CHAPTER XI.

THE MEYRINS.

Things were passing at the home of the Meyrins less worthily and less poetically than in the Rue Auber.

Faithful to the advice of his mistress, Paul had been careful to say nothing of his brother and sister-in-law of the serious events of which he was the hero. Neither Frantz Meyrin, however, nor his wife was ignorant of his amours, but they affected, by one of those middle-class hypocrisies that are so common, to suppose that the ties between the artist and the princess were perfectly moral. Their vanity was flattered at receiving the great Russian lady. If they had acknowledged that they knew the truth they would have been obliged to confess they were playing a degraded part, or to break with the noble foreigner, who was so generous to each of them, and so charming.

For Lise Olsdorf, since her coming to Paris, had used every means to win the Meyrins. She had played on all their weaknesses, good and bad; pride, interest, and maternal love. If the Meyrins received a few friends or gave a musical matinee, she was always there as an intimate friend of the family, helping Barbe, as it were, to do the honors of the house, and one may be sure the Meyrins spoke often enough of "their friend, the princess." Moreover, she let slip no chance of making presents to them all round. Now it would be a piece of jewelry for the violinist, as a mark of her gratitude for the pleasure she had enjoyed in hearing him play such or such a piece; now a dress for Mme. Meyrin, a silver trinket, or a piece of lace for her saint's day, the beginning of the new year, her birthday, or the anniversary of her marriage; while Nadeje received all the finery that could delight the heart of a coquettish young girl.

In exchange for some very paltry pictures by Paul she had adorned his studio with arms, hangings, and costly objects of all sorts. When Frantz gave a concert the princess undertook to dispose of tickets among her Russian friends in the city, and whether they took them or not it is certain the Meyrins pocketed the price of them. So that they all worshiped Lise Olsdorf, and had arrived at the singular state of mind, though without acknowledging it, of being proud that Paul had for his mistress a fine lady whom they had made their friend. They did not say to themselves that each of her presents was, in a manner, the price of their complaisance; and they made a great to-do with the little Tekla, whose real father they well knew, when the princess sent the baby by its nurse to the Rue de Douai.

This was the footing the Meyrins were on with Lise when the prince, coming suddenly to Paris and taking the tone we have seen, forced his wife not to see her lover except in secret, and to restrict her visits to the artist's family.

Mme. Meyrin very soon wondered why she did not see the princess as often as usual; but when her brother-in-law told her that the prince was in Paris she understood Lise's reserve, and was careful not to question Paul, whose explanation might have been of a sort to alarm her modesty as a mother. She was satisfied to tell the young painter each day to give her kind regards, and her husband's and daughter's, to the princess, whose departure for Russia she now began to fear.

Things might have gone on thus for a long time, for Paul, though well posted by the princess in what was occurring, kept silence; when one morning, toward the end of breakfast, which the family took together, Frantz read in the St. Petersburg correspondence of the "Figaro" the news of the coming divorce between the Prince and Princess Olsdorf. The real cause of the separation had been kept so secret that the correspondent of the journal stated, without comment, that a decree would be pronounced against the prince, following upon a petition to the Holy Synod by his wife, involving very grave charges.

"Well, here is a pretty thing!" the violinist could not help exclaiming. "Just listen."

And as his young daughter had a moment ago left the room with her grandmother, he read again, aloud this time, the paragraph in question. Then, speaking to his brother, he added: "Well, the princess is a good one. She is to petition for a divorce! What has the husband been up to? Don't you know anything of the facts?"

"Yes, I know a good deal; all, indeed," Paul replied, embarrassed.

"Then why did you not tell us?" Mme. Meyrin asked, in a prim tone.

"Simply because the princess asked me not to say anything until the thing was done with."

"Does her husband know nothing at all about her?"

"Most likely."

"And he lets his wife get a divorce against him like that? I have heard you say yourself that he was a charming man, and had no vices. There is something behind this. You know something more than you say."

"At any rate, what I do know I may not tell."

