"Undoubtedly."

"You can imagine that I don"t believe that?"

"Then it would be useless to question me, as, if what you suppose be true, I can not, and ought not, to confess it to you."

What the princess could not and would not tell her mother was that she was _enceinte_ by Paul Meyrin, and that this, more even than her love for him, compelled her to leave her husband at once.

"Do you imagine that your husband will always be ignorant of what is going on?" said Mme. Podoi, after a moment"s silence.

"I don"t know what you mean," said Lise, shrugging her shoulders.

"Suppose I were to warn the prince?"

"Warn him? About what? It is either too late or too soon. If it is too late, nothing shall hinder me pursuing my aims; and, thanks to you, there will be a scandalous rupture between Pierre and me. If, on the contrary, it is too soon, you will do a bad action for the sake of doing it, for the prince has perfect confidence in me. He would not believe you, and I should start on my journey all the same. Come, mother, I advise you not to mix yourself up with my affair. I am married--that is, I have to render account of my conduct to my husband alone. When the day to do so shall come--if unhappily it should come ever--I shall know how to defend myself; I won"t ask for your help. If you are willing you need say and stick to but one thing--that I am very far from well, and that as Doctor Psaroff, clever as he is, can do nothing for me, I am going to Paris to take the advice of more eminent men."

"Does the doctor believe you are unwell?"

"Can not women always be as ill as they wish to be, in spite of the keenest-sighted doctors?"

"Lise, there will be a bad ending to all this!"

"Fools alone make bad endings. Besides, I trust in Providence."

The dry, cutting, cynical tone of the princess in meeting each of her mother"s objections left no room for insistence. Lise Olsdorf could be wounded on one point alone--her maternal love; but Mme. Podoi had omitted to speak of her son, whom she must leave in Russia. What she dreaded was that her daughter would lose the high position she had won for her. Her pride being touched, to begin with, she had not given a thought to the only weapon which she could have used with effect.

"Then, adieu," said she, rising; and without so much as kissing her daughter, she left the room.

The princess did not try to keep her, but went back to her packing.

She had made up her mind to take no servant with her, not even a lady"s-maid, because to do so would be to risk exposure some day or other as to her condition.

To the affectionate concern of the prince as to her loneliness she replied that it seemed to her far better to engage a maid and a footman when once she was at her journey"s end, for the few weeks she meant to remain in France, than to be troubled by servants that were strange to Paris and its manners and could therefore be only useless.

The prince gave way, and next morning his wife set out for Paris.

Forty-eight hours after, Paul Meyrin had a telegram from Konigsberg, which he had been eagerly awaiting, to announce the coming of his mistress to Paris.

CHAPTER V.

PRINCESS AND MODEL.

Of course the Princess Olsdorf was not unknown to Paul Meyrin"s relatives. On his return from Russia, being questioned by his family on the incidents of his journey, the painter was forced to speak of the Olsdorfs and the hospitality he had enjoyed at Pampeln. He must needs show them the portrait of the princess, too, as it was to be shown at the coming exhibition.

We must therefore introduce the Meyrin family to our readers, amid whom some of the chief scenes of the story will happen.

Some ten years before the time of which we are speaking, the family had left Bucharest to come and live in Paris. Frantz Meyrin, Paul"s elder brother, had some skill as a violinist. He was a member of an orchestra imported into Austria and Germany, where the concerts they gave were much appreciated. The Roumanian artiste had accepted the offer of the Barnum who exhibited his and his companions" talents in this country, and that with the sole idea of settling wheresoever he saw a chance of making his fortune, or at any rate of establishing himself well. After playing in most of the chief towns of Europe, he came to Paris, where the success he won determined him to stay. When he came to depend upon himself alone, the struggle at first was a hard one, but Frantz was energetic and laborious. Things soon improved. Before a year had pa.s.sed he had pupils enough to make him easy about the future.

Then he sent for those of his family that he had left behind in Roumania--his old mother; his wife, Barbe; his daughter, Nadeje, a child of five; and his young brother Paul, who had just turned fifteen.

The little girl was clever, and she was to be trained as a musician, and Paul, who also showed apt.i.tude, was to be a painter.

At first they all lived together in the Rue Nollet, at Batignolles; afterward, Frantz"s success as a teacher and an executant having made its mark, they were able to take more comfortable rooms in the Rue de Douai.

Six or eight years later Nadeje was entered as a pupil at the Conservatoire, and Paul, under the tuition of Bouguereau, exhibited at the Salon a portrait of a child which won an honorable mention and made him known.

Paul had grown up into a handsome young fellow, well built and strong.

With his dark complexion, fine black eyes, and silky beard in its first growth, it was easy to guess that he would be successful among the women. But under this outward show of strength the young painter had a character lacking in energy and originality. Lazy and effeminate, he was entirely under the rule of his mother, and above all, of his sister-in-law, Mme. Frantz Meyrin. She was the autocrat of the household. She governed them all, her husband--a good fellow, who was untiring in his work as a teacher and player--as well as Paul, whose rare and feeble attempts at self-emanc.i.p.ation she repressed. The violinist"s wife was proud and weak about her daughter alone, in favor of whose future everything had to give way.

