‘Yes, dear Blanche, and you proved yourself my best and only friend, and my worst enemy. Oh, I am not ungrateful; you know that. But think: if only I had been deposed eighteen years ago, what garnered happiness had been mine by now!’
The Princess’s admirable English, as usual, provoked a laugh, but she scarcely paused to join in it herself.
‘Only think: for eighteen years I should have been a free woman—one of those happy individuals whose luncheon-parties and whose tea-parties are not recorded in the daily papers! Great Heaven! to be recorded in the daily papers makes the happiness of some women. Yes, Blanche, but for you I should have been one who does as she chooses. What nonsense is that which we are told of free-will! For my class there is no such thing. We do not wish or want or desire to go to lunch with the Mayor, yet we go. On the other hand, Mayors are inevitable. What is supposed to happen when free-will is opposed to that which is inevitable? Does no one know? How ignorant!’
‘Be truthful, Sophia,’ said Princess Aline, ‘and tell me when last you went to lunch with an inevitable Mayor.’
‘You are getting personal, Aline,’ said the other.
‘We will draw our conclusions, then.’
‘Dear Aline, draw what you like; the principle is the same. If I have not been to lunch with a Mayor for as long as you choose to suppose, I have vanquished the inevitable. If any of you had been in my place, you would have lunched with the Mayor once every week-day, and twice on Sundays.’
‘A day of rest,’ observed Blanche.
‘Yes, you would have slept afterwards,’ said Sophia. ‘Ouf! but it is hot. The house is abominable on a day like this.’
After lunch they broke up again, Princess Aline announcing without shame that she intended to lie on her bed and sleep, if possible, till tea. Prince Victor, less honest, took a large chair in the veranda, and pretended to read; but before long the book fell heavily to the ground, and he snored without restraint. The others, with the exception of Sophia and Blanche, said they were going to write letters, and the Princess laughed at them.