the war, it had been necessary to enlarge it by several level plots of ground that formed a series of terraces. From these esplanades the eye embraced a magnificent view: Monte Carlo, Monaco, immediately below that, Cap-Martin advancing out over the waves, finally the infinite expanse of sea that rose and rose until it mingled with the sky. A monument with a rooster arrogant and victorious on its summit held the remains of the combatants who had died for France. Don Marcos was still much moved by the speech he had delivered, while all stood hushed, at the entrance to this common tomb, which was about to swallow up forever the body of Martinez.
"It was a speech for men," said Toledo, with pride, "for men who had been crippled in warfare. Nothingbut heroes before me! There wasn't a single woman at the funeral."
This was the detail that interested the Prince most: "Not a single woman." And he asked himself again what could have become of Alicia.
Toward the end of the afternoon, as he was walking about his gardens, he saw Lady Lewis coming, preceded by the Colonel.
The Prince took refuge in his house. The nurse was undoubtedly arriving with a group of convalescent Englishmen, and wanted to run about among the trees and pick flowers. He did not feel he had the strength to listen to her chatter, which was like the twittering of a gay but wounded bird and was filled with a happiness that persisted tenaciously in the midst of grief, and continued even to the threshold of death.
The Prince was going up the stairway to retire to the upper rooms, when the Colonel overtook him; but before the latter could speak Lubimoff turned on him in a rage. He didn't want to see the nurse! Let her take her Englishmen over the gardens; she might go about in them as though they belonged to her; but as for himself, he wanted her to leave him alone.
"Marquis," said Toledo, "the noble woman has come alone and must talk with your Highness. She has something important to say to you."
The Prince and the nurse sat down in wicker chairs out of doors in a little open space surrounded by leafy trees. A fountain was laughing as great drops of water scattered from its lazy jet.
The greenish light reflected through the grove made Lady Lewis appear weaker and more anæmic. What was left of life seemed concentrated in her eyes, before taking flight and vanishing like some volatile fluid, into space. The Prince was beginning to forget his recentanger. Poor Lady Mary! Once more he had a feeling of tenderness and respect for her. Her physical wretchedness finally changed his pity into the kind of admiration that disinterested sacrifice always inspires.
Accustomed to living amid the deepest sorrows, to witnessing the greatest catastrophes, Lady Lewis paid little attention to the conventions prevailing in ordinary life and spoke at once, with a certain military abruptness, of the reason for her visit.
She was coming in behalf of the Duchess de Delille. She had spent the last two days at Villa Rosa, sleeping there in order not to leave the Duchess a single moment. First, Alicia's wild despair, followed later by a complete collapse, had frightened her. The lady had tried to kill herself.
"Poor woman!... She finally grew calm, seeing the true light, and realizing the path she must take. I feel satisfied that I've accomplished that much by my words."
Lubimoff's questioning glance remained fixed on the English woman. What light and what path was she talking about? But there was something that interested him more: the motive of her visit, the message that the Duchess had given her for him.
Lady Lewis read his thoughts.
"She asked me to see you, Prince; that is her last wish as she leaves the world. She begs you to forget her, never to seek her out, and above all to forgive her for the harm she has done you involuntarily. Forgiveness is what she most ardently yearns for. When I tell her that you don't hate her, it will restore the serenity she needs for her new life."
Michael had been absorbed in deep thought. Forgive her? Alicia had not done him any harm. From himself, from his own desires and disillusionments, his sufferingshad come. If he had remained faithful to the principles he had announced some months before when he hated women, he would not have suffered the slightest change in the sensible life he had been leading. Besides, where was she? Could he not see her?
This flood of questions was interrupted by Lady Lewis. She continued to smile sweetly, but her voice revealed the firmness of an unalterable will.
"The Duchess is no longer living in Monte Carlo; I have arranged everything in regard to her trip. I am the only one who knows where she is, and I shall never tell. Do not look for her; let her go away in peace in her quest for truth; think of her as dead ... as others have died, as thousands of beings are dying and will continue to die in this period of ours, with each day's sun. Forgive and forget. Poor woman! She is so unhappy."
Lubimoff understood how futile all his questions would be. His curiosity, no matter how strong and subtle, would fail in contact with that impenetrable reserve. Alicia had disappeared forever ... forever!
He now felt sadder and lonelier than ever before. As he sat there beside this Amazon of human sorrow, he had a feeling of confidence similar to that which the Duchess must have felt during those last few days. It was a desire to make a confession to her, an instinctive impulse to bare his soul, as though from that woman who brought to death beds the light-hearted merriment of a bird, might come the supreme counsel of wisdom.
The Prince nodded his head, murmuring his assent: "Yes, I forgive her." He did not wish the other woman to bear the slightest burden of grief on his account. He would shoulder all that, himself. But immediately afterward he could not resist the impulse of that anguish to express itself. He was himself astonished at the words which, overriding all restraint, escaped from his lips.
"I, too, Lady Lewis, am very unhappy."
The nurse did not show any surprise at such a burst of confidence. She simply continued to smile, and said laconically:
"I know."
