CHAPTER XXV

ANGUISH

The prince's countenance was cold and disdainful. It would have been scarcely credited, that his mild features, melancholy, and so perfectly juvenile in expression, could have lent themselves to such a demonstration of icy severity.

The princess looked at her husband with equal surprise and uneasiness. She had never seen him look thus. Arnold was pale and attired in black.

Anxious to conceal her embarrassment, Paula said to him,--

"Are you going out this evening, Arnold?"

"No, madame; I beg you to bestow on me a few moments."

"Most certainly."

"I have decided that we leave this hotel."

"As you please, sir; only after all the expense you have lately bestowed upon it----"

"That is my affair."

"I have not the slightest objection to move. I will even tell you frankly, that I should be delighted to quit this lone quarter which was your sole selection."

"I am so whimsical, so original; but what may appear to you, madame, more whimsical, more original still, is, that we shall leave this hotel the day after to-morrow."

"And whither shall we go to live, sir?"

"You will go to Germany."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"That you will go to Germany."

"You are joking--you must be."

"I have not the habit of doing so."

"In this case, sir, may I know your motive for quitting Paris so hastily in the depth of winter?"

"I do not leave Paris, madame, but _you_ will quit Paris the day after to-morrow. In a month, probably, I shall rejoin you. I have resolved on this."

Madame de Hansfeld looked on the prince with amaze. He had often been angry and violent, but in the midst of his wrath, whose cause Paula in vain sought to fathom, there were bursts of excitement, cries of despair, which she pitied whilst they wounded her. Never in his life before had the prince spoken to her in so cold, severe, and cutting a tone. She replied, with a sort of fear caused by her surprise,--

"I hope, sir, that you will not insist on this journey when I tell you that it will be exceedingly disagreeable to me to quit Paris at this moment."

"You are mistaken, madame; you will go."

"Sir!"

"Madame, the day after to-morrow you will depart."

"I shall not depart!"

"Indeed!"

"Besides, I should be silly, indeed, to believe that you are speaking seriously to me; your ideas are sometimes so strange, your wishes so varying, that it would be worse than childish in me to disturb myself for this fresh fancy."

"It is of little consequence to me, madame, that you are or are not annoyed, so that you obey my desire."

"Obey! the word is somewhat harsh, sir."

"It is just."

"Then, sir, it is a command?"

"A command."

"If I were inclined to submit to it, at least you must confess it is somewhat tyrannical."

"I should be very indulgent to do so."

"Indulgent! And what have you to reproach me with, sir? Have I not been indulgent a thousand times to your fits and gusts of passion? have I not carefully concealed them from all the world? Have you not repeated to me a hundred times, that, although we lived beneath the same roof, I was free in all my actions? It is true that soon after you came all wretched to recall your words. But again I say, sir, I am wrong to reply to you; I am, no doubt, at this moment, like yourself, a dupe to your aberration of mind."

"I am mad, then, am I, as my whims seem to announce? Ah, it has not been your fault that these appearances, of which you were the sole cause, which I affected from compassion to you (you do not deserve that I should explain to you my meaning)--it has not been your fault, I repeat, that these appearances should indeed become reality! But I believed that, enlightened, at least, by these alternations of passion and horror----"

"Horror!" exclaimed the princess.

"Horror!" repeated the prince, coldly,--"I believed that you would have understood the enormity of your crimes, and the endurance of my infatuation which survived them. But, no; not even that! Happily for me at this moment that infatuation is over; your last blow has destroyed it. But the horror still endures--do you mark me?--the horror, I say----"

"I hear you--_mon Dieu!_--but I understand you not."

"I have loved you, you bear my name--thus this abominable secret shall remain buried between us. Go, then, in Heaven's name, depart, and thank me on your knees for being as forbearing as I am!"

Madame de Hansfeld looked at her husband with alarm; she had nothing to reproach herself with except her love for De Morville, and that love did not deserve the fearful reproaches with which the prince overwhelmed her. Yet he seemed perfectly in his senses; there was nothing wild in his look or his demeanour. Wishing to see if he would make any allusion to her love for De Morville, which by some inexplicable chance M. de Hansfeld might have detected, she said to him,--

"When I married you, sir, I told you frankly my heart was not free; I have loved--passionately loved. What I then said, I now repeat: I do not love you with passion,--but, before God who hears me, I have never been unfaithful to you!"

"Unfaithful to me!" exclaimed the prince; "that would be even commendable when compared with the crimes which you have committed."

"I!" cried Paula, clasping her hands with animation; "why such calumny is as infamous as it is absurd!"

