“Were you at the opera yesterday evening?”
“Yes; Madame Sass was a splendid Valentine.”
“So that was you, was it? In the Emperor’s box?”
“Yes,” I replied, inwardly amused, in a tone as if it were my usual habit to occupy such places and no others at the theater. I felt that the incident made an impression on the whole school; evidently they were not in the habit of seeing the pupils in the monarch’s box. In the Mingrelian salon, on the other hand, my musical performances made a great impression again; there they were evidently not in the habit of seeing dilettantes sit down to the piano and treat the company to concert waltzes and colorature arias. Little—say, petty—gratifications of vanity.
The expected Prince Heraclius of Georgia did not come to Paris. Probably if he had come the flame in my heart would have flared up again, and the ambitious dream of becoming a great lady might have displaced that of the “great artist”; all the more because doubts about my talent kept growing upon me, the wretched nervousness refused to be overcome, and when I performed on the experimental stage I was unable to make a real success. Only my mother kept stimulating my courage and ambition; the maestro, too, promised that in a year or two of study he should form me into a superior artist, and I persevered.
The next summer (the Mingrelian family had gone off to the German watering-places again) we betook ourselves to the Duprez country estate, to continue the instruction there, it being interrupted in the school at Paris. In October we went back to the city, and the Mingrelian family too moved into the Hôtel du Louvre again. The old life of the preceding year was repeated: artistic interests and enjoyments in the Rue Laval, social interests and enjoyments with my Asiatic friends.
One day toward the end of the winter I received from Princess Salomé a dispatch: “Enjoy my good fortune with me; I have just become engaged to Prince Achille Murat.” On the same day she had sent me a card by mail, which I received a few hours later than the telegram. The little yellowed forty-year-old card is still among my old papers. I reproduce it in full:
Princesse Salomé Dadiani
de Mingrélie
Ma bien bonne Contesco, venez demain