 | CHAPTER X. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
To wind up a ball with a breakfast-party was one of the
specialities of the eccentric princess who had taken Paul's
arm after the quadrille; and, while he was yet puzzling
his brain over his dilemma with the Palefords, he was
bespoken for a gathering of choice spirits to whose table
the sunrise should be the lamp. The villa G—, amid
whose witcheries of rural beauty and luxury these untimely
gaieties were held, was on the slope of one of the eminences
beyond Fiesolé, four or five miles from Florence;
and, Paul having accepted the offered seat in her Highness's
britzka, they whirled punctually away from the Palace
gate as the morning star rose in the east—the carriages
crowding to the door for the departing guests, but the
music still measuring gay vigils for the dancers within.
As the only person of very high rank whom he had yet
seen who differed from other people by acting out an
every-day consciousness of birthright (eccentricity, it was
called by her friends, and less amiably designated by common
rumor), the Princess C— had an additional interest
simply eagle-born among the sparrows of society. At the
same time that she willingly offended no one, nor took the
trouble to defy any prejudice or usage, she had no recognition
of a restraint. Her habit of mind seemed a tranquillity
of mood—or disregard of what would irritate other
people—from a mere sense of superiority. And this superiority
would have been thought to be seldom or never
asserted, probably, but that her supreme indifference was
unpardonably offensive—keeping her in a constant attitude
of contempt for what, under the soft name of “appearances”
constitutes the covert supremacy of the Many.
With better blood in her veins than could be found in a
suitor for her hand, the Princess C— had still made
a match of family interest. She was married young to a
man of rank and of great wealth, considerably older than
herself; and as, after the first year or two of wedded life,
they had seldom resided in the same city, it was presumable
that their tempers were not very congenial—though, as
the public were not admitted to their secrets, the separation
was not recognisable by etiquette. With plenty of
means, and a position at any court unexceptionable, she
made a home in one city of Italy after another, returning
oftenest to Florence, however, which she much preferred,
and where the villa G—, in the suburbs, was kept in
luxurious readiness for her use.
Quite idolized by the few with whom she chose to be
intimate, and pleasing nobody else, the fascinating princess
could hardly appear, to any court eyes, otherwise than dangerous
to one of Fane's age and inexperience—the merely
being seen in attendance upon her, when, by propriety, he
should have remained (as he had intended to do) at the
disposal of another, having the look of a neglect which
was the result of a self-evident preference.
The endeavor to convince himself that the Palefords
must have understood the awkwardness of his position,
and, with this, a half-conscious comparison of the exquisite
beauty of Sybil with the reclining form thrown back in
the carriage, and just visible by the gray light of the dawn,
as they whirled along, was the counter-current of thought,
which, for the moment, somewhat hindered Paul's flow of
conversation.
Though wholly of another mould than the English girl,
there was beauty in what he looked upon, however. The
princess was, at this time, about thirty—and of a most
ethereal slightness of figure. It was her peculiarity of
appearance that, with the airy and spirituelle proportions
which usually accompany a nervous habit, she was of such
wondrous indolence of movement. Paul thought this
repose, at first, to be the language of a period of life—
thinking there might be an emotional lull, for a woman of
thirty, corresponding to the calm of mid-forenoon after the
have confirmed it, the temperament itself, he soon found,
was the tranquillity of a nature in which the nerves, as well
as the coarser sensibilities, had felt the control of pride.
Her natural instinct of superiority, though of birth and
rank, was intellectual—and, at the same time that it constituted,
for her, a presence which refused to be subjective
to the presence of others, it insisted on supremacy over herself.
Her limbs knew no motion that was not gracefully
deliberate. Her unvarying paleness, and her exquisitely
subdued modulations of voice, were parts of the same self-mastery.
It was only in the covert fires of those black
eyes, so almost unnaturally large and lustrous—partly softened
as they were by the apparent languor of the drooping
lids with their sweep of overhanging lashes—that the
capabilities of her character were betrayed. While, to
common observers, the delicate, pale face, with its carelessly
idle lips and dreamy look, was expressive of mere
indolence and indifference, it would be startlingly apparent,
to a closer student of expression, that, under the soft
moonlight of such repose lay asleep a volcano of character.
