“Pardon me, madame!” said his Eminence. “I am an old diplomatist, and I ceased to be compromising to a pretty woman many years ago.”
“Diplomatists are always compromising, your Eminence! and I really would not dare venture, for fear I should be punished by being forced to take the veil of a Carmelite. But oh!” she added, with a pretty gesture of entreaty, “will your Eminence allow me to send my confidential maid to M. Volenski and ask him to give her the candlesticks? I assure you I shall not sleep a wink to-night, and to-morrow look as old as Madame l’ambassadrice, unless your Eminence will satisfy my curiosity.”
“Madame, among my numerous sins, which, alas! the Recording Angel but too faithfully marks against me, there has often occurred the sin of giving a lady a sleepless night, but never that of causing her to look a day older than her years. I feel sure such a sin would be beyond forgiveness; so, if you will allow me, I will ring for my carriage and drive to my hotel at once, in order to bring you the objects of your curiosity myself. I doubt if Volenski is at home at this moment; moreover, I have the key of my valise in which I know they are locked.”
“Oh, your Eminence is too kind!” said Madame Demidoff, with almost childish delight; “you will gauge the extent of my curiosity by the fact that it has completely annihilated my courtesy, inasmuch as I find it impossible to refuse your kind proposition.”
And, as if fearing that the Cardinal might change his mind, she rang the bell, and ordered his Eminence’s carriage to be brought round immediately. The Cardinal, very much amused at this old yet ever new trait of feminine curiosity, promised not to tarry a moment, and ten minutes later he took a temporary leave, and the roll of his carriage soon died away in the distance.
Madame Demidoff sat for some moments quite still, unable to move—perhaps from sheer intensity of excitement—till the very last sound of those carriage wheels could be heard no more. A torpor, akin to a trance, seemed to have mastered this woman, usually so full of energy and vitality.
But this did not last, soon the reaction set in. How astonished would her urbane guest have been, had he been gifted with second sight, and now beheld the elegant, nonchalant grande dame whom he had left lazily lounging in an arm-chair, toying idly with a cigarette.
All eagerness and excitement, she feverishly opened her desk, and ran through the few notes she had taken of Eugen’s report as to the Tsarevitch’s disappearance, and Count Lavrovski’s pusillanimous behaviour. Every now and then short, jerky sentences found their way, half audibly, through her tightly clenched teeth; they were, as it were, the safety-valves of this intense, inward excitement.
For what a chance of complete secrecy had fate thus placed in her way. She shuddered as she recollected that hateful moment on the Austrian frontier, when, through blunder or over-officiousness, alien hands had come across her reports. Oh! the humiliation of it, the mockery of obsequious civility, palpably directed towards a dangerous enemy, a spy of the Russian Government. Then, the heavy hush-money, paid with a liberal hand, and yet evidently wholly inadequate to stop chattering tongues from propagating—oh! a mere whisper—the interesting fact, that Madame Demidoff, the élite of Viennese society, the friend of princes, kings, and cardinals, derived her great wealth from money paid to her for spying on her countrymen abroad. Some such news did get about, there was no doubt of that; she had felt vaguely conscious of it sometimes, or was it the merest fancy? At any rate there had been no certainty, and certainty there must not be, for Madame Demidoff loved her life, the gay, glittering court life, with the admiration her beauty and wealth aroused, and the friendships her bright wit and fascinating manner attracted around her.
Her profession? Ah! as to that, English readers, try not to be too severe. Russia is a great, but hard mistress, who demands of all her children, work according to their means and ability. The word spy has an ugly meaning with us, we loathe it, if applied to a man, and cannot even conceive it as an attribute to a young and gifted woman. But in Russia, where all round an absolute monarchy a web of intrigue and conspiracy is woven, where blows are aimed and dealt at the head of the State from every quarter of the Empire, from every class of society, and always from the dark, these blows must be met with counter-blows of the same nature, secret, swift, and dark. An enemy, hidden behind every pillar of a palace, can but be fought by means as secret as his own. Russia employs them to protect herself and her autocratic ruler: blame the system if you will, and then try to pity its often unwilling servants.