Her smile was changing to a look of sweet pity, of beneficent compassion, as though the Prince were a child in need of her advice.
She had guessed his unhappiness long before the Duchess had talked to her in the hours of despairing confession. He believed he was unhappy through being crossed in love; but actually, this sorrow was only the outer shell of another which was deeper and more real, and which depended on himself alone.
He had tried to live apart from his fellow-beings, ignoring their troubles, selfishly withdrawing into a shell. He had wished, by loitering on the margin of humanity which was suffering the greatest crisis in all its history, to prolong the pleasures of peace into a time of war. One could understand such aloofness in a coward, dominated by the instinct of self-preservation; buthewas a brave man. One could tolerate it in a man who was burdened with children, who constantly felt the imperious duty of supporting them, and was afraid on that account; but he was alone in the world.
"We are all unhappy, Prince. Who doesn't know grief and death these days?"
And she talked in monotonous tones of her own misfortune, as though she were reciting a prayer. Her smile, the smile that animated the anæmic homeliness of her features with a vaporous light of dawn, gradually faded.
Six of her brothers had been killed in one afternoon. They belonged to the same battalion and she had received the news of the six deaths at the same time. Thirty-two of her relatives were now beneath the ground and veryfew of them had been soldiers in the beginning. Before the war they had lived lives of pleasure. They enjoyed great wealth and titles: Life had been as sweet to them as to Prince Lubimoff.... But when they heard the call of duty!... "No one chooses the spot where he is born; no one can decide which his country shall be and what his lineage. We come into the world according to the whims of chance, in the upper or the lower stories of society, and we mold our lives according to the place designated by fate. Neither can any one choose the times he will live in. Happy they who are born in peace times, when humanity is wrapped in calm, and its prehistoric savagery is slumbering within the shell formed by civilization; happy also they who are born into a powerful family and find themselves exempted from the struggle of life."
"But when we are born into a period of madness," she continued, "we have to resign ourselves and adapt ourselves to it, without seeking to avoid the painful burden that falls on our shoulders. It is our duty to suffer so that others later on may be happy as our forefathers suffered for our sakes."
What grief she had felt on receiving at a single stroke the news of the death of all her brothers! She did not consider herself an extraordinary being; she was simply a woman like any other. She had wept. She had abandoned herself to her despair. Then, an idea kept drifting through her mind joyously refreshing her drooping spirits. Supposing men were immortal in this life! Then despair would be horrible indeed. If you considered that the dead might have saved their lives by keeping far from every danger! But no one was immortal.
"Whether you die from a bullet wound or from microbes, makes little difference. Only the external circumstances vary, and for many people there is a greaterfascination in returning to dust in a lightning-like manner in the full intoxication of battle, with a generous idea in one's mind, than in slowly fading away in confinement between two sheets, defiled and degraded by the filth of a material nature beginning to disintegrate.
"It is a sort of holy fear necessary, for that matter, to the preservation of human life, and it troubles people and makes them hide from themselves the terrible truth that waits at the end of every life. Sensible people consider it madness to go out in quest of death. It is all very well if death is something motionless which sets hands only on those who draw near it of their own accord. But if man does not go forward to meet death, death, with its hundred-league boots, runs in search of man. Who can guess the moment of the meeting? The best thing, then, is to scorn it; and not pay it the tribute of constant thought which engenders anxiety and fear.
"Besides, death in bed is an unfruitful and sterile death. To whom could it be of use, except one's heirs? The other kind of death, death for an idea, even for an erroneous idea, means something positive. It is an act of energy and faith and the aggregate of such acts makes up the noblest history of humanity."
The Prince admired the simplicity with which this woman, who was almost in a dying condition, exalted the heroism of life and scorned death.
She had placed her ideal very high beyond the selfish desires which form the warp and woof of ordinary lives. If every one were to suit merely his own convenience, humanity as a whole would have no reason to consider itself superior to animals.
The noblewoman possessed an ideal: to sacrifice herself for her fellow beings; to serve them even at the cost of her own life. She was almost glad of the war, which had helped her to find her true path. In peace times shewould have done the same as every woman, linking her lot with that of a man, bearing children and building up a family.
"Amorous affection reduces the world to two beings; a mother's love finds nothing of interest beyond her own progeny. Only when old age is reached and the illusory perspectives of life have faded away, is the great truth apparent that people must be interested in every living being, ready to sacrifice themselves for every living being. But the exalted sympathy of old age is unfruitful and brief."
Mary Lewis considered herself fortunate in having rushed forward in the right direction from the first moment, without the long evasions of other people, who are late in reaching the truth.
"I have had my romance, like every one else."
She said this simply, but at the same time what blood was left in her veins animated her features with a faint blush, as though she were confessing something extraordinary.
She had been loved by a scholarly man, a former secretary of her father, the Colonial Governor. Only once had they confessed their love. Afterwards their life continued as before, both of them keeping the secret, postponing the realization of their dreams to an indefinite future.... But the war came.
