‘Yes, the age has invented nothing that does not result in worry. Only look at the torture to diplomatists from the telegrams,’ replied Madame Napraxine, while she tendered him a cigar. ‘In other years an ambassador had some pleasure in disentangling a delicate and intricate embroglio, some chance of making a great name by his skill in negotiation. An able man was let alone to mingle his suaviter and his fortiter, his honey and his aloes, as he thought fit; his knowledge of the country to which he was accredited was trusted to and appreciated; nowadays, telegrams rain in on him with every hour; he is allowed no initiative, no independent action; he is dictated to and interfered with by his home government, and cypher messages torture him at every step. What is the consequence? That there is scarcely a diplomatist left in Europe—they are only delegates. Where there is one, he is incessantly controlled, hindered, and annoyed, and all his counsels are disregarded. Meanwhile the world’s only kind of peace is a permanent armed truce. But let us go into the garden.’
CHAPTER II.
When Nadège Fedorevna, Countess Platoff, known to all her friends by the petit nom of Nadine, had reached her sixteenth year she had the look of a hothouse gardenia, so white was her skin and so spiritual her aspect, whilst her slender form had all the grace of a flower balancing itself on a fragile stalk in a south wind. That ethereality, that exquisite delicacy, as of something far too fair and evanescent for man’s rude touch, fascinated into a timid and adoring passion a heavily-built and clumsy cuirassier of the Imperial Guard, who was also one of the greatest nobles written in the Velvet Book of Russia—Platon Nicholaivitch, head of the mighty family of Napraxine. He was eight-and-twenty years old, immeasurably rich, popular with his sovereign, a good soldier, and an exceedingly amiable man. He laid his heart and everything he possessed at the feet of this exquisite and disdainful child when he saw her at her father’s embassy in Vienna one fateful April day.
She refused him without a moment of doubt; but he was persevering, greatly enamoured, and had both her parents upon his side. She was neither weak, nor very obedient; yet in time she allowed herself to be persuaded that not to accept such an alliance would be to do something supremely ridiculous. She resisted stubbornly for a while; but she was inquisitive, independent, and a little heartless.
Her mother, a woman of the world, full of tact and of wisdom, answered her objection that the Prince Napraxine was stupid, had a Kalmuck face, and was inclined to be corpulent—in a word, displeased her taste in every way—by frankly admitting these objections to be incontestable facts, but added, with persuasive equanimity, ‘All you say is quite true, my child, but that sort of details does not matter, I assure you, in a question of the kind we are discussing. It would matter terribly to him if you were stupid or ugly, or inclined to be fat; but in a man—in a husband—in three months’ time you will not even observe it. Indeed, in a fortnight you will be so used to him that you will not think whether he is handsome or ugly. Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty, but kind to ugliness. As for being inclined to corpulence, he is very tall, he will carry it off very well; and as to gambling, he will never get to the bottom of his salt mines and ruby mines: that is the chief question. And after all, my dear Nadine, a man who will never interfere with you and never quarrel with you is a pearl seldom found amongst the husks; and when the pearl is set in gold—— I would not for worlds persuade you, my dear, to marry merely for certain worldly considerations, such as the great place and the great wealth of Platon Nicholaivitch; but I would earnestly advise you to marry early and to marry for peace, and when peace and a colossal fortune are to be found united, it seems to me a great mistake to throw them both away. Somebody else will take them. I suppose you dream of love as all young girls do; but——’
‘Not at all; I know this is only a question of marriage,’ said Nadine, with that terrible sarcasm on her lovely young lips with which many things she had seen in her mother’s house had armed her for the battle of life whilst she was still but a child.
She did not think about love at all; she was not romantic; she already thought it vieux jeu; but she had a brain above the average, and she fancied that she should like the man to whom she was given to be something great in intellectual power, not merely in the sense of millions and of rank. But a girl of sixteen, born and bred in an embassy, reared in the most brilliant cities of the world, having seen the great panorama of society pass before her eyes from her babyhood, is, however innocent in other ways, not unsophisticated enough to ignore the vast advantages of such a position and such wealth as the Prince Napraxine offered to her. Besides, her father wished passionately for the acceptance of Napraxine; he himself was deeply in debt, and knew that his constitution had the germs of a mortal disease.
‘V’là, ma petite,’ he said to her gravely one morning, ‘je suis criblé de dettes: je peux mourir demain. C’est mieux que tu le prennes—— enfin, c’est un assez bon garçon.’