‘Crésus doublé de Corôt,’ murmured his wife. ‘Othmar, have you sketched any Mongol ladies? are there such beings? or are they only as that terrible Dumas has it, la femelle de l’homme?’
‘Only la femelle de l’homme, Madame. They cannot be said to be women in any civilised sense of that term; they only know the duties of maternity, and are ignorant of the victories of coquetry. You will perceive that they are an entirely elementary animal.’
Princess Nadine heard with a little smile; she knew what allusions to herself were contained in the words.
‘You should have married one of them,’ she said, slowly moving her big fan. ‘It would have been too picturesque; the owner of two hundred millions dwelling by choice under a pole and a piece of blue cloth, and——’
‘Cannot you forbear to quote my millions?’ said Othmar. ‘You would not reproach a hunchback with his hump.’
‘Though it is the only thing which makes him noticeable,’ muttered Geraldine, but the fear of his hostess made him speak too low to be overheard save by Othmar, who did not deign to notice the insolence.
‘You think money is not interesting,’ said the Princess Nadine, ‘but you are wrong. It is the Haroun al Raschid of our day. It is the wand of Mercury. It is the sunshine of life. Only fancy, Othmar, if you chose you could make the desert blossom like the rose; you could call up a city like Paris in the centre of your Mongolian steppes; that is very interesting indeed. Money itself is not so, but when one considers its enormous influence, its fantastic powers, it is so; it is even more, it is positively bewitching.’
‘When it comes out of anything so fairylike and invisible as the Prince’s salt-crystals it may be,’ replied Othmar, ‘but not when it is tainted by commerce. Remember, Princess, your Mercury was the god of the mart and of the thieves.’
‘That was in the Roman decadence.’
‘And are we not in a decadence?’