The carriage had been going between terraces of vineyards, when suddenly, as though by surprise, it drove past a castle, half-visible through some very ancient chestnut-trees.

"What estate is that?" asked the prince. "Who are your neighbours, d.u.c.h.ess?"

"No one less than Zanti, highness," replied the d.u.c.h.ess: she shivered, but tried to jest. "Balthazar Zanti lives here, with his daughter."

"Zanti! Balthazar Zanti!" cried Othomar, in a tone of astonishment.

He stood up and looked curiously at the castle, which lay hidden behind the chestnut-trees:

"But how is it, d.u.c.h.ess, that last year, when I was hunting here with the emperor, with the duke, I never heard of Prince Zanti or that he lived here?"

The d.u.c.h.ess laughed:

"Presumably, highness, because the duke's covers lie in the opposite direction"--she made a vague gesture--"and you never drove past this way and because his majesty will never suffer the name of Balthazar Zanti to be uttered in his presence."

"But none of the equerries...."

The d.u.c.h.ess laughed still more merrily, looked at the prince, who was also chuckling, and said:

"It is certainly unpardonable of them not to have informed you more fully of the curiosities in the province of Vaza. But ... now that I think of it, highness, it's quite natural. The castle was empty last year: Zanti was travelling about the country, making speeches. You remember, they were afterwards forbidden by law. His name, therefore, had no local significance here at the time...."

The prince was still staring at the castle, which never came fully into view, when the carriage, in a turn of the road, almost touched a little group as it drove past them, against the slope of a vineyard: an old man, a young girl, a dog. The girl was frail, slender, pale, fair-haired, dressed in furs in spite of the sun and retaining beneath them a certain morbid elegance; she sat on the gra.s.s, wearing a dark fur toque on her silvery fair hair; her long, white hand, ungloved, soothingly and insistingly patted the curly head of the retriever, which barked at the carriage. Next to her stood a tall, erect old man, looking eccentric in a wide, grey smock-frock: a grey giant, with a heavy beard and sombre eyes, which shone with a dull light from under the brim of a soft felt hat. The dog barked; the girl bowed--she recognized the d.u.c.h.ess as a neighbour--without knowing who the prince was; the old man, however, looked straight before him, frowning and making no sign. The carriage rattled past.

"That was Zanti," whispered the d.u.c.h.ess.

"Zanti!" repeated the prince. "And how long has he been living here?"

"Only a very short time: I believe the doctors think the air of Vaza good for his daughter."

"Was that young girl his daughter?"

"Yes, highness. I have seen her once before; she appears to be delicate."

"Prince Zanti, is he not?"

"Certainly, highness; but, by his own wish, Zanti quite plain.... t.i.tles are all nonsense in the nineteenth century, highness."

She jested and yet felt a silent shudder, she knew not why. She thought it ominous that Zanti had come to live so near to Castel Vaza.

Shivering, she gave a quick side-glance at the prince. She perceived a strange pensiveness drawing over his face like a shadow. Then, to change the conversation and to think no longer of that horrid man:

"You are looking much better, highness, than you did this morning. The air has done you good...."

She suppressed her shiver. The prince, on the other hand, remained strange: a sudden emotion seemed to be stirring within him. When they were back at the castle, in the boudoir, the d.u.c.h.ess offered herself to make the prince a cup of tea. He stood looking out of the window at the deer, but, while she busied herself with the crested, gilt array of her tea-table, she saw him turn pale, white as chalk--as he had looked that morning--his eyes dilating strangely:

"What is the matter, highness?" she cried, in alarm, approaching him.

He turned towards her, tried to laugh:

"I beg your pardon, d.u.c.h.ess; I am very discourteous ... to behave like this, but ... but that man took me by surprise." He laughed. "I did not know that he was here; and then the air ... that rarefied air...."

He put his hand to his forehead; she saw him grow paler, his blood seemed to be running out of him, he staggered....

"Highness!" she cried.

But Othomar, groping vaguely with his hand for a support, fell up against her; she caught him in her arm, against her bosom, mortally frightened, and saw that he had swooned. A thin sweat stood on his forehead; his eyes closed beneath their weary lids, as though they were dying away; his mouth was open without breathing.

