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The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer)

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez · English · Gutenberg #38458 · 975,611 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer)

Author: Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Translator: Irving Brown


        
Release date: January 1, 2012 [eBook #38458]

Language: English

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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: image of the book's cover]




THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

MARE NOSTRUM (OUR SEA)

BLOOD AND SAND

LA BODEGA (THE FRUIT OF THE VINE)

THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL

WOMAN TRIUMPHANT

MEXICO IN REVOLUTION

_In Preparation_

THE ARGONAUTS

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY




THE ENEMIES
OF WOMEN

_(LOS ENEMIGOS DE LA MUJER)_

BY
VICENTE BLASCO IBANEZ

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH
BY
IRVING BROWN

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE

    Copyright, 1918, by
    E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

    _All Rights Reserved_

    _First printing         Oct., 1920_
    _Second printing        Oct., 1920_
    _Third printing         Oct., 1920_
    _Fourth printing        Oct., 1920_
    _Fifth printing         Oct., 1920_
    _Sixth printing         Oct., 1920_
    _Seventh printing       Oct., 1920_
    _Eighth printing        Oct., 1920_
    _Ninth printing         Oct., 1920_
    _Tenth printing         Oct., 1920_

    Printed in the United States of America




        CONTENTS


    CHAPTER      PAGE

    I.              1

    II.            28

    III.           71

    IV.           103

    V.            151

    VI.           189

    VII.          260

    VIII.         324

    IX.           371

    X.            450

    XI.           499

    XII.          512




THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN




CHAPTER I


The Prince repeated his statement:

"Man's greatest wisdom consists in getting along without women."

He intended to go on but was interrupted. There was a slight stir of the
heavy window curtains. Through their parting was seen below, as in a
frame, the intense azure of the Mediterranean. A dull roar reached the
dining-room. It seemed to come from the side of the house facing the
Alps. It was a faint vibration, deadened by the walls, the curtains, and
the carpets, distant, like the working of some underground monster; but
there rose above the sound of revolving steel and the puffing of steam a
clamor of human beings, a sudden burst of shouts and whistling.

"A train full of soldiers!" exclaimed Don Marcos Toledo, leaving his
chair.

"The Colonel is at it again, always the hero, always enthusiastic about
everything that has to do with his profession," said Atilio Castro, with
a smile of amusement.

In spite of his years, the man whom they called the Colonel sprang to
the nearest window. Above the foliage of the sloping garden, he could
see a small section of the Corniche railroad, swallowed up in the smoky
entrance of a tunnel, and reappearing farther on, beyond the hill,
among the groves and rose colored villas of Cap-Martin. Under the
mid-day sun the rails quivered like rills of molten steel. Although the
train had not yet reached this side of the tunnel, the whole
country-side was filled with the ever-increasing roar. The windows,
terraces, and gardens of the villas were dotted black with people who
were leaving their luncheon tables to see the train pass. From the
mountain slope to the seashore, from walls and buildings on both sides
of the track, flags of all colors began to wave.

Don Marcos ran to the opposite window overlooking the city. All he could
see was an expanse of roofs with no trace of Nature's touch save here
and there the feathery green of the gardens against the red of the
tiles. It was like a stage setting broken into a succession of wings: in
the foreground, amid trees, isolated villas with green balustrades and
flower-strewn walls; next, the mass of Monte Carlo, its huge hotels
bristling with pointed turrets and cupolas; and hazy in the background,
as though floating in golden dust, the rocky cliffs of Monaco, with its
promenades; the enormous pile of the Oceanographic Museum; the New
Cathedral, a glaring white; and the square crested tower of the palace
of the Prince. Buildings stretched from the edge of the sea halfway up
the mountains. It was a country without fields, with no open land,
covered completely with houses, from one frontier to the other.

But Don Marcos had known the view for years, and at once detected the
unfamiliar detail. A long, interminable train was moving slowly along
the hillside. He counted aloud more than forty cars, without coming to
the rear coaches still hidden in a hollow.

"It must be a battalion ... a whole battalion on a war footing. More
than a thousand soldiers," he said in an authoritative manner, pleased
at showing off his keen professional judgment before his fellow guests,
who, for that matter, were not listening.

The train was filled with men, tiny yellowish gray figures, that
gathered at the car windows, doors, and on the running-boards with their
feet hanging over the track. Others were crowded in cattle pens or stood
on the open flat-cars, among the tanks and crated machine guns. A great
many had climbed to the roofs and were greeting the crowds with arms and
legs extended in the shape of a letter X. Almost all of them had their
shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, like sailors preparing to
maneuver.

"They are English!" exclaimed Don Marcos. "English soldiers on their way
to Italy!"

But this information seemed to irritate the Prince, who always spoke to
him in familiar language, in spite of the difference in their ages.
"Don't be absurd, Colonel. Anybody would know that. They are the only
ones who whistle."

The men still seated at the table nodded. Military trains passed every
day, and from a distance it was possible to guess the nationality of the
passengers. "The French," said Castro, "go past silently. They have had
a little over three years of fighting on their own soil. They are as
silent and gloomy as their duty is monotonous and endless. The Italians
coming from the French front sing, and decorate their trains with green
branches. The English shout like a lot of boys, just out of school, and
in their enthusiasm, whistle all the time. They are the real children in
this war; they go with a sort of boyish glee to their death."

The whistling sound drew nearer, shrill as the howling of a witches'
Sabbath. It passed between the mountains and the gardens of Villa
Sirena; and then went on in the other direction, toward Italy, gradually
growing fainter as it disappeared in the tunnel. Toledo, who was the
only one in the room to watch the train pass, noticed how the houses,
gardens, and _potagers_ on both sides of the track were alive with
people, waving handkerchiefs and flags in reply to the whistling of the
English. Even along the seashore the fishermen stood up on the seats of
their boats and waved their caps at a distant train. The quick ear of
Don Marcos distinguished a sound of footsteps on the floor above. The
servants doubtless were opening the windows to join with silent
enthusiasm in that farewell.

When only a few coaches were still visible at the mouth of the tunnel,
the Colonel came back to his place at the table.

"More meat for the slaughter house!" exclaimed Atilio Castro, looking at
the Prince. "The racket is over. Go on, Michael."

Under Toledo's watchful eye, two beardless Italian boys, unprepossessing
in appearance, were serving the dessert at the luncheon.

The Colonel kept glancing over the table and at the faces of his three
guests, as though he were afraid of suddenly noticing something that
would show the lunch had been hastily arranged. It was the first that
had been given at Villa Sirena for two years.

The master of the house, Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff, who sat at the
head of the table, had arrived from Paris the evening before.

The Prince was a man still in his youth, fresh with the well controlled
vigor that is furnished by a life of physical exercise. He was tall,
robust, and supple, of dark complexion, with large gray eyes, and a
massive face, clean shaven. The scattered gray hairs at his temples
seemed even more numerous in contrast with the blue-black of the rest.
A number of premature wrinkles around the eyes, and two deep furrows
running from his wide nostrils to the corners of his mouth, were the
first indication of weariness in a powerful organism that seemed to have
lived too intensely, in the mistaken confidence that its reserve of
strength was endless.

The Colonel called him "Your Highness," as if Michael Fedor were a
member of a ruling house, instead of a mere Russian prince. But this was
when some one was present. It was a habit Don Marcos had adopted in the
days of the late Princess Lubimoff, to maintain the prestige of the son,
whom he had known since the latter was a child. In their intimate
relations, when they were alone, he preferred to call him "Marquis,"
Marquis de Villablanca, and the Prince was never successful in
disturbing, by his witticisms on the subject, the precedence thus
established by Don Marcos in his terms of respect. The title of Russian
Prince was for those who are dazzled by the lofty sound of titles,
without being able to appreciate their respective merits, and origins;
as for himself, the Colonel preferred something nobler, the title of
Spanish Marquis, in spite of the fact that that title for Lubimoff was
quite unknown in Spain, and lacked official recognition.

Toledo was well acquainted with Prince Michael's three guests.

Atilio Castro was a fellow countryman, a Spaniard who had spent the
greater part of his life outside his own country. He affected great
intimacy with the Prince and, on the grounds of a distant blood
relationship between them, even spoke to him with some familiarity. Don
Marcos had a vague idea that the young Spaniard had been a consul
somewhere for a short time. Atilio was continually poking fun at him
without his being always immediately aware of it. But the Colonel,
seeing that it pleased "His Highness" greatly, felt no ill-will on that
account.

"A fine fellow, good hearted!" the Colonel often said, in speaking of
Castro. "He hasn't led a model life, he's a terrible gambler--but a
gentleman. Yes, sir, a real gentleman!"

Michael Fedor defined his relative in other terms.

"He has all the vices, and no defects."

Don Marcos could never quite understand what that meant, but
nevertheless it increased his esteem for Castro.

The Prince was only two or three years older than Atilio, and yet their
ages seemed much farther apart. Castro was over thirty-five, and some
people thought him twenty-four. His face had an ingenuous, rather
child-like expression, and it acquired a certain character of manliness,
thanks solely to a dark red mustache, closely cropped. This tiny
mustache, and his glossy hair parted squarely in the middle, were the
most prominent details of his features, except when he became excited.
If his humor changed--which happened very rarely--the luster in his
eyes, the contraction of his mouth, and the premature wrinkles in his
forehead gave him an almost ominous expression, and suddenly he seemed
to age by ten years.

"A bad man to have for an enemy!" affirmed the Colonel. "It wouldn't do
to get in his way."

And not out of fear, but rather out of sincere admiration did the
Colonel speak admiringly of Castro's talents. He wrote poetry, painted
in water color, improvised songs at the piano, gave advice in matters of
furniture and clothes, and was well versed in antiquities, and matters
of taste. Don Marcos knew no limits to that intelligence.

"He knows everything," he would say. "If he would only stick to one
thing! If he would only work!"

Castro was always elegantly dressed, and lived in expensive hotels; but
he had no regular income so far as was known. The Colonel suspected a
series of friendly little loans from the Prince. But the latter had
remained away from Monte Carlo almost since the beginning of the war,
and Don Marcos used to meet Castro every winter living at the Hotel de
Paris, playing at the Casino, and associating with people of wealth.
From time to time, on encountering the Colonel in the gaming rooms,
Castro had asked him for a loan of "ten louis," an absolute necessity
for a gambler who had just lost his last stake and was anxious to
recoup. But with more or less delay he had always returned the money.
There was something mysterious about his life, according to Don Marcos.

The two other guests seemed to him to live much less complex lives. The
one who had frequented the house for the longest period, was a dark
young man, with a skin that was almost copper colored, a slight build,
and long, straight hair. He was Teofilo Spadoni, a famous pianist.
Spadoni's parents were Italian--this much was sure. No one could quite
make out where he had been born. At times he mentioned his birthplace as
Cairo, at other times, as Athens, or Constantinople, all the places
where his father, a poor Neapolitan tailor, had lived. No one was
astonished by such vagaries and absent-minded discrepancies on the part
of the extraordinary virtuoso, who, the moment he left the piano, seemed
to move in a world of dreams and to be quite incapable of adapting
himself to any regular mode of life. After giving concerts in the large
capitals of Europe and South America, he had settled down at Monte
Carlo, explaining his residence there by the war, while Don Marcos
imputed it to his love of gambling. The Prince knew him through having
engaged him as a member of the orchestra on board his large yacht, the
Gaviota II, for a voyage around the world.

Sitting beside the host was the last guest, the latest to frequent the
house, a pale young man, tall, thin, and nearsighted, who was always
looking timidly around as though ill at ease. He was a professor from
Spain, a Doctor of Science, Carlos Novoa, who received a subsidy from
the Spanish government to make certain studies in ocean fauna at the
Oceanographic Museum. The Colonel who had spent many years at Monte
Carlo without running across any of his compatriots, other than those
whom he saw around the roulette tables, had expressed a certain
patriotic pride in meeting this professor two months previously.

"A man of learning! A famous scientist!" he exclaimed in speaking of his
new friend. "They can say all they want now about us Spaniards being
ignoramuses."

He had only the vaguest notion of the nature of his fellow countryman's
learning. What is more: from his earliest conversations he had guessed
that the professor's ideas were directly opposed to his own. "One of
those heretics with no other God than matter," he said to himself. But
he added by way of consolation: "All those learned men are like that:
liberals and free-thinkers. What of it...." As for the professor's fame,
in the opinion of Don Marcos it was unquestionable. Otherwise why would
they have sent him to the Oceanographic Museum, large and white as a
temple, whose halls he had visited only once, with a feeling of awe that
had prevented him from ever going back again.

On the occasional evenings when the professor would go to Monte Carlo
and chance to meet Don Marcos, the latter would present him to his
friends as a national celebrity. In this fashion Novoa had made the
acquaintance of Castro and Spadoni, who never asked him more than how
his luck was going.

When the coming of the Prince was announced, Toledo insisted that his
illustrious friend the Professor should accompany him to the station in
order to lose no time in introducing him to "His Highness."

"One of our country's prides.... Your Highness is so fond of everything
Spanish."

Michael Fedor had spent a considerable portion of his life on the sea,
and felt a certain sympathy for the modest young man, on learning of the
studies in which he specialized.

They talked for a long time about oceanography, and the following day
Prince Michael, who was in the habit of entertaining elaborately at his
table the most divergent kinds of guests, said to his "chamberlain":

"Your scholar is a very fine fellow. Invite him to luncheon."

The guests all spoke Spanish. Spadoni was able to follow the
conversation, with the little he had picked up while giving piano
recitals in Buenos Ayres, Santiago, and other South American capitals.
He had been there with an impresario, who finally got tired of backing
him, and struggling with his childish irresponsibility.

As they were sitting down at the table, the Colonel noticed that the
Prince seemed preoccupied with some absorbing meditation. He made a
point of talking with Professor Novoa, expressing his surprise at the
slight compensation the scientist received for his studies.

Castro and Spadoni gave their whole attention to their food. The days of
the famous chef, to whom Prince Michael gave a salary worthy of a Prime
Minister, were over. The "master" had been mobilized and at that moment
was cooking for a general on the French front. However, Toledo had
managed to discover a woman of some fifty years, whose combinations
were less varied, perhaps, than those of the artist whom the war had
snatched away, but more "classical," more solid and substantial--and the
two men ate with the delight of people who, forever obliged to eat in
restaurants and hotels, at last find themselves at a table where no
economy or falsifications are practised.

About dessert time the conversation, becoming general, turned, as always
happens when men are dining alone, to the subject of women. Toledo had a
feeling that the Prince had gently steered the guests' talk in this
direction. Suddenly Michael summed up his whole argument by declaring a
second time:

"Man's greatest wisdom consists in getting along without women."

And then had followed the long interruption as the train of English
soldiers, in a whirl of shouts, whistling and hissing, had gone by.

Atilio Castro waited until the last car had disappeared in the tunnel,
and said with a subtle and somewhat ironical smile:

"The shouting and whistling sound like a mixture of applause and scorn
for your profound remark. However, please don't bother with such
inexpert opinion. What you said interests me. You abominate women, you
who have had thousands of them!... Go on, Michael!"

But the Prince changed the conversation. He spoke of his impressions on
returning to Villa Sirena after a long absence. Nothing remained to
recall the former days, before the war, save the building and the
gardens. All the men servants were mobilized: some in the French army,
others in the Italian. The day after his arrival he had asked, as a
matter of course, for an auto to go to Monte Carlo. There was no lack of
machines. Three, of the best make, were lying as though forgotten, in
the garage. But the chauffeurs too were at the front; and moreover
there was no gasoline; and a permit was necessary to use the roads....
In short, he had been obliged to stand at the iron gate of the garden
and wait for the Manton electric. It was a novelty for him, an
interesting means of locomotion. It seemed as if he had suddenly been
transported into a world he had forgotten, as he found himself among the
common people on the car. The general curiosity annoyed him. Everyone
was whispering his name: and even the conductor showed a certain emotion
on seeing the owner of Villa Sirena among his passengers.

"And the worst of it all, my friends, is that I'm ruined!"

Spadoni stared with wide opened eyes as though hearing something
extraordinary and absurd. Castro smiled incredulously.

"You ruined?... I'd be satisfied with a tenth of the remains."

The Prince nodded. He reminded one of those great transatlantic liners
which, when they are wrecked, make the fortune of a whole population of
poverty stricken people along the shore. Wealth was of course a relative
thing. He might still have more than many people; but ruin it was for
him, nevertheless.

"In view of what I am going to say later, I must not conceal from you
the situation I am in. A few weeks ago I sold my Paris residence which
my mother built. It was bought by a 'newly rich.' With this war, I'm
going to become a 'newly poor.' You know, Atilio, how things have gone
with me, since this row among the nations started. From the time they
fired the first cannon they sent me from Russia only an eighth of what I
received in times of peace; later much less. The revolution came and cut
down my income still more. And, now under Comrade Lenin and the red
flag, there is nothing coming through at all, absolutely nothing. I have
no idea whatsoever of the fate of my houses, my fields, my mines ... I
don't know even what has become of those who were looking after my
fortune there. They have probably all been killed."

The Colonel raised his eyes to the ceiling: "The revolution!... What
they need is a master."

"But a rich man like you with reserve funds in the bank all the time,
can always find some one to make him a loan until times are better."

"Perhaps; but it means practically poverty for me. My administrator told
me when I was leaving Paris, that I ought to limit my expenses, live
according to my present income. How much have I?... I don't know. He
doesn't even know himself. He is balancing my accounts, collecting from
some people and paying others--I had a lot of debts, it seems.
Millionaires are never asked to pay their bills promptly.... In short, I
shall have to live, like a ruined prince, on some sixty thousand dollars
a year; perhaps more, perhaps less. I really don't know."

Castro and Spadoni seemed to be stirred with longing at the mention of
such a sum. Novoa looked with an air of respect at this man who called
himself his friend and thought himself poor with sixty thousand dollars
a year.

"My administrator spoke to me of selling Villa Sirena as well as the
Paris residence. It seems that the newly rich would like to get
everything I have. A complete liquidation.... But I wouldn't listen to
it. This is my own little nook; I made it what it is myself. Besides,
life is impossible out in the world. The war has filled it with
bitterness. Living in Paris is very gloomy. There is no one there. The
streets are dark. The 'Gothas' make the people of our class worried and
nervous. It is much better to leave. I thought I would settle down here
and wait till this world madness is over."

"It is going to be a long wait," remarked Castro.

"I'm afraid so. However, this is an agreeable spot, a pleasant refuge,
all the more delightful because of the selfish feeling that at this very
moment millions of men are suffering every sort of hardship, and
thousands are dying every day.... But after all, it isn't the same as it
used to be. Even the Mediterranean is different. The minute the sun goes
down, my good Colonel has to mask with black curtains the windows and
doors looking out on the sea, so that the German submarines cannot guide
themselves by our lights.... Dear me! Where are those wonderful days we
spent here in time of peace, the festivals we used to have, those nights
on the Gaviotta II when she anchored in the harbor of Monaco?"

A far away look came into Castro's eyes, as though he were in a dream.
In his imaginings he saw the gardens of Villa Sirena, softly lighted,
wrapped in a milky haze that settled on the invisible waves like rays of
reflected moonlight.

The window curtains were crimson, and from them, drifting through the
warm darkness of the night, came the sound of laughter, cries, the
sighing of violins, amorous love songs, that told of women's throats,
white and voluptuous, swelling with desire and the rapture of the music.
The stars, specks of light lost in the infinite, twinkled in answer to
the electric stars, hidden in the dark foliage. Walking slowly, couples
arm in arm disappeared amid the deep shadows of the garden. All the
women of the day had turned up there sooner or later: famous actresses
from Paris, London, and Vienna; beauties of the smart cliques of two
hemispheres, women of high society, smiling the smile of slaves before
the potentate who could banish their debts with the stroke of a pen.
Oh, the Pompeian nights of Villa Sirena!...