He had hastened, among the first, to enlist as a volunteer: "Mary, I am a soldier." And Mary had replied: "That is right." They wrote short letters to each other at long intervals. They had more important things to do. He did not have the handsome features and the strength of a hero, like Lady Lewis' brothers. He even suspected that his bearing was scarcely military because of the ungainliness that comes from a sedentary life, spent in bending over a writing table. But he did his duty, andmore than once he had been cited for his cool audacity.
Their desires would now never be fulfilled. Even though she might succeed in surviving the war, she would continue her present existence in civilian hospitals, in far-off countries scourged by plagues. He perhaps would marry another, or perhaps would remain faithful to her memory, devoting himself for his part to relieving the pain and sorrows of his fellow beings. But they would live apart, going where duty called them, thinking constantly of each other, but without meeting, like the cultivated monks and passionate nuns of other centuries, who filled their lives with spiritual friendships maintained in widely separated monasteries and convents.
Once more Michael admired her abnegation. Lady Lewis belonged to that small group of the elect, who do not know what selfishness is and long to sacrifice themselves for what is good. She was one of that immortal line of saintly women who existed before the birth of religion and who will continue to flourish just the same when skepticism has finally ruined all our present beliefs.
"You are an angel," said the Prince.
"No," she protested; "I am a lover, a great lover."
Lubimoff smiled with a certain air of pity.
"You a lover?"
She went on talking as though her listener's surprise annoyed her. What was other women's love compared to hers? They fixed their tenderness, their desire for self-sacrifice, on one man only. Beyond him they found nothing worthy of interest. She loved all men, all of them, even the soldiers of the enemy whom she had often cared for in the ambulances at the front. They were mistaken, and if they really were guilty souls and wished to continue being so, all she could see in them was their physical condition as, threatened by death, they lay stretched out on their beds, with their flesh mangled.They were simply unfortunate beings, and this was enough to make her forget their nationality.
She wanted her own side to triumph because the other represented the exaltation of brute strength, the glorification of war, and it was her desire that there should be no more wars. She longed for the time when love would rule the whole world!... It was bad enough that men could not suppress with like facility, poverty, pain and death, the black divinities which seize us at our birth and with whom we struggle up to the last moment.
"I love everything that is alive: People, animals, and flowers. Beside such love, what is the affection between a man and a woman, which people consider the only love and is simply the selfishness of two beings setting themselves apart from their fellow beings, and living only for themselves? My love is likewise a kind of selfishness. I realize it; perhaps it is something worse: pride. If you only knew how gay I feel when I have saved from death one of my 'flirts,' one of those poor wounded men whom I shall never see again!... No, don't admire me, Prince, and don't feel sorry for me. I am merely a poor woman! by no means an angel! Moreover, I am very bad; I have my repentances, like every one else."
"You, Lady Mary!" the Prince exclaimed again with a look of incredulity. That he should have no doubts about it she hastened to relate the great sin of her life. Traveling through Andalusia she had seen some boys on a river bank who were trying to drown a stray dog, throwing stones at it. Mary fell upon them, mad with rage, striking them with her parasol. One of the little fellows wept, and blood spurted from his nostrils. This unhappy memory had often troubled her in the night.Now she could not see a child without caressing it with all the ardor occasioned by remorse.
Also she had had quarrels in various countries with drivers who were whipping their work animals and with hotel keepers who would not allow her to keep in her room lost dogs and cats she found in the streets.
Before the war, her pity had been entirely for animals. Humanity was able to defend itself. But now, the butchery of beings in uniforms had turned her sweet tenderness toward mankind. They needed love and protection more than the poor brutes.
The mention of her "flirts" suddenly brought her back to her duty. At that very moment they were tossing, covered with bandages, in their beds, and anxiously calling for her presence. Or else they were sitting on a bench with motionless eyes turned toward the sun, refusing to take a walk until they could feel the gentle support of her arm. "Good-by, Prince!" She must go! Her lovers were waiting for her.
As she stood up, she thought again of the reason for her visit and spoke once more in the tone that revealed the firmness of her will.
It was useless for him to seek the Duchess. The poor woman after entering so many blind alleys in her life, had finally found the true path, the one she herself, more fortunate, had discovered while still in her youth. The Virgin Dolorosa spoke in a simple, natural way of Alicia's past. She knew it all. In the silence of Villa Rosa, the other woman had confessed it in despair, without the nurse feeling either scandalized or amazed. What did the moral capacity of a mere individual mean, when at every moment the world was beholding the most unheard of crimes.
"She left this morning and is a long way off—a longway!" said the gentle woman. "It is possible that you will never see each other again. I will write her that you forgive her. That will afford her the peace of mind she needs in her new life."
The Prince was going with her as far as the entrance to his gardens. During the walk he began once more to lament his fate. He needed to relieve by articulation the despair in which he was left by the refusal of the English woman to tell him where Alicia was staying.
"I am very unhappy, Lady Mary."
"I know," she replied. "My misfortunes are greater than yours, but I rise above them better."
