When Victoria left me, I sent word of my intention to be present at Coralie"s theatre that evening, and invited William Adolphus to join me in my box. I received the answer that he would come.
When we arrived at the theatre Coralie was already on the stage. She was singing a song; she had a very fine voice; her delivery and air, empty of real feeling, were full nevertheless of a sensuous attraction. My brother-in-law laid his elbows on the front of the box and stared down at her; I sat a little back, and, after watching the scene for a few moments, began to look at the house. Immediately opposite me I saw Varvilliers with a party of ladies and men; he bowed and smiled as I caught his eye. In another box I saw Wetter, gazing at the singer as intently as William Adolphus himself. There must certainly be something in a girl who exercised power over two men so different. And Wetter was a person of importance and prominence, accepted as a political leader, and consequently a fine target for gossip; his feelings must be strongly engaged before he exposed himself to comment. I fell to studying his face; he was pale; when I took my gla.s.s I could see the nervous frown on his brow and the restless gleam of his eyes. By my side William Adolphus was chuckling with bovine satisfaction at an allusion in Coralie"s song; his last night"s pique seemed forgotten. I leaned forward and looked again at Coralie. She saw me and sang the next verse straight at me.
(She did the same thing once more in later days.) I saw people"s heads turn toward my box, and drew back behind the shelter of the hangings.
At the end of the act my brother-in-law turned to me, blew his nose, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Superb!" I nodded my head. "Splendid!" said he. I nodded again. He launched on a catalogue of Coralie"s attractions, but seemed to check himself rather suddenly.
"I don"t suppose she"s your sort, though," he remarked.
"Why not?" I asked with a smile.
"Oh, I don"t know. You like clever women who can talk and so on. She"d bore you to death in an hour, Augustin."
"Would she?" said I innocently. I was amused at William Adolphus" simple cunning. "I daresay I should bore her too."
"Perhaps you would," he chuckled. "Only she wouldn"t tell you so, of course."
"But Wetter doesn"t seem to bore her," I observed.
"Good G.o.d, doesn"t he?" cried my brother-in-law.
There were limits to the amus.e.m.e.nt to be got out of him. I yawned and looked across the house again. Wetter"s place was empty. I drew William Adolphus" attention to the fact.
"I wonder if the fellow"s gone behind?" he said uneasily.
"We"ll go after the next act."
"You"ll go?"
"Of course I shall send and ask permission."
William Adolphus looked puzzled and gloomy.
"I didn"t know you cared for that sort of thing; I mean the theatre and all that."
"We haven"t a Coralie Mansoni here every day," I reminded him. "I don"t care for the ordinary run, but she"s something remarkable, isn"t she?"
He muttered a few words and turned away. A moment later Varvilliers knocked at the door of my box and entered. Here was a good messenger for me. I sent him to ask whether Coralie would receive me after the next act. He went off on his errand laughing.
I need not record the various stages and the gradual progress of my acquaintance with Coralie Mansoni. It would be for the most part a narrative of foolish actions and a repet.i.tion of trivial conversations.
I have shown how I came to enter on it, led by a spirit of rebellion and the love of a joke, weary of the repression that was partly inevitable, partly self-imposed, glad to find an outlet for my youthful impulses in a direction where my action would involve no political danger. On one good result I can pride myself; I was undoubtedly the instrument of sending my brother-in-law back to his wife a humbled and repentant man. Coralie had no scruple about allowing him to perceive that her attentions had been paid to his rank, not to himself; and his rank was now eclipsed. A few days of sulking was followed by a violent outburst; but my position was too strong. He could not quarrel seriously with his wife"s brother on such a ground. He returned to Victoria, and, I had no doubt, received the castigation which he certainly deserved. My interest in him vanished as he vanished from the society that centred round Mlle. Mansoni. At the same time my share in his defeat and humiliation left a soreness between us which lasted for a long while.
I myself had by this time fallen into a severe conflict of feeling. My temperament was not like Varvilliers". For an hour or two, when I was exhilarated with society and cheered by wine, I could seem to myself such as he naturally and permanently was. But I was not a native of the clime. I raised myself to those heights of unmoral serenity by an effort and an artifice. He forgot himself easily. I was always examining myself. That same motive, or instinct, or tradition of feeling (I do not know how best to describe it) on whose altar I had sacrificed my first pa.s.sion was still strong in me. I did not fear that Coralie would or could exercise a political influence over me, but I was loth that she should possess a control of any sort. I clung obstinately to the conception of myself as standing alone, as being independent and under the power of n.o.body in any respect. This was to me a stronger check than the restraint of accepted morality. Looking back on the matter, and judging myself as I should judge any young man, I am confident that my pa.s.sion would easily have swept away the ordinary scruples. It was my other conscience, my King"s conscience, that raised the barrier and protracted the resistance. Here is another case of that reaction of my position on myself which has been such a feature of my life.
