XII
PARIS AGAIN
Return to Paris · Renunciation of an artistic career · A dream of Australian gold · Betrothal of Heraclius of Georgia
The Baden-Baden season was coming to an end. The Princess Murat wrote me that, as her plans for the summer had fallen through, we must return to Paris again in the ensuing winter, and there make up for what had been missed; she would give me many opportunities of enjoyment with her. We obeyed this suggestion, and journeyed back from Baden-Baden to Paris.
I refused, however, to go on with my lessons at the Duprez school. Singing had ceased to be the “one important thing.” Now that I had lost the conviction that my talents could raise me to the highest pinnacle of that art, I would give up the thought of practicing it publicly, and hereafter would merely exercise it for my own private enjoyment. My mind was now more and more directed to “high society”; association with all the princely, imperial, and royal personages had perhaps gone to my head. At any rate, the democratic tendencies which have marked my maturer years had not as yet been awakened.
During the last part of our stay at Baden-Baden a young man had managed to obtain an introduction to me, a very young man, who paid me notable attentions; every day he used to send me a magnificent bouquet. He was an Englishman, but born in Australia, where his father, it was said, had enormous possessions. I had not given further thought to this handsome youth, who, being apparently eighteen or nineteen, scarcely seemed a suitable candidate for marriage with me now that I was twenty-five, until one day he sent in his name at our Paris residence and begged permission to bring his father, who had just arrived from Melbourne. We consented, and the next day we received a call from an elderly gentleman, who was so lame that he had to be carried upstairs.
“Ladies,” his discourse began, “I am going to tell you without circumlocution what has brought me to you. In all probability I have not long to live, and I have an only son whose happiness in life I would gladly see assured. To be sure he is young to be married,—twenty years old,—but with us early marriages are not rare. He has fallen passionately in love with you, my dear young lady, and begs me to ask you for your hand; this I accordingly do with all formality. You will perhaps find this somewhat presumptuous on such a short acquaintance; but in the first place I have a very brief time before me,—I may be called away at any moment,—and in the second place I have so much to offer that there is no undue pretension in my acting as I do. I am the richest man in Australia. Among other things I own a whole street in Melbourne. My boy is my sole heir,—but even during my lifetime I am ready to settle upon him and my daughter-in-law a kingly fortune. The choice of the place where they may decide to live is left entirely to the young lady. At all events a hôtel in Paris shall be bought. It is of course necessary that you be able to obtain information about us: apply to the house of Rothschild, to which my letters of credit are directed. And now I beg of you to take a week to decide this question, and meantime to permit my son to spend an hour or two every afternoon in your house, so that the young people may become better acquainted. I myself am too ill to repeat my visit very often.”
After this pretty discourse, to which I made no reply and my mother only spoke a few words about “surprise” and “thinking it over,” the old gentleman bade us farewell, and we were left alone with our amazement. That same evening I related the circumstance to my friend and her husband.
“What fabulous good fortune, Contessina! You must seize it....”
I made some protest: “But I scarcely know the young man, I do not love him, I am too old for him....”
But my friends parried these objections. Especially Prince Achille threw himself into the matter. He offered his services to make the necessary inquiries, and, through his real-estate agent John Arthur, to see to the purchase of a magnificent palais. He ventured the prophecy that I should have the finest salon in Paris. Even if the young man did not boast an aristocratic name—I contributed that; and millions, so many millions, mean far more nowadays than rank and title. All this sounded very pleasant to me; my mother regarded the affair as a great stroke of luck, the young man was elegant and handsome and seemed to worship me,—so we said Yes.
Then the father appeared a second time and invited us to a drive which put me into a genuine Arabian-Nights frame of mind. We drove through the Champs-Élysées; it was for me to select one of four or five splendid palaces which were for sale. My choice fell on the Hôtel Païva,—a regular jewel casket, which Count Henckel-Donnersmarck had set up for the beautiful Madame Païva.
From the Champs-Élysées we drove to the Rue de la Paix. My future father-in-law had us stop in front of a great jewelry establishment. His valet lifted him out of the carriage and assisted him into the shop, where an easy chair was put at his service. The rest of us stood near by. He ordered them to show us the richest jewels that were to be had. The complaisant jeweler brought out his most magnificent wares, and the velvet caskets as they were opened disclosed to my eyes the prismatic sparkle of solitaires and the mild glory of pearls as big as peas.
“What is the price of this rivière?” asked the Australian.
“Two hundred thousand francs,” was the answer.
Then turning to me, “Does that please you?”
Yes, it pleased me! And now he took up a pearl necklace.
“That is not bad,” he commented, “but it has only three rows; could one not have five?”
“Of the same size? That would be difficult to obtain,” replied the jeweler.
“Well, we will not decide to-day,” said the old gentleman, and we left the shop.