For Mary life was a sort of balance. In one pan of the scales suffering had perforce to fall. No one could free himself from that burden. But the spirit must re-establish the equilibrium by placing in the other pan something great, an ideal, a hope. She had found the necessary counterweight: love for everything alive, sacrifice for one's fellow beings, and consequent abnegation.
What did the Prince have to counter-balance the shocks of destiny?... Nothing. He went on living the same as in peace times, thinking only of himself. He was still just as the great mass of men had been, before the war drew them from their selfish individualism, making the virtues of solidarity and sacrifice flourish once more in their souls. For that reason all he needed to feel desperate was a mere obstacle to his desires, a disappointment in love, that should really be an affliction only in the life of a mere boy. Oh, if only he could get a high ideal! If only he could think less about himself and more about mankind!...
They shook hands beside the gate.
"Good-by, Lady Lewis!" said the Prince, bowing.
If Don Marcos had been present the Prince's voiceat that moment would have sounded familiar to him. It was the same as on the afternoon of the duel, when he met the English woman with the two blind men; a beautifully solemn voice which wavered close to tears.
Toledo did not appear until a few moments later, coming out of the gardener's pavilion, to meet the Prince, who was returning pensively toward the villa.
Lubimoff spoke and gave an order in stern tones.
"I am leaving for Paris. I want to go to-morrow. Make all the necessary arrangements."
Then, as he gazed into the Colonel's eyes, he continued in a gentler voice:
"I think I shall never return here.... I am going to sell Villa Sirena."
DONMARCOSis descending the slopes of the public gardens toward the Casino Square, in conversation with a soldier.
He is no longer the ceremonious Colonel who used to kiss the hands of the elderly and noble ladies in the gambling rooms, and was present as the inevitable guest at the luncheons of all the titled families stopping at the Hôtel de Paris. There is nothing about his person to recall the long velvet lined frock coats, the high white silk hats, and the other splendors of his eccentric elegance. He is soberly dressed in a dark suit, and there is something rustic about his appearance, which reveals the man who lives in the country, enjoys cultivating the soil, and feels constraint on returning to city life. He is wearing gloves, just as in the good old days; but now it is out of necessity. His hands remind him of a certain narrow garden around his diminutive villa, with five trees, twelve rose bushes, and some forty shrubs all of which he knows individually, by names he has given them. He has been caring for them so fondly, and caressing them so often, that his fingers have become calloused.
The soldier is also walking along like a country man, looking with curiosity in every direction. A stiff mustache covers his upper lip, one of those stiff and aggressive mustaches which come out after long periods of continual shaving. His uniform is old, faded by the sun and rain. The yellowish cloth has the neutral color of the soil. His right arm hangs inert from the shoulder andmoves in rhythm with his step, like a dangling inanimate object. His hand is covered with a glove, the rigidity of which reveals the outline of something hard and mechanical. The other hand leans on a knotty cane, and smoke is curling from a pipe in his lips. On his sleeves, almost mingling with the color of the cloth, is the one narrow officer's stripe.
"It has been ten months and twenty days, since your Highness left here. How many things have happened!"
The soldier is Prince Lubimoff; but Lubimoff seems stronger, more serene and decided than the preceding year, in spite of his artificial arm. There are the same gray hairs, scattered here and there, on his head; but his mustache, on being allowed to grow, has come out almost white.
The Colonel's side whiskers are like his mustache. With the disappearance of his elegance, the touches of the toilet table have likewise ceased, and the modest gray, obtained by careful dying, has given place to the white of frank old age.
Don Marcos points to the Square toward which they are both going.
"If your Highness had only seen it the night of the Armistice!"
The news of the triumph made every one come running. They descended from Beausoleil, they came up from La Condamine, and they arrived from the rock of Monaco. For the first time in four years, the façades of the Casino, the hotels and cafés, were illuminated from top to bottom.
The Square was overflowing with people. They all seemed to blink as though dazzled by the light, after the long darkness in which the submarine menace had kept them plunged. Several brass instruments roared out the Marseillaise, and the crowd following the flags ofthe Allied countries and, unwilling to leave the Square, kept marching about the "Camembert," like moths about a flame.
Suddenly a long dancing line formed, afarandole, and it began to run and leap, growing at each twist and turn. Every one, in the contagion of enthusiasm, joined out; officers grasped hands with privates; solemn ladies kicked up their heels and lost their hats; timid girls shouted, with their hair flying; the faces of the women had the look of enthusiastic madness which is seen only in times of revolution. The lame hopped and skipped, the blind imagined they could see, and those who had lost their hands held on with their stumps to the serpentine line. The Marseillaise seemed like a miraculous hymn, giving every one new strength. Peace!... Peace!
In one of its evolutions, the head of the human snake climbed the steps of the Casino. Thefarandolewas trying to enter the antechamber, and the gambling rooms, to wrap its coils about the crowd, thecroupiers, and the tables. Every selfish activity should cease in that hour of generous joy.
"Alas, the gamblers! What a malady gambling is, Your Highness! On reaching the Square they took off their hats to the flags, and almost wept, as they sang a verse of the Marseillaise. 'Long live France! Long live the Allies!' And immediately they entered the Casino to bet their money on the same number as the celebrated date, or on other combinations suggested by peace."