"What! do you dare deny that yesterday evening----Ah! no never," exclaimed the prince, shuddering,--"never did machination more infernal emanate from human brain! I shook with fear as much as with surprise,--and you are not on your knees before me with supplicating hands, but stand as you are, calm and contemptuous--do you not know, madame, that there are judges and a scaffold?"

Paula at this moment trembled; until then she had only suffered by the singularities of M. de Hansfeld, only in his displays of anger, or rather desperate griefs. He had reproached her vaguely, and her reproaches were half averted by her recollections, but never had he brought against her, until this moment, an accusation so decided and so terrible.

The princess entirely believed that Arnold's reason wandered, whilst he mistook the princess's amazement for a tacit avowal, and said to her, in a voice more calm, but with profound and concentrated indignation,--

"You see, madame, that you must depart, not from regard to yourself, but from respect to my name; I shall be supposed to accompany you. I pass for a lunatic," he added, with a bitter smile, "and no one will be surprised at my sudden departure; I shall remain here under an assumed name. Except Madame de Lormoy, and a man who is known to her and came into her box, no one knows me, and thus this tale will be easily credited; besides, I go so little into the world; and in a month or two, before I leave Paris, perchance, to rejoin you in Bohemia, where you will go under the care of Franz, who has my instructions, then I will tell you my desires, if I do not write them to you. This evening you will go to the Opera; there they will spread the report of my sudden departure. It will be one whim more, which you can attribute to the aberration of my brain, you will be easily believed. You will depart in a close carriage, all my servants will follow you, and it will be readily credited that I have accompanied you. One word more: the contempt and execration with which you inspire me are such that I rely on your not believing that it is from clemency, but from respect for my name, that I do not here unveil to you all your crimes; but take heed, on the least hesitation on your part to obey me, whether here or elsewhere, I shall surmount my disgust, and give you up to vengeance divine and human." And the prince quitted the apartment.

Madame de Hansfeld had listened without interrupting him, thinking that persons ought always to be careful of contradicting madmen. Iris suddenly entered the room with an air of alarm.

"Oh, godmother, what a misfortune!" she cried.

"What mean you?"

"According to your orders, I went to the third rendezvous which Charles de Brévannes has appointed."

"Well?"

"I told him you would not consent to see him."

"Well?"

"Then he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with rage, 'Tell your mistress that I am here; that if she will not give me a speedy interview, at which you may be present--I do not object to that--this evening I will spread every where the tale of Raphael Monti--your lady will understand me.'"

"Did he say so--did he really?"

"And he added, 'She must know I can destroy her, and I will do it.'"

"Misery! misery to me and De Morville! What will he think of me? He will credit these atrocious calumnies,--did not unhappy Raphael believe them?"

"You are to appoint a meeting in some retired spot, the Luxembourg or the Jardin des Plantes, he said, and he will be there; if not, he will speak out. What is to be done? what--what? That wretch of a man is capable of every and any thing!"

After a few moments' reflection, Paula said to Iris, in a decided tone,--

"Give me paper and a pen."

"What are you going to do?"

"Appoint a meeting with M. de Brévannes, at which you shall be present."

"Can you think of such a thing, godmother? What, write and leave a letter of yours in the hands of such a man! What imprudence! But he does not know your writing?"

"No."

"Suppose I write for you."

"You are right; write to him: _The day after to-morrow, at ten o'clock, in the Jardin des Plantes, beneath the cedar in the labyrinth._ Have you written it?"

"Yes, godmother."

"Sign, _Paula Monti_."

"If he should wish to make use of this letter," said Iris, after she had signed it, "he will be the dupe of his own infamy."

"When will you give him this note?"

"Instantly; he is waiting your answer at the little gate by the Quai d'Anjou."

"Go, and return as speedily as possible."

"I have a great deal to tell you, what I have just learnt."

"What is it?"

"During the last week the prince has been four times to an old man's house, named Pierre Raimond, who lives close by."

"And what of that?"

"Why, Pierre Raimond is father to Bertha de Brévannes, whom you thought so pretty."

"What do you say?"

"And Bertha has met the prince twice at Pierre Raimond's."

"Him--met him?"

"Under a false name, Arnold Schneider."

"Ah! now I see through it all!" said the princess, pressing both her hands against her brow.

"What, godmother?"

"You shall know by and by; leave me now."

Iris left the apartment.

Some minutes afterwards, deceived by the treacherous language of Iris, M. de Brévannes, maddened by his insensate hopes, covered with passionate kisses the note which he believed to have been written by the Princess de Hansfeld.