Through a psychological phenomenon which, becoming commoner from day to day, is a mark of our practical epoch, all in this family of artistes, for Mme. Meyrin herself was an excellent musician--was tradesman-like and prosaic--manners, dispositions, tastes, aspirations. Success was only success with them when it brought in plenty of money. It mattered nothing to Mme. Meyrin whether her husband had executed a piece of music in a masterly manner, or Paul had drawn with skill a child"s head. How much had been paid for them? That was the only question, as well too, unhappily, for Frantz and his brother as for the mistress of the household.

While devoting themselves to their work at the time of doing it, the musician and the painter did not linger long in these regions of high art after they had laid aside the one his violin, the other his brush.

They did not work without taste, but they worked in the most prosaic acceptation of the word, hastening in a sense to finish the task that the material wants of life put upon them.

Their mode of life had its natural results in the matter of friendships and acquaintances. Though justice was done to his talents and modesty and tact, Frantz got no higher than being a paid musician at the houses where he played. As much from economy as through her indifference to society, Mme. Meyrin held few receptions. She gave in the course of a winter three or four musical matinees, to show off her husband"s pupils, and especially her daughter.

As for the friends of the family, they numbered a dozen at most--some countrymen of theirs, a few musicians, Armand Dumesnil, an old actor at the Odeon, and a young woman, Mme. Daubrel, the heroine of a very painful story.

Married when quite young to a man in a large way of business as an export agent, an honest fellow, Marthe Daubrel, who was of a romantic turn of mind and was often left alone by her husband, had listened to the madrigals of a third-cla.s.s writer. Thanks to her romantic imagination and her inexperience, she had yielded to him, was about to become a mother, and had confessed everything to her husband, who, instead of taking a violent revenge, appealed to the law, a judicial separation being decreed on his pet.i.tion. He returned her dowry to his adulterous wife, and emigrated, taking with him the son she had borne to him before her fall.

Within three months" time Mme. Daubrel was delivered of a daughter, who lived but a few weeks. Her illusions dispelled, she broke off all intercourse with her seducer, returned to her mother, and, gentle and resigned, speaking of her husband only with the greatest respect, determined to expiate the past by conduct irreproachable at all points.

She lived isolated, and saw scarcely anybody but the Meyrins. She had been one of the first pupils of Mme. Frantz when she, on first coming to Paris, had to give lessons on the pianoforte to increase the resources of the family. With an indulgence one would scarcely have looked for in her, Mme. Meyrin excused, pitied the poor woman, and liked her very much.

As for Paul, his natural idleness, his want of backbone, the surroundings he lived amid, all had a bad influence on his talents. It was to be feared that he would never rise to higher work than that which had at first occupied him; that he would remain a painter, in a pleasing fashion, of women and children, and faithful to his blue and pink colors.

However, he made headway, and chiefly in the Russian colony.

Orders followed upon orders, and he began to be paid very fairly, to the joy of Mme. Meyrin, who was his self-appointed steward and cashier.

Indeed, when five-and-twenty Paul was not thoroughly out of leading-strings. He had his studio on the Boulevard de Clichy, at a short distance from the Rue de Douai, but he still lived with his family. His sister-in-law would not have suffered any other arrangement, for his removal would have deprived the Meyrin household of a notable part of its income. Mme. Frantz seemed to think that no change would ever come.

The rule he was under, from which he dared make no effort to free himself, determined Paul to lend an ear to the propositions to Count Barewski one fine day. He had painted a full-length portrait of the Countess Barewski which was not without merit, and her husband had persuaded him that if he would accompany him to St. Petersburg he would be received by the Russian aristocracy after a fashion that would result in a rich harvest.

The painter lost no time in telling his family of the plan. At first his sister-in-law Barbe had declared against it, but when Paul had explained what he hoped would be the outcome in money of his journey she consented to his going. Thereupon Paul had set off to Russia in company with Count Barewski.

In an earlier chapter we have seen what a flattering reception the young artist had at the hands of a goodly number of the Russian n.o.bility, and notably on the part of Prince Olsdorf; and we know what were the consequences, for the honor of Lise Barineff"s husband, of the hospitality which he so graciously offered to Paul Meyrin in Courland.

Let us antic.i.p.ate by some days the arrival of the Princess Olsdorf in Paris, where Paul, in spite of her promise to him, had not looked to see her so soon.

From the day after their separation the lovers had written to each other regularly, but they could not say by post all that they thought. Made acquainted by his mistress of the customs and practices of the Russian Government, the painter knew that all letters, going or coming, were stopped and read at the frontier by clerks whose discretion was more than doubtful. They had both been forced, therefore, to write with great care, and apt as their love made them to read between the lines of their guardedly affectionate letters, the correspondence instead of calming had given a sharper edge to their pa.s.sion.

Two or three times the princess, it is true, had used the good offices of one or other of her women friends to intrust them with letters in which she could give herself rein, but Paul had found no way of answering in the like strain; and Lise worse off than her lover, had often tormented herself with the question whether she was still pa.s.sionately loved.

It is certain she would have doubted it somewhat could she have known in all its details the life the artist led at Paris. In fact, though he adored the princess, Paul had nevertheless taken up the course of his old life; nor did he think himself unfaithful to his love in renewing on his return the intrigues he had had at the time of his departure for Russia.

Amid the former sweethearts of the young man was one who had played a more important part than the others. She was one Sarah Lamber, very pretty, a ballet-girl at the theaters of burlesque, and a well-known model in the studios. After posing for Paul five or six times she had taken a great fancy to him, and the painter had made her his mistress, supposing that it would be with her as it had been with others who had gone before her; that is, that he would rid himself of her easily when it pleased him so to do.