He could not tell her that he had been already married three years to a woman who was so utterly heartless that she would not be presented to his old grandmother because she was afraid of her age and wrinkles—so he had answered, "No."
"Now you are telling me a fib. Let me feel your pulse. Of course, it was a fib! And why should you not have fallen in love? Look! in this drawer I am keeping a diadem for your bride; it is the same diadem I wore when your grandfather led me to the altar. Then Moscow was the capital of the empire. Where this fine palace stands were nothing but clumps of willows. Now, your bride shall adorn herself with this diadem. Take it; I give it you. You best know who is to wear it. The girl you love shall be my very dear granddaughter."
But Ivan, in truth, did not know to whom to give the diadem. He had a wife who had no love for him, and he loved a woman who could never be his wife. Thus to neither could he give it.
"I will take care of it, dear granny, until the right one comes."
"But now you will stay to supper with me, will you not, that we may eat the last Butter-night meal together? You are not going to be off to any bachelor drinking-party—to get into all sorts of wild company? You will stay, like a good son, with the old grandmother."
And so Ivan stayed to supper, and had to declare how much he was enjoying it, when he had dined but so short a time before, and knew all the while that in Zeneida's palace a Lucullus-like feast awaited him. If his digestion rebelled against the sacrifice, his heart made it a thousand times heavier.
Oh, the unspeakable agony that overpowered him as he thought how at that very time his affronted wife would be venting her whole vengeance upon that other woman who the world knew had thrown her soft shackles over him, and whom he dared not openly protect, least of all against this aggressor, his own wife! Had the Czar been in St. Petersburg, she would not have dared to molest her; but, in his absence, his powerful favorite, Araktseieff, was supreme.
To tell the truth, Ivan was glad that his absence was compulsory. A warm, tender-hearted man, of weak will, he was unequal to the situation. Taller by a head than most other men, he had been chosen as a leader among them; but the position oppressed him, for, capable as he was in all else, he lacked the necessary courage and decision for the post.
What he would most gladly have done would have been to say adieu one fine day to all his palaces, possessions, confederates, and to Russia, and to go out with Zeneida into the wide world to sing tenor to her soprano. Perhaps, too, it might have come about, had Zeneida been an ordinary artist and nothing more. But the disquieting thought is there—what may happen to-night on that other stage? Perhaps she is destined to mortification on the one; but on the other? On those boards the blood of the actors is wont to flow.
And all this time his fond grandmother could not press him enough to eat, as she asked news of Maria Louisa and the great Napoleon, of the little King of Rome, and many another who had long passed away; to many of which questions Ivan returned such mixed answers that the good Ihnasko was constantly exercised to set him right, being far better informed through his newspapers of all these things than was the absent-minded Prince.