“In your Petrarchan solitude you seem to have lost all touch with the world, since you inquire so insistently after our diva. I thought you were still in Paris and that you had seen Eva Sorel. For she returned from there only a few weeks ago—returned like a general after a victorious campaign of three weeks, full of fame and booty. Didn’t you learn from the newspapers at least of the feverish enthusiasm which she has recently created in international society?
“In your inquiry there is an undertone of anxiety. I understand the reason for it, even though you are reserved on that point. Brief as your visit to her during your stay in Petrograd may have been, your eyes, which are so practised in reading the souls of men, must have perceived the change that has come over her. I hesitate to call that change one that should cause us anxiety, for doubtless it conforms somehow to the law of her being. Yet to behold it means pain to us who witnessed her beginnings and her rise—to those ten or twelve people in Europe, the fairest experience of whose youth was her sweetness and radiance and starry freedom from earth’s heaviness. She was timeless; she was at each moment that very moment’s gift. I need not describe to you what she was; you knew her. But is it for us to quarrel or mourn because a given development does not correspond to our expectations? However we may strive and cry, that which has become and now is unquestionably holds the wiser and the deeper sense of life. We always want too much, and so end by seeing and understanding too little. We need more humility.
“It is a fact that she employs and stirs public opinion in our country as scarcely any other human being does. Every one knows at all times who is in her favour and who has fallen from grace. The luxury that surrounds her generates the wildest fables, and does, indeed, surpass anything ever known. Her monthly income runs into the hundreds of thousands, and her fortune is estimated at between twenty and thirty millions of rubles. Twice a week she receives a carload of flowers from the Riviera, and twice from the Crimea.
“Concerning the castle which she is building at Yalta on the sea, details are told that remind one of the Arabian Nights. It is to be finished in a month, and magnificent festivities are planned for the house-warming. I am among the guests invited. Every one is talking about this castle. The park is said to cover an area of five square miles. Only by a most extravagant expenditure of money and labour could the whole thing have been completed within a year. I am told that the central building has a tower from which one has a magnificent view of the sea, and that this tower is a copy of the tower of the Signoria at Florence. A gilded spiral staircase with a balustrade of costly enamel leads upward within, and each window affords a carefully selected view of the southern landscape. To adorn the walls of one of her great rooms she desired the remaining paintings which the British had still left in El Hira, the celebrated ruin in the Arabian desert. To obtain them, extensive commercial and diplomatic negotiations were necessary. Further large sums were spent and difficulties surmounted to fit out an expedition which was in the desert for three months and has but just returned. Its task was as dangerous as it was romantic, and seven of its members lost their lives. When Eva was told of this, she seemed to be frightened and to regret the boldness of her desires. But then she saw the pictures, and was so entranced that her smile seemed almost to express a satisfaction at the sacrifices they had cost.
“There is no exaggeration in this account. Such is her nature now. Those inconceivably beautiful hands treat the world as though it were possessed by slaves and meant and destined for her alone. I myself beheld her one day crouching before the paintings of a strange, far age, and I was shaken by the expression with which she regarded the gestures of those archaic figures. It was an expression of estrangedness and cruelty.
“It is quite by chance that I drifted to the subject of the ancient paintings and how they were procured. But I see now that I could have chosen no shorter path to the kernel of what I should like to tell you. The events of the past few days actually start from that incident. Few men, of course, can raise the veil that hides these events to-day and will probably always hide them. Any one who has not, like myself, gained some insight through a series of lucky accidents, is simply groping in the dark. I must beg you, too, to observe the strictest secrecy. This letter, which is being sent with especial precautions and which a courier of the embassy is taking across the frontier, may serve as a document entrusted to your care. By its help a later age will be able to track the genesis of certain happenings to their most distant roots.
“Scarcely had the paintings of El Hira arrived, than reclamations on the ground of violated property rights were made by France. The arrangements with England were asserted to have omitted all consideration of the legal rights of a Parisian stock-company, and the French government overwhelmed our ministry with notes and protests. The leader of the expedition, a courageous and witty scholar named Andrei Gabrilovitch Yaminsky, was accused of open robbery. The whole matter was unpleasant and the consternation great, and the noise intimidated even the old foxes of diplomacy. They feared that they had committed a bad blunder, and thus promenaded into the trap set for them. Since this affair, amusingly enough, actually threatened to darken the political sky, the important thing, above all, was to keep it from the knowledge of the Grand Duke Cyril, who holds the threads of foreign affairs in his hands like a spider in the midst of its web, and who feels the gentlest vibration. All efforts were directed to this end. Terror of the Grand Duke’s rage created the most grotesque situations in the responsible ministerial offices.
“The minister in person went to Eva Sorel. She declared proudly that she would assume full responsibility and guard everyone concerned from unpleasant consequences. But there were grave doubts as to that. Similar cases were recalled, in which later on a malicious punishment had, after all, been the portion of the subordinates. So Eva was earnestly begged to give up the mural paintings. She resisted steadily, asserted her right to them, and grew defiant. When the officials were foolish enough to have Andrei Yaminsky, to whom she had taken a great liking, arrested, she threatened to inform the Grand Duke, who happened to be staying at Tsarskoye Selo. Thus terror rose to its utmost height. And now the original instigators of the whole intrigue held their fit time to have come. Suddenly there was calm and the storm had passed. But what had been the hidden and ultimate occasion of it all?