Spadoni saw, rather, the Gaviotta II, a palace with propellers, which,
when anchored in the small harbor of La Condamine, seemed to fill it
completely and to make the yachts of the American millionaires and the
Prince of Monaco look like tiny things indeed. It was an alcazar, a
palace of the Arabian Nights, topped off with two smoke stacks, and
parading over every sea of the planet, its private parlors adorned with
fountains and statues, its enormous library, its ball room with a raised
platform, from which fifty musicians, many of them celebrated, gave
concerts for a single visible auditor, Prince Michael, who half reclined
on a divan, while the tropical breeze came through the high windows,
caressing the heads of the officers and chief functionaries of the
steamer crowding about the openings. The pianist could see once more the
lonely harbors of dead historic countries, with flights of seagulls
wheeling against the quiet azure vault; the mighty bays, filled with the
smoke and bustle of North America; the coasts of the Antilles with
groves of cocoanut palms, black at sunset against the reddish sky; the
islands of the Pacific, of hard coral, forming a ring about an inner
lake.... And that omnipotent magician confessed the loss of his
wealth!...

The Prince, as though he guessed their thoughts, added:

"It's the end of all that: I don't know whether forever or for many
years.... And even if things should be the same some day as they were
before the war, what a long time we shall have to wait!... I may die
before then.... That is why I am going to make a proposal to you."

He paused a moment, to enjoy the curiosity he read in the eyes of his
auditors.

Then he asked Castro:

"Are you satisfied with your present life?"

In spite of Castro's good natured, smiling placidity, he started in
surprise as if indignant at such a question. His life was unbearable.
The war had upset his habits and pleasures, scattering his friendships
to the four winds. He did not know the fate of hundreds of persons of
various nationalities, who had filled his life before the war, and
without whom he would then have thought it impossible to live.

"Besides, I have less money than ever. I am staying at Monte Carlo just
for the gambling; and even if I always lose in the end, like everyone
else, I always keep a tight grip on a little something to live on!...
But what a life!"

He glanced at Novoa as though the recency of his acquaintance inspired a
certain suspicion, but immediately he went on, with an air of assurance:

"There is no reason why I should not speak quite plainly. A little while
ago the Professor told us how much he earned: some hundred dollars a
month; less than any employee at the Casino. I am going to be as frank
as he. I live in the Hotel de Paris: Atilio Castro cannot afford to live
anywhere else; he must keep up his connections. But there are many weeks
when I have the greatest difficulty in paying for my room, and I eat in
cheap restaurants and Italian wine shops, when no one invites me out to
dine. I pay three or four times as much for my bed as I do for my board.
Evenings when luck is against me, and I lose everything to the last
chip, I get along with a ham sandwich at the Casino bar. I belong to the
same school as the Madrid gambler we nicknamed the 'Master,' and who
used to say to us: 'Boys, money was made for gambling; and what's left,
for eating.'"

"And in spite of that, you like good food," said the Prince.

Castro's laments took on a comical seriousness. With the war the good
old customs had been forgotten. No one kept house; everyone lived in
hotels, and the proprietors of the luxurious palaces took the scarcity
of food as a pretext to serve the sort of meals one gets in third rate
restaurants, scanty and poor. An invitation merely gave one a chance to
fool one's hunger.

"It has been months, maybe years, since I've eaten as I have to-day, and
I've sat at the tables of all the big hotels on the Riviera. I had
ceased to believe that such chicken as you have just served existed in
the world any longer. I imagined they were dream birds, mythological
fowl."

The Colonel smiled, bowing as if that were a tribute to him.

"And you, Spadoni?" the Prince went on inquiringly. "How are you
enjoying life?"

"Your Highness--I--I," stammered the musician, at the sudden question.

Castro intervened, coming to his rescue.

"Our friend Spadoni can always get a free meal at the villas of a number
of invalid ladies, who live at Cap-Martin and who are mad about music.
Besides some English people at Nice often invite him. He doesn't need to
bother about paying hotel bills either. He has at his disposal a whole
big villa, large and well-furnished: it goes with his job, as watchman
over a corpse."

Novoa started with surprise at the news.

"Don't be astonished," continued Atilio. "He has the benefit of a
magnificent house in exchange for looking after a tomb."

"Oh, Professor!... Don't mind him," groaned the musician with the air of
a martyr.

"But with all these advantages," Castro went on saying, "there is one
terrible drawback: he is a worse gambler than I. He has a nickname in
the Casino 'the number five gentleman.' He never plays any other number.
Anything he can get hold of he puts on five, and loses it. I am the
'number seventeen gentleman' and it turns out as badly with me as with
him.... Besides, he has his English friends. Queer ducks! They come from
Nice every day in a two horse landau, and just as if they didn't get
enough gambling with the Casino, they set up a green table on their
knees and take out a deck of cards. They play poker with the Corniche
landscape, that people come from all over the world to see, right before
their eyes. And our artist, when he takes a fourth hand with the two
Englishmen and an old maid, there within the sight of the Mediterranean,
golden in the setting sun, loses everything he took in at some concert
at Cannes or Monte Carlo."

Spadoni started to say something, but stopped, seeing that the Prince
turned to Novoa:

"I shan't ask you," said the Prince; "I know your situation. You live in
the old part of Monaco, in the house of an employee of the Museum; and
his lodgings can't be much. Besides, as Atilio was saying, you receive
much less than a croupier at the Casino."

And looking at his guests he added:

"What I want to propose to you is that you live with me. The invitation
is a selfish one on my part; I'm not denying that. I intend to stay here
until the world quiets down, and life is pleasant once more. If my
Colonel and I were here alone we would end by hating each other. You
will keep me company in my retreat."

All three remained dumbfounded at such an unexpected proposal. Novoa was
the first to regain the use of his tongue.

"Prince, you scarcely know me. We saw each other for the first time
three days ago.... I don't know whether I ought...."

The Prince interrupted him with the sharp tone and imperious manner of a
man who is not accustomed to considering objections.

"We have known each other for many years; we have known each other all
our lives." Then he added soothingly:

"It isn't much that I'm offering you. Servants are scarce. There are no
men except my old valet and those two Italian monkeys that the Colonel
managed to recruit somewhere. The rest of the service is done by
women.... But even so, our life will be pleasant. We shall isolate
ourselves from a world gone crazy. We will not mention this war. We
shall lead a comfortable existence, as the monks did in the monasteries
of the Middle Ages, which were refreshing oases of tranquillity in the
midst of violence and massacres. We shall eat well; the Colonel
guarantees me that. The Library from the yacht is here. When I sold the
boat, I had Don Marcos install all my books on the top floor. Our friend
Novoa will find some volumes there which perhaps he does not know.
Everyone will do what he pleases; free monks all of us, with no other
obligation than to repair to the refectory at the proper hour. And if
the 'number five gentleman' and the 'number seventeen gentleman' want to
drop in at the Casino, they can do so, and someone will see to it that
their pockets are kept filled. We must give something to vice, what the
devil! Without vices, life wouldn't be worth living."

A silent approbation greeted these words of the master of Villa Sirena.

"The one thing I insist on," continued the Prince after a long pause,
"is that we live alone, as men among men. No women! Women must be
excluded from our life in common."

The pianist opened his eyes in astonishment; Castro stirred in his
chair; Novoa removed his glasses with a mechanical gesture of surprise,
immediately adjusting them once more to his nose.

There was another silence.

"What you propose," said Atilio, at last, with a smile, "reminds me of a
comedy of Shakespeare. No women! And the hero in the end gets married."

"I know that play," replied the Prince, "but I am not in the habit of
governing my life according to comedies, and I don't believe in their
teachings. You can rest assured that I shan't marry, even if it gives
the lie to Shakespeare and the French king from whose chronicle he got
the material for his work."

"But what you're attempting is absurd," Castro went on: "I don't know
what the rest think, but prevent me from...!"

With a gesture he ended his protest.

Then seeing that the Prince had remained thoughtful, he added:

"It is quite evident that you have had your fill!... You have gotten all
you wanted, and now you want to force on us...."

The Prince, although absorbed in his own train of thought, he had not
heard him, interrupted.

"Seeing that you can't get along without it.... All right! I have no
fixed intention of making a martyr of you. Go on being a slave to a
necessity that is a result more of the imagination than of desire. Now
that I really know life, I am astonished that men do so many foolish
things for the sake of a passing pleasure. While you are here you may
satisfy your whims whenever you like ... but no women."

The three listeners looked at one another in astonishment; and even the
Colonel, who never betrayed his feeling when his "lord" was speaking,
showed a certain surprise on his countenance. What did the Prince mean?

"You are not ignorant, Atilio, of what a woman is. In the great majority
of peoples on this earth there are only females. There are young females
and old females; but there are no 'women.' Woman, as we understand the
word, is the artificial product of civilizations which, somewhat like
hot-house flowers, have reached their maturity with a complex perverse
beauty. Only in the large cities that have come to be decadent because
they have reached their limits, do you find 'women.' Not being mothers
like the poor females, they give up all their time to love, prolong
their youth marvelously, and scheme to inspire passions at an age when
the others live like grandmothers. There you have the creatures that,
personally, I am afraid of! If they come in here, it's the end of our
society, our tranquil, even life."

The Prince arose from the table, and they all followed suit. Lunch being
over they all passed into the great hall adjoining, where coffee was
served. The Colonel looked about anxiously, examining the boxes of
Havanas, and the large liquor chest with its varied cut glass and
colored flasks, placed in a row.

While cutting the tip of his cigar, the Prince continued, speaking all
the while to Castro:

"When you want ... anything like that, all you need do is to choose in
the vicinity of the Casino. A hundred or two francs; and then,
good-by!... But the other ones! The women! They work their way into our
lives, and finally dominate us, and want to mold our ways to suit their
own. Their love for us after all is merely vanity, like that of the
conqueror who loves the land that he has conquered with violence. They
have all read books--nearly always stupidly and without understanding,
to be sure, but they have read books--and such reading leaves them
determined to satisfy all sorts of vague desires, and absurd whims, that
succeed only in making slaves of us, and in moving us to act on impulses
we have acquired in our own early romantic readings.... I know them. I
have met too many of them in my life. If women from our social sphere
mingle with us here, it means an end to peace. They will seek me out
through curiosity on remembering my past life, or greed in thinking of
my wealth; as for you men, they will come between you, making you
jealous of one another and the life that I desire here will be
impossible.... Besides, we are poor."

Atilio protested, smilingly: "Oh! poor!"

"Poor when it comes to the follies of the old days," continued the
Prince, "and for love one needs money. All that talk about love being a
disinterested thing was made up by poor people, who are satisfied with
imitations. There is a glitter of gold at the bottom of every passion.
At first we don't think of such things; desire blinds us. All we see is
the immediate domination of the person so sweetly our adversary. But
love invariably ends by giving or taking money."

"Take money from a woman!... Never!" said Castro, losing his ironic
smile.

"You will end by taking it, if you are poor, and frequent the society of
women. Those of our times think of nothing but money. When their love is
a rich man, they ask him for it, even if they have a large fortune of
their own. They feel less worthy if they don't ask. When they are fond
of a poor man, they force him to receive gifts from them. They dominate
him better by degrading him. Besides, in doing so they feel the selfish
satisfaction of the person who gives alms. Woman, having always been
forced to beg from man, has the greatest sensation of pride, and thinks
she in turn can give money to some one of the sex that has always
supported her."

Novoa, cup in hand, listened attentively to the Prince. Lubimoff was
speaking of a world quite unknown to him. Spadoni, as he sipped his
coffee, with a vague look in his eyes, was thinking of something far
away.

"Now you know the worst, Atilio," the Prince went on. "No women!... That
way we will lead a great life. All the morning, free! We shan't see one
another until lunch time. Down below is the cove, there are still a
number of boats. We can fish, while it's sunny; we can go rowing. In the
afternoon you will go to the Casino; occasionally I shall go, too, to
hear some concert. Spring is drawing near. At night, sitting on the
terrace, watching the stars, our friend Novoa, the man of learning of
our monastery, will expound the music of the spheres; and Spadoni, our
musician, will sit down at the piano, and delight us with terrestrial
music."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Castro. "You are almost a poet in describing our
future life, and you have persuaded me. We are going to be happy. But
don't forget your permission for the 'female,' and your prohibition of
'women.' No skirts in Villa Sirena! Nothing but men; monks in trousers,
selfish and tolerant, coming together to live a pleasant life, while the
world is aflame."

Atilio remained thoughtful a few moments, and continued:

"We need a name; our community must have a title. We shall call
ourselves 'the enemies of women'."

The Prince smiled.

"The name mustn't go any farther than ourselves. If people outside
learned of it, they might think it meant something else."

Novoa, feeling honored by his new intimacy with men so different from
those with whom he had previously associated, accepted the name with
enthusiasm.

"I confess, gentlemen, that according to the distinction made by the
Prince, I have never known a 'woman'. Females ... poor ones, to be sure,
a very few perhaps! But I like the name, and agree to join the 'enemies
of women' even though a woman is never to enter my life."

Spadoni, as though suddenly awakening, turned to Castro, and continued
his thought aloud.

"It's a system of stakes invented by an English lord, now dead, who won
millions by it. They explained it to me yesterday. First you place...."

"No, no, you satanic pianist!" exclaimed Atilio. "You can explain it to
me in the Casino, providing I have the curiosity to listen. You've made
me lose a lot, with all your systems. I had better go on playing your
'number five.'"

The Colonel, who had listened in silence to the conversation in regard
to women, seemed to recall something when Castro mentioned gambling.

"Last evening," he said to the Prince, in a mysterious voice, "I met the
Duchess in the Casino"....

A look of silent questioning halted his words.

"What Duchess is that?"

"The question is quite in point, Michael," said Atilio. "Your
'chamberlain' is better acquainted in society than any man on the
Riviera. He knows princesses and duchesses by the dozen. I have seen him
dining in the Hotel de Paris with all the ancient French nobility, who
come here to console themselves for the long time it takes to bring back
their former kings. In the private rooms in the Casino, he is always
kissing wrinkled hands and bowing to some group of disgusting mummies
loaded down with the oldest and most famous names. Some of them call
him simply 'Colonel'; others introduce him with the title of 'aide de
camp of Prince Lubimoff'."

Don Marcos stiffened, offended by the waggish tone in which his high
estate was being mentioned, and said haughtily:

"Senor de Castro, I am a soldier grown old in defense of Legitimacy; I
shed my blood for the sacred tradition, and there is nothing remarkable
about my association with...."

The Prince knowing by experience that the Colonel did not know what time
was, when once he began to talk about "legitimacy" and the blood he had
shed, hastened to interrupt him.

"All right; we know that very well already. But who was this Duchess you
met?"

"The Duchess de Delille. She often asks about your Highness, and upon
hearing that you had just arrived, she gave me to understand that she
intended paying you a call."

The Prince replied with a simple exclamation, and then remained silent.

"We are starting well," said Castro, laughing. "'No women!' And
immediately the Colonel announces a visit from one of them, one of the
most dangerous.... For you will admit that a Duchess like that is one of
the 'women' you described to us."

"I won't receive her," said the Prince resolutely.

"I have an idea that this Duchess is a cousin of yours."

"There is no such relationship. Her father was the brother of my
mother's second husband. But we have known each other since childhood,
and we each have a most unpleasant memory of one another. When I was
living in Russia she married a French Duke. She had the same desire as
the majority of wealthy American girls: a great title of nobility in
order to make her friends among the fair sex jealous and to shine in
European circles. A few months later she left the Duke, assigning him a
certain income, which is just what her noble husband wanted perhaps.
This woman Alicia never appealed to me particularly.... Besides, she has
lived life just as she pleased.... She has seen almost as much of it as
I have. She has as much of a reputation as I. They even accuse her, just
as they do me, of love affairs with people she has never seen.... They
tell me that in recent years she has been parading around with a young
lad, almost a child ... dear me! We are getting old!"

"I saw her with him in Paris," said Castro. "It was before the war.
Later in Monte Carlo I met her, all by herself, without being able to
find a trace of her young chap anywhere. He must have been a passing
fancy of hers.... She has been here three years now. When summer comes
she moves to Aix-les-Bains, or to Biarritz, but as soon as the Casino is
gay and fashionable again, she is one of the first to return."

"Does she play?"

"Desperately. She plays high stakes and plays them badly, although we
who think we play well always lose just the same, in the end. I mean,
she puts her money on the table without thinking, in several places at a
time, and then even forgets where she placed it. The 'leveurs des morts'
are always hanging around to pick up the pieces that no one claims and
when she wins, they always manage to get something of it. She gambled
for two years with nothing less than chips of five hundred and a
thousand francs. At present her chips are never for more than a hundred.
It won't be long before she is using the red ones, the twenties, the
favorites of your humble servant."

"I shall refuse to receive her," affirmed the Prince.

And doubtless in order not to talk any more about the Duchess de
Delille, he suddenly left his friends, and walked out of the room.

Atilio, in a conversational mood, turned and asked a question of Don
Marcos, who was speaking with Novoa, while Spadoni went on dreaming,
with eyes wide open, of the English lord's system.

"Have you seen Dona Enriqueta lately?"

"Are you asking me about the Infanta?" replied the Colonel gravely.
"Yes, I met her yesterday, in the courtyards of the Casino. Poor lady!
If it isn't a shame! The daughter of a king.... She told me that her
sons haven't anything to wear. She owes two hundred francs for
cigarettes, at the bar of the private play rooms. She can't find anyone
who will lend her money. Besides, she has frightful bad luck; she loses
everything. These are fatal days for people of royal blood. I almost
wept when I heard all her poverty and troubles, and felt that I couldn't
give her anything more. The daughter of a king?"

"But her father disowned her, when she eloped with some unknown artist,"
said Atilio. "And besides, Don Carlos wasn't a king anywhere."

"Senor de Castro," replied the Colonel, drawing himself up, like a
rooster, "let's not spoil the party. You know my ideas: I have shed my
blood in the cause of Legitimacy, and the respect that I have for you
should not...."

Novoa, wishing to calm Don Marcos, intervened in the conversation.

"Monte Carlo here is like a beach, where all sorts of wreckage, living
and dead, is washed up sooner or later. In the Hotel de Paris there is
another member of the family, but of the successful branch, the one that
is ruling and taking in the money."

"I know him," said Atilio, laughing. "He's a young man of calipigous
exuberance and wherever he goes his handsome gentleman secretary goes
with him. He always meets some venerable old lady who, dazzled by his
royal kinship, takes it upon herself to keep up his extravagant mode of
living.... Don't know what the devil he can possibly give her in return!
As for the secretary, he gives him a slap from time to time just to
assert his ancient rights."

Don Marcos remained silent. He was not interested in the members of that
branch, not he.

"Also," Castro continued mischievously, "in the Casino before the war, I
met Don Jaime, your own king at present. A great fellow for gambling! He
risked thousand franc chips by the handful. He had a lot of money coming
from somewhere. In the Casino they all used to say that it was sent him
from Madrid, on condition that he should have no children and allow his
claims to the throne to die out with him."

"And just to think," murmured Novoa, without realizing that he was
speaking aloud, "that for both of these families, back there, so many
men have killed one another. To think, that for a question of
inheritance among people like that we have gone back a century in
European life!"

"You too!" exclaimed the Colonel, provoked again. "A scholar, saying a
thing like that! I can hardly believe my ears!"




CHAPTER II


At the end of the second Carlist war a Spanish officer, Don Miguel
Saldana, had found himself, as a result of the defeat, banished forever
from his own country and condemned to a life of poverty and obscurity.
The Madrid papers, without prefixing his name with any slanderous
adjectives, called him simply "the rebel chief Saldana." This courtesy,
doubtless, was intended to distinguish him from the other party chiefs
who in Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, had waged a campaign of pillage
and executions for five years. Among his own people he was known as
General Miguel Saldana, Marquis of Villablanca. The pretender, Don
Carlos, had given him that title because Villablanca was the name of the
town where Saldana had practically annihilated a column of the Liberal
army. The topographical information of Saldana's Chief of Staff--a local
priest who had spent his whole life in doing nothing except saying mass
on Sundays and spending the rest of the week hunting in the mountains
with his dog and gun--gave him an opportunity to take the enemy by
surprise, and he won a notorious victory.