"But, after all, what does she want with a divorce? What reason could she give? Is she not as free as a woman need wish to be? Will she be any freer when she hasn't a husband? Frantz, your brother must have told you something of all this."

"Not a word," said the worthy Frantz. "Five minutes ago I knew no more about it than you did. The deuce! The princess no doubt has got a divorce because she is more and more infatuated with this fine fellow here."

"My dear," said Mme. Meyrin, shocked.

"Oh, we need not be so particular between ourselves. I dare say you know well enough what is what in the matter. Very likely she wants to marry Paul."

"Marry Paul!" exclaimed the musician's wife, furious because her husband spoke of the thing in laughing at it.

The painter, ill at ease during the discussion, rose from the table, and was making off.

But there was no escaping Mme. Meyrin in this way.

"Come, don't run away like that," she said, catching her brother-in-law by the arm. "You know very well that all this is of the greatest interest to us. If the princess is getting a divorce that she may marry you, you must have agreed to marry her."

"It is no use asking me questions," said the young man, freeing himself.

"So you are going to marry your mistress, are you?"

Frantz's wife was so vexed at not having been consulted that she lost her usual self-command.

"My mistress?" repeated the painter. "You are deucedly outspoken. Well, what if I do marry the Princess Lise, what harm would there be in it?"

"What harm? Do you hear him, Frantz? What harm! Do you suppose that your mother and your brother would ever let you make such a marriage? A divorced woman!"

"If she were not divorced I could not marry her."

"So much the better."

"What! You who are so strait-laced would rather that she should remain my--my-- What you say--than that she should become my wife?"

Seeing that the change of ground was not in her favor, Mme. Meyrin did not know what to answer. Frantz, a good sort of fellow, caring most of all for peace and quietness, did not wish to carry the discussion further. With a look he advised his brother to remain cool.

"Well, for that matter, let us wait; there is no harm done yet." He ended by saying like a coward, "When the princess is divorced, we shall see."

So saying, he left the room abruptly, and his sister-in-law in her astonishment.

Husband and wife kept silence for some moments; then Barbe said to her partner, who had prudently buried himself again in his paper:

"You make very little of this, do you? You may be sure your mother will look at it very differently."

"My dear," Frantz ventured to say, "the case is a delicate one. Here is a woman who has been visiting us for nearly a year back, from whom we have accepted all sorts of favors, and whom we knew very well to be my brother's mistress. Would you now shut the door in her face simply because she thinks of becoming his wife, as we suppose? That seems rather difficult to do."

"But think of Paul marrying a woman older than himself, accustomed to live in luxury, and already the mother of two children."

"One of which is his whom she wants to make her husband."

"It may be so; and it may not. There is no certainty."

"Oh Barbe, Barbe! I can't see anything so dreadful for my brother in all this. The princess is older than he, but by a few months only; and she certainly won't be dependent on him. I have heard him say that she has a good private fortune. Besides, her mother, still alive, is rich."

The worthy fellow emphasized these particulars, for he knew that what angered his wife more than the marriage of her brother-in-law was the change that it would cause in the household.

Paul gone, the income of the family would be greatly reduced. As a husband and the father of a family, the painter would necessarily cease to be the prospective rich uncle that they had hoped for Nadeje. And lastly, the princess herself when once she was Paul's wife would probably not be so open-handed with the Meyrins as she had been in the past.

As, without daring to acknowledge them, these were the thoughts that had moved the artist's sister-in-law, she blushed at finding them so well guessed by her husband.

She said no more for the moment, but as soon as her mother-in-law came in she told her all that had passed, and Frantz's mother, who worshiped her younger son, though rather egotistically, at once agreed with her daughter-in-law that Paul ought not to marry.

Meanwhile the inquiry before the Holy Synod was going on, the prince was still living at Paris with Vera whom he loved deeply, though he had not yet told her so; and Lise Olsdorf, more infatuated than ever, was eager for the marriage with her lover, who had not been able to hide from her the opposition the idea met with in his family.