“I want to go to a few other jewelers,” he said, when we took our seats in the carriage, “but not to-day. I now know what your taste is. Moreover, I have brought with me from Australia some stones which are far finer and larger than those we have seen here. I will have them mounted as a diadem.”
I rejoice to this day that I had that drive in Paris. I experienced thereby a sensation which it is vouchsafed to few human beings to enjoy,—the feeling of having immeasurable wealth at one’s command; of being able to secure, by merely nodding, anything that money can buy. At the first moment it is an intoxicating sensation, but—this observation I also value: the intoxication soon passes away and gives place to a certain sense of surfeit; it comes over one like a weariness, “If one can so speedily have everything that one wishes, what then is left to wish for?” And then, above and beyond the treasures that money provides, how many treasures there are which are not purchasable,—love, glory, honor, lightness of heart, health—what good did his row of houses in Melbourne do the poor lame man? And I, instead of belonging to a strong, influential, well-beloved husband, to whom I might look up, on whom I could rely—this lad....
Prince Achille came to us in order to make the acquaintance of my suitor. I think he did find him rather insignificant, but that seemed to him only one thing more in his favor.
“You will make of him whatever you want; you will be able to twist him around your little finger!”
He invited him to dinner for the next evening. But the next evening, after we had been waiting for our guest a quarter of an hour, a message came: “Mr. F. is ill and begs to be excused.” The next day the indisposition had fortunately passed away. Inquiries at the Rothschilds’ brought no detailed information; the head of the house was at Nice, and the clerks could only report that a letter of credit bearing the name in question had actually been presented and honored. And now the betrothal was to be solemnly celebrated. Prince Achille’s parents had the friendliness to offer their house in which to hold the banquet, and they sent out the invitations. Arrayed in a sky-blue toilet which I had had fashioned at Worth’s for the occasion, and with a throbbing heart, I entered the salon. The carriage had been delayed on the way, and so we—my mother and I—got there rather late. The whole company was assembled, but the future bridegroom had not as yet arrived! A painful quarter of an hour elapsed, and then, the one expected still failing to appear, we went out to dinner. I was seated at the right of the aged head of the house—the place at my right remained vacant for the time. We had reached the third course, in a very painful frame of mind, when a note was brought: “Mr. F. begs to be excused; he has been suddenly taken ill.” After this the dinner went off very stupidly. Of course the engagement toasts had to remain undelivered, and the champagne glasses were drained only to the speedy recovery of the absent one.
I foreboded nothing good. This repeated excuse to my friends, and at the betrothal banquet above all things, and in such a cool tone,—what could it signify? The mail brought me the next morning an explanation of what it meant: a letter from the father,—only a few lines, with the tidings that the two men had gone to England. They had come to the painful decision that the engagement must be broken. The disparity of ages was too great, for the young man was—it had to be confessed—not twenty but only just eighteen. “Farewell, and may you be as happy as you deserve. Yours truly.”—
And that was all! The whole fairy-tale dream blown away! Later we learned that all that row of houses in Melbourne, and the rest of the millions, were only figments of the imagination.
Of course for a time I was hurt and humiliated on account of this episode. I felt that I had been made a mock of before the whole Murat family. Still my friends endeavored to sustain me and kept assuring me that all the discredit fell on the two Englishmen, and that it was really a piece of good luck to be rid of those erratic people. And soon I really became reconciled.
The same winter I had another experience which lives in my memory. One day I received a note bearing the signature “Princesse Annette Tschawtschawadze,” inviting me to call upon this lady at the Grand Hôtel, where she and her two daughters, Lisa and Tamara, were sojourning. At Homburg I had known Princess Annette, who was a sister-in-law of the Dedopali, and I was delighted to see her again.
An interesting incident in her life had often been told me. The notorious Circassian leader Shamyl had once abducted her. It was at the beginning of the fifties. The young woman was sitting with two of her younger children and a French governess on the veranda of their villa in Kachetia, when suddenly a band of horsemen fell upon them. The men leaped off, tied the women securely, and lifted them up on their horses. The two children were put into Princess Annette’s arms, and away went the troop. In addition to her terror, the young woman experienced the fearful agony of having one of her children slip from her arms as they kept growing weaker, and seeing it crushed under the horses’ hoofs. The whole abduction was for nothing but ransom. The ladies were treated with the most scrupulous respect in Shamyl’s abode; only he set a very high price on their release—not a price in money, but some political concession or other. The ransom was granted, and Princess Annette was given her liberty; but never in her life could she recover from the horror that she felt at the moment when her child fell from her arms.
I found the lady in her hôtel salon, and among the visitors (oh, surprise!) I perceived Heraclius Bagration, Prince of Georgia. And still greater was my surprise when Princess Annette presented to me her seventeen-year-old daughter Tamara and the elderly gentleman as—affianced!...
It did give me a shock; but my feelings for him had long ago cooled down, and so I was able to offer tolerably unembarrassed and sincere congratulations.