VII
HERACLIUS OF GEORGIA
A disappointed dream of love
One day a new figure appeared in the princess’s circle. A man of about forty: elegant figure of medium height, regular features with a melancholy, almost gloomy expression, and a long, narrow black imperial.
“My dear cousin, Prince Heraclius of Georgia—my darling Contessina, of whom I have told you so much,” said the princess, as she introduced us.
The cousin from Georgia pleased me and I pleased him also. Such a thing is detected instantly. A lively conversation immediately sprang up between us. Now we met several times a day, for the prince was constantly in his cousin’s company, was invited to her rooms for all meals and for the evenings. In the evening they used to have music—what is called music: the oldest son drummed on the piano and sang all kinds of songs from the music-halls and the boulevards; the rest joined in; I rendered a few real piano pieces,—Chopin nocturnes, Mendelssohn caprices, and Liszt rhapsodies,—sang a few of the ballads that were lying around, and reaped a rich harvest of applause. I was admired day after day as a musical marvel.
I liked to have the Dedopali tell me about her cousin. He was the son of the last King of Georgia; properly bore the name Bagration, just as the Russian emperors are Romanofs—he was a “Bagratide.” This designation sounded to me particularly heroic and classic. He had a palace in Tiflis and an ancient royal castle in the mountains. He lived much in Europe, but frequently went back to his home in the Caucasus, where he was still treated by the population as a king. In temperament he was melancholy rather than cheerful, the probable cause being his not altogether robust health—his yellowish complexion indicated a diseased liver. To cure such ailments he alternately drank of the waters of Homburg, Karlsbad, or Vichy.
“He would cure his ailments better,” added the princess, “if he would take a young wife who would cheer him up and make him right happy, a sweet young wife like you, ma petite Contessina—Just try and see if you can’t turn his head a little; it has long been the wish of my heart to have him married.”
Such advice turned my head a little. I really found this exotic sprig of royalty, this dark Bagratide, who was at the same time a thorough homme du monde, in the highest degree interesting. There is yet a step from being interested to being in love, but not a very long one. The slightest occasion, and this step is taken. This is the way it happened with me (I made use of this episode many years later in my novel Trente-et-quarante):
One day I had again been invited to dinner at the Villa Weckerlin. Those who sat next me at table were an Englishman—Lord Hillsborough—and Heraclius. After dinner the company repaired to the salon; the mistress of the house requested me to play something for them. Without being urged, I sat down at the grand piano and played with bravura a Chopin valse. Heraclius stood near me.
“You are an artist,” he said when I had finished.
It was now time to break up. The princess’s guests had also taken a box at the opera for that evening, and it had been agreed that we should go to the opera together.
I followed the princess into her dressing-room to rearrange, my hair a little. The locks to be curled, and the faded roses to be replaced with fresh ones. While Masha, the maid, was doing this work, I looked at my own picture set in the silver frame of the toilet mirror. How advantageously this thick polished glass showed the image: or was it the effect of the champagne that my cheeks glowed so vividly, as if they had been rouged? I took up the oval hand mirror; it showed the same dazzling color; and by means of the double reflection I could now also see the effect of the spray of roses drooping between the dark locks at the back of my neck.
The princess stood near the toilet table.
“Take a little poudre de riz, my love,” she said, and lifted the silver cover of a round glass jar. I pressed the puff into the fragrant powder and dabbed it against my face and neck; how cooling it was, how refreshing to the hot cheeks! And then, after the visible traces of rice flour had been wiped off with the soft rabbit’s foot, the too deep red in the cheeks had been changed to a tender rose, the lips glowed the more vividly, and the eyes sparkled darker than before.
To complete my toilet the princess gave me a sandalwood fan with steel spangles, and now we were ready.
When we entered the box the performance was already in progress. They were giving Rigoletto. Gilda was just rushing down the steps to meet her father. Mio padre!—Figlia mia! As it were a flood of delicate waves of tone came purling down from the stage, and the thickly packed theater presented a brilliant spectacle. The impressions of life’s splendor and joy which I was receiving that day kept on crescendo.
Heraclius of Georgia was present in the box. He sat opposite me and kept his eyes fixed on me. It seemed to me as if the captivating melodies in the duet between Gilda and the duke expressed what was streaming from heart to heart between Heraclius and me, still unspoken but already understood on both sides. I listened to the fiery strains of Verdi, and slowly moved my fan back and forth, every motion sending me a breath of sandalwood. Once I slightly turned my head and met the eyes of my vis-à-vis fixed upon me full of tenderness and admiration. Then I dropped my lids, but soon, in spite of myself, I lifted them again and gave the dear fellow a long, full gaze of love.
Now the curtain fell; the princess turned around, and Heraclius stood up; he made room for various visitors who came crowding into the box, and went out. Shortly afterwards I saw him on the other side of the house with his opera glass directed on me. During the rest of the performance Lord Hillsborough stayed in the box and Heraclius did not return.
After the quartet in the last act the princess stood up.
“Let us go,” said she; “I do not want to see the coming storm and the dragging out of the bag with the corpse. Instead, let us take a turn through the gaming-rooms.”
At the exit of the auditorium stood Heraclius. He came to my side.
“The performance is over at last! Were you very much fascinated by the Englishman’s conversation?”
“I was fascinated by the Italian’s music,” said I in reply.
