CHAPTER X.

TWO HUSBANDS.

On arriving at Brindisi, twenty days after sailing from Bombay, Pierre Olsdorf sent a telegram to Vera Soublaieff, asking her to leave Pampeln for Paris at once. A few hours later he took train from Brindisi, arriving in Rome the next day, where a letter from Mme. Daubrel was awaiting him, in reply to the telegram he had sent her before embarking for Europe.

The gentle Marthe confirmed the bad news she had sent before. On learning that the prince was coming to Paris, Mme. Meyrin had expressed the deepest gratitude, but no hope was felt of her recovery. The doctors had given her up, and the patient knew the gravity of her illness. She only prayed of God that He would suffer her to live until the coming of the man whose forgiveness she wished to implore.

Pierre Olsdorf replied immediately to Mme. Daubrel that he would be in Paris in three or four days, as would his children. Then he went to the Russian Embassy. It was at the Palace Feoli, on the Corso. He sent his card in to Count Panen, the first secretary, who had been a school-fellow of his at the Institute of Nobles.

Having been introduced at once and most cordially received by the young diplomatist, the prince went straight to the object of his visit.

"My dear count," said he to his countryman, "I have a great favor to ask of you."

"I am quite at your orders, prince," replied the secretary to the embassy.

"I wish you to act as my second in a very serious business. If you require it, I will give you all the explanations that you have the right to ask for; but I should prefer to be silent."

"From a man such as you," replied the count, quickly, "no confidence is needed, for he could not desire anything contrary to the strictest propriety. Keep your secret and command me."

"Thank you. The man whom honor calls upon me to fight to the death, until one or the other of us falls, is Monsieur Paul Meyrin, a painter living in Rome."

"Paul Meyrin, the husband--"

Count Panen was going to exclaim, "The husband of the ex-Princess Olsdorf;" for like the rest of the Russian nobility he was not ignorant of the divorce pronounced a few years ago.

"Yes, he himself," said the prince, bitterly; "he himself."

"Forgive me."

"I should beg your pardon. Later on you shall know more. Meanwhile I must kill Monsieur Paul Meyrin. I don't know where he is living, but you will easily get his address at the Ecole Francaise, at the Villa Medici. Be so good as to take a friend with you, to whom you can answer for me if I am unknown to him. Whatever conditions Monsieur Meyrin stipulates for accept, provided that they are of a kind to give a fatal issue to our encounter. I only desire one thing--that this affair may be over quickly, to-morrow morning, if possible. I mean to leave for Paris immediately afterward, if I do not fall."

"In a couple of hours, unless Monsieur Meyrin meets us with a refusal, all will be arranged. A good friend of mine--Baron Zamoieff, our second secretary---will feel it his duty to join with me. Besides, he has the honor of knowing you."

"It is true, indeed; we are distantly related. I remember that in happier days I had the pleasure of receiving him in Courland."

"As for Monsieur Meyrin, I think I know where to find him. But what if he should ask us for explanations?"

"I hope he will understand with half a word. If he does not, you may tell him I will hesitate at no provocation, no matter what scandal may follow upon it. This man, in the past, has done me the deepest outrage possible; it has suited me to wait until now before demanding reparation from him, that is all."

"I understand."

"Thank you once more, dear count. I shall see you again soon, shall I not?"

"As soon as I have seen Zamoieff and we have been to Monsieur Meyrin's, who lives near the Pia Gate, I take it. If you will go back to the Minerva we will join you there as soon as our mission is fulfilled."

"Yes, I will go back to the hotel. Good-bye for a short time."

In less than two hours' time, at the Minerva, a footman announced to Prince Olsdorf the two visitors he was expecting.

Pierre went forward quickly to meet them, offering his hand to Baron Zamoieff, and thanking him for kindly acting as his other second.

The Russian noblemen responded cordially to the grasp of his hand, and the first secretary spoke at once.

"My dear prince," he said, seating himself on a divan with his colleague of the embassy, "we had no trouble in finding Monsieur Paul Meyrin, whom we both know slightly. He was in his studio on the Via Venti Settembri, close to the Pia Gate. I told him the object of our visit, and I must say that he seemed astounded for a moment. At first he could not understand what to think. However, recovering himself after a few moments' reflection, he replied: 'Very well, gentlemen; I ask no explanation, singular as this challenge is, coming from a man whom I have not seen for four years, and who has kept silence all this time. Two of my friends will have the honor to present themselves at the Palace Feoli within an hour.' We are going back to the embassy to wait for them. As soon as we have arranged everything we will come back and tell you about it."