When he crossed the frontier as a fugitive, through refusing to
recognize the Bourbons as the constitutional rulers, "the rebel chief
Saldana" was twenty-nine years of age. A second son in a proud and
ruined family, he had been obliged to resist the traditions of his house
which presented for him an ecclesiastical career. When his studies at
the Military School at Toledo were just finishing, the Revolution of
1868 caused him to renounce a commission to escape being under orders
from certain generals who had participated in overthrowing royalty.
When Don Carlos took up arms, Saldana was one of the first to volunteer
his services; and having gone through a military school, and received a
good education, he at once became conspicuous among the guerrillas of
the so-called Army of the Center, made up, for the most part, of country
squires, village clerks, and mountain priests.

Besides, Saldana distinguished himself for a reckless though rather
unfortunate bravery. He always led the attack at the head of his men and
consequently was wounded in the majority of his fights. But his wounds
were "lucky wounds" as the soldiers say. They left marks of glory on his
body without destroying his vigorous health.

Finding himself alone in Paris, where his only resource was the
admiration of a few elderly "legitimist" ladies of the aristocratic
Faubourg Saint Germain, he left for Vienna. There his king had friends
and relatives. His youth and his exploits gained him admission as a hero
of the old monarchy to the circle of archdukes. The war between Russia
and Turkey tore him away from his pleasant life as an interesting
hanger-on. Being a fighting man and a Catholic, he felt it his duty to
wage war against the Turks; and with recommendations as a protege of
some influential Austrians, he went to the Court at Saint Petersburg.
General Saldana became a mere Commander of a Squadron in the Russian
Cavalry. The officers conversed with him in French. His horsemen
understood him well enough when he placed himself in front of his
division, and, unsheathing his sword, galloped ahead of them against the
enemy.

Various successful charges and two more "lucky wounds" won him a certain
celebrity. At the end of the war he had gained numerous friends among
officers of the nobility, and was presented in the most aristocratic
drawing rooms. One evening at a ball given by a Grand Duchess, he saw
close at hand the most fashionable and most talked of young woman of the
season: the Princess Lubimoff.

She was twenty-two, an orphan, with a fortune said to be one of the
largest in Russia. The first to bear the title of Prince Lubimoff, a
poor but handsome Cossack, unable to read or write, succeeded in winning
the attention of the Great Catherine, who made him the favorite among
her lovers of second rank. During the years that her imperial caprice
lasted, the new Prince was forced to seek his fortune far from the
Court, since the favorites before him had gained possession of all that
was near at hand. The Czarina allowed him to make his selection on the
map of her immense Empire; distant territories beyond the Urals, which
the new proprietor was, like the majority of his successors, never to
see. With the introduction of the railroad, enormous riches came to
light in these lands chosen by the Cossack; in some, veins of platinum
were discovered; in others, quarries of malachite, deposits of lapis
lazuli, and rich oil wells. Besides, tens of thousands of serfs,
recently freed by the Czar, continued to work the land for the Lubimoff
heirs, just as they had before the emancipation. And all this immense
fortune, which nearly doubled each year with new discoveries, belonged
entirely to one woman, the young Princess, who considered herself as one
of the Imperial family owing to the relationship of her ancestor, and
had more than once given the sovereign cause for worry through the
eccentricities of her character.

She was an aggressive young woman, capricious and inconsistent in both
words and deeds, a puzzle to everyone through the sharp contradictions
in her conduct. She mingled with the officers of the Guard, treating
them as comrades, smoking and drinking with them and taking a hand in
their exercises in horsemanship; and then suddenly she would shut
herself up in her palace for whole weeks, on her knees most of the time,
before the holy ikons, absorbed in mystic fervor, and loudly imploring
the forgiveness of her sins. She looked on the Emperor with veneration,
as the representative of God. At the same time she was known to
sympathize with the Nihilists.

The courtiers were scandalized whenever they told how she had
accompanied a girl, whom the police were watching to a wretched house on
the outskirts of the capital, and had there mingled with the
revolutionary rabble composed of workmen and students. With them she had
entered a narrow room, and joined the line passing before a coffin that
was constantly in danger of being upset by the pushing of the gloomy
curious crowd. The dead man's name was Fedor Dostoiewsky. The princess
had scattered a bouquet of the most costly roses on the protruding
forehead and monkish beard of the novelist.

And in her moments of anger this same Nadina Lubimoff beat the servants
in her Palace, as though they were still serfs, and forced her maids to
grovel at her feet. Her irritability and fiery temper turned everything
upside down, to such an extent that a certain elderly Prince, who by
Imperial order had been chosen as her guardian, desired, in spite of the
fact that it would mean to him loss of the management of an immense
fortune, to see her married as soon as possible.

Nadina Lubimoff inspired a feeling of dread in her suitors. They were
all afraid that she would answer their request for her hand with a cruel
jest. Twice she had announced her engagement to gentlemen of the Court,
and at the last moment she herself had begged the Czar to refuse his
consent. By this time no one dared propose, for fear of laughter and
comment. Yet in spite of the freedom and unconventionality of her
conduct, no one doubted the uprightness of her character.

On seeing her, Saldana thought of a naiad of the North, rising from an
emerald river, in which cakes of ice were floating. She was tall and
majestic, with a somewhat massive figure, like the divinities painted in
frescos for ceilings. Her skin was of radiant whiteness. The pupils of
her gray eyes gave out a greenish light, and her silky hair was a faded
washed-out red. Owing to the marvelous whiteness of her complexion, her
flesh appeared somewhat soft, but a fresh fragrance emanated from it,
"the fragrance of running brooks," to use the words of her admirers. Her
nostrils were rather wide, and in the stress of emotion they quivered,
like those of a horse, thus recalling her glorious ancestor, the virile
Cossack of the Czarina.

The ball was nearly over before she noticed the Spaniard. There were so
many officers constantly at her heels, greeting her cruel jokes and
vulgar expressions with a smile of gratitude!--Suddenly Saldana, who was
standing between two doorways, was startled by a clear but commanding
female voice.

"Your arm, Marquis."

And before he could offer it to her the young Princess took it, and led
him off to the buffet in the drawing room.

Nadina drank a good sized glass of vodka, preferring this liquor of the
people to the champagne which the servants were pouring out in large
quantities. Then smiling at her companion she drew him into the
embrasure of a window where they were almost hidden by the curtains.

"Your wounds!... I want to see your wounds!"

Saldana was dumfounded at the command of this great lady accustomed to
carrying out her most whimsical ideas. Blushing like a soldier, who had
lived all his life among men, he finally drew up the left sleeve of his
uniform, revealing a brown, hairy forearm, with large tendons, and
deeply furrowed by the scar of a bullet wound received back in Spain.

The Princess admired his athletic arm, with its dark skin, cut by the
jagged white of the new tissue.

"The other--the others! I want to see the rest of them!" she commanded,
gazing at him fiercely, as though she were ready to bite, while her
lips, moist and shining, curved sharply downward.

She had seized his arm with a hand that trembled, while with the other
she tried to undo the gold cords on the officer's breast.

Saldana drew back, stammering. "Oh! Princess!" What she desired was
impossible. It was impossible to show the other wounds to a lady....

He felt on the one visible scar the contact of two lips. Nadina, bowing
her proud head, was kissing his arm.

"Hero!... Oh! my hero!"

Immediately afterward she drew herself up again, cold and distant, with
no other sign of emotion than a slight quivering of her nostrils. No
longer was she tormented by the desire to see immediately those
frightful scars of which she had heard from some of the comrades of the
brave adventurer. She was sure of being able to see them to her heart's
content whenever she pleased.

In a few days the rumor began to circulate that the Princess Lubimoff
was to be married to the Spaniard. She herself had started the news
going, without bothering to ascertain beforehand the inclination of her
future husband.

The arguments with which she justified her decision could not have been
more weighty. She was blond and Saldana was dark. They had both been
born at outermost limits of Europe. These considerations were
sufficient to make a happy marriage. Besides, the Princess was
convinced that she had always been fond of Spain, although she would not
have been able to place it accurately on the map. She recalled certain
verses of Heine mentioning Toledo, and others by Musset addressing
Andalusian Marquises of Barcelona; and she used to hum a love song about
the oranges of Seville.... Her hero must surely be from Toledo, or,
better yet, an Andalusian from Barcelona.

In vain certain people of the court spoke of the Czar's not allowing the
match. A great heiress marrying a foreign soldier banished from his
country!... But the Princess by her very conduct, gave the sovereign to
understand her will.

"Either I marry him, or I start out as a dancer in a Paris theater."

It was rumored that Saldana was about to be deported.

"So much the better: I will go and join him, and be his sweetheart."

The old Prince, her guardian, lamented this obstinacy on the part of the
Court. If it had not been for this opposition, Nadina's caprice for
Saldana, like so many of her whims, would have lasted only a few days.
It was said that perhaps the Emperor, in order to break her will, would
dispossess her of her vast estates in Siberia. The grandchild of the
Cossack shrieked in reply that she would kill herself rather than obey.

At last the ruler prudently allowed her to fulfil her desire. In getting
married she would give up her eccentricities perhaps, and the Russian
court, so rich in scandals, would have one less.

The wedding journey of the Princess Lubimoff lasted all her life. Only
twice, for reasons relating to her great fortune, did she return to
Russia. Western Europe was more favorable than the court of an autocrat
to her love of freedom. In the first year of her marriage, while in
London, she had a son, who was to be the only child. She allowed him to
be called Michael, like his father, but insisted that he should have a
second name, Fedor, perhaps in memory of Dostoiewsky, her favorite
novelist, whose character inspired in her a feeling of sympathy, through
a certain resemblance to herself.

No one succeeded in ascertaining with certainty whether or not Don
Miguel Saldana felt happy in his new position as Prince Consort, which
permitted him to enjoy all the pleasure and magnificence of immense
wealth. According to Spanish customs, he started out to impose his will
as a husband and a man of character, to curb the eccentricities of his
wife. Vain determination! The very woman who at times could be
sentimental and moan at the thought of social inequalities and the
suffering of the poor, could, by her fiery impetuosity, reduce the
stoutest and most firmly steeled will.

In the end Saldana relapsed into silence, fearing the aggressiveness of
the daughter of the Cossack. To keep his prestige as a great noble,
anxious for the respect of the servants and for the consideration of his
guests, he feared violent scenes that filled the drawing rooms and even
the stairways of his luxurious residence with feminine shrieks. He did
not care more than once to see the Princess with one kick send the oaken
table flying against the dining room wall, while all the porcelain and
crystal service smashed into bits with one catastrophic crash.

When the Paris architects had carried out the orders of the Princess,
the family left the castle they were occupying in the vicinity of
London. A group of rich Parisians, Jewish bankers for the most part,
were covering the level grounds around the new Park Monceau, with large
private dwellings. The Princess Lubimoff had an enormous palace, with a
garden of extraordinary size for a city, built in this quarter. She even
set up a tiny dairy behind a grove of trees, and without leaving her
place she could enjoy the role of a country woman, whipping cream and
churning butter, in imitation of Marie Antoinette, who likewise played
at being a shepherdess in the Petit Trianon.

At times a wave of tenderness swept over her, and she adored and obeyed
her husband, pushing her humility to extremes that were alarming. She
told her visitors about the General's campaigns, and his daring exploits
back in Spain, a land which inspired in her a romantic interest, and
which for that very reason she did not care ever to see. Suddenly she
would cut her eulogies short with a command:

"Marquis, show them your wounds."

As proof of her tenderness, she refrained from getting angry when her
husband refused.

She always called him "Marquis," perhaps in order to keep the princely
title for herself alone, perhaps because she felt that he should not be
deprived of a rank he had gained with his blood. The Marquis never paid
any attention to this breach of etiquette. His wife had already
committed so many!

A year after their marriage, when the news reached London that Alexander
II had been killed by the explosion of a Nihilist bomb, the Princess ran
about her apartments like a mad woman, and took to her bed after an
extraordinary fit of anger.

"The wretches! He was so good!... They've killed their own father."

And thereafter when Saldana entered the luxurious dwelling in Paris, he
often came across strange visitors, at whom the lackeys in breeches
stared in amazement. They were uncouth girls with spectacles, and
cropped hair, carrying portfolios under their arms; men with long hair
and tangled beards, whose eyes contained the startled expression of
visionaries; Russians from the Latin Quarter under police surveillance,
terrorists, who appealed not in vain to the generosity of the Princess,
and used her money perhaps to make infernal machines which they sent
back to their country and hers.

When the Prince Michael Fedor recalled his childhood memories, he could
see his father holding him on his knees and caressing him with his firm
hands. The child would gaze up at the dark face and large mustache that
joined Saldana's closely cropped mutton chop whiskers. He could not be
sure whether the moisture in those black, commanding eyes came from
tears; but after he learned Spanish he was sure that the Marquis had
often murmured, as he smoothed the tiny brow:

"My poor little boy!... Your mother is mad!"

When Michael reached the age of eight, the problem of his education
caused the Princess to show her motherly concern for a few weeks. One of
those visitors, who so greatly worried the servants, brought his books
and his frayed garments from a narrow street near the Pantheon, and took
up his abode in the lordly dwelling of the Lubimoffs. He was a silent
young man, given to the study of chemistry, and forbidden to return to
his country. The very day of his arrival, a secret service agent came
and questioned the porter of the palace.

"I want my son to know Russian," said the Princess. "Besides, he will
learn a great deal from Sergueff. Sergueff is a real man of learning,
and worthy of a better fate."

Saldana insisted that he should likewise have a Spanish teacher, and she
raised no objections. All the members of her family had possessed to an
unusual degree the talent of the Slavs for learning languages easily.

"Prince Michael Fedor," said his mother, "is the Marquis of Villablanca,
and ought to know the language of his second country."

On this account the General once again sought out his former companions
in arms who were still scattered in various parts of Paris. The fame of
his enormous wealth had brought him many requests, even from persons of
whom he had formerly stood in awe. But although the Princess, who was
generous to a fault, allowed him the management of her fortune, Saldana,
with chivalrous unyielding integrity, felt that he had no right to her
money, and gradually came to avoid the insistent suppliants. Besides, a
great change had come over this silent man during his travels through
Europe. The former soldier of the absolute monarchy was now an admirer
of England and her constitutional history.

"You see things differently when you travel about," was all he said. "If
all my fellow countrymen had only seen the world."

One day the new teacher presented himself at the palace. He was twelve
years younger than Saldana. He had been under the latter's command
toward the end of the war, and instead of calling him by his title of
Marquis or Prince he addressed him proudly, at every opportunity, as "my
General."

The General had not the slightest recollection of him; but the fact that
he could give exact details of the last campaign, and had been
recommended by various friends, did not permit of any doubt as to his
veracity. He must have been one of those lads who had run away from home
and joined the Carlist bands, making up those forces of irregulars whom
Saldana, unable to tolerate their frequent atrocities, more than once
threatened with execution en masse. The teacher claimed that the General
himself had given him a subordinate's commission in the last months of
the war, owing to his having a better education than his ragged
comrades.

Thus Marcos Toledo entered the palace of the Lubimoffs.

The solemn husband of the Princess laughed with boyish glee upon hearing
the story of Toledo's first experiences as an _emigre_ in Paris.

During the first few months, since he did not know French, he used to
stop the priests in the street, to talk with them in Latin. He eked out
a miserable existence, giving lessons on the guitar, and lecturing in a
Polyglot Institute, where the auditors did not pay the slightest
attention to the subjects discussed, but tried simply to accustom their
ears to his Spanish pronunciation.

Seven francs and a half, for talking an hour and a half! But Toledo made
up for the smallness of the compensation in the pleasure it gave him to
orate about the happy days of Philip II, so much superior to "these days
of liberalism."

"At present, I have only one ambition, General," he ended by saying,
"and that is to dress well."

The passion for luxurious display came from his youthful days as a
guerrilla, when he would steal red and yellow petticoats from peasant
women in order to make uniforms for himself. In Paris, he did not feel
so keenly the lack of nutritious food, as he did the fact that he was
obliged to wear clothes that did not belong to any known fashion.

When he was given quarters on the top floor of the palace, like the
Russian teacher, and the General had selected various garments for him
from his large wardrobe, Toledo felt he had realized all the dreams that
he had elaborated while running about Paris as a persistent agent for a
thousand unsaleable things.

His fellow countrymen, former comrades in poverty, admired him on
seeing him all dressed up like a rich man, and often riding in the
carriage of a Prince. It scarcely seemed honorable that he, a former
fighter, should occupy a position as a teacher, and he used to say in an
apologetic manner:

"I am now General Saldana's _aide-de-camp_. I don't think it will be
long before we take to the mountains again."

Young Prince Michael admired his Russian teacher, because his mother
affirmed that he was a great scholar. The boy felt a certain fear in the
presence of this melancholy sage. On the other hand, Michael Fedor
treated the Spaniard with an air of friendly and patronizing
superiority. Toledo made his father laugh, and that was enough to cause
the son to consider him an inferior being, but one worthy of esteem
nevertheless, because of his docility and patience.

"Say: is it true that you were going to be a priest?" Michael Fedor used
to ask Toledo. "Is it true that after you left the seminary you were a
druggist's clerk?"

"Prince," the teacher replied with dignity, "I am Don Marcos de Toledo.
My name tells my nobility, in spite of everything that envious people
may say, and I have a right to use the 'Don' since I am an officer and
your father, the Marquis, gave me my commission."

In a short time the pupil was speaking Spanish correctly. It seemed that
he had learned it as rapidly as possible in order to be better able to
poke fun at his _hidalgo_ teacher.

The father also contributed to the education of the heir of the
Lubimoffs the one thing he was able to teach. Every morning, after the
lessons given by the Russian, which left the little fellow with a solemn
face, Saldana would wait for him in a large room on the ground floor.

"Prince, on guard!"

And he, who had been the best blade in the Carlist army, and had on his
conscience the slashing of a skull to the jawbone in a duel during the
Turkish campaign, smiled proudly when he saw how this eleven year old
boy stood his ground during the fencing lesson, parrying the hard blows
and returning them successfully at the least unguardedness on his
father's part. Michael Fedor was going to be a splendid fighting man, a
worthy descendant of the Cossack of Russia, and of the guerrilla of the
Spanish mountains.

But Saldana was not to enjoy this satisfaction for long. Among his
various "lucky wounds," which only bothered him slightly with the
changing of the seasons, there was one which from time to time inflicted
periods of acute pain. For many years he had carried in his body a
Spanish bullet which the sawbones of his guerrilla band had been unable
to extract. When the surgeons of London and Paris attempted the
operation it was too late.

One morning the General's valet, on entering the room, found him dead.

Michael Fedor never forgot the sorrow he had felt on that occasion, nor
the sumptuous funeral which the Princess had ordered, equal to that of a
king deceased in exile. But what he remembered most clearly was the
extraordinary grief of his mother. She too wanted to die. Her Russian
maids were once obliged to snatch from her hands a phial of laudanum,
receiving for their pains a few more blows than usual. Then, with her
hair streaming down her back, she ran about wailing like a madwoman in
front of all the portraits of the General. Oh! Her hero! Now she really
knew how much she loved him....

For several months she received her visitors in a drawing room with
black furnishings and curtains. Wearing loose mourning garments, she
half reclined on a sofa in front of a full length portrait of Saldana.
His swords, his uniforms, and even a Russian saddle were on exhibition
in the drawing room, which had been converted into a sort of museum of
the deceased.

"He died like the man he was!" moaned the widow. "He was killed by his
wounds."

At this period began the ultimate stage in the rise of Don Marcos
Toledo. The Russian scholar receded into the background. A part of the
dead man's glory passed to his humble fellow countryman who had
witnessed his great exploits. One evening, the Princess, while engaged
in conversation in the drawing room museum with some noble relatives who
had arrived from Russia, wept so copiously at the memory of her husband,
that she decided to leave the room for a moment.

"Colonel, your arm."

Toledo was present in company with his pupil, and looked around with an
expression of bewilderment. The Princess had to repeat her command in a
more imperious voice. "Colonel, your arm!" She was speaking to him! For
some time Don Marcos thought that the new title was a whim of the
Princess and that some day when he was least expecting it his commission
as "Colonel" would be withdrawn.

But when the first months of mourning had passed and the widow, tiring
of solitude, started to resume her social calls, she insisted on being
accompanied by Toledo, and on introducing him to her acquaintances in
the aristocratic world.

"He is the aide-de-camp of the dead Marquis," she explained.

