"Ah, you may believe me, dear Helen," the excellent old lady said to her daughter on the first evening after her return, as they were sitting on the sofa in the reception-room, and after the baron had left the room to retire; "it is very difficult now to get along with your father, and I need your kind support more than ever. Malte is too young, and I fear too heartless, to admit of putting any confidence in him. I have been so long accustomed to bear all alone that I can hardly realize the happiness of having a friend and a confidante." And the good lady shed tears while she was gathering up her work in order to follow her husband.
The relations between mother and daughter seemed indeed to promise a better understanding for the future. It was not in the nature of either of them to be particularly affectionate. They treated each other as adversaries who have mutually tried their strength and found out that they had better be friends again.
After Anna Maria had thus taken the second step toward the attainment of her end she pursued her plan with greater security. She had every reason to be pleased with the results. Prince Waldenberg came almost every evening; and as he did not play cards, and it could not well be presumed that he found many charms in the conversation with Count and Countess Grieben, who were near neighbors, and also came very frequently to play a game with the baron and the baroness, the magnet could be none other than Helen, with whom, indeed, he spent the whole of his time.
Anna Maria took care that the prince and Helen should not be disturbed more than was unavoidable; and as in these circles the older people had no other way of spending time than in playing cards, and young people were but rarely invited, the task was not very difficult. The prince and Helen spent long hours alone in the little boudoir by the side of the large room with three windows, where the card-tables were placed, at least until supper was announced, and even then they were generally again left very nearly to themselves, as the others had to discuss the different games that had been played.
It was most creditable to the conversational powers of the prince that the young lady, with her pretensions, was never tired of these interviews. And yet, what he said could not be called interesting, exactly; at all events the manner in which he said it was not so. He was never heard to speak in that animated and quick manner which is peculiar to young people (and the prince was very young yet, perhaps twenty-four), especially when they speak of favorite topics, or are excited by opposition. It was always the same monotonous utterance, as if the words were men and the sentences sections, and they were all marching about, carefully keeping pace. It was significant, too, that the prince preferred speaking French, a language which has naturally such a logical rhythm, although he spoke German as well and as fluently. It was perhaps due to this fact--that the conversation was almost exclusively carried on in a foreign idiom--that Helen felt the strange character of his mind so much less. For the prince was, after all, in his appearance, and not less so in his manner of thinking and feeling, more of a Russian than of a German. All the memories of his childhood and youth, with the only exception of the short time which he had spent in France, and more recently in Germany, were Russian. He had been page at the court of the Emperor Nicholas, and the daily sight of this magnificent monarch, with whom he was even said to share certain peculiarities of figure and carriage, had probably not been without influence on the character of the young prince. He had received a purely military education among the cadets of the Michailow palace, the same palace whose vast apartments witnessed in that fearful night the murder of an emperor, when the wife of Paul I., frightened by the low sound of a number of voices and clanking of arms, snatched the young Princes Nicholas and Michael from their beds and hastened with them through the long suit of rooms to the emperor's apartments, when icy Count Pahlen met her, carried her almost forcibly back to her rooms, and locking the door carefully, said: "Restez tranquille, madame; il n'y a pas de danger pour vous." The prince had quite a number of similar stories, and they did not fail to have their effect upon the mind of the fanciful girl. It was a new version of the adventures with which the warlike Moor filled the heart of the daughter of the Venetian patrician. Desdemona also shuddered at the blood flowing in streams, through his accounts, but the hero appeared only the more marvellous; and although Helen often felt an icy breath rising from these palace souvenirs of the Russian page, she was none the less captivated and ensnared by the secrecy and the horrors that surrounded them with an irresistible charm. She dreamt of a life in comparison with which the life she was now leading appeared very pitiful and mean. She saw herself a lady in waiting at a court where beauty and cleverness are all-powerful; she fancied herself the soul of grand enterprises, as the confidante of generals and statesmen; and then she started from her reveries and looked at the calm, dark face of the giant who had rocked her to sleep with his strange stories, and she asked herself whether she would ever venture to enter, on his hand, those lofty regions towards which she was drawn by the ardent wishes of her proud, ambitious heart.
The prince must have been particularly interested in winning the young girl's confidence, for he laid aside the cool reserve with which he treated all others, when he was alone with her. He even spoke of his family with the greatest frankness. He told her that, as for his parents, he only knew his mother really, because he saw his father but very rarely. His mother was living in St. Petersburg, where her influence at court was still very great, although an incurable affection had sadly disfigured the once surpassingly beautiful woman, and made her a melancholy enthusiast. His father, Count Malikowsky, he said, was spending most of his time in travelling and at watering-places, as he was still passionately fond of the pleasures of life in spite of his age and his delicate health, and thus could combine at these Spas pleasure and profit. He, the prince, had, properly speaking, nothing to do with his father. They exchanged short letters with each other once or twice a year, on special occasions; he had seen his father the last time at the capital, when he was swearing his oath of allegiance to the king, and he had been shocked by the sad appearance of the old gentleman, which the latter had tried in vain to conceal by the subtlest arts of the toilette. The count and the princess harmonized very little, as their characters were so utterly different. The count went once a year to St. Petersburg, appeared at court, showed himself once or twice at the Letbus House, and disappeared again, in order to send friendly greetings for another year from Homburg, Baden-Baden, Pyrmont, etc.
Nor did the prince conceal his views on other subjects. He had evidently thought much about matters which are usually of no interest to young men of his rank; but as he was far from being brilliant, and as he looked upon everything from the unchangeable standpoint of the officer and the aristocrat, his views and thoughts were all more or less stiff and wooden, as if they had been so many well-drilled recruits.
Of his profession he thought very highly.
"I consider the soldier's profession," he said, "not only the noblest, but also the most useful; the noblest, because here alone every faculty of man is roused and developed; the most useful, because it is the only security for all the other professions, which cannot exist without it. If the peasant wishes to raise his cabbages, if the mechanic wants to sit quietly in his work-shop, the artist in his atelier, and the scholar in his study they must all thank the soldier, who for their sake stands guard at the town-gate, patrols the streets at night, disperses noisy revellers, and fights the enemy when he threatens the country. Compared with this profession, all others are low and vulgar. And that it is beyond doubt the highest and noblest, is proved by the fact that the rulers of the earth adopt its costume for their daily wear, or at least for all solemn occasions. Therefore I think that nobles alone ought to be officers. And I think it a deplorable mistake that, of late, others also have been admitted to our ranks, for which the penalty will have to be paid sooner or later."
"But do you really think that all who are not nobles are unfit for this profession?" asked Helen.