A Russian is reticent beyond all men. None save the Czar dared to allude to the affair of the triumphal arch. Araktseieff was silent, because he did not want the fiasco connected with his military-colony scheme to spread. The detachment of Cossack guards were despatched to Kasan, and those others who had been present knew how to observe profoundest silence as to what had taken place.
CHAPTER XVIII
KORYNTHIA
The young Circassian Princess could not have been in a better school than that of Princess Ghedimin.
Korynthia might have served as a type to that Russian naturalist who, outdoing Darwin, endeavored to prove that women are degenerate cats. In vain, be it here mentioned, was it sought to soften him so far as to modify his views into their being a race of ennobled cats. He stuck to his opinion. The beautiful Korynthia could be coquettish as an Aspasia, stonily cold as a Diana. This time, however, it was not Diana, but Aspasia, who changed her lover into Acteon.
The men whom she thus distinguished with her favors, like Chevalier Galban, never succeeded in unravelling the riddle of the lovely sphinx. Korynthia allowed him to accompany her in hunts, danced with him at balls, gave him her bouquet to hold when dancing with another man, laughed at his sallies, made fun of others with him, even kissed him at parting, the while holding him as far off as a planet its satellites—and of such satellites she had more than Saturn—each and all permitted to revolve about her, none to approach her too near.
Yet when in society she fixed a man with a stony look of a goddess, acknowledging his bow with the contraction of the lips by which great ladies express, at once, disdain and reproach, he was the man for whom her heart was cherishing secret flames.
No one knew it, for he, thus signalled out, an officer of the guards, distinguished alike for his genius and his many gay adventures, was careful to keep to himself that one day a perfumed note was brought him by a mysterious messenger, and on opening the delicately tinted envelope he read: "An unknown benefactress, who is interested in your fate, is ready to pay off all your debts if you will stay away at nights from Fräulein Ilmarinen's Saturnalia."
We think we are not mistaken when we take, in connection with the above, the usurer's speech, who certainly did not volunteer it without good grounds: "There are certain young, rich, and lovely ladies in St. Petersburg who are ready to come to the aid of a young officer whom I could name."
The young Endymion's reply to the perfumed note was that night to enter the proscribed Eleusis on the box-seat of Zeneida's sledge.