"Thanks, gentlemen," said Pierre Olsdorf, "I feared Monsieur Meyrin might escape me. Let me remind you I accept in advance his conditions, provided they are of the kind I have mentioned; if they are not, make your own: four balls at twenty paces, with the right for each of us to advance five paces; and in default of result we fight with swords until it is absolutely impossible for one of the combatants to hold his weapon."

"Depend upon us, prince, all shall be arranged as you wish," said Count Panen. "Until this evening."

"Until this evening, count; until this evening, cousin, for we are relatives, my dear baron."

"I have that honor," replied Zamoieff, "and I thank you for the further one you do me in accepting me as a second. Until this evening."

In a few moments Pierre Olsdorf, left alone again, was putting his affairs in order, writing to Mme. Daubrel, to Vera, and to his son Alexander, letters which would be forwarded by Count Panen, if the writer should be killed in the duel with Paul Meyrin.

The Russian nobleman wrote these letters with a firm hand, with all the calmness and courage of a soldier who, in advance, makes the sacrifice to duty of his life.

To Mme. Daubrel he commended the unhappy Lise Barineff; to his son he said in simple and touching terms that he must never forget he was the heir to a stainless name, and that honor was priceless; to Vera he again avowed his love, praying her to forgive him for failing in his promise to return to her.

Meanwhile Paul Meyrin received the two friends he had sent for---two artists they were, like himself; one an Italian, Giacomo Rimaldi; the other a Frenchman, a student at the Ecole de Rome, Alfred Bertin--and he explained what service he claimed of them.

Less discreet than Prince Olsdorf with his countrymen, he told them the story of his amour and marriage with the wife of the man who now came, at the end of four years, to ask for satisfaction for an outrage effaced, one would have supposed, by the marriage with the divorced wife.

"I could well refuse any satisfaction to the prince," he said, "but I won't have it that he shall be able to say a Roumanian was afraid of a Russian. So settle this affair as you please with his seconds; sword or pistol, whichever he likes."

Paul Meyrin did not add, though he understood, that what the prince wished to avenge was not the past but the present. And it was precisely the present that the painter hoped to free himself from in accepting the proposed duel. It seemed to him that in challenging him Pierre Olsdorf furnished him with a weapon against his wife whom he would then have the right to abandon altogether.

The wretched man had not heard anything of her for two months. His brother had indeed written to him that she was ill; but he did not know her condition was desperate. Like all men without energy, not daring to face the tears and the reproaches of the woman he had basely deserted, he shrunk from learning anything about her, in fear of being forced to return to the Rue d'Assas, if it were but out of common humanity and to avoid making himself a scoundrel in the eyes of even the most indulgent.

It is probable, however, that had he known the true situation of his wife, Paul would have left Rome; but at the time we have reached, Sarah, with whom he lived wholly, was intercepting all the letters from Paris, which she did not even read, out of womanly cunning, that she might have an excuse in reserve for the future. She simply put them on one side.

The painter was also urged on by another reason to finish with Pierre Olsdorf, of whom he could not be jealous, for he knew through Mme. Daubrel that Lise had not met him at Pampeln when she went thither to nurse her son.

In the early days of his marriage with the ex-Princess Olsdorf he had been applauded and envied. Flattered that one of them had carried off the wife of a great Russian lord, Paul's brother artists congratulated him; for several months he was quite a romantic hero, but when they saw him so soon wreck his home, when they knew he had taken up again with Sarah Lamber, there was surprise that this love which had made so much noise had passed so quickly. Inquiries were made, and in a short time there came whispers from St. Petersburg which gave a handle to the jealous and the envious.

It was told that it was Prince Olsdorf himself who had made the princess sue for a divorce and forced Paul to marry her. He was thrown down from the pedestal he had been planted on; there was much laughter at the quite novel revenge of the outraged husband; Paul was nicknamed "the husband by order," and, being questioned by his mistress, he lied so poorly that she, in the midst of a quarrel about his household in Paris, retorted upon him, not knowing she had hit the mark so exactly:

"Ah, don't bother me. You won't dare to be away from Paris a couple of days. Your wife's former husband would look you up and lead you back by the ear to your lawful home."