A long gallery leads from the theater to the gaming-rooms. Heraclius walked by my side, and I expected every moment that he would put into words what had just now been uttered through the eyes; but then the princess began to involve her cousin in a conversation, which lasted till we entered the gaming-rooms.
Here we took our stand at the roulette table, and the princess flung some gold pieces on the tableau.
“I am going to make a proposition,” said Heraclius to his cousin. “To-day is Wednesday, and there is a ball here; let us go to the gallery and look on.”
The princess agreed, and the little company mounted the steps leading to the ballroom gallery.
This was full of people. There was hardly a place to be found between the spectators who were leaning over the railing. We had to separate; the princess took her place at one end of the gallery, I was at the other. Heraclius joined me. It was like a tête-à-tête. Crowded by the people who stood beside us, he had to come so near me that his arm rested on the railing close against mine. What we said no one else could hear, for the noise of the waltz music prevented words exchanged at close quarters from carrying to any remoter place. It was to a Strauss waltz—the Morgenblätter—that the couples on the floor below were whirling. But, though I looked down, I saw little of the swarm on the floor; my ball was up above. More giddily than under the maddest galop time I felt myself whirled onward by the prince’s proximity, by his words. The atmosphere was oppressive; the chandelier near us poured out a hot and dazzling light. I kept my fan going incessantly, and with its sandalwood scent it said something to me—for scents also speak—that enravished me.
“You are a magnificent girl,” Heraclius’s flattering voice was whispering in my ear meantime. “You have all the qualities to turn the soberest heads, to set the coldest hearts to beating. I had no idea that earth contained a being who could exercise such a witchery as you—”
“Children!” exclaimed the princess, coming up to us, “it is beyond endurance here; this heat is suffocating, the light makes one’s eyes ache, the music is deafening, and there is not much to look at in the dancing of those four or five ill-gowned Homburg girls. Don’t you agree with me? Let us go!”
Well, we had to go, for it was for the princess to decide, but I assuredly did not agree with her. The heat-radiating chandelier was to me a magic sun, the noise of the wind instruments was like the music of the spheres—a more glorious festivity I had never yet experienced.
The princess and her cousin accompanied me to the door of my house. It was still open.
“A demain, chérie!” said the princess, kissing me on the forehead. “But not at the spring,” she added. “Come at two o’clock.”
My mother was still up.
“How late you are! The theater was out long ago!”
“We have been looking on at the ball, mamma.”
“How did you enjoy yourself? Tell me.”
“To-morrow, dear mamma!”
I kissed my mother and went to rest.
Rest? “Who ne’er distressful nights upon his bed has sat in tears,” runs the well-known poem; but whoever has not through a long night, awaking every ten minutes, kept tossing from one side of the bed to the other, with a beloved name upon his lips, a glowing beatitude in his heart,—he also “knows you not, ye heavenly powers.”
A hundred times I started up from my slumber, and if I was not at once conscious why I was so utterly happy and whom I loved so very dearly, the sandalwood fan, which lay close to me on the stand, quickly told the story. Its fragrance played the Morgenblätter, poured out the hot light of the ballroom chandelier, and pressed a sleeve of black cloth gently and tremblingly against a sleeve of white muslin. Then I would deliciously go to sleep again, only to be reawakened soon by a powerful heart-throb. And so it went till morning.
Once again, just as when I was enamored of Friedrich von Hadeln, I was seized at waking by the consciousness of the rapturous “I love,” and with it the still more rapturous “I am loved.” Warm, almost tangible, it gushes from the heart, sweet, tender, full of yearning and yet glad in possession—for even yearning is a possession. Thus there is on earth something which yesterday was still unknown, still not in existence, and which to-day, so to speak, fills the world,—the unspeakably precious treasure, which is so wholly and completely the “one important thing.”
I was not to see him for three days; he had gone to Paris for that time. I filled these days with studies regarding the Caucasus and its history. Not only what the Dedopali could tell me, but also what I found in the encyclopedia and in Dumas’s book Le Caucase, gave me a glimpse into the distant, fabulous realm whose throne should by right have belonged to my Prince Heraclius.
On the second day I received from Paris a package and a letter. The package contained a full bonbonnière from Boissier, the accompanying letter a few polite lines. There was nothing out of the ordinary in it, but it intoxicated me outright, for it was signed with the name of Heraclius of Georgia, and from its thick paper adorned with a princely crown there exhaled a faint, but peculiarly sweet, fragrance. This letter-sheet and the sandalwood fan—both told me untranslatable things.
On the third day I went over to the Dedopali’s with quick-beating heart. I found her in her usual place in the little drawing-room.
“Ah, bon jour, Contessina—I have a greeting to transmit to you. My cousin writes me from Paris.... He was to be here to-day himself, but—I am not surprised at it in him, he is a man of moods—instead of coming, he writes to bid me farewell for this year; he left Paris yesterday to go direct to Tiflis.”
And I—silly thing—I burst into tears.
“For God’s sake, what is the matter, Contessina?”
“Oh, Dedopali,—it is too cruel!”
“What?... that my cousin has gone home? So you are in love with him?... Perhaps it may be your fate after all,—he may come back again; don’t cry. No man deserves to have a girl cry for him if he is capable of passing by his own good luck like that. Besides, all may yet turn out as your heart desires.”
These words were a balm to me. Merely the right to hope,—that is all that youth desires. And so I hoped that Heraclius would write me from Georgia. But he did not.—