“It is the way of my Czar,” returned Ivan proudly. “Did you ever hear what passed between him and Kosakoski, the most devoted of Napoleon’s Polish adherents? ‘Is it true that you followed Napoleon to Fontainebleau?’ asked the Czar. ‘Yes, sire,’ returned the Pole who certainly had the courage of his opinions. ‘I was with him till he left it; and then, if he had asked me to go with him, I would have done it.’ The Czar was silent for a moment, then he asked him, ‘What is it you wish for most?’ ‘The restoration of my property,’ said Kosakoski. The Czar immediately wrote an order to that effect, and gave it to him. It is well known that his heart, since his boyhood, has yearned to heal the wounds and to atone for the wrongs of Poland. The Polish hostage, Czartoriski, was the friend of his youth; and in their long confidential talks they planned together to build the old waste places and gather the scattered members of the oppressed nationality. Now Czartoriski reproaches him with doing far too little; while Russia, loyal but perplexed, suspects him of doing too much; and Europe accuses him of caring for nothing but the extension of his own frontier. And your King, Louis Dix-huit,” continued Ivan with some bitterness, “to whom he gave a throne, treats him as an enemy.” They had almost reached their home when this was said, so Henri was spared the necessity of a rejoinder, nor did he greatly care to make one, Legitimist though he was.
Many a happy talk had Clémence and Ivan in those days about things past and future—things seen and unseen. Their engagement was now openly avowed; the trousseau of the bride was in preparation, and all was arranged except the wedding-day. Madame de Salgues was becoming reconciled to an alliance which would give her niece the title of Princess, and was lavish in her presents of jewellery and costly laces. Since the Restoration her life had become less secluded; many of the returned émigrés frequented her house, and found the young Russian prince, the futur of Mademoiselle Clémence, a very pleasant addition to their society.
One evening Madame de Salgues gave an entertainment to a few of her friends. It was a supper, refined and elegant, but unpretending, such as, in her own words, “used to be de bon ton before the Revolution and the bourgeoisie spoiled everything, when we did not come together to eat and to drink, but to converse and to enjoy one another’s society.”
Upon this occasion her guests thoroughly fulfilled her expectations, with the exception of the youngest of the party. Stéphanie de Sartines, like a spoiled child, had importuned her father to allow her to accept Madame de Salgues’s invitation; but having gained her point, she sat absorbed and silent, refusing to eat or to speak, and devoting herself to the contemplation of her idolized friend Clémence, from whom she was so soon to be separated. Ivan pitied the sad-faced little girl, and remembering her exploits at their first meeting, sought to console her with the most tempting of bonbons and preserved fruits; but he could elicit nothing beyond a melancholy “No, thank you, monsieur.”
“You should say M. le Prince, my daughter,” her father corrected.
“En Russie tout faquin est prince,”[60] observed the audacious Emile to his neighbour, M. de Cranfort.
The latter, though disposed to regard Ivan in the light of a successful rival, resented the discourtesy of Emile, and showed it by asking coldly, “What do you say, sir?”
“Don’t you know the story? Before the war broke out the Czar sent Prince Tufaquin as ambassador to the court of the Emperor, who, during their first interview, called him nothing but ‘Monsieur.’ One of the bystanders afterwards told him of the title borne by the envoy. ‘J’ignorais qu’en Russie tout faquin est prince,’ was his answer.”
“General Buonaparte was a parvenu,” said M. de Cranfort; “therefore it was not altogether his fault if he mistook rudeness for wit.”
Emile “knew when he was beaten,” perhaps because he was not an Englishman; so he turned from M. de Cranfort to Stéphanie, whom he heard deploring that Prince Ivan was going to take Clémence away from them into Russia, where she would be frozen to death in the long cold winter, or eaten by the bears. He bent over her with a comic air of gallantry, and prayed her to be comforted. “I am infinitely more devoted to you than Mademoiselle Clémence could ever be,” he said; “and, mademoiselle, I am not going to Russia.”