The gate-keepers, with the air of old gendarmes, concentrated in a heroic body to keep off with their breasts, their bellies and their fists the turbulent snake dance which was trying to enter the sacred edifice. They seemed indignant. When had such extraordinary insolenceever been seen? Peace was a good thing, and people might well rejoice; but to come into the Casino like a dancing riot, to interrupt the functioning of an honorable industry!... And they had finally shoved the line of disheveled women down the steps, and the decorated soldiers who were suddenly forgetting their infirmities and their wounds were driven after it.
The Prince and Toledo arrive at the Square and turn to the left of the Casino, toward the Café de Paris.
Lubimoff sits down at a table, at a protruding angle of the sidewalk café which people nickname "The Promontory." The Colonel remains on his right. He has spent the afternoon with the Prince, and must return home. He is no longer so free as before; some one is living with him, and his new situation imposes unavoidable obligations.
In his mind's eye he can see, on the heights of Beausoleil, the little house he lives in, surrounded by its little garden. It is all his by registered public deed. But the fate of his property does not worry the Colonel; no one will carry off his walls and trees. What makes him nervous is a certain non-commissioned American officer, young and well built, who has a mania for walking about the dwelling; and certain bright eyes which from a window follow the soldier with a hungry look; and certain lips red as cherries, that smile at that American; and certain hands which Don Marcos thinks he has surprised from a distance throwing down a flower, though their owner shrieks at him in fury every day to convince him that he has been imagining things.
Don Marcos is married. A few weeks after the departure of the Prince, a great change came into his life. Villa Sirena already belonged to the nouveau-riche who was a maker of auto trucks and aeroplanes, and whohad also bought the Paris residence. The Colonel on giving him possession, remembered only to praise the merits of the gardener and his family.
Lubimoff, before leaving for the front, had arranged for his "chamberlain's" future, assuring him a pension of ten thousand francs a year, and also sending him a certain sum with which to buy a house. Since the Colonel had set his mind on dying in Monte Carlo, he ought to have a little Villa Sirena of his own.
After digging in the garden on his property for a short time, with an occasional glance down on the Casino Square, Toledo went in search of Novoa. The Professor was his best friend; besides, he was a Spaniard, and it was the latter's duty to be of service to him, in the most important event in his life. He needed a best man for his wedding. The Professor was dumbfounded on being informed that the Colonel was going to marry the gardener's daughter. She was young enough to be his grandchild! It was tempting fate for a man of his years to expose himself deliberately to such dangers.
"You, Don Marcos, as a Spaniard, must remember," said Novoa, "that the Saint whose name you bear has a bull with long horns for his emblem! Besides, youth has its rights."
"And old age its duties," replied the Colonel, with a kindly air, resigning himself to his future.
At present, standing beside the Prince, he stammers with timidity and embarrassment. He hates to confess that he must desert him.
"Mado is waiting for me: you see, the poor girl doesn't go out very much. She likes to have me take her to the afternoon concerts on the terraces. It is five o'clock."
And when the Prince assents, with a slight nod, Toledo rushes off precipitously. Then, farther on, he beginsalmost to run up the slope, panting, but without feeling his weariness. He wants to reach home as soon as possible, and yet is afraid of doing so. He is sure of Mado only when he is within range of her shrieks. He shudders when he thinks that he may be "imagining things" again.
As the Prince remains alone, the glass that is before his eyes gradually fades away and with it the adjoining tables, and the people seated around the "Camembert." His vision contracts, and buries itself deep within his mind to contemplate other images of memory.
He arrived in Monte Carlo that morning. Only a few hours have passed, and he has seen so much already!
He recalls certain remarks of his friend Lewis; and remarks, made during one of the luncheons at Villa Sirena: "Life is strange and uneven as it flows along. Time goes by without anything extraordinary arising, and then, all of a sudden, hours do the work of months, days are as eventful as years, and things happen in a few moments which, at other times, would take centuries." How many people have died in the relatively short space of time that has elapsed since he last left Monte Carlo!
Lubimoff recalls the brief and exciting period after his arrival in Paris: his enlistment in the Foreign Legion; the Commission of Second Lieutenant granted him in recognition of his former service as Captain in the Imperial Guards; his departure for the front, after distributing or investing the million and a half derived from the sale of Villa Sirena, his hard life in action, the battles and slaughter accompanying, with gruesome prodigality, the advances of the triumphant offensive. He recalls his meeting with a member of the Legion who suddenly called to him and whom he had some difficulty in recognizing: Atilio Castro! Castro had changed. Hisironical smile had vanished. He looked on life with greater seriousness, and now seemed convinced of the worth of his actions. They belonged to different battalions, and they did not see each other again, till late one afternoon, after a fight, he came across him. The poor boy was lying stretched out on the ground, among other corpses. His forehead had been crushed in and his brain was showing under the wound! On that face the death grin was a smile of serenity. Poor Castro! What could have become of Doña Clorinda?
