à deux heures précises—vous passerez
la journée avec nous. J’ai une foule de choses
très pressées à faire et je m’adresse à
vous comme à mon amie dévouée, pour vous demander
votre aide. Ne m’oubliez pas auprès de Mme.
votre mère. Soyez bien exacte.
I joyously obeyed the summons—there is nothing in the world more interesting to young girls than an engagement—and found the whole house in happy excitement.
I was told how it all came about. The affair, contemplated during the preceding winter by the Empress Eugénie and the Princess Ekaterina, had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion the week before. The Emperor undertook to provide his nephew with an allowance of fifty thousand francs a year, which excellently comported with the bride’s similar income; he also agreed to pay the young man’s debts.—Well, yes, debts—it was known to the whole town that he was one of the most extravagant high-livers in Paris. Among the diamonds of the then so celebrated “belle Hélène,” Hortense Schneider, were many jewels which Prince Achille Murat had laid at her feet. The prince was regarded as one of the handsomest of the young people in high society. The son of Prince Lucien and an American woman, he very much reminded one of an Englishman in his manner, in his accent, and in the blond type of his face. All this I knew from hearsay before the news of the betrothal came to me.
I found the fiancée busily engaged in sending announcements of her good fortune to all her St. Petersburg and Parisian acquaintances, and I must needs help her address the envelopes. She was really happy. To be sure the whole affair was arranged by the relatives on both sides, and she had seen her fiancé only three or four times; but in those circles, especially in France, they are used to having marriages contracted in this way. And the dazzling appearance of her suitor when introduced to her had thrown a spell over her: she was genuinely in love with the young man, and heartily enjoyed the thought of becoming “Princesse Achille Murat.”
Now she had before her also the interesting task of making up the trousseau, of superintending the appointments of a little palais in the Elysée quarter, and of receiving the wedding gifts, the first installment of which had appeared that very day in a “river of diamonds” that her own mother had given her, and a pearl necklace which her fiancé had laid at her feet. So she had, as the old song[[17]] puts it, “diamonds and pearls”; she had beautiful eyes as well, a twofold princely crown, a hundred thousand francs of income, her nineteen years, and a handsome husband: “Darling, what more would you have?” To me also all this seemed at that time like the pinnacle of human happiness, and I honestly rejoiced with my friend. Later, much later, I learned that there is something “more” than all that, that there is a happiness which in its inward depth, even in very limited circumstances, is more radiant than any external glory, any affluence. Oh, my unspeakable married bliss ... but I will not anticipate.