Majesty: A Novel

by Louis Couperus

Dutri was silent, thought him a child and a prince in one. He shrugged his shoulders silently at Othomar's incomparable innocence, but he shuddered when he thought of a possible disgrace. He had no fortune; his position with the crown-prince was his life, his ambition, his all, for now and for later, when the prince should be emperor!... How pleased he had been at first that Alexa had told him everything, that he knew a secret of his prince, who never seemed to have any secrets! A vague pleasure that this secret would give him a power over his future emperor had already flitted through his head, full of frivolous calculations. And now the prince was threatening him and that power was frustrated at its very inception! And Dutri was now almost sorry that he had learned this secret; he even feared that the emperor might come to hear of it, that he would be visited with the father's displeasure even before the son's....

"If only Alexa had not dragged me into it!" he complained to himself, with his shallow fickleness of thought.

But, although Dutri was silent and even contradicted the rumour, the crown-prince's liaison was discussed, possibly only because of Alexa's triumphant glances whenever Othomar addressed a word to her at a reception, at a ball. Nevertheless, Dutri's contradiction introduced a certain confusion—for he was known as a ready blabber—and people did not know what to think or what to believe.

But Othomar did not feel happy in his love. The fierce passion of this woman with her fiery glances, who overpowered him one moment with her kisses and the next crept before him like a slave and crouched at his feet in humility before her future sovereign, at first astonished him and, in one or two of his fits of despair, carried him away, but in the long run aroused in him a feeling of disinclination and opposition. In the young equerry's scented flat where they met—it was as dainty as any young girl's sitting-room and padded like a jewel-case—he sometimes felt a wish to repulse this woman, for all that she loved him with her strange soul and did not feign her love; he felt a wish to kick her, to beat her. His temperament was not fit for so animal a passion. She seemed to harry his nerves. She revolted him at times. And yet ... one single word from him and she mastered her fierceness, sank down humbly by his side, softly stroked his hand, his head; and he could not doubt that she adored him, perhaps a little because he was the crown-prince, but also greatly for himself.

And so April came; already it was almost summer; the King and Queen of Syria were expected. They had been first to the sultan and afterwards to the court of Athens. From Liparia they were to go on to the northern states of Europe. On the day of their arrival, Lipara fluttered with flags; the southern sun, already potent, rained down gold upon the white city; the harbour rippled a brilliant blue. A hum of people—tanned faces, many peasants from Thracyna still clad in their parti-coloured national dress—swarmed and crowded upon the quays. On the azure of the water, as on liquid metal, the ironclads, which were to welcome the king and queen and serve as their escort, steamed out to the mouth of the harbour. There, on the Xaveria, with their suite of admirals and rear-admirals, were the two princes, Othomar and Berengar, and their brother-in-law, the Archduke of Carinthia. Innumerable small boats glided rapidly over the sea, like water-spiders.

A shot from Fort Wenceslas, tearing the vivid ether, announced the moment at which the little fleet met the Syrian yacht and the oriental potentates left her for the Xaveria. From the villas on the quays, from the little boats full of sight-seers, every glass was directed towards the blue horizon, tremulous with light, on which the ships were still visibly shimmering. Half an hour later there rose, as though coming from the Imperial, the cheers of the multitude, surging louder and louder towards the harbour. Through the rows of the grenadiers, who lined the streets from the palace to the pavilion where the august visitors were to land, came the landaus, driven by postillions, in which their majesties sat. These were followed by the carriages of the two sisters, the Archduchess of Carinthia and Thera, and of the suite.

The fleet, with the Syrian yacht in its centre, had steamed back into the harbour. Across the guard-of-honour formed by the throne-guards, through the purple draperies and the flags, the crowd were able to see something of the meeting of the sovereigns in the pavilion. They shouted their hurrahs; and then the procession drove to the Imperial, the emperor with the King of Syria in the first carriage, the empress with the queen in the next; after these, the landaus with the princes and princesses and the suite.

A series of festivals and displays followed. After the tragedies of the inundations and the parliamentary crisis, a mood of gaiety blew over the capital, as it glittered in the sun, and lasted till late in the lighted rooms and parks of the Imperial. This gaiety was because of the eastern queen. The King of Syria may have had a few drops of the blood of Solomon still flowing through his veins. But the queen was not of royal descent. She was the daughter of a Syrian magnate and her mother's name was not mentioned in the Almanach de Gotha. That mother was doubtless a favourite of dubious noble descent, but nobody knew who she had been exactly. A demi-mondaine from Paris or Vienna, who had stranded in the east and made her fortune in the harem of some great Syrian? A half-European, half-Egyptian dancer from a Cairene or Alexandrian dancing-house? Whoever she was, her lucky daughter, the Queen of Syria, showed an unmistakable mixture of blood, something at once eastern and European. Next to the true Semitic type of the king, who possessed a certain nervous dignity in his half-European, half-oriental uniform glittering with diamonds, the queen, short, fat, chubby, pale-brown, had the exuberant smiles, the restless movements, the turning head and rolling eyes of a woman of colour. Her very first appearance, as she sat in the carriage, next to the delicate figure of the Empress Elizabeth, in a gaudy travelling-dress and a hat with great feathers, bowing and laughing on every side with profuse amiability, had affected the Liparians, accustomed to the calm haughtiness of their own rulers, with an apparently inextinguishable gaiety. The Queen of Syria became the universal topic of conversation; and every conversation referring to her was accented with a smile of wickedness. Withal she seemed so entirely good-natured that it was impossible to say a word against her; and people were only amused about her. They remembered that the Syrians had subscribed fabulous sums at the time of the inundations. And the merriment that blew over Lipara was a southern merriment, free from malice and vented in sheer jolly laughter and delight, because the Liparians had never seen so droll a queen.

The great manoeuvres took place on the parade-ground. The king accompanied the emperor and the princes on horseback, with a bevy of European and oriental aides-de-camp. Their consorts with their suite watched the march-past from landaus. Berengar marched bravely with his company of grenadiers, in which he was a lieutenant, as well as he could march with his short little legs, and stiffened his small features, so as not to betray the difficulty it cost him to keep pace with his men's long step. The hussars astonished the Syrian monarch by their unity with their horses, when in wild career they threw themselves half off and in still more rapid rushes picked up a flag from the ground, swung themselves up again with a yell and waved the bunting. The Africans executed their showy fantasias, brandished their spears, which flashed like loosened sheaves of sunbeams, and came fluttering on in clouds of white burnouses and dust, amid which their negro heads clustered darkly in endless black patches and their eyes glistened.

In addition there was a military tournament, followed by garden-parties, races, regattas, popular games and fireworks. Lipara was one city of pleasure. Every day it was traversed by royal processions, the array of uniforms glittered like live gold, the imperial landaus rattled in the sun, with the spokes of their wheels flashing through the light dust which flew up from the flagged pavements of the town. Most brilliant of all, like drops of white flame, were the diamonds which the Syrian pair wore even in the streets. At night, when the sun ceased shining, there shone over the white town, vague with evening light, and over its violet harbour, festoons of salamanders and gaudy bridges of fire, factitiously bright beneath the silent silver glances of the stars; rockets fell hissing into the water, on which the boats showed black, and left behind them a faint, oppressive savour of gunpowder in the night.