The Prince's mind wanders from that memory. Other lost friends claim his attention. He evokes finally a more recent vision: his arrival after a long convalescence in a hospital, in Monte Carlo. On getting out of the train, Toledo deeply moved, gazes at his artificial arm, which hides but imperfectly the amputation. He had suffered for several months from the consequences of a stupid, accidental wound, received ingloriously a few days before the armistice.
He ascends the slope to the delightful little home of Don Marcos, which will be his own while he remains here. Down below, projecting into the sea, the promontory of Villa Sirena meets his eye. It now belongs to another man, and he turns his glance away to keep certain memories from welling up. In doing so his eyes chance to meet the eyes of Mado, Toledo'sseñora; eyes which doubtless consider Prince Lubimoff more interesting, with his mustache, his elderly appearance, and his uniform, than when he was the elegant master of her parents. Poor Colonel! And Michael flees the tempting glance, and the full scarlet lips, which seem to challenge him to smile.
After lunch he follows a path which zigzags up the mountain; he sees a stone wall, passes through a door,and briefly contemplates a monument surmounted by a huge rooster.
Toledo bares his head. Peace to the heroes! Then he points to the entrance of the funereal structure.
"Poor Martinez is there."
They descend several steps to another part of the cemetery, lying in terraces on the mountain slope. On that level plot the tombs are leveled off even with the soil, with slabs of stone protected by low rectangular fences of chain, or simply bordered with flowers. An æsthetic instinct seems to explain the sparing use of ornaments here. From these mournful esplanades of death one can see a great expanse of green coast, dotted with the white of villas and towns; the rose-colored Alps, the capes of purple rock, the deep intense blue of the Mediterranean, and the soft limpid blue of a cloudless sky. And the graves seem to smile at all this splendor of Nature.
The Colonel searches among them, reading the names.
"Here, Marquis."
He points to a slab with a simple inscription: "Mary Lewis."
"Just like a bird, your Highness. One morning at dawn they found her poor little body dead on the hospital cot. She hadn't cried out, she hadn't complained; she departed as she had lived. The nurses say that the face was smiling. Her body was as light as a feather."
Around the tomb several wreaths were turning black, as though scorched by fire. Toledo seeks among these offerings of the dead woman's companions, until he points to a handful of fresh roses, which are beginning to decay.
"They must be from Lord Lewis," he goes on to say. "When things go badly in the Casino, he comes up tosee his niece. Your Highness must know, of course, that with the death of Lady Lewis, he is now a Lord—really a Lord."
The Prince shrugs his shoulders. To think of human vanities in a place like this, which makes all earthly worries seem grotesque!
Don Marcos guesses his impatience, and as they descend two more terraces, he goes on explaining.
"The English woman died before the other; that is why they buried her farther up. So many people have died in the last few months!"
They reach the last terrace of the cemetery, the lowest one, a square field of reddish earth in which there are no slabs, no truncated columns, and no fences of chain. Little mounds of earth taking the form of a coffin indicate the location of the graves. Some of them have wooden crosses. From one of the latter hangs the picture of a young soldier in the center of a wreath laid there by his parents.
Two men show their heads and shoulders above the ground and disappear from sight again after emptying their shovels. They are opening a grave for some one who is soon to come. Michael notices floating up from the vibrant, luminous air, the mournful sound of a bell, tolling in an unseen church below.
The Colonel insists on explaining.
"It is a temporary grave, without any slab, without any name."
On account of the war, it was impossible to send the body to Paris. It will lie here the length of time the law demands, and then the young lady, who is her heir, will have her taken to the vault in the Passy Cemetery where her mother is buried. He hesitates somewhat as he examines the mounds, and finally stops in front of one of them, and takes off his hat.
"Here it is."
Lubimoff cannot hide his surprise. "Here?..." He sees a heap of earth, without anything to adorn it, without anything to differentiate it from the rest, and which inspires in him no emotion at all. He looks anxiously at his companion. Hasn't he made a mistake? Are they not standing beside the tomb of some poor soldier who died of his wounds?
The Colonel, somewhat offended by the question, repeats energetically: "Here it is." He remembers that he was the only man present at the funeral. Three nurses, Señorita Valeria, and he, followed the coffin to these heights; there was no one else.
Poor Duchess de Delille! Toledo is moved on remembering her unexpected death. Lady Lewis had sent her to the front. Having been born in the United States, it was fairly easy for her to be admitted to a hospital unit with the American Divisions that were fighting at Château-Thierry.
The Prince, listening to the explanations of Don Marcos, recalls a confession Alicia once made to him. Her hands were clumsy. Her spirit, anxious to do good, weakened at the moment of action through a lack of material training. Doubtless for that reason she had been sent back a few weeks later to the Riviera, to give her services in a quieter hospital than the ambulance stations at the front.
Toledo had not seen her. She was living in the neighborhood of Monte Carlo without his ever suspecting it. The first news he had had of her was that of her death; a death which leaves the Colonel pensive whenever he recalls it. She became infected by a surgical instrument which had just been used in an operation. Perhaps it was because of the clumsinessof her hands; perhaps ... who knows! Don Marcos believes that the Duchess was tired of life.