The very title he had invented to give himself an air of importance in
the eyes of his half-starved companions in poverty! Toledo no longer
questioned the validity of his promotion. Now that the Princess was
presenting him as her husband's aide-de-camp, he might well be a
Colonel. And a Colonel he was, even for the young Prince, who at first
had given him the title to make fun of him, but finally came to call him
"Colonel" by force of habit.

Toledo's dreams of splendid and showy toggery were now realized
magnificently. With the Princess he did not need to fear the scruples
sometimes shown by Saldana, who hated extravagance and mismanagement.
The great lady even felt disdain for those who were niggardly in
availing themselves of her generosity. Don Marcos was enabled to change
his attire several times a day, and held long conferences with famous
tailors. He sought personal elegance. He wished to dress like a
gentleman of distinction, but at the same time to wear clothes of a cut
that would plainly show that he was accustomed to uniforms: He had in
mind something like a Napoleonic Marshal obliged to wear a dress suit.
Through his barber, likewise, he effected a great transformation. He
imitated the manner in which the General had worn his hair, with a part
that started at his forehead and ended at the back of his neck, and with
stray locks hanging down at the temples. His mustache was taught to
mingle with his side whiskers, in the Russian fashion. In accompanying
the Princess, he learned to kiss ladies' hands with the grace and ease
of an old courtier. He also learned to carry on long conversations
without saying anything, to keep himself in the background, practically
unseen, while his superiors were talking.

When the Princess, after the first year of mourning, resolutely returned
to her box at the Opera, Don Marcos attended her, remaining discreetly
in the rear, like the Chamberlain of a Queen. One evening, during an
intermission, on passing to the front of her box, the Princess heard
the Colonel telling an old French general, a friend of the house, about
the battle of Villablanca.

"And the Marquis said to me: 'Now it's your chance, Toledo: Let's see
how you can make out with a bayonet charge.' So I bared my sword, and at
the head of my regiment...."

"He's a true soldier," interrupted the Princess, "a worthy companion of
my hero.... The Marquis often talked to me about him."

And at that moment she was really sure she had heard the silent Saldana
relate the gallant deeds of his aide-de-camp.

The Russian teacher, regarded by Toledo as an unpleasant person who
would bear watching, soon left the Lubimoff palace. Perhaps he was
jealous of the Colonel's growing influence; perhaps mysterious reasons
needed his attention far from Paris. The Princess did not mind in the
least the disappearance of the scholar. She had forgotten her rebellious
looking Russians; she stopped giving them money. At present she had
other interests.

She suddenly evinced a desire to live for some time in London, and for
this reason, she granted her son's request to be allowed to travel alone
throughout Europe.

"You're a man now; you will soon be fourteen. Travel, and don't stop at
expense; always remember that you are Prince Lubimoff.... The Colonel
will go with you. He will be your aide, as he was for the heroic
Marquis."

His first trip was to Spain. Michael Fedor wanted to see his father's
native land. Toledo thought it in point for the young Prince to show
great admiration for Spain. Michael must remember they were in the
enemy's country. Toledo was a Carlist Colonel who had refused amnesty,
and had declined to recognize the reigning dynasty! But they traveled
for three months in Spain, without being noticed except for the
largeness of their tips. It is quite true that Toledo avoided coming in
contact with any of his former comrades. He felt that he now belonged to
a different world. Inwardly he felt the same change the General had.

As soon as Michael Fedor had recovered from his first enthusiasm for
bull fighting, they continued their travels across the continent as far
as Russia, arriving considerably later than the numerous letters of
introduction sent by the Princess Lubimoff to her relatives. The Prince
remained there a year, visiting his less distant estates, and making the
acquaintance of all the great families in his mother's circle of
friends. The Colonel talked grandiloquently about everything related to
war with various generals who received him as an equal. Was he not the
aide and companion in heroic deeds of Saldana, whom they had known in
the war against Turkey, when they were mere subalterns?

The former friends of the Princess Lubimoff told her son some unexpected
news. His mother had announced her forthcoming marriage to an English
gentleman. She had written to the Czar asking his authorization. This
news startled no one save Michael Fedor. The times of the wild Nadina
had long since passed. Her actions aroused no further interest. Other
young Princesses had effaced her memory with adventures that caused even
greater commotion. No one save a few of the ladies of the old court,
when they forgot their cares and interests as mothers, would bring to
mind the Princess Lubimoff, recalling days of vanished youth, which for
old people are always more interesting than the present.

When the young man returned to the Paris palace, he found his mother as
much of a Princess as ever, but married to a Scotch gentleman, Sir Edwin
Macdonald.

"Some day you will leave me," she said with a tragic note in her voice
she used on great occasions. "A Prince Lubimoff should live at the
court, serve his Emperor, be an officer in the Guard; and I need a
companion, some one to lean on. Sir Edwin is the personification of
distinction; but don't ever think that I shall forget your father.
Never!... My hero!"

Michael Fedor saw a gentleman who, indeed, was "the personification of
distinction"; attentive to everyone, very precise in his bearing, a man
of few words, who shut himself up for long hours--studying, according to
the Princess. English politics was his preoccupation, and his one great
dream was to return to Parliament, which he had been forced to leave by
defeat at election.

This cold man, with a pale smile and extreme insistence on good form
even in the most trivial actions, neither displeased Michael as a
step-father nor appealed to him as a friend. He was an inoffensive,
somewhat stuffy person, whom Michael grew accustomed to seeing every day
in his father's former place, and whom he had expected to see sooner or
later anyhow.

This marriage brought other people to the Lubimoff palace, with all the
intimacy inspired by relationship.

One of Sir Edwin's brothers had been obliged, like all the second sons
in wealthy British families, to go out in the world and earn his living.
After a life of adventure, he had finally settled down in the United
States, near the Mexican border, and had soon found himself, through a
marriage with an heiress of the country, much richer than his elder
brother.

His wife was a Mexican. She owned famous silver mines in the interior
and vast ranches on the border. She had only one daughter; and the
latter was in her eighth year when Arthur Macdonald died as a result of
a fall from his horse. The widow, with her little Alicia, moved to
Europe. She wanted to live in London, to be near her brother-in-law, Sir
Edwin, then a member of Parliament, and much admired by the Mexican
woman as one of the directors of the world's affairs. Later she
established herself in Paris, as the capital most to her taste, and as
the place where she could meet many people from Mexico.

The Princess Lubimoff treated her relative well, although her friendship
suffered sudden changes, often going from extreme affection to sudden
coldness.

She and Dona Mercedes could talk about mines and vast estates, although
neither of them had any accurate knowledge of their respective fortunes.
They estimated their wealth only by the enormous quantities of
money--millions of francs a year--which their distant business agents
sent them, and which they spent without knowing just how. There was
another thing which attracted the Princess, in her moments of good will,
to Dona Mercedes: she herself was blond, while the Spanish Creole still
kept traces of Hispanic-Aztec beauty, with a dark, somewhat olive
complexion, large, wide-open, almond eyes, and hair astonishing for its
blackness, brilliancy, and length.

But an instinctive rivalry frequently embittered the relations of the
two multi-millionaires. The Princess was sure that her own wealth was
far the greater. When Dona Mercedes talked about Mexican silver, she
mentioned Russian platinum! "What is silver worth compared to platinum!"
And in order completely to floor her opponent, the Princess would bring
out her family history. Beginning with the remote Cossack ancestor, who
almost became the legitimate husband of Catherine the Great, she
paraded before her Mexican rival generals, marshals of the Emperor's
household, hetmans, followed by their retinues of half savage horsemen,
princes and ambassadors. Sir Edwin's wife talked as though she belonged
to the reigning house, letting it be understood that her famous ancestor
had played a part in the establishing of one of the Czars. For this
reason she had always been shown special consideration at court.

Dona Mercedes, inwardly jealous of so much greatness, nevertheless
smiled a sweet enigmatic smile, as though she were to say, "That is all
very far away--and perhaps a lie."

Then immediately she would begin talking in her rapid whimsical French,
a French which she had never been able to free from numerous Spanish
locutions that still clung tenaciously.

"Mama was an intimate friend of Eugenie.... Don't you know who Eugenie
is? The Empress, the wife of Napoleon III. When Madame Barrios--that was
my mother's name--was announced at the Tuileries, the doors were opened
wide. Papa was one of the men who made Maximilian emperor."

Over against the aristocratic grandeur of the Saint Petersburg court she
set the image of the Mexican court, of the brief Empire which had ended
in the execution of the Archduke Maximilian, and the madness of his
bride, Carlotta. The Emperor endeavored to establish the musty old
etiquette of the Austrian Court, but the Mexican matrons, when they
called on the young Empress, said in the frank maternal fashion of the
colonies: "How is everything, Carlotta?... How do you like the country,
my dear?"

Moved by a similar frankness, Dona Mercedes would end her discourse by
saying carelessly:

"Papa, seeing that the Empire was going badly, recognized Juarez as the
head of the government, and joined the side of the Republic. He did it
to save our mines."

Then she would talk on for a long time about the Barrios, who, according
to her, were descendants of the most ancient aristocracy of Spain. All
the nobles of Madrid were therefore relatives of hers. Everybody knew
that! As a child she had seen at home a lot of papers which proved her
right to the title of Marchioness; but owing to the revolutions in her
country, and her travels, she no longer knew where to find them.

If the Princess referred to the splendor of her palace, the Creole would
immediately mention her elegant private mansion in the Champs Elysees.
The arrival of Colonel Toledo, as a valorous adornment giving the
princely residence military prestige, did not intimidate Dona Mercedes.
She too had a Spaniard, an Aragonese cleric, who acted as a sort of
royal private chaplain, and whom she considered a man of science,
because, bored by his sinecure in her employ, he had taken up elementary
astronomy, and had set up a telescope on the roof of her house.

Whenever the Mexican lady dared to imitate her entertainments, her
carriages or her clothes, the Princess Lubimoff would audibly lament the
fact that Paris was not in Russia, where she might call on the chief of
police to force this low-bred Creole to show the respect due to her
superiors. But after these bursts of anger she would feel a sudden wave
of tenderness for Dona Mercedes. "In spite of your illiteracy," she
would say, "you are a woman of natural talent and the only one with whom
I can talk for an hour at a stretch."

Between these two declining beauties, who had seen themselves the center
of attraction and adoration in former years, there was a common bond,
something which moved them both like far off lovely music, like the
cherished memory of youth: It was the daughter of Dona Mercedes, the
vivacious Alicia Macdonald.

Dona Mercedes seemed to see her own beauty, renewed with fresh vigor, in
her child. But in this she was mistaken. Alicia added to her dark
southern splendor the slenderness and slightly boyish freedom of
movement of her father's race. The Princess, observing the girl's
independent character, thought she saw herself back once more in the
days when she was beginning to shock the Imperial Court. This too was a
mistake. She herself had been able to follow all her most wilful
impulses, without fear of gossip. She possessed everything. Besides her
immense wealth, she had the advantages of birth, enabling her to elevate
any man whatsoever to her own level, no matter how far beneath her he
might be. Alicia had one ambition; to unite her fortune with a great
title of the old aristocracy in order to be presented at court. Since
her fifteenth year this desire had been fixed, calculating design,
dissimulated under apparent recklessness. From her fairy-story days, her
mother had talked to her about wonderful marriages, and of princes who
in former times used to marry shepherdesses, but who were in search
nowadays of millionaires' daughters.

Michael Fedor felt somewhat embarrassed at meeting this girl in his
palace. She looked at him so boldly, with such a dominating expression,
as though everything and everyone should bow before her!

She had beauty of a type more fascinating than conventional. Her
complexion, slightly tinged with a strange golden orange color, her
large eyes a trifle slanting, her luxuriant hair, which, fleeing its
bondage of hairpins, seemed alive and coiling like a cluster of snakes,
gave her an exotic charm. The rest of her body revealed a modern
physical education. Her limbs were firm and agile from continued
exercise and play.

Dona Mercedes seemed to urge Alicia and Michael toward each other from
the first meeting.

"Don't stand on formality," she said in a motherly way. "You are
cousins."

Although Michael didn't succeed in making out this relationship, he
endeavored to treat the young girl in a friendly manner, while the
Creole mother smiled as she already pictured Alicia with the coronet of
a princess, bowing before the Czar. Princess Lubimoff was in one of her
kindly moods; for the moment she did not believe in caste and
privileges, to the extent that she would again have given money to the
long-haired individuals who used to visit her. She accepted her friend's
ambitious projects tolerantly and without comment.

The Prince, meanwhile, was telling the Colonel his impressions.

"Too much of a young lady! I like the others better."

Don Marcos, having been Michael's companion in wide and joyous travels,
knew whom the boy meant by "the others"; for Prince Lubimoff had begun
very young to nibble at the grapes of life.

On other occasions it irritated him that, with her unabashed demeanor of
a foolish virgin, she should seem so much like "the others."

"She's worse than a boy. If you only knew, Colonel, the things she says
to me!"

As for Alicia she was not wholly satisfied with the young Prince. She
was accustomed to seeing other men make an effort to be gracious and
show her flattering attentions, while Michael manifested a haughty
character, like her own, arguing with her, and even daring to contradict
her.

Occasionally, accompanied by Toledo, they went out together for a gallop
in the Bois de Boulogne. All this was torture for Don Marcos, who had
been a mountain warrior! But his present position called for certain
duties. So he rode along as well as could be expected from a colonel of
infantry.

Alicia was a tireless rider. At the residence in the Champs-Elysees,
Dona Mercedes had frequently been obliged to look for her in the
stables, where she made herself at home among the hostlers and coachmen,
and talked with professional authority as she supervised the grooming of
the horses. Afterwards, when she came back into the drawing room her
hair would have a decidedly horsey odor. Back in her native land she had
mounted a horse and clung to it before she knew how to walk. In Paris
she boldly made her way among the vehicles, knocked down the passersby
occasionally, and often found her mad gallops intercepted by the police.

The Colonel endeavored to keep up with her. He never said anything, but
his heart was heavy. The Prince protested against her racing in this
fashion, which might have been all very well on her native plains. The
girl's retorts widened the breach between them, with feelings of
hostility. "No one is going to talk to me like that, not even my
mother," she said. "I'm old enough to know what I ought to do." She was
fifteen.

One morning in the Bois, coming to a cross road that happened to catch
her fancy, Alicia started her horse for the Avenue without consulting
her companion.

"No, this way," Michael called in a commanding voice.

"I don't like that; this is the way!" she answered aggressively.

The Prince made an effort to cut her off by crossing ahead of her, and
she spurred her horse against Michael's with a shock that brought the
two animals to their knees. The Colonel, who was behind them, caught an
exchange of angry glances, and harsh words. Alicia raised her whip, and
struck the Prince across the shoulders.

"You do that to _me_!" shouted Michael furiously.

The face of this scion of the old Cossack Lubimoff underwent a rapid
series of expressions, finally taking an aspect of extreme ugliness and
savagery. His nostrils seemed to dilate even more than usual. He raised
his whip and struck, but Toledo had put his horse between the two,
receiving the tip of the lash on his cheek, which began to bleed. The
sight of blood and the thought that the blow was intended for her, drove
the young woman mad with rage.

"Brute! Savage!... Russian!"

This seemed too mild, and she stopped for a moment, to think up a
greater insult. Her childhood memories helped her; the legend she had
heard from the half-breeds back in her own land inspired her with a new
affront, as if Michael Fedor were Fernan Cortes.

"Spaniard!... Murderer of Indians!"

And fearing a new lashing after that supreme insult, she fled at a mad
pace without stopping until she reached the Arch of Triumph.

After this incident Dona Mercedes lost all hope of her daughter's
becoming a Lubimoff.

"A Russian Princess!" she said scornfully. "Why, everyone is a Prince in
Russia!... A mere English baron is better, or a French or Spanish
count."

Michael was in a mood no more conciliatory when the Colonel lectured
him.

"I don't want to hear anything more about that wench!" said he.

And the Princess, in one of her petulant moments averred that she
considered this word the proper one. These relatives of Sir Edwin had
always seemed to her very ordinary people. Likewise it seemed to her
very natural that her son should think of going back to Russia to fill
his station as a Prince. The life of caste and privilege there was more
suitable to his rank than the democratic ways of Paris, where certain
American Indians, because they had millions, could imagine they were the
equals of the Lubimoffs.

Prince Michael remained in Russia until he was twenty-three. His
military studies were passed brilliantly, according to Toledo, and the
boy succeeded in distinguishing himself among the most famous cavalry
officers of the Guard. He took prizes in exhibitions of horsemanship.
With his revolver he could pot coins held up at fifty paces by his
comrades. He wielded the sabre with a skill that his Cossack ancestor
and General Saldana would have admired. Every morning in the courtyard
of his Petersburg palace he found awaiting him a life-sized dummy made
of the firm sticky clay used by sculptors. He would stay for half an
hour in front of it, going through his exercises. It was not enough to
be able to strike one's enemy. The important thing was to strike well,
with the greatest possible depth and force. And the head and limbs of
the dummy went flying, severed by the steel blade. The study of military
science was all well enough for those in the infantry or the
artillery--sons of clerks and merchants!

At first the Colonel was astonished at the magnificence and extravagance
of Russian life. Finally he came to take it all quite naturally, as
though he had been accustomed to something similar from his earliest
boyhood. "My son, remember the name you bear," the Princess used to
write to the Prince. "Do not disgrace it. Spend according to what you
are." And the son, without asking her for anything, followed her advice
faithfully by coming to a direct understanding with the Russian
administrators. Don Marcos figured that the Lieutenant in the Guard was
spending something over three millions a year. His racing stables were
the most celebrated in the capital. Many famous beauties of the court
and the theaters were on good terms with Prince Michael Fedor. His
supper parties in the Lubimoff palace or in the fashionable restaurants
were sought after by all the young men of the aristocracy. To be invited
to one of them was an extraordinary honor, something like being a member
of an academy of supermen. It often happened that toward morning on
nights of such parties celebrated women finished by dancing naked on the
tables, so that the host "might not be displeased."

Sometimes these celebrations ended in drunken brawls, where wine mingled
with blood. The Colonel had seen one of these suppers result in a duel
between two of the guests. It took place in the palace garden, just
before dawn. One of the men was killed. His best friends carried the
corpse to the quay of the Neva, and placed a revolver in his hand to
make it look like a case of suicide.

No: Don Marcos did not care much for those nocturnal feasts. He
considered them dangerous. On one occasion, a youthful Grand Duke,
absolutely drunk, amused himself by daubing the Colonel's whiskers with
caviar, until, tired of such brazen familiarity, the Spaniard in turn
put his hand in the dish and smeared the other man's august face with
green. The duke hesitated for a moment whether or not to kill him, but
finally embraced him, covering him with kisses and shouting aloud, "This
is my father."

Toledo preferred his own honorable and quiet friendships with General
Saldana's former companions in arms; solemn personages who talked to him
about world politics and future wars. Besides, the Prince's generosity
permitted the Colonel secret pleasures, less noisy, and agreeably
unostentatious.

One night, returning to the Lubimoff palace after two o'clock, he saw
there was a supper party in the great dining hall used on gala
occasions. Some fifty guests had assembled, and in the course of the
night many more had arrived. It seemed that the news had spread
throughout all the pleasure resorts of the capital, attracting all the
youthful libertines.

Opposite the Prince was seated a Cossack officer, short, lithe as a
panther, dark skinned, with Asiatic eyes. His wrinkled uniform showed
signs of recent traveling. Michael Fedor showed him the greatest
attention, as though he were the only guest. Toledo, being acquainted
with all the friends of the house, was unable to place this uncouth
Cossack, who looked as though he had come from some remote garrison in
Siberia. Some one offered to relieve his uncertainty. He was startled on
learning that it was the brother of a court lady who just at that moment
was being much talked about on account of her extreme familiarity with
Michael Fedor. The two men looked at each other with keen interest,
exchanging silent toasts in huge glasses of champagne. At the other end
of the hall arose the ceaseless wail of gypsy violins. Several dark
skinned girls with striped aprons of many colors were dancing about the
tables. But in spite of that, Don Marcos, glancing about, felt
instinctively a note of gloom.

"Leon, the sabres!"

The Prince, after looking at his watch, had arisen and given this order
to his body servant, who was standing behind him. All the guests rushed
for the doors forming a jam, like a crowd, pushing and shoving, at the
entrance to a theater. There was no reason now to conceal their real
feelings. They were eager for the promised spectacle. The Colonel
finally found some one who could talk intelligibly.