The Villa G— was a small paradise of luxury, and
each expected guest, on arriving from the gaieties of the
city, was shown into an apartment that would content a
Sybarite. With the few minutes of solitude thus gained,
Paul's buoyant health rallied from fatigue and care, and, as
the just waked lark sung in tune. To the princess it was
veritable morning; for her habitual day was from midnight
to siesta, and she had risen from well-timed sleep to
dress for the duke's ball. As she made her appearance
presently, in her favorite costume of turban and négligé,
her profusion of black locks over her shoulders, and her
girdle of golden cord swinging from her waist—(the tassels
kissing each arching instep as it appeared, as if to call
attention to the exquisite beauty of those deliberate little
feet)—Paul could not but give a sigh for his pencil. It
was a picture of the inexplicably patrician air—beauty
made unimportant by the elegance and maintien that out-did
it—of which he would have well liked to use that
morning light in making a study.
The sliding windows of the breakfast-room opened it
entirely to the main plateau of the garden, and the close-shaven
greensward of the lawn meeting the carpet, it was
an apartment half sparkling with dew, in which the guests
now assembled. Every object was glowing with the rosy
light kindling in the east, and the fragrance of the moist
earth and flowers filled the room. On a table covered
with the most consummate temptations for the appetite,
the rays of the rising sun began to slant; and, as coffee
was served to them, lounging in their luxurious fauteuils,
a wondrous morning of Italy seemed in attendance on their
of splendor.
They were not long at table—restraint being the excluded
spirit in the princess's ideal of her own rightful
sphere—and (the company, of course, being such couples
as could be pleased to prolong a night's gaieties by a
matinée) the labyrinths of the grounds were more inviting.
With the beauty and fragrance of sunrise, the terraces and
groves, shaded alleys, grottoes and arbors of the Villa
G— formed a wilderness of enchantment. Paul, as a
comparative stranger, was understood to be the object of
interest for the moment to the hostess herself; and, after a
turn or two in groups around the fountains and statuary
in the centre, each couple took its separate path for a
ramble.
“The sun is like other every-day visitors,” said Paul,
while the servant was bringing cushions for the stone seat
at which the princess was halting for a lounge; “his coming
and his going are more agreeable than his stay. What
noon is equal to a dawn or a sunset?”
“Yes,” she said, “and it is a pity we cannot sleep away
the middle of a visit as we do the middle of a day. But,
to think of society's wonderful slavery to habits, when, at
this most luxuriously beautiful hour of the whole twenty-four,
the classes who could best appreciate it are asleep in
their beds.”
“Few, except people of genius, see things with first
eyes,” he replied.
“But it should be clear enough, even to borrowed eyes,”
she continued, “for never is Nature half so beautiful—the
dew giving a brighter color to the grass and foliage, and a
fresher atmosphere over everything. And then the birds
particularly musical and the flowers particularly fragrant—
why, it seems marked, over and over again, by Nature, for
an hour to be observed and enjoyed!”
“And yet indebted to your Highness, I presume,” said
Paul, “for its very first admission into polite society. I
never before heard, at least, of a pleasure-party given to
titled guests at sunrise, and what does the mention of
`dawn of day' suggest, but laborious poverty and the being
unwillingly astir betimes?”
“My recognition of the day's best hour, then,” recommenced
the princess, after a reverie which Paul had
respected, “is something like my preferences, in society.
The men, particularly, that are least thought of, are, so
very often, Nature's best!”
“You like us, I suppose,” said Paul, “men or mornings,
when we are not past blushing?”
“Yes—rosy morn or rosy men,” laughed the Princess,
“particularly if the men blush as you do now, with saying
a good thing. But that does not explain my preference,
quite.”
“Nor will any one ideal, certainly,” he suggested again.
“No, for I am speaking of men for a woman's set of
friendships, not for her one passion,” she replied; “and
though there are fewer of the class I prefer, there may be,
in an ordinary round of acquaintance, more than one of
them—of men particularly gifted by Nature, I mean.”
“But these are oftenest men of genius,” objected her
now earnest listener; “poets and artists, scholars and authors,
who are poor and obscure.”