"A horrible death, Marquis. I did not see her: I am glad I didn't. They tell me she was black and swollen. Besides, for several hours she was in torture, lifting herself on her head and heels, arching above the bed, with the muscles of her body tense with the most atrocious suffering. Tetanus! How terrible for a great lady, so beautiful, so elegant to die like that! But in the midst of such pain she found the peace of mind to dictate her last testament. Señorita Valeria has inherited Villa Rosa, and several hundred thousand francs: all that she won that night at the Sporting Club. As for your Highness...."
The Prince interrupts him with a gesture. He has known for a long time, from the letters of Don Marcos, that Alicia remembered him in her last moments, leaving him heir to her silver mines in Mexico, all that she possessed on the other side of the ocean; nothing at the present moment, but in the future perhaps a fortune, almost as great as that which Lubimoff formerly held in Russia.
He remains with his eyes fixed on the grave. On it he sees some fine moss, a miniature forest, opening its branches at the breath of spring, and among the tiny leaves diminutive flowers are stirring. Several greenish black butterflies, spotted with red, are fluttering above this murmuring forest of budding life, much as the monstrous prehistoric birds fluttered above the first vegetation of the globe.
Michael sees a relation between these insects and the spirit that dwelt in the organism now disintegrating a few feet under the ground beneath his feet. The varied, clashing colors remind him of the dead woman's soul. In the same way a few minutes before, a white butterflyfluttering above the flowers brought by Lewis reminded him of the child-like and sublime soul of Lady Mary.
At present, sitting in the café, his emotions are greater than in the cemetery. He can see events through a veil of memory, spiritualized, and free from the sediment of reality.
Poor Alicia! Poor woman, disillusioned of life! The triumphant Venus, the Helen of the "old men on the wall," the beauty who was the center of the Universe, more eager for admiration than for love, is lying in this miserable cemetery, among the bodies of soldiers. Perhaps she voluntarily hastened her exit from a world in which she could not find her place, defeated by her own actions.
Our lives are nothing more than what we will them to be. We create life in our own image; it is useless for us to complain of fate: we are what we want to be. It was impossible for Alicia to end her days save in some extraordinary manner, in harmony with her previous career. He, too, has lived as most men do not live, and he will die a different death from them.
He feels neither grief nor resentment. He is surprised that he could have hated Martinez and desired this woman with such vehemence. At present he feels only melancholy and a deep sadness at the memory of those dreams that no longer exist and which are beginning to die a second death, in being forgotten by those who knew of them. They have no immortality save in the memory of the Prince, a poor memory destined to fade away in turn before many years.
In his imagination he attempts to pierce the mass of earth that covers the dead body; he makes an effort to penetrate with his vision into the densest of the shadows. Only a few months of decomposition have gone by: her personality has not yet wasted away completely. He seesher as she was in life and at the same time as she is now. Her flesh is disintegrating in little putrid rivulets that run down the folds of her clothes, blackened and eaten away. She is forced to smile at all times in the darkness: she no longer has any lips. Her eyes serve as a refuge for the prolific grave flies which engender millions and millions of destroyers. And this annihilation of something which existed, thought, and loved, is as yet only in its first stages.
After the devourers of the soft parts will come the irresistible artisans of the bones. Myriads of micro-scopical workers will plow the skeleton, cleaning away the last impurities clinging to the framework, undoing the marvelous articulations, scraping away the cement which holds the vertebræ together. Some day the lower jaw will loosen, falling toward the abdominal cavity, leaving the upper jaw bone, the teeth of which knew the splendor of smiles and the caress of kisses. Some other day, the skull, as the pivot on which it rests comes apart, will fall in turn and mingle with the dust of the ribs and the little bones of the feet which mark the rhythm of an undulating walk. Within a few centuries revolutions and wars will perhaps bring this skull to the surface. Why not? Lubimoff has just seen at the front numerous cemeteries swept away by gunfire, with the dead emerging from the earth, raised thus by the bursting shells. And when some one, in the future, with the eternal curiosity of the Shakespearean Prince takes Alicia's skull in his hand, he will not be able to tell whether it belonged to a lady or a servant, whether it belonged to a beauty or to a drab.
Michael recalls with ironical sadness all the illusions, all the desires, he had in the past, concentrated on this nothingness. He begins to feel the need of forgetting the corpse. His eyes, looking within, see the diminutivefoliage, the gaudy butterfly, and all that nature has placed on a nameless tomb. This is what a life which considered itself superior to all others has left as the only trace of its existence. Perhaps in the corolla of one of the little flowers there is something of Alicia's soul, the butterflies sip it, and continue in an intoxicated flight above the tombs.
Springtime! The Prince lifts his thoughts above the sorrows of individuals. He recalls what he has seen in a corner of the world ruined by man's bestiality: cities in ruins; villages that raise their walls only a yard above the soil, like towns which have been excavated after a cataclysm; barns set on fire; endless fields made sterile, torn apart and turned topsy turvy by five years of bombardment; many graves—thousands of graves—millions of graves. Women, dressed in black, stagger along the roads through the ruins and the funnel-shaped chasms opened by the monstrous projectiles. They have lost their children, they have seen their husbands executed, and now they are exploring the soil in search of their homes that were....