It was after this that Paul Meyrin, to prove he was free and his own master, had left Paris with Sarah and established himself in Rome, where his feebleness, his cowardice, and also his passion for the model, soon made so complete a slave of him that he gave up all idea of going back to Lise, and scarcely thought of his child.

During the first month of his absence he wrote to Mme. Meyrin once or twice to tell her that important commissions were detaining him in Italy; then, when he did not know how to explain his prolonged absence, he rarely answered the letters Mme. Daubrel wrote to him unknown to Lise, for she, too proud to complain, wrapped up in her maternal love, and not desiring to furnish her husband with new occasions for lying, had given up writing to him.

Receiving no replies now from the husband of her poor friend, Marthe told her that Paul had left Rome and was traveling East, where his letters had doubtless not reached him; but the deserted wife did not believe this pious fib; she knew then how unworthy had become the man she had loved so well; and she begged Mme. Daubrel not only to address not another line to him, in any circumstances, but not even to utter his name before her.

It was from this time forth that Sarah had ventured on hiding away all letters from France. The miserable creature began to hate the woman she had inflicted such torments on. To excuse herself to herself she said that Mme. Meyrin's sickness was a farce, got up by her friends with the idea alone of bringing back Paul to his wife.

Being thus without news, the painter soon came to think it was so himself. Then he fell under the absolute sway of this girl who flattered his vanity and satisfied his senses.

The husband of poor Lise Barineff had rented on the Via Venti Settembri, a couple of hundred yards from the Pia Gate, a small villa, one of the rooms of which he had made into a studio. There he was living with Sarah, not knowing what was really going on in Paris in the Rue d'Assas, when he received the visit he so little looked for from Prince Olsdorf's seconds, and replied to the challenge as has been written above.

A man of stronger fiber than Paul would have been careful to say nothing to his mistress, from self-respect and even from affection. The painter, on the contrary, hurried to tell her all, and then there was a torrent of abuse poured out by the model on the Russian nobleman and the woman who had borne his name.

Sarah loved Paul as a master loves a slave, as a female a male. Even so, but, after all, she loved him with her violent and passionate nature; besides, she was jealous of the past, and as her ignorance in matters of honor did not allow her to suppose that Pierre Olsdorf was desirous of avenging the outrage done to him four years ago, she interpreted the challenge in quite another sense. Either the prince again in love with the wife, wanted to kill her husband to regain her, or his duel with M. Meyrin was nothing but a means of intimidation to force him to return to Lise.

"You see," she exclaimed, when her lover had told her everything, "all these people are against you. After making you marry his wife that he might be rid of her, here is the prince come now to call you to account. And what for? Does he suppose he has the right to govern your present conduct? Are not you free to live as you please? Do your household affairs concern him? It would be too absurd. A divorced woman sending for her first husband to help her! If it is not so, he wants to fight you because you--betrayed him in the olden time. That would be a still more absurd idea. He has taken time for reflection, and you may be sure that he has not come without some urging on. Well, if I were you I should send this Cossack off about his business. It is simply his former wife who has plotted all this. If you fight you are a fool."

"I can not do otherwise," said Paul, when Sarah let him get in a word, "Prince Olsdorf would say everywhere that I was frightened of him."

"And if he did?"

"If he did? You don't consider that if I refuse to fight, my friends, to begin with, would call me a coward, and I should be the scoff of every studio in Paris; besides, my foreign patrons, who are mostly Russians, would desert me. Moreover, I have a grudge to pay off. I should not have gone to look for him, but since he challenges me-- Well, we shall see. It is time that there was an end put to people saying I married his wife by order. I am not quite so unskilled as I was four years ago. If he thinks I am he makes a mistake, as I will prove to him."

Paul Meyrin spoke the truth. Like all artists, he had devoted a portion of his time to fencing, which had been brought into vogue by some of his most eminent brother painters, first and foremost being Carolus Duran, and had acquired a respectable skill in the use of the weapon. Tall, muscular, active, and robust as he was, he would not be cowed by this undersized, delicately built Russian noble. In a word, he wished to put an end to all the tittle-tattle about, and to have his full liberty.

Sarah in the end agreed that his view was the right one, and the painter, as we have shown, then gave his seconds a free hand, partly from anger and more out of boastfulness.