“As society is constituted,” she continued, “the grands
seigneurs, even with birth and fortune only for recommendations,
are undoubtedly the best to marry. So much
for the pedestal and the rough-hewing, which are to mark
the elevation and outline the purpose. But it is the expression
that is to breathe through the statue which is to
constitute its after-value and superiority to other blocks,
and how is this to be given without something besides the
shaping of mediocrity? That is what I wonder at women's
not seeing, as you express it, with `first eyes!' Intercourse
with common minds so strangely contents them!
How seldom does a woman of rank give herself a thought
as to whether she is visited by the intellectually high-born
or low-born! Content with her court acquaintances, she
has, perhaps, not a man of genius on her list!”
“It is probably more because he is badly gloved, than
because she is badly educated,” said Paul.
“Ah! but wait till better gloves make her prefer a
count's hand to a duke's,” she once more insisted. “Women
are quick-sighted in most things, and the wonder to
me is, that the same pride which makes them ambitious as
to title, house, equipage and dress, does not suggest also
some corresponding aristocracy of conversation.”
“Is it not vanity that makes the choice,” asked Paul;
“or, at least, an instinctive dread that intellectual conversation
may demand too much, or otherwise have less flattery
in it?”
“Why, there, I think,” more eagerly argued the princess,
“you touch upon the strangest mystery of all! What
so delicious to a woman's vanity as the subtle appreciation
which she can get from genius only! Common-place
minds make very common-place compliments, it seems to
me, and there is scarce a woman in the world who has
not some beauty or grace likely to go unrecognized among
dull people.”
“It would delight an artist to listen to your highness,”
said Paul, almost afraid that his concealed allusion to his
profession would betray itself in his smile.
“Some men who are neither artists nor poets,” she replied,
“have the perceptions of genius, and it is not her
beauty only that a woman wants appreciated. A favorably
true reading of her qualities of mind and character is
exquisite pleasure to her”—
“Even though it be a surprise,” interrupted Paul.
“Yes, for there is a secret consciousness at the bar of
which all flattery is tried,” thoughtfully added the princess.
“It is the pleasure of the intercourse I speak of,
with men of genius, that, though they compliment what
may never have been complimented before, it is because it
has been always overlooked. Yet we have at the same time
been aware of its existence. Many a thing is true of us which
we should ourselves lack the skill to define—is it not?”
“I am mentally reversing the picture,” said Paul, with
his eyes cast to the ground and his mind far away for
the moment, “thinking how exquisite, in turn, to the man
of genius, would be such appreciation of himself by the
woman he admired—appreciation” (he continued, remembering
to whom he was speaking, and meeting her dark
eyes as he looked up) “such as could be given to a superior
mind by perceptions and powers of analysis like your
own.”
“The which perceptions and powers,” she said, with one
of the most delicious of her indolent smiles, I have been
bestowing very industriously upon you, Mr. Fane! You
may not take it as a compliment, but I assure you that
your criticisms upon people and things, the first time I
saw you at court, satisfied me that you were born for an
artist.”
“Happily not introduced to you as one, however,” said
but still acting upon his habit of keeping his profession to
himself.
“And why?” asked his friend with a more closely scrutinizing
look.
“According to court usage,” he replied, (seeking the
cover of ceremony from a discussion that might endanger
his secret), “my position behind my diplomatic button is
better than it might be behind an easel; and I could not
presume to suppose that your highness would make an
exception in my favor.”
“Very diplomatically stated!” said the princess, quietly,
and I see that you were born also for a portefeuille; but
your proposition is only partly true, notwithstanding.
The formalities of my first acquaintance might be easier
to the attaché—but all beyond that would be easier to the
artist!”
Paul's sensitiveness as to his secret began to grow nervous.
He feared from the leaning of the last remark, that
the princess knew more than she had admitted; but, thinking
he would make one more effort to throw the artist into
the background, he rushed into a digression that proved
suggestive: “I should have supposed,” he said, “that your
preference would have been quite the other way, and simply
for a woman's strongest of reasons—pride of monopoly.