But the Winter-time of war is over; and now the Spring of Peace is here. The same hand, touching all things with green, puts little flowers and butterflies on the nameless graves, hangs fragrant garlands on the fire-blackened walls, spreads a velvet carpet of emerald on the sides of the shell holes, makes the birds warble and the insects stir above the tombs, and guides the curling creepers over the black wood of the crosses, as though trying to change them into thyrsi.
Alas! The earth knows nothing of our sorrows.
The Prince comes out of his abstraction, and sees the Colonel greeting him from a distance.
Don Marcos is already back, and with him isMadameToledo, whose head scarcely reaches his shoulder. Onthe way she looks back several times, with the hope of finding herself followed by the American soldier.
On recognizing the Prince in the café, however, she forgets the other man, and seems to be entreating him with her eyes to leave his seat and to go out with her to the terraces.
The Colonel and his minx disappear in the direction of the terraces, and again Michael plunges into meditation. He recalls his talk with Don Marcos, shortly before, as they were descending from the cemetery.
Toledo seems inconsolable. According to him the war has not ended properly. He appears scandalized at the absurd manner of its conclusion! What terrible times these are! The fugitive of Amerongen disconcerts and irritates him.
"And imagine me doing him the honor of comparing him to a Lieutenant! I considered him man enough at least to blow his brains out!
"For thirty years he has been frightening the world with the rattle of his saber, and with his boastful mustache; for thirty years he has been calling himself war lord, making whole races tremble at his frown, his heroic attitudinizing, and his melodramatic speeches; for thirty years he has been preparing millions of men for slaughter, obliging peoples of the world to live under arms in the midst of peace. And now, when misfortune seeks him for her own, when he considers his life in danger, he shamefully flees to a foreign country and deserts his supporters, like a merchant going into a fraudulent bankruptcy."
"It is the greatest lie humanity has ever known," the Colonel shouts indignantly. "The greatest swindle in history."
It does not prove anything to kill one's self; Don Marcos is well aware of that. But in this life there areso many things that do not prove anything and which nevertheless are beautiful and logical! The despair of those who commit suicide through love does not prove anything either, and yet it has inspired the greatest works of poetry and other arts. The sailor, who wrecks his ship, kills himself; every man of honor who considers his fault irreparable appeals to death, in order that when he falls, he may fall in a dignified manner.
"And that Emperor," Toledo continued, "who planned an organized slaughter of ten million men, wants to live to a ripe old age. It's the most shameless thing I ever heard of!
"Military honor, such as it had come to be understood through the various centuries, was unknown likewise to his generals. Those specialists in burning towns, those technicians in executing peasants, those artisans of terror, on seeing disaster coming, tranquilly returned to their castles, like office boys leaving their work.
"Of all these companions of the 'war lord,' the only one worthy of respect was a civilian, a manufacturer, a Jew, the munition maker Ballin, of Hamburg, who on seeing the Empire ruined, did not want to survive it and shot himself. In the meantime the Marshals of the strategy that failed, tranquilly begin to devote themselves to training their dogs, writing their memoirs, and looking after their health.
"Napoleon, in one of his last battles, stopped his horse over a lighted bomb; later he tried to poison himself at Fontainebleau. He courted death, and resigned himself to living, like a fatalist, only on becoming convinced that death would have nothing to do with him. The other Napoleon, the one of Sedan, may have taken refuge in Belgium, abandoning his troops much as the sad German Cæsar had done; but ill and fainting, on his horse, he nevertheless preferred to gallop along a high road sweptby gun fire, hoping that a shell would tear him to pieces."
That is the way Toledo understands military honor. That is the way it has been accepted in all ages.
Against the Imperial generals, recreants, ready to run in the hour of danger, like comedians thinking only of their reputations, his anger is implacable. Hemmed in by the Allies, with their lines broken, they might have fallen nobly fighting until the last moment. But they preferred to beg for an armistice and hand over their weapons, in order that the imbeciles who had admired them so greatly might go on believing in their divine invincibility, and be sure that if they were retiring to their estates it was only out of consideration for internal politics.
"Sorry comedians, like their master, up to the very last moment!" And Don Marcos, thinking of the fear these men have made the whole world feel for thirty years, cries out in anger:
"Swindlers! Swindlers!"
Once more the Prince comes out of his reverie. Somebody has stopped in front of him, and he hears a well known voice.
"Your Highness, what a joy to see you! The Colonel has just told me of your arrival."
It is Spadoni: the same old Spadoni, as though but a few hours have gone by since his last interview with the Prince; as though it is only yesterday that he bellowed with indignation, as he studied at the pianoWhat the Palm Tree Said to the Century Plant.
He doesn't want to sit down: he is in a hurry; he came just to shake hands with his Highness. He will make a point of seeing him later when he has more time, in the Casino. He takes it for granted that the Prince is going into the Casino. Where else could a decent person go in Monte Carlo?