Artist and Model Part 10

The first care of the princess was to leave the Baden Hotel where she dreaded not being free to live according to her fantasy. She had found very comfortable furnished rooms in the Rue Lafitte, a few yards from the boulevard where she had taken up her residence after hiring the necessary servants, a cook, a lady's-maid, and a steward.

She next hired from one of the livery places in the Champs Elysees a well-appointed and well-horsed carriage, together with coachman and footman; and, having done this, she said to Paul one morning:

"Now, dear, that my life is arranged as I wished it to be, you must present me to your family. They already know me by name, so that it will be quite simple."

"Certainly," said the painter, who also thought this wish of his mistress a very natural one.

"Mesdames Meyrin must not know what I am toward you."

"My brother rather suspects the truth."

"Your brother? Well, what does it matter? When shall the introduction take place?"

"The best way, I think, would be for me to bring Frantz and present him to you."

"Yes. Well on what day? Ah, there is a good chance for us to make acquaintance. The Countess Waranzoff will be giving almost immediately a musical matinee for the benefit of the wounded in the last campaign in the Caucasus. I will see her this evening, and ask her to send for your brother to help her."

"Excellent. That will put you at once into my sister-in-law's good books."

On the next day but one, in fact, after having received and accepted the proposition of the Countess Waranzoff, Frantz came with his wife to thank Lise Olsdorf, whose greeting of them was so gracious that they returned home charmed with the great Russian lady.

Two days later the adroit princess returned the visit, and, as she had promised Paul, she won his sister-in-law's heart completely by paying her a thousand compliments about Nadeje. A few days afterward she took the child in her carriage to the Bois and brought her back home loaded with toys and having a pretty gold necklet about her throat. Then she invited the Meyrins to dinner, took them to her box at the opera, and a week had not pa.s.sed before the conquest of the family was made.

An excellent pianist, Lise Olsdorf begged Frantz to come and play with her twice a week, and she presented him in the Russian colony, where concerts were often given at which the executants were paid on a high scale.

All this flattered the Meyrins, and was profitable to them besides.

Therefore Mme. Frantz was careful not to seek to know more than she was told of the relations between the princess and her brother-in-law. Lise Olsdorf's end was gained.

In acting thus the daughter of the Countess Barineff only yielded to the feeling which moves most devoted and truly loving women to become intimate with the family of the man dear to them. It seems to them that in not remaining strangers to the ordinary life of their lover, or his business, or his work, they are something better and more than his mistress. It is a sort of consecration or rehabilitation for them. They feel less degraded, less alone, and armed so to speak, with a right.

Their affection grows the more inasmuch as they can thus, as legitimate companions, share the sorrows and joys of the man who esteems them so far as not to make of them mere instruments of pleasure. They become in a sense morganatic wives, lacking only the name, and often not deserving less respect than if they had it.

It soon came to pa.s.s that not a week went by without the princess receiving the Meyrins or being invited by them. She always came with hands full, seizing the slightest occasions, saints' days or anniversaries, to make presents to all the members of the family.

As for Paul, she saw him every day: to begin with, in his studio, where she posed for the picture in which she was painted half naked, as Diana the huntress--a picture which promised to be one of the artist's best, though the sittings were often suddenly interrupted and put off to the following day.

In the evening the two lovers dined together and went to the theater, leaving it arm in arm, without caring for the opinion of the public, which the writers of gossip for the newspapers had left in no doubt on the nature of their relations. It was a nine days' wonder, and then, as happens with these things at Paris, no more was said about it.

Still, notwithstanding all the indiscretions she was guilty of, the Princess Olsdorf was received as usual in the exclusive Russian set and the best Parisian drawing-rooms, where so plenary an indulgence reigns in matters of morality. This lasted a part of the winter, up to the time when it was no longer possible for her to hide the state she was in.

She was then obliged to give up going into society, and as a consequence she was more and more at the Meyrins', where she had made the acquaintance of the charming Mme. Daubrel, whose whole life Paul had told her.

Mme. Daubrel did not doubt that between the princess and the painter there was a closer tie than the Mmes. Meyrin affected to suppose; but as she recalled the time when she, too, an adulterous wife, had had so much to dread, she felt a deep sympathy for the n.o.ble foreigner, who, in return, showed her sincere affection.

It was this affection, as well as the lonely life that her state forced her to live, that led Lise Olsdorf to tell all to the young woman, who replied, after hearing the tale:

"Alas, I have not the right to blame you. My past forbids me; but may G.o.d spare you the punishment I have suffered for my fault. A judicial separation has branded me--that was only just; but, more than that, I shall never see my son again, and I am abandoned by the man who made me forget my duty. As for that, I should have left him, for, living with him, I learned too late how worthy my husband was of my love. If I had not had my mother to devote myself to, I should have killed myself or gone into a convent."

"Ah, you did not love as I love," Lise said, interrupting her, "you were not loved as I am. I know your story. Your seducer was a dreamer, as it were--a man without genius or future. You fell through inexperience, curiosity of the soul, rather than through love. You were little more than a child. I was a woman when I gave myself to Paul. My heart and my senses awaited him in the solitude, in the blank that my husband made about me--a cold, austere, and pa.s.sionless man, who had never been able to understand or love me."

"But the future--the future!"

"It will be what circ.u.mstances may make it; like yours, perhaps, save for the abandon of the man I love. I shall make a great artist of Paul.

He will owe everything to me--his reputation, his genius, his success."

"One day or other your husband will require you to return to Russia. You will be forced then to separate from Monsieur Meyrin."

"No, never!"

"What reason will you give for prolonging your stay in Paris?"