"He came last night, to ask the Prince to marry his sister. A
thirty-eight day trip.... The Prince refuses.... It isn't often you'll
see a match like this.... He's the best swordsman in Siberia."

The garden was covered with snow. It was night, and the uncertain moon
illumined it with slanting rays, lengthening immeasurably the shadows of
the trees. More than a hundred men formed in two black masses on the
borders of the walk. The Colonel noticed the arrival of several
servants. One was bringing swords; the rest were carrying large trays
with bottles and glasses.

Michael Fedor bowed to his enemy, his eyes shining with kindliness and
drink.

"Would you like another glass of something?"

The Cossack thanked him with a gesture, and immediately Toledo saw him
remove his long coat, the breast of which was adorned with cartridge
pouches. Then he took off his shirt, and finally remained in nothing
save his trousers and high boots. Then he stooped, and seizing two
handfuls of snow, began to rub his wiry body and muscular arms.

The Prince, like many of the spectators, shivered slightly with surprise
and cold; but nevertheless that the condition of the combat might be
equal, Lubimoff felt it imperative that he should follow the example of
his hardy adversary. While he was removing the upper part of his uniform
several torches were lighted and began to blaze like red stars in the
semi-darkness of the moonlit garden.

Don Marcos could see the two men face to face. They were bare from the
waist up. Their breasts shone from the moisture of the recent massage.
In their hands quivered sabres as sharp as razors.

"Ready!"

Some one was directing the fight.

"Why this is barbarous!" thought the Spaniard. "These men are savages."

He did not dare say it aloud because he was a soldier, and more than
that, a Colonel; but during the rest of his life he never could forget
that scene.

They crossed swords, parried, attacked, the Prince with firm poise, the
other with catlike agility. Toledo could see that their bodies were
blood red, but at the moment he thought it an effect of the torchlight.
As they drew near him, circling about in their deadly play, he realized
that they were actually red with blood. Their bodies seemed covered with
a purple vestment that was torn to shreds and the shreds quivered at the
ends as the blood dripped off. Standing out against that warm moist
garment rose their white arms. The Prince was getting the worst of it.
Toledo suddenly saw a deep gash appear in his brow; a moment later he
thought he saw one of his ears hang half severed from the skull. But
that wild cat from the steppes always sprang free from every sabre
thrust. No one dared intervene; it was a duel without quarter, without
rest, with no condition save the death of one or the other combatant. At
times they came together, forming a single body bristling with white
flashes in the shadow of the trees; a moment later they appeared apart,
seeking each other in the fiery circle of the torches.

Suddenly Toledo heard a wild cry of pain, the howl of a poor animal
caught unawares. The Prince was the only one still standing. A straight
thrust had slashed his adversary's jugular. Lubimoff stood there a
moment motionless. Then his superhuman strength, which had sustained him
until then, left him. With the loss of blood, all the weariness of the
struggle came over him like a shot. He too tottered and fell, but into
the arms of friends. There was not a single doctor among the
spectators. No one had thought of that. They considered the presence of
one unnecessary in an encounter that could end only in death.

All the curiosity seekers left the garden, following the unconscious
Prince. A few servants stayed behind, gathered about the body of the
Cossack. He was lying face downward. With respectful awe they watched as
his legs quivered for the last time, as the blood slowly emptied itself
from the neck, and spread out across the snow, in a black stain that was
beginning to take on a bluish tinge in the livid light of dawn.

At the court, which had already shown frequent alarm over the Prince's
notorious adventures, this event caused a great stir. Lubimoff's duels,
his love affairs, his scandalous entertainments, annoyed the young
Emperor, who had taken it upon himself to improve the morals of his
associates.

In aristocratic gatherings, the freakish whims of the almost forgotten
Nadina Lubimoff were brought to memory and discussed again. The young
Cossack was related to people of influence, and his death contributed to
the complete disgrace of his sister.

Michael Fedor had not yet entirely recovered from his wounds, when he
received the order to leave Russia. The Czar was banishing him, and for
an indefinite period. He might live in Paris with his mother.

"That's all right; so long as they respect his income," was the
Colonel's only comment.

Arriving in Paris, the Prince was convinced of his mother's insanity.
That was something he had suspected for some time, from her letters. Sir
Edwin had died, rather suddenly, three years before, in England,
following defeat in an election. The palace in the Monceau quarter had
suffered an interior transformation that represented a cost of several
millions. The Princess was devoting all her time to it. The Arabic,
Persian, Greek, or Chinese drawing rooms, the construction and
decoration of which had made the fortune of two architects and several
dealers in doubtful antiques, had just disappeared; while furnishings
acquired years before as extremely rare pieces had been scattered to the
four winds as though they were mere rubbish of no value. The palace
remained the same as before on the outside; but the interior, beginning
with the stairway, was rebuilt in imitation of a medieval castle. Not a
single window remained without its stained glass, not a room but was
shrouded in the vague half light of a cellar. All the conventional
Gothic known to modern contractors was employed by order of the Princess
in the restoration of the house. Three stories and one entire wing had
been torn down to form the nave of a cathedral.

Michael saw advancing toward him a tall austere woman, with long
transparent fingers, and large, staring, uncanny eyes. She was dressed
in black, with loose sleeves that almost touched the ground, and with a
white bonnet fitting close to the head beneath her mourning veils. In
spite of the fact that she had a rosary at her wrist and talked with the
air of a martyr, her son imagined that he was looking at an opera
singer.

The expulsion of the Prince from Russia had caused her neither surprise
nor sorrow.

"Those Romanoffs have always disliked us. They cannot forget that your
illustrious ancestor, so they say, used to beat Catherine when he caught
her with anyone else."

Her thoughts rose above all such worldly considerations. She had never,
as a matter of fact, taken any stock in religion; but now she declared
herself a Catholic. She had made no public declaration of conversion, to
be sure, but she felt she must adopt the belief. Her new and final
personality demanded it.

"Your father approves of my new stand. Often in the night I have talked
with my hero. He is glad to see me in the path of truth."

No sooner had Michael Fedor and the Colonel arrived, than they noticed
the strange visitors who were frequenting the palace. The long haired
terrorists had been succeeded by numerous fortune tellers, soothsayers,
clairvoyants, and solemn professors of occult sciences. A plain old
lamp-stand, which looked as though it might have walked upstairs by
itself from the concierge's quarters, was jumping about and rapping, at
all hours, in the bedroom of the Princess.

One day she decided to tell her son the great secret of her life. At
last she knew who she was; the spirits had revealed to her the knowledge
of her true personality. In one of her many previous existences she had
been the most unfortunate and beautiful, the most "romantic", of queens.
The soul of the Russian princess, Nadina Lubimoff, centuries ago had
dwelt in the body of Mary Stuart.

"That is why I always had a special liking for the story of the unhappy
queen. And now I know why, when I saw Sir Edwin in London, I fell in
love with him on the spot, in the most irresistible fashion. His
ancestors were Scottish."

Such reasons were to her as unanswerable as all the others which had
guided her actions. And to pay homage to the queenly soul which was,
according to all her mystic attendants, reincarnated in her, she was
going to live like the beheaded sovereign of Scotland, copying the
Queen's clothes as she had seen them in pictures, converting her palace
into a mediaeval castle, and eating from antique plates nothing but
Renaissance delicacies, the recipes for which she had employed a
history professor to discover in ancient chronicles.

Carriages now rarely entered the Court of Honor of the palace. The grand
stairway was growing mossy between its steps. Not so the delivery
entrance. There, each day, the professionals of "the beyond" appeared,
poorly dressed and suspicious looking men and women, who were exploiting
the Princess, generous as a queen--and was she not one?--under the guise
of aiding her in the manipulation of the lamp table, and conjuring up
historic phantoms which, to prove their presence, moved the carpets,
made the pictures fall from the walls, changed the positions of the
chairs, and committed other childish deviltries.

Dona Mercedes avoided visiting the Princess. Her simple faith caused her
to be frightened at queens that last for centuries, and at those halls
with old furniture that seemed to palpitate with mysterious life. She
preferred the quiet wholesome conversation of the priests whom she was
supporting for herself. The Aragonese vicar had allowed himself to be
snatched away in triumph by another devout millionaire. He had grown
tired, no doubt, of the excessive ease and idleness afforded him by his
penitent, and was bored with astronomical observations on the roof of
the dwelling in the Champs-Elysees.

At present she was offering her hospitality to a Monsignor, a Bishop _in
partibus_, who directed the widow's money into various pious charities
of his own invention.

Alicia had married a French Duke, twenty years her senior, and after a
few months of marriage was causing herself to be very much talked about.
Dona Mercedes, offended, was punishing her by seeing her very seldom, in
hopes that such coldness would cause the Duchess de Delille to follow
the example of her mother. In the meantime, the latter was concentrating
all her family affection on the Monsignor, a saint, and a man of the
world, who in the evening, to avoid a discordant note, took off his
cassock and sat down at table in a tuxedo, while a flock of mechanical
birds sang and flapped their wings in the large gilded cage in the
Creole's dining room.

Michael Fedor saw Alicia twice in the Lubimoff palace. She did not feel
there the uneasiness her mother experienced, and even declared the
manias of the Princess very original and interesting. Afternoons when
she was bored, and paid the Princess a visit, she too seemed to believe
in the lamp table and in the "Queen's" proteges with the mystic
gestures.

She too consulted them to find out whether she would be happy, and
especially whether she would be greatly loved, although she never told
who it was that was supposed to love her. On other occasions she asked
the oracle, with a note of jealous anxiety in her voice, what a certain
unknown person was doing at that particular time. The name of the person
was kept secret, but some months he would be dark and at other times he
would be blond. She and the lamp table understood each other perfectly.

"I always said that girl was cleverer than her mother," the Princess
affirmed.

When Alicia first met the Prince, on his return home, she burst out
laughing, and almost embraced him.

"Do you remember how we used to hate each other? Do you remember that
day in the Bois when we whipped each other?"

She looked at him with an air of interest, scrutinizing him from head to
heel without detecting anything of the displeasing youth of former
times. She knew of his adventures in Russia, his loves, his duels, his
expulsion. An interesting man! A Byronic fellow! Besides, she had heard
that he was a bit of a brute with women.

"Come and see me. We must be friends. Remember we are relatives."

Michael scrutinized her also, but with a certain seriousness. He had
heard a great deal about her since arriving in Paris. During her three
years of married life the Duke had tried twice to divorce her. It
weighed on his mind to think that he should be enjoying immense wealth
just in return for allowing her to bear his name. When he shook hands
with a friend, he was never sure of the latter's relations with his
wife. But Alicia had married the Duke in order to be a Duchess, and in
the end the couple came to a practical agreement. Half of her income was
to go to the Duke, who was to travel, or, if he wished, reside in Paris
with a former mistress. Alicia might live as she pleased in her splendid
white mansion in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and display a ducal
coronet on her underwear, on her silver, and on the doors of her motor
cars.

The little horsewoman of the Mexican plains, trained to morning gallops,
had been transformed into a woman of proud and arrogant beauty. To
Michael she looked like a California orange, golden, gleaming, wafting a
strong sweet fragrance.

Inwardly he winced at the gaze of those dark eyes, so enticing and
fascinating, so provoking and commanding, in full consciousness of
power.

But no. He remembered that various men whom he disliked, had, according
to common gossip, already preceded him in falling under Alicia's spell.
And for the time being he was interested in a French actress, whom he
had met on the train returning from Russia.

Besides, he suddenly beheld her again in his imagination as she was
years before. Perhaps she had not changed. She was used to managing men
with a firm hand, to changing from one to another, as though they were
post horses. He and Alicia would quarrel at their second meeting. They
might easily end by coming to blows.

He saw no more of her. New preoccupations changed the direction of his
thoughts. One day in the street he met a Russian who seemed old and ill.
It was Sergueff, his former teacher. Sergueff must now have been some
forty years of age. He looked as though he were in his seventies, with a
dirty white beard, grayish skin, and a wrinkled almost motheaten face,
with no sign of life save in the two green holes that marked his eyes.
From Saint Petersburg they had sent him to a prison in Siberia. He had
escaped, crossed half of Asia on foot and alone, as far as a Chinese
seaport, and there he had taken ship for the United States. The story of
this tour of the world was told in a few words, as though it were a
single walk on the boulevards.

Michael Fedor took him to the palace. The Colonel seemed dismayed by
Sergueff's presence, and drew back into his shell. He must remember his
own connections with nobles of the Russian court! Some of them were
former generals of police!

The son of Princess Lubimoff talked for several days with the fugitive.
The memory of his own expulsion from the court caused Michael vaguely to
sympathize with this man who was likewise an exile. Besides, in the
depths of his mind something of his mother's character was stirring,
with all its inconsistencies and hazy vague desires. The officer of the
Guard listened as attentively as a scholar to the doctrines of the
revolutionist.

"Why, those men are right!" he exclaimed with the passionate enthusiasm
that the Princess herself expressed for every novelty.

For the first few days he felt a yearning for martyrdom, a deep desire
for renunciation, the mystic abnegation of the man of his race. He
thought of many princes like himself, educated at court, with high
social positions, who had given away their wealth to live among the poor
and dedicate their lives to the triumph of truth and justice. He would
do the same. He would reawaken to true life, and he was sure that his
mother would approve. General Saldana had given his blood to
rehabilitate the past; he would give his to overcome all obstacles in
the pathway of the future. Times change. The past consists of a certain
number of centuries; the future is infinite.

But Lubimoff was not a true Russian. No sooner had he decided to carry
out his mystic determination, than the Latin love of pleasure reawakened
in him. Life is good, and offers many pleasant things! For him the tree
of life was still overflowing with sap; there still remained for him so
many leafy springs, so many fruitful summers! Later, perhaps, when only
the dry wood remained....

The one positive and immediate result of this resurrection was Michael's
sense of his own ignorance and of the emptiness of his life. There was
something in the world besides knowing languages, wielding rapiers, and
riding horses. Man should seek the realization of his greatness in more
serious enterprises than love making, duels and betting. Fate, in giving
him wealth, had exempted him from the harsh necessity of work. But that
was no reason why he should renounce making his mark in the world, as he
passed through it, just as thousands of his predecessors had done, and
as millions of men to come would continue to do.

For the first time in his life Michael sought the comradeship of books,
and this initial reading stirred him with a new desire. He made up his
mind to know the world, to see strange countries, to struggle with the
blind forces, which form the pulsing of the planet, and to live the
coarse rough adventures of men who go from port to port. His father had
told him of remote ancestors of the Saldana family, who had gained
titles and fortunes by setting sail from humble Spanish harbors,
swooping out like sea gulls across the gloomy Ocean, in the track of
Columbus and the Pinzons, in search of new lands of mystery. An ancestor
of his, disembarking with the aged Ponce de Leon in Florida, in search
of the famous "Fountain of Youth," had been one of the discoverers of
the present United States. The first Saldana to be a noble had obtained
his title of "don" by founding a city in the neighborhood of Panama. Why
should he not be a navigator like his forebears, a wanderer of the seas,
enjoying exotic pleasures, and perhaps succeeding in wresting some
secret from the blue deep?

Life in that palace which his mother's mania had rendered ugly, was
becoming uncomfortable and distasteful, and was impelling him to flee.
The Princess did not make the slightest objection, when informed that
her son desired to buy a yacht to navigate the seven seas. Let him do
so, by all means! It was a princely pastime, quite worthy of a Prince
Lubimoff. They were constantly growing richer. The oil, the platinum,
all the precious ores of their properties and the products of their
lands, as large as nations, made up an enormous income. The preceding
year it had reached the sum of seventeen million francs: a million a
month! For a single private family it meant unbelievable wealth, and the
Princess Lubimoff, who had temporarily regained her sanity, modestly
added:

"But for a queen it isn't much."

In England Michael purchased a sailing yacht, with a sharp bow, bold
masts, and an auxiliary engine, and gave it the Spanish name for the sea
gull, the "Gaviota."

His idea was to continue on the ocean the life he had led on land,
selecting, however, only its most interesting phases. For that reason he
decided to take Sergueff along. The teacher seemed melancholy, as though
the comforts and the liberal sums of money which the Prince bestowed on
him weighed on his conscience like remorse. He had something more urgent
to do in the world than voyage idly hither and thither in a luxurious
boat. He disappeared one day, to return to Russia, as though the gallows
had a fascination for him. Or was it that he preferred, in case of
better luck than that, to travel once again around the world, but in his
own manner?

The Colonel, as the aide de camp of the Prince, felt obliged to embark.
He had never yet left "his boy's" side! But, oh, he was not blessed with
sea legs, and, much less, with a sea stomach! He was a hero of the
mountains! They were obliged to send him back to Paris from a port in
Brazil.

The voyage of the _Gaviota_ lasted for five years. In the second year
Michael Fedor thought his career as a navigator was about to be
interrupted. The war between Russia and Japan had just broken out and he
cabled from a Pacific port, asking for his former place in the Guard.
The reply was a long time in coming. The Czar was still angry with him
and kept him in exile.

"So much the better!" Michael finally said to himself in a voice choked
with anger. He guessed what was going to happen; what was to be the
final fate of those brave Russians of the sharp sabers, when they came
to face the astute little yellow men who had silently gone on
appropriating the most scientific occidental arts of killing.

His adventures in the various ports, his relations with women of every
race and color, were sufficient to fill his life.

"I am studying geography," he wrote Don Marcos, after inquiring about
his mother's health. "I am studying the geography of love."

It was not long before he was obliged to interrupt his cruise to return
to the Princess. The physicians had ordered her away from the Paris
palace, with its gloomy decorations so stimulating to her obsessions.
They were sending her to the Riviera to drink sunlight and open air.

And poor Maria Stuart, absolutely _incognito_, went from one large hotel
to another, occupying entire floors with her retinue of much beaten
Russian servants and much adored soothsayers and witch doctors. She was
the despair of the hotel keepers, who were always glad to see her
depart, though she alone paid more than all the other guests put
together.

Her son found her looking like a specter in her flowing mourning garb.
She was weaker and thinner, and her eyes had taken on an alarming, fixed
stare, which gave one the creeps. Her complexion had lost its former
whiteness, gradually growing darker as though burned by an inner fire.
For the moment her sole preoccupation was the construction of a palace
on the Blue Coast. On French territory, in sight of Monte Carlo, she had
bought a small promontory, a spur of land and rocks jutting out into the
sea, a ridge covered with century-old olive trees and gnarled pines. She
was kept busy quarreling with a stubborn old couple, an aged peasant and
his wife, who were refusing to sell her the extreme point of the
headland. She had already spent many thousands of francs on the plans of
the future palace. Architects, painters, and landscape gardeners were
constantly working for her, making studies of the historic past, in the
endeavor to view of the Mediterranean an enormous Scottish castle
express her imaginings. Her idea was to erect in full as Scotch as could
possibly be imagined; in short, according to the Princess, it was to be
"a novel of Walter Scott, done in stone."

Michael was frightened. The sumptuous dungeon in Paris was to be
repeated in the face of that luminous sea, in one of the most smiling
landscapes of the earth. Behind his mother's back he talked with all the
men who were working on the future Villa Sirena, the "Villa of the
Sirens." The Princess had selected this name, in the conviction that on
moonlight nights the daughters of the briny deep would come and visit
her, singing on the reefs beneath her window. That was the least they
could do for her!

Each day the veil of mystery was opening more widely before her eyes,
allowing her to see things which for others were invisible.

Don Marcos, who, deserted by his former pupil, had gone back to the
Princess, likewise received instructions from Lubimoff. He was to
prevent the unhappy lady from perpetrating such a sacrilege on the
Mediterranean. But what could the poor Colonel do with that madwoman who
spent whole weeks without speaking to him, as though she did not know
who he was!

The Prince returned to his yacht, and a year later being by chance in
upper Norway on his return from an expedition to the Arctic Ocean, he
received the sad but expected news. His mother had died, just as she saw
rising from among the olive trees and pines of the rosy promontory, the
beginning of huge stone walls artificially blackened like the painted
panels in the antique shops, and which looked as though they were about
to fall in ruins from mere age, as soon as they had risen from the
ground.