The d.u.c.h.ess was violently alarmed; she was mortally frightened lest anything serious should happen to the Duke of Xara, alone with her in the castle; she suddenly felt that the future of Liparia was entrusted to the support of her arms; she already saw the prince lying dead, herself disgraced at the Imperial.... All this flashed across her brain at the first moment. But she looked at him long; and a gentle expression overspread her face: pride, that the Duke of Xara lay there half-fainting on her shoulder, and sudden pa.s.sion, containing much motherliness and pity, blended into a strange feeling in her soul. She softly smoothed back his hair, wiped his perspiring forehead with her handkerchief.... And the strange sensation became still stranger within her, intenser in its two const.i.tuent parts: intenser in pride, intenser in compa.s.sionate love, that of a mistress and mother in one. Then, with a smile, she pressed the handkerchief, lightly moistened with the imperial sweat, to her trembling lips. The soft aroma of the moisture seemed to intoxicate her with a fragrance of virile youth.... She thought of the letters and photographs in the silver casket with the turquoises. A deep melancholy, because of life, smarted through her soul; yet more of her memories seemed to fly away like dust. Then, refusing to yield any longer to this melancholy, she bent her head and, serious now, giving herself to the present, which revived her with new happiness, she pressed her lips, trembling still more than before, on Othomar's mouth. For a moment she lingered there; her eyes closed; then she gave her kiss.

They opened their eyes together, looked at each other. Earnestly sombre, almost tragically, she flashed her glance into his. He said nothing, remained gazing at her, still half in her arms. The colour came mantling back to his cheeks. Their eyes imbibed one another. He felt the unknown opening before him, he felt himself being initiated into the world of knowledge which he suspected in her and did not know of himself. But he felt no joy because of it; her eyes continued sombre. Then he merely took her hand, just pressed it in a solitary caress and said, his eyes still gazing into her deep, quiet, dark glances of pa.s.sion, his features still rigid with surprise:

"I was feeling a little giddy, I fear, just now? Please forgive me, d.u.c.h.ess...."

She too continued to look at him, at first sombrely, then in smiling humility. Her pride soared to its climax with one beat of its wings: the mouth of her future emperor was still sealed with her kiss! Her love touched her inner life as a wafting breeze skims over a lake, rippling its surface into utter silver with a single fresh gust and stirring it to its very depths; she worshipped him because of his youthful majesty, which so graciously accepted her kiss without further acknowledgment, because of his imperial candour, his boyish voice, his boyish eyes, the pressure of his hand: the only thing he had given her; and she experienced all this as a very strange, proud pleasure: the delight of a.s.similating that candid youth, that maiden manhood, as a magic potion that should restore her own youth to her.

7

They dined late that evening, as they had waited for Herman and the others. The conversation at table turned upon the condition of the lowlands, upon the peasants, who had lost their all. The d.u.c.h.ess was silent; the conversation did not interest her, but her silence was smiling and tranquil.

That evening Othomar again studied the map with Ducardi, under the lace-covered lamp. The evening had turned cold, the terrace-doors were closed. The d.u.c.h.ess did not feel inclined for billiards, but sat talking softly with Dutri in the second drawing-room. She looked superb, serene as a statue, in her dress of old lace, pale-yellow, her white bosom rising evenly with her regular breathing; a single diamond star gleamed in her front hair.

Othomar pointed with the pencil across the map:

"Then we can go like this, along this road.... Look, General Ducardi; look here, Colonel von Fest: this is where I drove this afternoon with the d.u.c.h.ess; and here, I believe, is where Zanti lives. Did you know that?"

The officers looked up, looked down at the spot to which the crown-prince pointed, expressed surprise:

"I thought that he lived in the south, in Thracyna," said the young Count of Thesbia.

Othomar repeated what the d.u.c.h.ess had told him.

"Zanti!" cried Herman. "Balthazar Zanti? Why, but then it is he!... I was talking this afternoon to a party of peasants; they told me of the new huts which a new landlord was fitting up in the neighbourhood, but they spoke in dialect and I could not understand them clearly; I thought they said Xanti and I never suspected that it could be Balthazar Zanti.

So he's the man!"

"Huts?" asked Othomar.

"Yes, a village of huts, it seems; they said he was so rich and so generous and was housing I don't know how many peasants, who had lost all that they possessed."

"I now remember reading in the papers that Zanti had gone to live at Vaza," said Leoni.

"I should like to see those huts: we can take them on our way to-morrow," said Othomar.

General Ducardi compressed his bushy eyebrows:

"You know, highness, that his majesty is anything but enamoured of Zanti and is even thinking of exiling him. It would perhaps be more in accordance with his majesty's views to ignore what Zanti is doing here for the moment."

Othomar, however, was not disposed to yield to the general; a youthful combativeness welled in his breast.