CHAPTER XVI.
RETRIBUTION.
The appointed hour had arrived, and in the full splendor of his rich uniform, decorated with orders, and glittering with diamonds bestowed upon him by the favor of two empresses, Prince Feodor von Stratimojeff entered Gotzkowsky's house. With the proud step of victory he ascended the stairs that led to the apartments of his bride. The goal was at last reached. The beautiful, lovely, and wealthy maiden was finally to become his wife. He could present her at the court of St. Petersburg, and with her beauty, her virtue, and his happiness revenge himself on the fickle empress. These were his thoughts as he opened the door and entered Elise's room. There she stood in her white bridal attire, as delicate, as slender, and as graceful as a lily to the sight. There stood also her father, and the friend of her youth, Bertram. The witnesses to the ceremony were present, and nothing more was necessary but to lead her to the altar. Elise had requested of her father that she herself should see the prince, and give him his dismissal. She had also requested that Bertram should be present. She wished to show him that her heart had, at once and forever, been healed of its foolish and unholy love, and that she could face the prince without trembling or hesitation. This was an offering which she wished to bring to the honor of her future husband and her own pride; and she would have despised herself if a motion of her eyebrow or a sigh from her breast had betrayed the sadness which, against her will, she felt in her heart. She looked, therefore, with a cold and calm eye on the prince as he entered, and for the first time he seemed no longer the handsome man, the being endowed with numberless fascinations, of former days. She read only in his flaccid features the sad history of the past. The charm was broken which had held her eyes captive. Her vision was clear again, and she shuddered before this wild, demoniacal beauty which she had once adored as God's image in man. As she looked at him, she felt as if she could hate him, because she had loved him; because she had spent her first youth, her first love, her first happiness, on him; because he had defrauded her of the peace and innocence of her heart; and because she no longer had even the right of weeping for her lost love, but was forced to turn away from it with blushes of shame.
Feodor approached with an air of happy triumph and satisfaction, and, bowing low to her father, said, with a most exquisite smile, "I have come to seek my bride—to request Elise's hand of her father."
With eyes beaming with pleasure he offered Elise his hand, but hers remained calm and cold, and her voice did not tremble or falter as she said: "I am a bride, but not yours, Prince Stratimojeff;" and extending her hand to Bertram, she continued: "This is my husband! To-day, for the third time, he has saved me—saved me from you!"
Prince Feodor felt annihilated, and staggered back as if struck by an electric shock. "Elise! is this the way you reward my love?" asked he sadly, after a pause. "Is this the troth you plighted me?"
She stepped up close to him, and said softly: "I kept my heart faithful to my Feodor, but he ceded it to Prince Stratimojeff. Elise is too proud to be the wife of a man who owes his title of prince to the fact of being the favorite of an empress."
She turned and was about to leave the room, but Feodor held her back. No reserve, no concealment were any longer possible to him. He only felt that he was infinitely wretched, and that he had lost the hope of his life. "Elise," he said, in that soft, sad tone, which had formerly charmed her heart, "I came to you to save me; you have thrust me back into an abyss. Like a drowning man I stretched out my hand to you, that in your arms I might live a new life. But Fate is just. It hunts me back pitilessly from this refuge, and I must and will sink. Well, then, though the waves of life close over me, my last utterance will be your name."
Elise found herself capable of the cruel courage of listening to his pathetic words with a smile: "You will yet have time to think over your death," said she, with proud composure; and, turning to her father, she continued, "My business with this gentleman is finished. Now, father, begin yours." She gave her hand to Bertram, and, without honoring the prince with another look, she left the room with her betrothed.
"And now," said Gotzkowsky coldly, "now, sir, let us proceed to our affairs. Will you have the kindness to follow me to my counting-room? You have come to Berlin to rob me of my daughter and my property! You have been unsuccessful in the one; try now the other."
"That I will, that I shall!" cried the prince, gnashing his teeth, and anger flashing from his eyes. "Elise has been pitiless, I will be so too."
"And I would hurl your pity from me as an insult," said Gotzkowsky, "if you offered it."
"We are then enemies, for life and death—"
"Oh, no! We are two tradesmen who bargain and haggle with each other about the profits. There is nothing more between us." He opened the door and called in his secretary and his cashier. "This gentleman," said Gotzkowsky, with cutting coldness, "is the agent of Russia, sent here to negotiate with me, and in case I cannot pay, to adopt the most severe measures toward me. You, gentlemen, will transact this business with him. You have the necessary instructions." He then turned to the prince, who stood breathless and trembling from inward excitement, burning with anger and pain, and leaning against the wall to keep himself from falling. "Prince," said he, "you will be paid. Take these thirty thousand dollars; they are the fortune of my son-in-law. He has given it cheerfully to release us from you. Here, further, are my daughter's diamonds. Take them to your empress as a fit memorial of your German deeds, and my pictures will cover the balance of my indebtedness to you."[1]
"It is too much, it is too much!" cried Prince Feodor; and as if hunted by the furies, he rushed out, his fists clinched, ready to crush any one who should try to stop him.
[Footnote 1: Gotzkowsky paid his debt to Russia with thirty thousand dollars cash; a set of diamonds; and pictures which were taken by Russia at a valuation of eighty thousand dollars, and formed the first basis of the imperial gallery at St. Petersburg. Among these were some of the finest paintings of Titian, some of the best pieces of Rubens, and one of Rembrandt's most highly executed works—the portrait of his old mother.]
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