CHAPTER III


Michael arrived in time to receive the body of the Princess in Paris.
Before her death her mind had been illuminated by the sudden flare of
reason which is the signal of the end in cases of serious mental
disturbances. She had left various papers on which she had noted loans
made to certain persons, and judicious suggestions for her son in regard
to the management of the enormous fortune. She wanted to be buried
beside her husband, her first husband, "the hero," in the Pere Lachaise
cemetery. During the last years she had stayed in Paris, she had been
seized once more by the craze for building, and had busied herself with
the preparation of her final dwelling place. Beside the mausoleum of the
Marquis of Villablanca, whose image, frowning and indomitable, held in
one hand a broken sword, she had set up another monument no less
ostentatious with a statue which was supposed to be her exact likeness
and was nothing less than the semblance of the unhappy Queen of Scots,
as it appears in the engraving of the Romanticist period.

During the funeral ceremonies, Michael Fedor met again many persons who
formerly visited the Lubimoff palace, and whom he had thought were dead.
Dona Mercedes in tears embraced him. She had become extraordinarily
stout, and the coppery complexion inherited from her Aztec ancestors had
taken on an unhealthy ascetic pallor. She looked like the Mother
Superior of a noble convent of nuns. At her side, Monsignor, in his silk
cassock and with an air of compunction, was moving his lips to save the
dead woman's soul. "My son! We have all our sorrows." And as she said
this, the poor lady looked at another woman elegantly dressed in
mourning who stood there somewhat aloof, in the cemetery, and seemed
utterly incapacitated by the ceremony which had obliged her to rise
before noon.

The Duchess de Delille also came forward to meet him, taking both his
hands and giving him a strange glance.

"Your mother loved me ... really loved me. During these last years we
saw each other very often."

Michael nodded assent. He knew that already. The Princess Lubimoff had
been the one loyal friend of this passionate unscrupulous woman, who was
gradually losing every one's respect. She had defended Alicia when other
high society women declared open war and closed their doors to her,
fearing for their husbands' fidelity. As she used to play every winter
at Monte Carlo, she had been in the company of the Princess up to the
last moments.

"She loved me more than my mother ever did.... Perhaps she remembered
that I might have been her daughter."

The Prince walked away, as though annoyed by this allusion. He had heard
such things about her!... But all during the ceremony he kept seeing her
in his mind's eye. She was still beautiful, but so strangely beautiful.
Her skin had lost the golden tinge of ripened fruit, and now was pale,
the dull white of Japanese paper. Her large eyes, which gave off green
and yellow glints, stared with disturbing fixity and seemed at the same
time to have a blank expression, as though covered by an invisible
spider web. Her least bitter enemies accused her of a certain propensity
for spirits. She drank all sorts of American mixed drinks like an
habitue of the bars. Other people attributed her pallor and the
continual darkly bewildered look in her eyes to morphine, opium and all
the various liquids and perfumes producing lethargy and creating
"artificial paradise." The little Alicia of former years was drinking,
draining it to the last drop from the cup of life in deep draughts.

Michael Fedor thought that he had seen the last of her, but a few days
later he began to receive letters. He was alone, and must be feeling
sad, so she was inviting him to come and eat with her, informally, of
course, as was natural among close relatives. His evasions brought fresh
invitations by telephone. The Prince, like a person fulfulling a
tiresome social obligation, finally went one evening to her little
palace in the Avenue du Bois, one of the numerous imitations of the
Petit Trianon, which are to be found in various parts of the world.

The Duchess de Delille was proud of this edifice and the tiny garden
with its sharp, gilded grating, in front of which all fashionable Paris
passed. Michael was acquainted with the drawing rooms without ever
having been inside them. The illustrated journals, which cover the
styles of wealthy social life, had published photographs, in Europe and
America, of the interior of her residence. Gossip had kept him informed
of Alicia's strange life. She had suddenly been taken with the mad
desire of seeing people, of being admired, and of astonishing every one
by her prodigality. She gave a series of great fetes, and publicly
protested because the municipality of Paris would not allow her to
illuminate the entire Champs Elysees and the Arch of Triumph so that her
guests might ride up to her very door in a fiery apotheosis. She had
given a garden party in the Bois de Boulogne, with water sports, and
dances of sacred dancers, brought from Asia. The buffet supper had been
prepared for three thousand guests. On another occasion, for a single
costume ball, she spent a hundred thousand francs, to transform part of
her residence into an interior of Persian style and the next day she
began to have the rooms restored to their original state.

Suddenly she would disappear, and people would wink and make malicious
comments because she left no address. Some new love affair! Hers were
nearly always wandering fancies, that called for long trips and new
horizons! Perhaps she was in Constantinople or in Egypt; perhaps she was
in hiding in one of the large New York hotels. At times such guesses
were right; and then again the most intimate friends of the Duchess
could affirm that she had not left Paris. Was not her automobile
standing in front of the door?

This was another of Alicia's eccentricities. At all hours of the day and
night, one of her various expensive cars was kept in readiness in front
of the stairway. Three chauffeurs divided the service between them. They
stayed in the porter's quarters; and as soon as the bell was heard, they
had only to put on their gloves, run to the machine, and start the
motor. She often chose the most extraordinary hours for going out.
Sometimes it would be just after returning from a ball, then again she
would get up for a ride after she had gone to bed. Frequently she would
select the early morning hours which were usually her time of soundest
sleep.

At times the chauffeurs would succeed each other, week after week,
without leaving the gate of the mansion. The Duchess did not care to go
out. She no longer felt her sudden impulses to ride aimlessly about
Paris, while the city slept, pay unseasonable calls, or glide through
the woods on the outskirts of the capital at the height of some violent
storm. Meantime, the autos seemed to age, as they stood there
motionless, now with their wheels deep in the snow of the courtyard, and
again with the glass of the wind shield flecked with the tear drops of
the slanting rain, that swept under the glass covered porte-cochere.
During all such periods, Alicia, in spite of her restless impulsive
nature, would be spending whole days in bed, telling her intimate
friends that to keep one's beauty one must take a "rest cure" from time
to time. She would entertain her friends at dinner without getting out
of bed. The table would be spread in luxurious fashion in her large
bedroom, and lying between the sheets, with the dishes within reach on a
tiny table, she would laugh and chat for hours with her guests. Months
would go by without her seeing the outside of her house, while the
costly objects in her rooms, amassed to indulge her whims, were quite
forgotten. Her vanity was satisfied, at such times, by the mere fact of
having constructed a costly jewel case to harbor her idleness.

The Prince met her in a little reception room on the ground floor. She
was in truth receiving him with absolute lack of ceremony. She was
dressed in a black tunic of her own invention, a combination of the
Greek peplum and the Japanese kimono. Her bare arms floated free from
the soft silk that almost seemed to live, it clung so closely to her
body. Underneath it, half revealed, were the contours and perfumed
warmth of her flesh, hidden by no inner veils. Michael glanced at his
tuxedo and gleaming shirt-front as though his own costume were quite out
of place.

As she took him to the elevator, which was white and quilted like a
glove box, he caught a rapid glimpse of the drawing rooms of the lower
floor, ostentatious, but left in a shadow almost as dark as night; of
the large dining-hall, deserted, with the furniture covered; of the
little dining-room in which there were no signs whatsoever of
preparations.... Where was she taking him?... Was the table set in her
bedroom?

The elevator passed the second floor without stopping? "We are going to
my study," said Alicia. "I eat there when I am alone."

The Prince was amazed at the so-called "study," a large room which
occupied a major portion of the third floor, and in which only one or
two books in a small book-rack were to be seen. The place was decorated
in imitation "Far East" style: plain black lacquer furniture, silk
either of pale shades or of an intense dark purple, and an array of
frightful idols. A diffused bluish light, like that used in night scenes
on the stage, descended from the ceiling. A screen, embroidered with a
design in gold, formed a sort of second more intimate room, the floor of
which was covered with white rugs of fur, with long, silky hair. Heaped
about were dozens of pillows of various colors adorned with winged
reptiles and unheard of flowers.

An exotic, penetrating odor made Lubimoff wince. He knew that perfume.
And there was a look of severity in his eyes as he glanced sharply at
the Duchess.

"Sit down," she said. "They are going to serve us."

As the Prince looked about, without seeing any sort of a chair, Alicia
set him an example, dropping on a heap of cushions. Michael sat down in
the same fashion, beside a tiny mother of pearl table no bigger than a
tabouret. On it a lamp with a dark shade let fall a circle of soft
light. Inwardly the Prince began to feel a boiling of suppressed anger
as he thought of his evening wasted.

"You must have eaten this way often," she continued, "you have traveled
more than I. The style of decoration must be familiar to you."

Yes; he knew the style, the original and authentic style, and for that
very reason he did not care to see it again in imitation. Besides
obliging him to eat on the floor, there in a house on the Avenue de
Bois.... What an affectation!

But in a short time his opinion began to change. A poseur she
undoubtedly was, but affectation had already become a more or less
natural trait in her, a sort of second nature. He guessed that even in
its slightest details none of this had been prepared especially for him.
Alicia lived and ate there when she was alone just as she was doing
then. She was prey to a desire to be different from other people even
when no one was noticing her.

The servant in charge of the meal was a copper-colored man with a long
down-curling mustache. He was dressed in a black tuxedo, with a white
cloth wrapped around his legs like a skirt. He had long hair, done up on
his head like a woman's and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. The
Asiatic was placing the huge trays containing the food on the floor:
Some of the dishes were of ancient hammered silver, others of many
colored lacquer, or of semi-transparent materials made in imitation of
emerald, topaz, and red sealing wax.

For Michael the meal looked like something a great chef might have
prepared if he had suddenly gone mad and made up the dishes in the midst
of his ravings. There was not a single item that suggested the
harmonious course of an ordinary dinner. The palate acted on the
imagination, awakening memories of distant travels, visions of far off
lands. Exotic preserves alternated with hot dishes. Pastry flavored with
penetrating perfumes was served along with sharp, biting, or intensely
bitter sauces.

Alicia, half reclining on the cushions, looking at the dishes without
appetite, extended her hand carelessly toward the most unusual
delicacies, and those with the most pungent and racy savors. Clearly
the perversion of her palate was profound. She herself saw to it that
Michael's glass was always filled. It was a drink of her own invention,
having a champagne base. It burned and rasped his mouth, paralyzing all
other sensation with its stinging coolness. It penetrated his nostrils
with a lingering scent of the rarest flowers and of Asiatic spices.

Speaking of the dead Princess, Alicia came to mention her own mother.
They were now on terms of open hostility. Her eyes began to gleam with
defiance as she was reminded of Dona Mercedes, confined in the
Champs-Elysee residence with her court of clericals, and showing herself
in public only for the organizing of pious works. She was trying to
starve her only daughter to death!... And as Michael smiled at this
explosion of anger, she explained her grievances.

"She gives me hardly anything; a mere nothing: half a million francs.
And I have to hand two hundred and fifty thousand a year over to my
husband: a rather expensive lover, whom I avoid seeing. You are really
rich, my dear, and don't understand such things.... Since the fortune is
all in her name, she tries to starve me out and keeps her money to
squander it with the priests.... Poor Senora! She can't find any
admirers now except that _Monsignor_ and other sponges like him.... And
I, her own daughter, have to implore her like a beggar for the crumbs
she gives me, seasoned with sermons.... Oh, if it hadn't been for your
mother! She really was a great lady: I never lamented my poverty to her
in vain; she gave me even more than I asked for. You know of course that
I owe you some money. A little.... I don't know how much. Didn't you
really know that?... I shall pay you back when I get my inheritance."

And with brutal frankness she expounded her full thought.

"When will that bigot leave me in peace?... Old people ought to make way
for the young. What fun do they get out of going on living?"

They had finished eating. She went on filling both their glasses with
her special drink. At first Michael had found it repugnant, but in the
end he was attracted to its refreshing fragrance which gently troubled
the senses, like an intoxication with perfumes.

"Of course you use the pipe," said Alicia simply.

He shook his head and thought of the odor which struck him on entering.
He knew what sort of a "pipe" it was, and gazed about the study. The
smoking den must be in some hidden corner!

"A man like you!" she went on. "A sailor! And I fooled myself into
thinking we'd smoke together!"

She even gave him to understand that the hope of being able to give him
that forbidden pleasure was the principal reason for her invitation. She
became resigned when she learned that the Prince, vigorous as he was,
suffered nausea every time he attempted to experiment with that Asiatic
vice. And while he lighted a havana, Alicia took from a silver case the
cigarettes which she smoked in the presence of the "uninitiated":
Oriental tobacco, but heavily dosed with opium. Suddenly Michael was
convinced of something of which he had a presentiment the moment he
entered the place, or even earlier, the moment their glances had met in
the cemetery. He saw her half rising from the cushions, with a
panther-like contraction of her muscles, as though she were ready to
spring at him. It was the concentrated impulse of the beast, beautiful
and sure of its power, unable to wait, and not knowing how to feign.

Alicia had forgotten the demi-tasse she held in her hand, as she sat
there, looking at him fixedly. The tiny blue electric spark dancing in
her eyes was something well known to Michael.

It was the offering glance of female silence, inviting violence, and
mastery. He had encountered that glance often along his path of triumph
as a conquering millionaire.... He felt he must say something at once to
break the silent charm of the beautiful witch, who, sure of her final
victory, was smiling and blowing puffs of cigarette smoke toward him. So
Michael alluded to her amorous fame, to the great number of lovers she
was supposed to have had. That might widen the distance between them.

"Ah! You too?" said Alicia laughing, with masculine frankness. "I don't
suppose your morals are the same as Mamma's! You are not going to read
me a sermon on my behavior. Although, after all, Mamma doesn't blame me
for what I do. What makes her angry is the fact that I am not afraid of
what people say, and that sometimes I am attracted to unknown men of low
birth. Poor Senora! If I were to have an affair with a king or a crown
prince, perhaps she'd even let us see each other in her house, and have
her _Monsignor_ mount guard into the bargain."

She remained silent for a moment. That disturbing glance was still fixed
on Michael.

"It is true; I have had a lot of men. And how about you? Do you think I
don't know about your wanderings all over the planet in quest of types
of women unknown to the novels and capable of giving new sensations?...
We have both done the same: only it wasn't necessary for me to travel
around so much to learn just what you have learned.... And you are not
so absurd as to imagine, as certain men do, that our cases are not to
be compared because we are of different sexes."

The Prince listened silently as she expounded her ideas. She was deeply
in love with life, and in return she demanded all that life could give
her.... The minds of other women were occupied with questions of a
material nature: desire for wealth, longings for luxury, domestic
cares.... As for her, she possessed everything; to-morrow held no
worries for her; not even in regard to her beauty, sustained as it was
by wonderful health, and seeming to increase in spite of age and her
prodigal waste of energies.

In her life, made up of caprices, always completely satisfied, even to
the point of satiety, only one thing interested her, from its infinite
variety and from its many phases, which might seem to vulgar people a
monotonous repetition of one another, but which in reality were distinct
for a mind attuned, as hers was, to exquisite sensations. That thing was
love.

"Oh please understand me, Michael; don't sit there laughing to yourself.
You know me too well ever to imagine that I believe in love as the
majority of women do. I know that a certain amount of illusion is
necessary to color the material aspect of love; we all lie about it a
little, and we enjoy the lie even though we know it as such; but way
down deep, I laugh at love as the world understands it, just as I laugh
at so many things which people venerate.... I don't want lovers, I want
admirers. I am not looking for love; I care more for adoration."

She was proud of her beauty. She spoke of Venus as though the goddess
were a real person. She admired the Olympic serenity with which the
Deity of Passion gave herself to gods and men, never surrendering her
superiority even at the moment when she was submitting to the
domination of the stronger sex. Alicia considered herself a
super-beauty, belonging to a sphere outside the ordinary limits of vice
and virtue. She thought herself a living work of art; and art is neither
moral nor immoral; its mission is fulfilled when it is beautiful.

"Poets, painters, and musicians seek to abandon themselves to the
greatest number of admirers. They do their utmost to enlarge their
circle of public worshipers and with feminine coquetry they try to
attract new suitors. I am like them. I do not need to create beauty, for
as they say, I have it in myself. I am my own work, but I love glory; I
need admiration; and for that reason I give myself generously, content
with the happiness which I apportion, but keeping my public at my feet,
without allowing myself to be dominated by those whom I seek."

Michael was sure that many artists must have left their imprint on that
woman's life. It was evident in the words and imagery with which she
endeavored to express her enthusiasm for her own body. Her pride in her
beauty was boundless. What were the ambitions of men, compared to the
satisfaction of being lovely and desired? Only the glory of warriors, of
blood-stained conquerors, whose names are known even in the remotest
wilds of the earth, equals the glory that a woman feels in the sense of
universal power over men.

"To me," continued Alicia, "the truest and most beautiful thing ever
written is 'the old men on the wall.'"

The Prince looked at her questioningly; so she went on to explain. She
referred to the old Trojan men in the _Iliad_, who were protesting
against the long siege of their city, against the blood sacrifice of
thousands of heroes, against poverty and hardship, all due to the fault
of a woman.... But Helen, majestic in her beauty, passed before the old
men, trailing her golden tunic; and they all lapsed into silent
contemplation, rapt in wonder, as though divine Aphrodite had descended
upon earth; and they murmured like a prayer: "It is indeed fitting that
we should suffer thus for her. So lovely she is!"

"I like to see men suffer on my account. How glorious if I might be the
cause of a great slaughter, like that ancient immortal woman!... I have
an exultant feeling of pride when I notice that envy and spite are
whispering behind my back, starting all that gossip that makes my mother
so furious. Only extraordinary people stir up torrents of abuse.... And
afterwards, in the drawing rooms, the very same austere gentlemen who
have seconded all that their wives and daughters have to say against me,
look at me with sly admiring glances, as I pass; and some of them blush
in confusion and others turn pale. It is easy to guess that I have only
to beckon and their silent admiration would.... I too have my 'old men
on the wall.'"

Michael suddenly realized that while she was talking she had been coming
gradually closer, from cushion to cushion as she lay resting on her
elbows. She was almost at his feet, with head held high, endeavoring to
envelop him in a wave of magnetism from her fixed and dominating eyes.
She seemed like a black and white snake, twisting forward little by
little among the cushions as though they were rocks of various colors.

"The only man of whom I have ever thought the least bit, the only one I
ever considered at all different from other men," she continued in a
half whisper, "is you.... Don't be alarmed: it isn't love. I am not
going to invert roles, and propose to you. Perhaps it is because, as
children, we used to hate each other; because you never wanted me. That
is such an unheard of thing in my life, that it alone is enough to
interest me."

She put her hands on his knees, as though she were about to rise.

"When I saw you in the cemetery, after so many years, I remembered all
that I had heard about you. Many women whom I know have been sweethearts
of yours, and I said to myself: Why not I, too? Then I thought of all
the men who have come into my life, and I added: Why not he?" ...

And now Alicia's elbows were resting on his knees, and as the Prince was
seated on but two pillows, their lips and eyes were almost on a level.
As she talked he could feel her breath on his face. It was like the
breeze in an Asiatic forest, whispering beneath the moon. The spices and
flowers with which the wine was saturated seemed to float in that
volatile caress.

Michael tried to avoid her advance, but one of Alicia's hands was
already on his shoulder. He merely shook his head.

"Don't be afraid," she added, exaggerating the caressing quality of her
sigh. "There are no embarrassing obligations with me. You may leave me
when you wish; perhaps I shall be the one to leave you first. I have
wanted you for the last few days. You must surely desire me as the
others do.... Let us live this moment, like people who know the secret
of life and all it can give.... Then if we tire of each other, good-by,
with no hard feeling and no pining!"

When from time to time in after years the Prince recalled that scene, he
always felt a certain dissatisfaction with himself. He was sure he had
seemed brutal as well as ridiculous. In his travels he had approached
women frequently in the most matter of fact way, often remembering them
afterwards with some repugnance; yet here he was, rebelling with a
feeling of offended modesty at the advances of the Duchess. No! With
her, never! Rising within him he felt the same displeasure that had once
made him raise his whip in his youth.

He found himself on his feet in the middle of the study, looking
anxiously toward the door and muttering stupid excuses. "No, I must go:
it is late. Some friends are waiting for me...." She had gained control
of herself. She too was standing looking at him with astonishment and
wrath.

"You are the only one who could do a thing like this," she said, in a
cutting tone, as they parted. "I see it all clearly now. I hate you as
you hate me. My whim was a stupid one. You have permitted yourself a
liberty which no one in the world will ever be able to take again. If I
were younger than I am I would thrash you again as I did in the Bois;
but instead, just consider that I am repeating everything I said then."

They did not see each other again.

When the Prince had set in order everything concerning the inheritance
from his mother, he thought of resuming his voyages, but on a more
magnificent scale. It was no longer necessary for him to ask the
Princess for money. He was one of the great millionaires of the world.
Those who were in charge of the administration of his affairs--an office
with numerous clerks, almost equalling the government bureau of a small
state--made the announcement that the fifteen million francs which the
Princess had received annually would soon be twenty, through the
development of Russian railways, which allowed more intensive working of
his mines.

The Colonel was commissioned to have the heavy medieval walls of Villa
Sirena torn down, and the place replanned according to the Prince's
tastes. The latter hated architectural resuscitations. He could not bear
modern buildings patterned to flatter the pride of the rich proprietors,
after the Alhambra, the palaces of Florence, or the solemn and orderly
constructions of Versailles.

"The furniture ought to correspond to the period," said Michael, "and
people ought to live in such houses as they lived in in the century
which produced that particular style. People living in an ancient house
ought to dress and eat as in former times.... What an absurdity to
reconstruct those historic shells, with the interior arranged to suit
the needs of modern men who are forced to commit an anachronism at every
step!"

He recalled the project of a millionaire friend of his, a member of the
Institute, who had built a Roman house on the Riviera, Roman in all the
exactness of its details. At the house-warming the guests were obliged
to sleep on corded beds and to eat reclining on couches; and even more
intimate conveniences were modeled on the principle of hygiene known to
the ancient Caesars. Within twenty-four hours they all pretended they had
received urgent telegrams calling them to Paris, and the owner himself
after a few months, left his house in charge of a keeper to show to
tourists as a museum.

Michael was fond of modern architecture, whose cathedrals are machine
shops and large railway stations. Applied to dwellings it pleased him
for its lack of style: white walls, a few moldings, rounded corners,
with no angles whatsoever, so that the dust might be pursued to its
remotest hiding places, wide openings letting in the breeze and the
sunlight, double walls between which hot or cold air, and water at
various temperatures, could circulate.

"Up to the present time," the Prince asserted, "man has lived in
magnificent jewel cases of art and filth. Modern architects have done
more in the last thirty years to make life pleasant than the
artist-builders, so much admired by history, did in three thousand. They
have declared running water and the bath-room as indispensable, things
which were unknown to kings themselves half a century ago. They have
invented the furnace and the water closet. Don't talk to me about the
magnificent palaces of Versailles, where there was not a single toilet,
and where every morning the lackeys were obliged to empty two hundred
vessels for the king and his courtiers. Often to be through quicker,
they threw their contents out of the majestic windows, and sometimes it
would fall on the sedan chair and the retinue of a Dauphine or an
ambassador."

Toledo applied himself to supervising the construction of Villa Sirena
in accordance with the desires of the Prince, making it a plain white
building, and without any definite style of architecture. Lubimoff
himself, at the proper time, would take charge of the artistic touches,
placing famous pictures, statues, tapestries, or rugs, just where they
would be most pleasing to the eye. The house was to be a harmony of
simple, pure lines. The walls were to have heating and cooling systems
for the different seasons, and running water was to be available in
abundance everywhere. Each room was to have its electric lights and its
electric fan.

The Prince found it a much easier task to make over his wandering ocean
residence. He simply sold the Gaviota, which reminded him of his
youthful dependence on his family, and went to the United States to look
into an advertisement. Three years before a certain multimillionaire had
begun the construction of a yacht, designed to be more luxurious and of
greater tonnage than that of any European sovereign. As the American was
about to witness the consummation of this triumph of the democratic
kings of industry over the historic kings of the Old World, he was
killed in an automobile accident, and his heirs did not know what to do
with the leviathan which would only be of use to an immensely rich,
and, in their opinion, somewhat crazy traveler. They were thinking of
selling it at a loss to the Kaiser, William II, having decided finally
to endure his demands as a sharp business man, when Prince Lubimoff
appeared. A week later on the white stern and bows of the yacht a new
name in gold letters was displayed, a name that was repeated in addition
on the life preservers and on the various tenders, the dingies, the
steam launches, and the motor boats. The American yacht had become the
_Gaviota II_.

It had the tonnage of a small trans-Atlantic liner and the speed of a
torpedo boat. Each day the wealth of an ordinary man went up in smoke
through the _Gaviota II's_ double funnels. During a trip to some distant
island, the supply of coal gave out. Immediately a collier chartered by
the Prince, came to meet the _Gaviota II_ in the farthest seas to fill
the bunkers with fuel.

Quiet harbors came to be illuminated at night, as though the sun had
risen. When the Prince gave a _fete_, the ship would be a blaze of glory
from the water to the mastheads, its outline marked by electric bulbs of
various colors, while powerful searchlights shot out movable streams of
radiance and drew the waves, the shores, and rows of city houses from
the depths of the darkness. At other times, the white fire of the
_Gaviota II's_ monstrous eyes would flash on walls of ice towering to
the clouds, and seals, penguins, and polar bears would waken from sleep
frightened by the strange luminous, puffing monster that darted off like
lightning into the mystery of night.

To be the owner of a floating palace which, when anchoring off large
cities, drew such crowds of sightseers as rare spectacles only attract,
was not enough for Michael Fedor. So he created something more
interesting even than the luxurious salons, and the refinements of
comfort of the _Gaviota II_: he built up an orchestra.

Sensuous delight in music was for him the most exquisite of emotions.
When his ears were satiated with the sweetness and melody of traditional
music, he sought unknown and often bizarre composers, who aroused his
curiosity; but he always came back to demanding as the _pieces de
resistance_ of his harmonic feasts, the masters who had been his first
love, and above all, Beethoven.

Treated as though they were officers, paid to their liking, and with the
added inducement of being able to see a great deal of the world,
musicians from every country offered their services to the yacht's
orchestra. Famous concert players and young composers came in as mere
instrumentalists. Some were ill, and sought to regain their health in a
voyage around the world in real luxury and without expense; others
embarked through love of adventure, to see new lands in this floating
castle, in which everything seemed organized for an eternal holiday.
There were never less than fifty of them.

"My orchestra is the finest in the world," the Prince would proudly say
when his guests complimented him after one of the concerts his musicians
gave at rare intervals on land.

In tropical nights, beneath the enormous honey-colored moon changing the
sea to a vast plain of quick-silver, the musicians, seated in evening
clothes before the rows of music racks illuminated by tiny electric
lights, would weave on the quiet air, which seemed to have retained the
first faint cries of the planet at its birth, the most original
melodies, the most subtle combination of sounds that the sublime rapture
of artists in god-like inspiration ever created. The music floated out
behind the boat in the mystery of the ocean, like a scarf unfolding,
breaking and scattering in fragments, with the smoke of the funnels.
When the orchestra paused one could hear the distant subdued beat of the
propellers, churning the foam with a humming sound; and then from time
to time the slow tolling of the bell calling the men on watch, or the
cry of the lookout snuggled into the crow's nest on the mainmast,
reporting his vigilance with the rhythmic intonation of a muezzin from a
minaret. And the monotonous music of the sea gave an impression of
night, and of immensity, to the music of man.

At the foot of the companionways, or on the outjutting parts of the
lower decks, the various officers and officials of the Prince gathered
to hear the concert in the night. On the prow the sailors squatted,
listening to the music in religious silence, as is often the case with
simple men when confronted with something they do not understand, but
which inspires awe. Aft, the only listener would be Michael Fedor,
standing at a distance from the music, and with his back toward the
musicians, watching at his feet, the divided, foaming waters which
rushed by like a double river far out and away from the boat. As
occasionally he raised his cigar to his lips, his pensive features would
appear for a moment in the darkness, lighted by the red glow.

The yacht held another more silent group. Those who succeeded in getting
on board in the ports always obtained a distant glimpse of a woman or
two with white shoes, blue skirts, jackets with rows of gold buttons,
masculine collars and neckties, and officers' caps. No one knew for
certain how many such women there may have been. The men of the crew
were forbidden access to the central quarters of the boat, and to the
upper deck. Some of them, chancing to break the rule through oversight,
had met the Prince's companions attired in elegant naval uniforms, or
more lightly clad, like dancers, in elaborate and exotic costumes. At
the large ports, steam launches landed these mysterious and beautiful
travelers for a few hours on shore. It was remarked that they dressed
with modest elegance and that they would speak various languages.

When the _Gaviota II_ returned and anchored in the same harbor she had
visited the preceding year, those whose curiosity had been aroused found
that the personnel of the wandering harem had been completely renewed.
They might occasionally recognize one or two of the former ladies, but
now their faces wore the placid expression of the odalisque who has been
supplanted, but is nevertheless contented with luxury and oblivion.

Some years Michael Fedor suspended his travels, during the summer, to
take up his abode at fashionable beaches. The women who accompanied him
on his long voyages remained on board, with all the lavish comforts to
which they were accustomed. At other times he parted with them, as one
dismisses a crew when a ship goes out of commission, at the end of a
trip.

Immediately he became interested in women living stay-at-home lives, in
shore society, and in summer flirtations at famous watering places. He
would take up his abode in a hotel on the coast, while his yacht was to
be seen rising from the azure waters, motionless, like a palace of
mystery and magnificence, the center of all feminine imaginings.

Living in Biarritz he came to know Atilio Castro intimately through
learning that they were related on his father's side. The Spaniard
admired the fascination exercised by the Prince, often without wishing
to do so, on all women.

Never at any period had women been more strongly attracted by luxury or
felt less scruples in the means of obtaining it than at present. This
was the opinion of Castro. Lavish display, which in other centuries had
been within reach of only the very few families, was now possible for
every one. All one needed to indulge in it was money. Besides, it was
necessary to take into account present-day progress in material things,
which has made life easier, but at the same time has increased our
needs.

"The motor car and the pearl necklace have made more victims than the
wars of Napoleon," said Atilio.

"These two things are like the gala uniform of women, and those who are
forced to go without them consider themselves unfortunate and ill
treated by fate. This twin image has shattered the illusions of maidens
and the fidelity of wives. Mothers in middle class society, with
melancholy dejection written on their faces as though they had made
stupid failures of their lives, advise their daughters: 'If you are
going to get married, make sure you will get an auto and a pearl
necklace.' And long after the modest marriage this desire still remains,
strengthened by maternal advice. Luxury is the one thought, luxury at
whatever cost. Luxury has been democratized. It is within reach of all,
obtainable through money, which has no taint, no odor, no sign of its
origin."

"You are the great provider of the expensive motor car of fashionable
make and of the rope of pearls," continued Castro. "You are the great
Sultan of magnificence. Your signature to a check is enough to sweep a
woman off her feet in a torrent of gold. Make the most of your
opportunity! The period in which you were born has left you an open
field for your talents."

And the Prince, who was not at all in need of such advice, went his way
as conqueror through a world in which the best accredited virtues
collapsed before his attack. Even sincere resistance finally appeared to
him to be a clever device for postponing surrender and increasing the
market value of desire. The millions from Russia were scattered
broadcast in smaller and smaller subdivisions, maintaining the well
being and display of many homes, indulging the taste for luxury of
numerous ladies, and keeping numberless factories busy producing elegant
novelties of female luxury. A few women felt a sincere interest in
Michael Fedor for his own sake, because of the mysterious prestige of
his voyages in a boat which was talked about as though it were an
enchanted palace; and also because of his adventures with celebrated
actresses and women of high society, which made him more attractive. But
once their vanity and curiosity were satisfied, they allowed their own
self-interest to have a word. "Why should I be any more altruistic than
the rest?"

They were not obliged to use cunning or round-about phrases in
formulating their requests. Some at the second meeting, took on a
melancholy air, and spoke of the sad realities of life. But the generous
Prince anticipated their desires. He preferred to pay his mistresses and
dazzle them with splendid gifts. Thus he could regard them as favored
slaves covered with jewels. In this way also, it was easier to break
with them: He could go away from them whenever he so desired, satisfied
with his own behavior, and quite unmoved by their tears and laments.
From his semi-oriental Russian ancestors he had inherited a great
sensual capacity, which caused him to be attracted to women, and at the
same time to feel an inalterable scorn for them. He indulged them but
could not love them; he adored them, but was stirred to indignation when
they presumed to be on terms of equality with him. He was capable of
ruining himself, of braving death for them, but he was ready to thrust
them aside with his foot if they tried in the least to govern his life.
The ambitious ones who feigned deep, passionate love for him in the hope
of marriage, the sentimental ones who tried to interest him with
psychological subtleties, and those who kept their maternal enthusiasm
even in adultery, and murmured in his ear how happy they would be to
have a child who might resemble him, waited for him in vain the
following day. "Neither deep passion, nor children!" ... Two trails of
smoke were soon rising from the yacht, carrying its owner to another
port or perhaps to another continent: or if he wished to flee from a
city in the interior, he gave orders that his private car should be
coupled to the first train that was leaving.

These flights were never undertaken without a generous remembrance.
Michael Fedor's munificence continued for those whom he had abandoned.
Each year new names were added to his budget, like that of a reigning
house which allots pensions to its forgotten servants. But the pensions
of Prince Lubimoff were for the maintenance of luxury and not of life.
The most modest were over thirty thousand francs a year. The average was
double that amount.

"Your Excellency: there will have to be a revision," his administrator
would say.

Michael would examine the list of names, hesitating at a few. He could
not recall clearly the persons who bore them. Then suddenly he would
smile, as certain visions were suddenly and attractively awakened in his
mind. He was immensely wealthy: why not keep up the luxury which was the
one dream of all of them?... He was not disturbed by the jealous thought
that his successors would be reaping the benefit of that luxury.

He felt a certain god-like pride in making his generosity felt at all
times, without letting himself be seen. In Paris a jewelry shop managed
by a Jew of Spanish origin limited its entire business to the production
of the Prince's gifts. His gems of high intrinsic value, with no false
artifices, had a certain family resemblance, a sort of imaginary
perfume which enabled the women who displayed them to recognize each
other. When it was least expected, at tea time, in the dining-room of a
hotel, at an elegant watering place at a dance, two women who had just
met would gaze at each other's ears and breast in silence, until the
boldest, blushing imperceptibly under her rouge, would ask simply: "You
knew Prince Lubimoff too?..."

Atilio Castro felt a deep admiration for his relative, less on account
of his triumphs than of the iron constitution required to sustain them.

"What a Cossack! A regular Cossack!... He is a true descendant of that
lover of the Great Catherine!"

Nevertheless, frequently the yacht would hurriedly put out to sea on
long voyages, without its master being forced to flee from any dangerous
or entangling passion. He was running away from himself, from his
perverse imagination and curiosity, which made him seek and allure
different women, upsetting his peace of mind, without rousing in him any
real desire. He undertook the most extraordinary voyages, for the sake
of the bracing air and the sense of restfulness the sea brings. The
orchestra accompanied him; but the "harem" remained on shore. He had
gone completely around the globe, following the shortest route; then he
had repeated this circumnavigation, but over a zig-zag course, to become
acquainted with all the coasts of the earth. At present he was on going
on whimsical trips; he was sailing from one hemisphere to another for
the pleasure of visiting one or another of the small islands which seem
lost in the Pacific, and are so tiny that on the maps they look like
mere dots placed after long names traced on the blue colored surface.

Returning from one of these excursions on which he went around the world
as though it were his personal property, he received by wireless the
news that Germany had declared war against Russia and France.

He felt no great surprise. He knew William II personally. It was because
of him that Prince Lubimoff avoided cruising off the coast of Norway in
summer.

The year following his acquisition of the _Gaviota II_ he had come
across the Imperial yacht in those parts. The Kaiser, like an officious,
all-knowing neighbor, came to see him in order to look over the yacht,
examining it in all its details, giving advice, reviewing the men and
materials, making a dissertation on the engines and interrupting himself
to advise certain changes in the uniform of the crew. After a breakfast
on his own yacht, and luncheon on the Emperor's, Prince Michael had had
enough of this unexpected friendship. Lohengrin, with his winged helmet,
white mantle, and both hands on the hilt of his sword, was less
unbearable than this gentleman with turned up mustache, and wolfish
teeth, dressed like a sailor, who laughed a false and brutal laugh, and
(whenever he met on the seas a multimillionaire from America or Europe)
played the role of a man of great simplicity and of an unconventional
sovereign. Money inspired deep veneration in this story-book hero, this
mystic with a mind fed on grandeur. Michael had never shared the
enthusiasm of various snobs for the German Emperor. He smiled at the
Hohenzollern's theatrical tastes, his war-like bravadoes, and his
intellectual ambitions which pretended to embrace the whole knowable
universe.

"He is a comedian," Michael said on receiving the news of the war, "a
comedian who for a long time is going to make the whole world weep....
And to think that the fate of mankind should depend on such a man!..."

Michael Fedor considered himself as a being set apart from the rest of
mankind. He lamented the war as something terrible for the rest, but
which could not influence his own particular fate. Since a madness for
blood had descended upon Europe, he would go on sailing distant seas.
Thanks to his wealth he could keep beyond the margins of the struggle.

But times changed rapidly; life was not the same: all old values had
lost their significance. In spite of her Russian flag, the _Gaviota II_
found herself halted by some English torpedo boats and was forced to
submit to a minute inspection. They could not believe that any one
should be cruising for pleasure when all the seas had been converted
into a battlefield. In the latitude of the Azores it became necessary to
force the yacht's engines to escape from a German corsair.

Besides, fuel was getting scarce. The various coaling stations located
here and there on the coast were reserved exclusively for the warships.
Important news kept coming by wireless from far-off Paris, where the
chief agent of the Prince was located. Communication had been broken off
between the Paris office and the administrators of the Lubimoff fortune
in Russia. No money was coming from there, and the French banks, with
their vaults closed by the _moratorium_, were willing secretly to lend
money to a millionaire like the Prince, but not in quantities sufficient
to meet his current needs.

The yacht came to anchor in the port of Monaco, and Michael Fedor, on
arriving in Paris, almost laughed, as though witnessing some
preposterous change in the laws of nature. The heir of the Lubimoffs in
need of money, and compelled to make an effort to obtain it--something
he had never done in all his life! Here he was having to ask for loans
at frightfully usurious rates, on the security of his distant and famous
wealth, which for the first time was regarded somewhat contemptuously!...

When communications were reestablished in an intermittent fashion
between Western Europe and Russia--which was practically isolated--the
administrator of the Prince gave a look of despair. The collections had
been reduced eighty per cent.

"According to that, I am going to be poor?" asked Lubimoff, laughing,
the news seemed so unbelievable and absurd.

It was very difficult to send money as far as Paris. Besides the rouble
was decreasing in value at a dizzy rate. Millions on reaching France
became mere hundred thousands. Mobilization had left the mines without
workmen; there was no outlet for the produce; the peasants, seeing their
sons in the army, refused to pay any money, and even to work. The
Russian government, to keep as much money as possible at home, limited
to small amounts the money sent to citizens residing abroad.

"The Czar putting me on a pension!" said the Prince in amazement. "A
thousand or two thousand francs a month!... How absurd!"

       *       *       *       *       *

But he did not laugh long. His anger against the Russian court, which
had gradually been growing in his subconsciousness ever since his
expulsion so long ago from Petersburg, now moved by a selfish impulse
suddenly flared up. The Czar and his counselors, desirous of
Russianizing all Eastern Europe, were responsible for the war. They
certainly might have kept peace with Germany. Why disturb the peace of
the world, for the sake of a little race of people in the Balkans?

He coolly made fun of certain of his friends who, by devious routes
across Europe and the icy Northern seas, returned to Russia to regain
their former commissions in the army. As for him, he had no desire to
die for the Czar. It made little difference to him whether his country
were governed by Germans. There were times when he even thought that
would be preferable, so long as peace were restored rapidly, allowing
him once more to reap the benefit of his wealth, and resume the life he
had been leading a few months before, or, as it now seemed, a half
century before.

The next two years went by for Lubimoff like a nightmare. What sort of a
world was he living in?... His former friends were disappearing. Some of
the frivolous women who had made life pleasant for him were not moved in
the least by the unfortunate events which were happening; but others
showed themselves to be heroic and self-sacrificing, forgetting all they
had done before, feeling a new soul developing within them.

The Prince suddenly found himself dragged along by the world happenings.
A mysterious and irresistible force was pushing against him, causing him
to lose his balance, just as he was reaching the pinnacle of his life,
so pleasant, so vast, crowned with a halo of such glory. And now, once
started, he was tumbling head over heels, of his own inertia, and each
step he struck as he descended, gave him a harder blow, a more painful
surprise. How far would this landslide take him?... What would he strike
at the end of this unheard-of fall?...

His interviews with his Paris administrator seemed to him like something
taking place in another world, subject to ridiculous laws. These
conferences always ended with the same order on his part:

"Try and get some money. Ask for a loan.... I am Prince Lubimoff, and
this cannot last. Whoever wins--it is all the same to me--order will be
reestablished, and I shall pay my creditors immediately."

But the administrator answered, with a look of dismay: "Raise money on
property in Russia?..." Taking advantage of the former prestige of the
Prince, he had been able to negotiate various loans; but time was
passing and the enormous interest was accumulating. Lubimoff in spite of
cutting down expenses and doing away with pensions, was in need of money
for his current living expenses.

The fall of the Czar gave a ray of hope to this magnate who hated the
Imperial government. "With the Republic the war will be over sooner and
we shall come back to the proper order of things." His egoism made him
conceive of a Republic as a form of government occupied chiefly with
restoring the wealth of beings of fortunate birth. The meager shreds of
his fortune which now and then still got as far as Paris were suddenly
cut off. The fountain of wealth was dry. The crumbling of a whole world
had dammed its source, and perhaps forever.

"Your Excellency must sell," the administrator was always saying. "You
must do without everything that is superfluous. We must liquidate in
time. Who knows how long the present state of affairs may last!"

The yacht was lying idle in Monaco harbor. Almost the entire crew,
composed of Italians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen, had left it to go and
serve in the navies of their respective nations. Only a few Spaniards
remained on board, to keep the boat clean.

The _Gaviota II_ was renamed by the English admiralty, and turned over
to the Red Cross. When he signed the bill of sale, Michael Fedor felt
that he was giving up his whole past. The romantic prestige of his mode
of life was vanishing now for all time; the _Arabian Nights_ palace was
being converted into a hospital ship.... What a world!

The English millions afforded him a year of respite. The administrator
paid the huge debts, and he was able to live without economizing, in
Paris, a Paris nearing the end of its third year of war with
inexplicable tranquillity, resuming its usual pleasures as though all
danger were past. Love affairs with two distinguished women, whose
husbands were called to arms--although they were not at the
front--caused him to spend a few months, now at Biarritz, now on the
Riviera, and now at Aix-les-Bains.

His agent disturbed these enjoyments. He was constantly repeating the
same advice: "You must sell." The Prince's fortune was already like an
old ship drifting aimlessly. The administrator had stopped the last
leaks with the money from the most recent sale, but warned him at every
moment that she was taking in water through new ones.

In the end Michael Fedor grew accustomed to misfortune, accepting it
serenely.

The sale of the palace built by his mother moved him less than that of
his yacht.

At the same time his desires had changed. He was beginning to tire of
love adventures, which seemed to be the only object of existence. His
fresh and vigorous constitution, which had amazed Castro, suddenly broke
down. But this was more the result of worry than of physical wear and
tear.

He felt that he was poor, and was he not accustomed to pay royally for
his love affairs? Not being able to reward women with luxury, he would
rather flee in order not to accept from them and be obliged to tolerate
from them their caprices. He preferred to master his desires, as long as
he could not satisfy them with all the grandeur of an oriental
potentate. Besides he was tired of love, and all the pleasant things of
life a man can find in this world!...

He thought of his friend Atilio, of the Colonel, of Villa Sirena, white
and shining in the Mediterranean sunlight, among the olive trees and
cypresses.

"The earth is being swept by the deluge. Perhaps the old lands will once
more appear; perhaps they will remain submerged forever.... Let us take
refuge in our Ark, and wait and hope."




CHAPTER IV


After glancing with satisfaction at the imposing aspect of Villa Sirena,
the adjoining buildings, and the surrounding groves, the Colonel said to
Novoa:

"The part you see cost less than what you don't see. There is a great
deal of money spent under ground here."

Turning away from the residence, Don Marcos pointed to the gardens,
which lay extended before them in terraces, some on a level with the
roof of the "villa," others descending like a mighty stairway almost to
the water's edge.

He recalled the promontory as it was when the late Princess first
thought of buying it; an ancient refuge of pirates; a tongue of rocks
wild and storm-swept when the _mistral_ was blowing, with deep caves
gnawed by the surge, which caused the land above to crumble, and
threatened to break it lengthwise into a chain of reefs and islets.

"The bulwarks we have had to build!" he continued. "You should have seen
the stone we had to put in here,--enough to build a wall around the
whole city!"

There were walls more than twenty yards thick, descending in a gradual
slope from the gardens to the sea. In places, it was possible to see
their foundations in the natural rocks which emerged from the water like
greenish beads always awash in the foam; in other places the masonry
went down and down until it was lost from view in the watery depths.
They were like the breakwaters one sees in harbors. They covered the
original hollows of the promontory, the caves, the inlets that were
forming, and all the jagged spaces, which had been filled with rich
soil.

These tremendous works of masonry were Toledo's pride, owing to their
cost and grandeur. He called his fellow-countryman's attention to the
proportions of the ramparts, worthy of a monarch of olden times.

"And they are not only strong," he continued, "but look, Professor! They
are all 'artistic.'"

The blocks of stone had been cut in large hexagons which fitted together
in a uniform mosaic, each piece outlined by a cement border.

At intervals there were large openings, so that the earth might rid
itself of its moisture; but each one of these blind windows held some
sort of wild vegetation, some hardy, aromatic plant, obstinately
parasitic, spreading downward over the wall and covering it with flowers
for the greater part of the year. The thick groves at the summit, and
the long balustrades arched with wine-colored clematis, seemed to exude
a flowery, green, inferior form of life, pouring it out seaward through
the gaps in the wall.

"When you see it from a boat below you will appreciate it better. Senor
Castro says it reminds him of the hanging gardens of Babylon, and of
Queen Semiramis. He is the only one who would think of such comparisons.
All I can say is that it meant doing all this! Imagine all the stone. A
whole quarry! And I wish you could have seen the bargeloads of rich soil
it took to fill the hollows, level the ground, and make a decent
garden!"

He grew enthusiastic as he talked about the modern flower gardens
stretching around the villa and along the iron railing bordering the
Menton road; and he lavished his praise on their harmonious elegance,
and the majestic regulation to which the plants were forced to conform.
That was how _he_ felt a garden should be, like many another thing in
life: perfect order, a sense of subordination, and respect for the
hierarchies, each thing in its place, with no individual rivalries to
cause confusion. But he was afraid to expound his "old-fashioned"
tastes, recalling the jests of the Prince and Castro. They preferred the
park, which the Colonel always thought of as the "wild garden."

They had availed themselves of the extremely ancient olive trees already
on the promontory as a beginning for the park. These trees could not be
called old, exactly. Such an appellation would have been petty and
inadequate to their age. They were simply ancient, of no visible age.
They had an air of changeless eternity about them which made them seem
contemporaries of the rocks and the waves themselves. They looked more
like ruins than like trees, like heaps of black wood, twisted and
overthrown by a storm, or piles of wood, warped and hollowed and
scorched by some fire long since past. With them also the invisible part
was more important than the portions exposed to the light. Their roots,
as large around as tree trunks, went out of sight, wound their way
through the red earth, and then appeared once more thirty or forty yards
beyond. Some of the trees had died on one side, only to come to life
again on the other. What had been the trunk five hundred years before,
now appeared as a mutilated stump, table shaped, severed by ax or
shattered by thunderbolt; and the root, showing above the soil, was
flowering again in its turn, changing into a tree, to continue an
apparently limitless existence, in which centuries counted as years. The
hearts of other trees were gnawed away and empty; and these supported
only half of their outer shell, looking like a tower with one side blown
out by an explosion; but on high they displayed an almost ridiculous
crown of foliage, a few handfuls of silvery leaves scattering along the
sinuous black branches. Below, the gnarled roots which seemed to have
preserved in their knotted windings the sap that was the first life of
the earth, embraced a much larger radius on the ground than that
occupied by the branches in the air. Other olive trees, that were only
three or four hundred years old, stood erect with the arrogance of
youth, leafy and exuberant, casting a light, trembling, almost
diaphanous shadow, like that of frosted glass which swayed with the
capricious will of the wind.

"His Excellency says that there are olive trees here that were seen by
the Romans. Do you believe it, Professor? Can it be that any of these
trees date back to the time of Jesus Christ?"

Novoa hesitated in replying. The Colonel continued his observations as
they walked along between walls of well-trimmed shrubbery towards the
end of the park.

"Look: there is the Greek garden."

It was an avenue of laurels and cypress trees with curving marble
benches, and in the background a semi-circular colonnade.

"I would have liked to plant a great many palms: African, Japanese, and
Brazilian, like those in the gardens of the Casino. But the Prince and
Don Atilio detest them. They say that they are an anachronism, that they
never existed in this region, and were imported by the wealthy people
who have been building for the last fifty years on the Blue Coast. All
those two fellows admire is the ancient Provencal or Italian garden:
olive trees, laurels, and cypresses--but not the huge, funereal
cypresses with bushy tops, that we use in Spain, to decorate the
_calvaries_ and cemeteries. Look at them: they are as light and slender
as feathers. To keep the wind from blowing them over you have to plant
two or three together in a clump."

They had reached the extreme limit of the park, where the leafiest olive
trees were growing. They walked along open pathways through high masses
of wild and fragrant vegetation, whose vigorous vitality seemed to
challenge the salt breeze. The plants had stiff leaves, and gave out
strong exotic perfumes. As Novoa breathed in the fragrance, it evoked
visions of far-off lands; and in truth it seemed almost as though an
odor of Hindoo cooking or Oriental incense were floating through that
wild garden. A variety of creepers hung from tree to tree. Though it was
still winter these natural garlands had already begun to bloom, owing to
the warm breezes of an early Spring. They stood out with all the gay
splendor of a courtly festival, against the chaste pale green of the
olive trees.

"Don Atilio says that all this makes him think of a Mozart symphony."

The deep blue Mediterranean lay at their feet, its slow swells combed by
a sharp reef that broke the streaming water into clouds of spray. Here
the promontory divided, forming two arms of unequal length. The shortest
was a prolongation of the park, carrying the magnificent vegetation
which flourished on its back, into the very waters. The other descended
to the sea in a chaos of rocks and loose earth, with no growth save a
few twisted pines, clinging to the soil, obstinately determined to
prolong their death struggle. The barren loneliness of this tongue of
land drew a sad smile from the Colonel each time he gazed at the
dividing wall. The rugged point was eaten away by the sea with caves
that threatened to cut it in two. It had no regular place of entrance,
being separated from the mainland by the gardens of Villa Sirena, and
shut off by a hostile wall, which represented the inalienable rights of
ownership, and was a source of constant indignation and amazement to Don
Marcos.

Doubtless that was why he turned away from it, gazing out toward where
Monaco lay beyond the rocky cliffs.

"It is lovely, Professor: one of the most delightful panoramas anywhere.
There is good reason for people to come here from the farthest ends of
the earth!"

He let his glance rest on the violet colored mountains that, at the
farthest horizon, projected out upon the sea, like the limit of a world.
They were the so-called Mountains of the Moors, which, with Esterel
Point, form a branch of the Maritime Alps, a separate mountain chain,
which juts into the Mediterranean. In the opposite direction lay a
portion of the pseudo-Blue Coast, which begins at Toulon and Hyeres. But
this part did not interest the Colonel. What he saw, more in imagination
than in reality, was a bird's-eye view of the real Blue Coast, his own
Blue Coast--that of the aristocratic and wealthy people on whom he was
in the habit of calling, in their elegant villas and expensive hotels.

The Maritime Alps form a giant wall, parallel to the sea. In some places
they fall steeply toward the Mediterranean with the sharp slope of a
bulwark, without the slightest break to mask the abrupt descent. At
other points the incline is gentler, creating waves of stone, miniature
mountains which stand out above the water, forming capes and placid
inlets. And on these sheltered shores, from Esterel to the Italian
frontier, wealthy people, sensitive to cold, arriving in pilgrimages
every winter, had finally converted the sleepy provincial villages into
world-famous capitals. Fishing hamlets were transformed into elegant
towns; the large Paris and London hotels erected enormous annexes on the
deserted bays; the most expensive shops of the Boulevards opened
branches in tiny settlements where a few years before every one had gone
barefoot.

In his mind Toledo went over the undulating line of celebrated places,
overlooking the sea from the promontories, or nestling in the little
horseshoe bays to profit more directly by the refraction of the winter
sunlight from the red walls of the Alps: Cannes, which inspired in him a
certain awe on account of its quiet distinction--the place where
consumptives and old people of renown desire to die--Antibes, with its
square harbor and its walls which, according to Castro, recalled the
romantic seascapes painted by Vernet; Nice, the capital where people
come together to spend their money, copying Parisian life; the deep bay
of Villefranche, the harborage of battleships; Cap-Ferrat and the
beautiful Point Saint-Hospice, a former den of African pirates, jutting
out from it; Beaulieu, with its Tunisian palaces, the homes of American
multimillionaires, who always keep open house, and who had often invited
the Colonel to luncheon there; Eze, the feudal hamlet, hanging grimly to
the side of the Alps, and falling in ruins around its decaying castle,
while down below, the people who fled from it are forming a new town,
beside the gulf which their predecessors proudly called the Sea of Eze;
Cap d'Ail, which serves as a sort of portico to the adjoining
Principality; the Rock of Monaco, carrying on its giant's back a walled
city; opposite it the dazzling Monte Carlo; and beyond, Cap-Martin, with
somber vegetation, reserved and lordly, the ultimate shelter of
dethroned kings; and lastly, close to Italy, pleasant Menton, the
stronghold of Englishmen, another place for invalids of distinction,
where every self-respecting consumptive feels obliged to end his days.

"Think of the money that has been spent here!" Don Marcos exclaimed.

Fifty years before, the Corniche railway in successfully finding its way
through this mountain region had been considered a marvelous piece of
work; but now for the convenience of winter visitors, the same work had
been repeated in every direction. Smoothly curving roads, clean and firm
as a drawing-room floor, extended along the seashore, ascended the
Alpine heights, passing from crest to crest on lofty viaducts, or
burrowing the hills in long tunnels. Where the perpendicular rock would
not allow a ledge to be cut the engineer had made one with buttresses
many yards high, the bases of which were lost to view in the waves.

A new dream had been added to the many which the blessed in this world's
goods may realize--the owning of a house on the Riviera! Within fifty
years, every architectural whim, every possible fancy of rich people
bent on creating sensations, had covered this shore of the Mediterranean
with villas, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Venetian, and Tuscan palaces, and
dwellings of other distinct or indescribable styles. The palm tree was
imported and acclimated as a native plant.

"Enormous fortunes have been invested here; three generations have been
ruined, and as many more enriched. When you think what it was a century
ago, and see what it is now...!"

The Colonel spoke of an Englishwoman's tomb, completely abandoned on the
extreme point of Cap-Ferrat. She was a forerunner of the present winter
visitors, a youthful contemporary of Byron, charmed by the beauty of the
Mediterranean, and by the pathless and practically unexplored mountains.
On her death, they buried her on the deserted promontory, because she
was a Protestant. The fishermen and peasants of this lonely coast
shunned the stranger, denying her the rights of hospitality even in
their cemeteries.

"This happened less than a century ago. And such poverty as there was!
The only products of the country were thick skinned oranges, lemons, and
these olives. The trees are very pretty, very decorative, but they bear
an exceedingly small pointed olive, all pit. Compare them with ours in
Andalusia, Professor! And to-day there are millionaires, born right here
on the Riviera, who have grown rich merely by selling the wretched
fields of their fathers. The red land, abounding in stones, is bought by
the yard, even in the most out of the way spots, like lots in large
cities. When you least expect it, at a turn in the road, you come across
a miserable hut with a little land around it that takes your fancy. The
roof of the building sags, and the wind blows through the cracks in the
wall. The owners sleep with the pig, the chickens, and the horse. This
same poverty and shiftlessness you find among the peasants almost
everywhere. You happen to think that you might build up a country home
there without much expense. Surely the good people won't ask very much,
no matter how inflated their ideas of value may be! But when you ask the
price, after much talk, and many doubts, they finally say in the most
casual manner: 'A hundred and fifty thousand francs, or two hundred
thousand.' When you protest in amazement they reply, pointing to the
mountains, the sun, and the sea: 'And the view, monsieur.'"

The red soil of the Alps amounts to little for its power of production:
it is the situation that gives it its value. And the native has grown
rich selling, so much per yard, the sunlight, the azure of the
Mediterranean, the orange color of the mountains and the dazzling glory
of the clouds at sunset, the shelter of the distant rock which, like a
screen, turns aside the icy breeze of the _mistral_.

"If you only knew how inexplicably obstinate some of these people are!"

As Don Marcos spoke he turned and pointed out to Novoa the miserable
strip of land that seemed fastened like a curse to the gardens of Villa
Sirena. The Princess Lubimoff with all her millions, had not been able
to buy the tip of that promontory. It belonged to an old married couple
without any children. "That is their house," he added, pointing to a
sort of yellowish cube, halfway up the mountain, beside a road that cut
across the red and black slope.

The Princess, after acquiring the promontory for her medieval castle,
had considered the acquisition of the small extremity a mere trifle.
"Give them what they ask," she said to her business agent. And in spite
of her recklessness with money, she was amazed to learn that they
refused two hundred thousand francs for a few rocks undermined by the
waves, and a couple of dozen dying pines.

"I was present at the interviews with the old people. The agent of the
Princess offered five hundred thousand, six hundred thousand, and the
couple did not seem to grasp the meaning of the figures. The Princess
lost her patience, lamenting the fact that they were not in Russia, in
the good old days. She even talked of engaging an assassin in Italy--as
she had read in certain novels--to get rid of the stubborn old pair. It
was just like her Excellency,--but she was really very kind at heart!
Finally, one day, she shouted to us: 'Offer them a million, and let us
be done with it!' Imagine, Professor, more than two thousand francs a
yard; you could buy land at that rate in the business district of a big
city! We went up to their cottage. They didn't bat an eyelash when they
heard the figure. The old woman, who was the more intelligent of the
two, let Her Excellency's lawyer explain what a million meant. She
looked at her husband for a long time, in spite of the fact that she was
the only one of the two who was doing any thinking, and finally
accepted; but on condition that the Princess should erect, on the
outermost point, a chapel to the Virgin. It was a wish that her simple
imagination had cherished all her life. Without the chapel, she would
not accept the million. 'Don't worry, we'll build the chapel!' we said.
The day set for signing the papers, we found the two old people, sitting
in the lawyer's office side by side, with bowed heads. The lawyer
received us, wringing his hands, and looking toward heaven with an
expression of despair. They would not accept! It was no use insisting.
They wanted to keep things just as they had received them from their
forefathers. 'What would we do with a million?' groaned the old woman.
'We would lead a terrible life!' We tried to talk to her about the
chapel, in order to persuade her; but they both fled, like people
finding themselves in bad company, and afraid of being tempted."

The colonel looked once more at the dividing wall.

"Her Excellency being a born fighter, immediately had the partition
raised before beginning the foundation of the castle. As you see from
here, the old people can reach their property only by the beach; and on
stormy days they have to enter the water up to their knees. That doesn't
matter; from that time on they became more attached than ever to their
land. They used to come down from the mountains every Sunday, to sit at
the foot of the wall. By constantly measuring the point they succeeded
in discovering an error made by the architect, who had been a trifle
flustered owing to the haste enforced upon him by the Princess. He had
made a mistake of eighteen inches, and half the width of t

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