Varvilliers" unreasoned philosophy did not cover this point. Here I had to fight out the question for myself. It was again a struggle between the man and the king, between a natural impulse and the strength of an intellectual conception. I perceived with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and bitterness how entirely Varvilliers failed to appreciate the condition of my mind or to conceal his surprise at my alternate hot and cold fits, urgency followed by a drawing-back, eagerness to be moving at moments when nothing could be done, succeeded by refusals to stir when the road was clear. I believe that he came to have a very poor opinion of me as a man of the world; but his kindness toward me never varied.
But there was one to whom my mind was an open book, who read easily and plainly every thought of it, because it was written in the same characters as was his own. The politician who risked his future, the debtor who every day incurred new expenses, the devotee of principles who sacrificed them for his pa.s.sion, the deviser of schemes who ruined them at the demand of his desires, here was the man who could understand the heart of his King. Wetter was my sympathizer, and Wetter was my rival. The relations between us in those days were strange. We did not quarrel, we felt a friendliness for one another. Each knew the price the other paid or must pay as well as he knew his own price. But we were rivals. Varvilliers was wrong when he said that Coralie cared nothing about Wetter. She cared, although it was in a peculiar fashion that she cared. Truly he could give her little, but he was to her a sign and a testimony of her power, even as I myself in another way. Mine was the high rank, the great position. In conquering me lay the open and notorious triumph, but she was not insensible to the more private joy and secret exultation that came to her from dominating a ruling mind, and filling with her own image a head capacious enough to hold imperial policies and shape the destinies of kingdoms. Wetter and I, each in our way, broke through the crust of seemingly consistent frivolity that was on her, and down to a deep-seated tendency toward romance and the love of power. She could not rule directly, but she could rule rulers. I am certain that some such idea was in her head, alloying, or at least refining, a grosser self-interest. Therefore Wetter, no less than I, was of value to her. She would not willingly have let him go, even although he could give her nothing and she did not care for him in the only sense of which my friend the Vicomte took account. I came to realize how it was between her and him before very long, and to see how the same ultimate instinct of her nature made her long to gather both him and me into her net. Thus she would have bowing before her the highest and the strongest heads in Forstadt. That she so a.n.a.lyzed and reasoned out her wishes it would be absurd to suppose, but we--he and I--performed the task for her. Each knew that the other was at work on it; each chafed that she would consent to be but half his; each desired to rule alone, not to be one of two that were ruled. All this had been dimly foreshadowed to me when I sat in the theatre, looking now at Coralie as she sang her song, now at Wetter"s frowning brows and tight-set lips. I must add that my position was rendered peculiarly difficult by the fact that Wetter not only owed me deference, but was still in my debt for the money I had lent him. He had refused to consider it a gift, but was, and became every day more, incapable of repaying it.
We were at luncheon at her villa one day, we three, and with us, of course, Madame Briande, an exceedingly well-informed and tactful little woman. Coralie had been very silent and (as usual) attentive to her meal. The rest had chattered on many subjects. Suddenly she spoke.
"It has been very amusing," she said, with a little yawn that ended in a rather weary smile. "For my part I can conceive only one thing that could increase the entertainment."
"What"s that, Coralie?" asked Madame Briande.
Coralie waved her right hand toward me and her left toward Wetter.
"Why, that we should have for audience and as spectators of our little feast your subjects, sire, and, monsieur, your followers."
Clearly Coralie had been maturing this rather startling speech for some time; she launched it with an evident enjoyment of its malice. A moment of astonished silence followed; madame"s tact was strained beyond its uttermost resources; she smiled nervously and said nothing; Wetter turned red. I looked full in Coralie"s eyes, drained my gla.s.s of cognac, and laughed.
"But why should that be amusing?" I asked. "And, at least, shall we not add to our imaginary audience the crowd of your admirers?"
"As you will," said she with a shrug. "Whomever we add they would see nothing but two gentlemen getting under the table, oh, so quickly!"
Madame Briande became visibly distressed.
"Is it not so?" drawled Coralie in lazy enjoyment of her excursion.
"Why," said I, "I should most certainly invoke the shelter of your tablecloth, mademoiselle. A king must avoid being misunderstood."
"I thought so," said she with a long look at me. "And you, monsieur?"
she added, turning to Wetter.
"I should not get under the table," said he. He strove to render his tone light, but his voice quivered with suppressed pa.s.sion.
"You wouldn"t?" she asked. "You"d sit here before them all?"
"Yes," said he.
Madame Briande rose. Her evident intention was to break up the party.
Coralie took no notice; we men sat on, opposite one another, with her between us on the third side of the small square table.
"Must not a politician avoid--being misunderstood?" she asked Wetter.
"Unless there is something else that he values more," was the reply.
She turned to me, smiling still.
"Would not that be so with a king also?"
"Certainly, if there could be such a thing."
"But you think there could not?"
"I can"t call such a thing to mind, mademoiselle."
"Ah, you can"t call it to mind! No, you can"t call it to mind. It seems to me that there is a difference, then, between politicians and kings."
Madame Briande was moving about the room in evident discomfort. Wetter was sitting with his hand clenched on the table and his eyes downcast.
Coralie looked long and intently at him. Then she turned her eyes on me.