Everything was soon arranged between the seconds, and next morning, at eight o'clock, the two adversaries were to fire twice, beginning at twenty paces distance and having the right to advance five paces toward each other; and if this first encounter were without result it was to be followed by one with the sword until one or other of the combatants could no longer defend himself.

So Count Panen told the prince in reply to the question put to him on entering the prince's room with Baron Zamoieff.

The first secretary added:

"I will bring our countryman, Doctor Saniative, physician to the embassy. As to the place of meeting, I will inform Monsieur Paul Meyrin's seconds of it after I have seen Prince Charles B----, who, I do not doubt, the princess and their children being away from home, will let us use one of the avenues of the park in which his villa stands near the Pia Gate. It is essential that the duel should be fought on private ground, for before midnight all Rome will have heard of what is going to happen. I know the police here; we shall be watched from day-break to-morrow."

Pierre Olsdorf warmly expressed his gratitude and accompanied his two friends to the Corso. He returned then to the Minerva where, a couple of hours later, a message from Count Panen reported that all was arranged and that he would be with the prince by seven next morning.

Prince Charles B----, a type of good-heartedness, honor and simplicity, had granted the request of the Russian nobleman, whom he had known intimately for some time, and he had given orders to the gate porter to be ready at day-break to admit the party.

Being told by his seconds of the conditions of the meeting with Prince Olsdorf, Paul Meyrin, from pride, dared not make any remark to them; nor did he say anything to Sarah about the exchange of shots which was to begin and perhaps end the duel. Next morning, having embraced the young woman with tolerable composure, he accompanied MM. Rimaldi and Bertin. It had been agreed between these gentlemen and the two Russian noblemen that the latter should provide the weapons.

The painter and his seconds had little further to go than across the street. Prince Charles B----'s villa was on the other side of the avenue, not a hundred yards off. When they reached the gate the porter opened it a little way for them and saluted them as they passed. They soon caught sight of two men awaiting them under the trees forming the entrance to the avenue on the left of the park.

They were Baron Zamoieff and Dr. Saniative.

A little further off was the prince, walking with Count Panen, to whom he was giving his final instructions.

Seeing M. Meyrin's seconds approach, the count left Pierre Olsdorf after pressing his hand, and went to MM. Rimaldi and Bertin, whom Baron Zamoieff had drawn a little on one side, to arrange the last conditions of the duel and load the pistols.

This task having been done with scrupulous care, Count Panen and M. Rimaldi drew deep marks in the sand of the avenue at the points where the two combatants were to take their stand, and also the lines they might advance to before firing. It had been agreed that either might fire instantly upon the signal being given by the count, or wait until he had advanced the five paces stipulated for.

Baron Zamoieff and M. Bertin handed the loaded and cocked pistols to Pierre Olsdorf and Paul Meyrin, and led them to the marks which they were not to overpass until Count Panen had said "Fire!"

The adversaries being opposite to each other, their seconds stood aside to the right and the left. The prince was as calm as if he were in a shooting gallery, and kept his pistol lowered. The painter, clothed in black from top to toe, without an edging of linen at neck or wrist to serve as a mark, and presenting as little as possible of his body by standing sideways, grasped his weapon, on the contrary, with a nervous hand, pointing it straight at his foe.

Lying in their green serge scabbards, a few paces off, were the swords ready to play their part when the time came.

With a last look Count Panen satisfied himself that all was in order, and, breaking the silence that reigned under the lofty trees he said, in a firm voice:

"Are you ready, gentlemen?"

Then immediately he gave the order:

"One, two, three! Fire!"

At the last word of the signal Paul Meyrin, aiming at his enemy, advanced quickly toward him, but before he had taken two steps a shot was heard and, with a half turn, the painter fell forward on his face like a log.

Dr. Saniative and his seconds rushed to him, but it was to hear his last sigh. Pierre Olsdorf's bullet had pierced the heart of Lise Barineff's second husband.

The prince understood, from the gesture of the doctor and the consternation of MM. Rimaldi and Bertin, that all was over. Then, and not till then, his face grew ghastly pale, and for a moment his eyes rested on the corpse that his justice had made. Then he uncovered respectfully, and walked away without a word, leaning on Count Panen's arm.

That day Mme. Daubrel and Vera each received in Paris a telegram to say that Prince Pierre Olsdorf would be at the Grand Hotel by the evening of the next day.