A diplomatist would give you all the powers of his mind—
being mere business faculties that have no sentiment
in them; while the artist, of course, shares with you his
ideal. The more genius he has to make you love him,
the more imagination, dream-study, tenderness and even
passionate longing, he will give to the Pysche of his Art.”
“Better the half of a gold ring than the whole of a
brass one,” impatiently interrupted his listener, “even if
your theory were altogether true. But, in the amount as
well as the quality of the devotion, which is the richer,
think you—a Laura in her Petrarch, or a countess in her
Metternich? No, no, mon ami! The Pysche that you
speak of is but the heightener of the capacity and desire
—the rehearsal which gives perfection to the play! It
seems to me that if there is any privilege worth being
born to, it is to be better loved than others, and if there
were but one genius-lover in the world, it should be a
queen that should have him!”
“The `Koh-i-noor diamond'—too precious for anything
but the crown-jewel—found to be but a poor poet's love!”
ejaculated Paul.
“Heavens!” continued the impassioned speaker (rising
and pacing backward and forward, with her dark eyes
glowing, and the usually tranquilly-lined arches of her lips
curving with superb tensity of expression), “the difference
there is, between being even looked at by inspired or brute
appreciation! There is something without language, Mr.
Fane, which tells how we seem to others; and it degrades
us to be admired by some minds—they so vulgarize and
materialize all they look upon! Take the picture of a woman,
if you could get it, out of the mind of a common-place
admirer—just as she seems to him when he is pouring
his dull flattery upon her—and contrast it with the
heroine of the novelist, or the ideal of the poet, or the
Pysche of the sculptor! And to be thus inexpressibly
more beautiful is the difference when genius is the
lover!”
Paul, by this time, was studying with very genuine wonder
and admiration the effect given to high-born grace and
distinction by natural abandon and passionateness. She
had stopped for a moment and stood, silently before him,
lost in thought—the warmth of her tone and action betraying
that the subject had turned a chance key to the
chamber of her heart hidden from the world, and her
flashing eyes and the expansion of her thin nostrils most
forgetfully expressive and beautiful.
“Pardon me,” said Paul, with the enthusiasm of the
most natural homage in his voice, “pardon me if, in turn,
I recognize genius out of place—an improvisatrice who has
been cradled for a princess!”
She offered him her hand with a sudden change to
to his lips.
“We meet on new ground then, hereafter,” she playfully
said, “and, as an improvisatrice, of course, I may
choose my character. You shall be what Petrarch would
have been as an artist, and I will play Laura with such
variations as I may choose to improvise.”
“Madame,” commenced Paul, with an embarrassed
inclination of the head—but, at this moment, two of the
other guests approached, returning from their ramble.
“Here come those,” said the princess, “who are not to
know us as `artist' and `improvisatrice!' That is our own
world, remember, my dear Fane!”
And preceding the other couple to the drawing-room—
(Paul the sudden sharer in a confidence which he had not
the time, even if he had had the skill to control or modify)—
the curtains were dropped, and amid the in-door twilight
now made more agreeable by the strengthening sun, the
conversation became general between guests and hostess.
It was an hour or two after this that Paul was whirling
back to Florence, alone in the princess's britzka, but with
a brain very thickly peopled with contending thoughts.
That he was under a spell of fascination, new and bewildering,
he could not but confess to the two spirits that his
consciousness compelled him to know were now looking
chain that bound him was not thus altogether broken!
The secret weakness of his ambition—the unconfessed and
secondary, but still powerful, motive of his visit abroad,
had been doubly touched and tempted, within the past
night. How resist some trial, at least, of the intoxicating
tests, now so apparently within reach—tests of what sympathy
was possible between his own and the world's very
finest and proudest clay? Sybil Paleford—should he risk
the dangers of a friendship with such peerless beauty?
The Princess C—, and her strange, bold defiance of
the world—could he fly from her already bewildering
spells to be alone with his home memories and his pencil?
The wheels rattled over the flag-stone pavements of the
Piazza Trinita, while he turned over these busily conflicting
thoughts, and, landed at the door of his lodgings by
the liveried servants of the princess, he was glad to darken
his room for early siesta, and seek the troubled mind's
blessed refuge of sleep.
| CHAPTER X. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold | |