“Prince Eugen, as they call him,” she said, “one of her Highness’s cousins. He has, I do not quite know how, hopes of sovereignty in Poland, and they were to have been married: it was her father’s wish, and it is so still.”
I sprang up with an imprecation, but the lady almost flung herself upon me, and clapped her hand over my mouth.
“In the name of God,” she said, “be still, or you will ruin us! My husband is his most devoted adherent. In this house he rules, and we bow to the earth before him.”
I sank back into my seat, docile, in spite of myself, impressed by the strength of her fear. New trains of revelations crowded upon me. Eugen of Liegnitz-Rothenburg—Rothenburg—Ville-Rouge—I saw it all!
She went on, bringing her mouth close to my ear:
“The Princess hated him, and indeed he has grown into a strange and terrifying man, so oddly impulsive, cruel, wilful, vindictive. He always professed to love the Princess, but I cannot but think that it was the love of taming—he would dearly love to break her, just as he loves to break the proudest-spirited horse. His grey eye makes me grow cold. As I said, from a child she hated him, and it was for that—having seen one whom she thought she could love....” Here she paused, and glanced at me, and hesitated.
It was for that. I remembered. She had told me of the unhappy fate that threatened “the Princess” that evening when we met under the fir-trees to decide upon my crazy match, and when, as I had deemed, she had fooled me to the top of my bent. She had spoken in tones of scathing contempt and hatred of some cavalier. And now? Suddenly gripped by the old devil of doubt and jealousy, I cried out, “And now, after all, the fate of being wedded to an obscure gentleman seems to her more dreadful than that of sharing her place with her cousin, and the peculiar qualities of the hated relative have been very usefully employed in ridding her of the inconvenient husband? Oh, Madam, of course you know your Court of Lausitz, and I think I begin to see your drift: you think, in your amiability, that it would be preferable to see your mistress bigamously united, than that she should legitimise her position by yet another and more successful attempt at assassination.”
“I fail to understand you, sir,” drawing back from me, nevertheless, with a glance of mistrust and indignation.
“I will be plain,” said I: “when the Princess, who is my wife, left me,—I will own I bear some blame, but then I had been strangely played with,—she had doubtless already begun to repent what you call her freak. When I followed her and implored her forgiveness,—you yourself know all about it, Madam, for you must have acted under her orders,—she flung back my letters, through your agency, with a contemptuous denial of any knowledge of such a person as M. de Jennico. When I wrote to her, her whom I believed to bear your name, a pleading, abject letter, for I was still but a poor loving fool, her only answer was to have me seized and driven from the country like a criminal. Later on, when I refused to be a party to her petition for divorce, she thought, no doubt, she had given me chances enough, and this time she deputed the noble bully, her cousin, to manage the matter in his own fashion. My life was attempted five times, Madam. And when it all failed,—your Prince Eugen, you tell me, he was in England, and there was a certain great bulky Chevalier de Ville-Rouge, who particularly sought my acquaintance—’tis he, is it not?—your Prince Eugen honoured me by seeking a duello, and by running his august sword through my common body, and that more often, be it said, than custom sanctions in honourable encounters. I was given for dead. No wonder! It seems to be the sport of hell to keep me alive. I can scarce think it is the will of Heaven.”
Madam Lothner had followed my tirade with what appeared the most conflicting sentiments: blank astonishment, horror, indignation. It was the last, however, that predominated. Her countenance became suffused with crimson; her blue eyes flashed a fire I had not deemed them capable of harbouring; she forgot the precautions she herself had so strenuously enjoined.