"I don't know. I shall say the doctors dread the effect of the Russian climate on my health. The prince will believe me. Meantime he will be hunting, and will trouble himself very little about me. When I have been confined we shall see."

Mme. Daubrel dared not add, "And your child--do you not think of him?"

She knew that that was the only vulnerable point of the princess, who, in spite of her mad love for Paul, never spoke of her son except with tenderness, tears filling her eyes. When the pa.s.sion infusing all her being let her think of anything else, she could not pardon herself for leaving him.

In consequence of this interchange of confidences, the friends.h.i.+p between Lise Olsdorf and Mme. Marthe Daubrel became closer, day by day, and very soon the princess--an adulterous wife--happy in her sin, had as her most devoted friend this little woman of the people, parted from her husband and repentant.

The tender, loving heart of Marthe had found a very feeble echo in Mme.

Meyrin's, a woman of cold and reserved temperament; while the affection of her mother, who had not pardoned her for the past, could not satisfy all her longings. She therefore conceived the liveliest affection for this stranger, whose situation one day might be so like her own. Mme.

Daubrel would have done anything to turn aside the danger that threatened Lise Olsdorf. She would even have declared herself the mother of the expected babe, but that before she could make this proposition to her, the princess had determined on a course from which there was no turning.

After hesitating long on what her conduct toward the prince should be, after deliberating with herself whether or not she should conceal her state from him, Lise Olsdorf felt that if she hid it she would be drawn into a chain of lies and condemned to a life as dangerous as it would be difficult. She therefore wrote to her husband shortly after her arrival in Paris to tell him that she was _enceinte_.

The prince, whose confidence in her was absolute, replied that he was happy at the event, and that, as she was in France, it would be best that she should remain there until after her confinement. Besides, in each of his succeeding letters, while affectionately recommending the greatest prudence, he had added that he would not fail to come to Paris for her accouchement.

This promise was a thunder-bolt for Lise Olsdorf, and from that moment she had made up her mind to lie on the point, for if the prince were with her she could not stir out-of-doors, it would be a separation from her lover, and that she would not suffer at any cost. She therefore wrote to her husband that she did not expect to be confined before the end of April, whereas she was almost certain that she would be again a mother some weeks earlier.

Meanwhile, as she could not decently show herself in public with Paul Meyrin in the state she was in, the princess went out scarcely at all, except on her visits to her lover's family, whose mother and sister-in-law always gave her a warm welcome. Of course the Mmes. Meyrin understood everything, but they pretended to see nothing out of the common in what was happening. The Princess Olsdorf, a married woman, had come to Paris to be confined; what could be more natural? If they had allowed it to be supposed that they knew anything more they would have had to break with this charming and generous woman. Both hypocrisy and interest closed their eyes. They were blind.

As for Paul he never missed a day in going to see the princess, and he was full of cares and attention for her but sometimes he shortened his visits. If, through her state of health, Lise Olsdorf had become less pa.s.sionate and more tender; if her love was, so to speak, purified in the maternity that absorbed it, Paul's, who had not the same reason to change, grew colder, incapable as he was of ideal tenderness and immaterial satisfaction. For her lover Lise Olsdorf ceased temporarily to be the lascivious, unsatiated, delirious mistress; for the artiste she was no longer the Diana whose sculptural form he had reproduced.

She was a suffering woman in a difficult situation, in the throes of an event which might occasion both of them grave annoyance. The painter paid little heed to the child about to be born, the sense of paternity being wholly wanting in him. He would not of course disown it and would no doubt love it, but he awaited it without impatience, very uneasy about what would result from all this, and preoccupied at the near arrival of Prince Olsdorf, in whose presence he was not at all eager to find himself. Thenceforward he looked about for something to distract his thoughts; he visited his brother artists more than ever, and one day fate brought him face to face in one of their studios with Sarah Lamber whom he had not seen since their rupture.

Nonplused for the moment, the artist wanted then to carry off the thing easily. With a smile, offering his hand, he said:

"'Pon my word, Sarah, here is a bit of luck I was not looking for."

And as the model had fallen back a step, he added:

"Bah! We are angry then, are we? How silly you are!"

"Very likely," said Sarah; "but I have a good memory. You shall have a proof of it one of these days, sooner than you think for. If you fancy I have given up the thought of revenging myself on you and your princess Olsdorf--you see I remember her name--you are wrong. It seems she is going to make a father of you, this princess. My compliments to you--and to her husband."

Happily the friend at whose place the scene began interrupted the young woman at this point, for Paul Meyrin was at a loss what to say, being troubled on Lise's account that her story should be so well known to everybody and therefore in danger of being indiscreetly spoken of. He cut short the visit to his friend and returned home much concerned. He knew that Sarah was a girl likely to keep her word. Besides he could not hide from himself that his intrigue with the Princess Olsdorf was now common property. It was a wonder that her husband had not been told of it long ago.

As it might easily chance that the prince hastening his journey, might appear suddenly any day, Paul Meyrin began to long for Lise's confinement. It did not take place for six weeks. At last, toward the end of March, as she had reckoned, attended by the eminent Dr. de Soyre, and affectionately cared for by Mme. Daubrel, the princess was delivered of a little girl whose birth was registered next day at the Russian legation, in the name of Catherine Tekla, legitimate daughter of the Prince and Princess Olsdorf.

Then, twenty-four hours later, Lise telegraphed to her husband to inform him of the event which she said had happened sooner than she had expected. She added that her confinement had been so easy that she hoped to be about again in a few days. Happy as she would be to see him, it was useless for him to make the long journey from St. Petersburg to Paris, as she meant to return to Russia in a few weeks, when her health permitted.