XI
THE GROTTO OF THE NAIAD
Princess Agatha was reclining on a divan of dark velvet, where her graceful and noble figure resembled a ghost in the moonlight. Michel could see her profile in the dim light, and the reflection of the candles behind her outlined with admirable distinctness features as delicate and pure as a young maid's. Her long full white gown assumed all the shades of the opal in that soft light, and the diamonds in her coronet shot flames of changing hue, now like the sapphire and again like the emerald. Michel lost altogether the idea that he had formed of her age when he first saw her. It seemed to him that she was a child, and when he remembered that he had believed her to be above thirty, he asked himself whether she was thus transfigured by a celestial radiance or by a gleam from hell, wherewith she was able, like a sorceress, to envelop herself in order to deceive the senses.
She seemed fatigued and depressed. But her attitude was modest and her expression serene. She was inhaling the perfume of her bouquet of cyclamen and playing idly with her fan. Michel gazed at her a long time before he heard, or, at least, attached a meaning to the words she was saying. She seemed to him lovelier than any of the beauties he had been scrutinizing so closely, and he could not understand the unmixed, boundless admiration which she aroused in him. He strove in vain to examine her features in detail and analyze her charms; he could not succeed. She seemed to be floating in a magic fluid which protected her from being studied like other women. From time to time, thinking that he understood her, he closed his eyes and tried to sketch her portrait in his memory, to draw her in imagination, in strokes of flame, on the black veil which he spread before his own eyes by lowering his lids. But he saw naught but confused lines, and could not conjure up any distinct face. He was compelled to reopen his eyes in haste and gaze at her with anxiety, with intense delight, and above all, with surprise.
For there was a something indescribable about her. She was perfectly natural; of all the women Michel had seen, she alone seemed to have no thought of herself; she had assumed no studied air or manner; she did not know, or did not choose to know, what people thought of her, what they felt as they looked at her; she had the tranquillity of a mind disassociated from all human things, and the entire freedom from constraint that she might have had in absolute solitude.
And yet she was arrayed like a genuine princess; she was giving a ball, she displayed her magnificence, she played her rôle of a great lady and of a woman of the world, like any other, to all appearance. Why then that madonna-like air, that inward meditation, or that rapt contemplation of a soul above human vanities?
She was a living enigma to the young artist's restless imagination. Something still more strange perplexed him beyond measure; and that was that it seemed to him that he had not seen her that day for the first time.
Where could he have seen her before? In vain did he rack his memory. When he arrived at Catania her very name was strange to him. A person of such exalted rank, and so remarkable by reason of her wealth, her beauty, and her reputation for virtue, could not have come to Rome incognito. Michel cudgelled his brain. He could recall no occasion when he could have seen her; especially as when he looked at her, he had a feeling, not that he had known her slightly, but that he had known her intimately and for a long time, ever since he was born.
When he had exhausted his memory, he said to himself that there must be some abstract reason for that sensation. It must be due to the fact that she was the ideal type of beauty of which he had always dreamed, but which he had never been able to grasp and produce. That was a poetic commonplace. He was fain to be content with it for lack of a better.
But the princess was not alone, for she was talking; and Michel soon discovered that she was tête-à-tête with a man. That was certainly a reason to impel him to withdraw, but it was difficult to do so. To preserve the mysterious obscurity of the grotto and exclude the brilliant light of the ball-room, the entrance had been masked by a heavy blue velvet curtain, which our inquisitive hero, by the merest chance, had drawn aside a little way when he entered, without attracting the attention of the two persons who were talking there. The entrance to the grotto being only half as wide as the grotto itself, formed a frame, not of artificial rocks, as would have been the case with us, in our imitations of rococo, but of genuine blocks of lava, vitrified, and of divers shades of color, curious and valuable specimens collected long before in the very crater of the volcano to be set like jewels in the masonry. This beautiful door-frame protruded far enough into the grotto to conceal Michel, who was able to see because of its uneven surface. But, in order to go out, he must raise the curtain again, and he could hardly hope that both the princess and her companion would be sufficiently engrossed not to notice him.
Michel thought of all this too late to avert the consequences of his imprudence. It was too late for him to go out naturally, as he had entered. Moreover he was nailed to his place by the most intense curiosity and anxiety. Doubtless that man was the princess's lover.