Aurore de Vannes, called Cri-Cri by her friends, was a very pretty woman, as much and as delicately painted as the fan she carried; she wore a marvellous costume of cream-coloured velvet blent with japonica-coloured satin, and had japonicas in her hair and at her bosom; she wore also some very fine rubies.
When he entered the drawing-rooms of Millo there were a dozen persons assembled there, most of whom he knew, but amongst them was not the Princess Napraxine. There was lamentation for her absence, but no surprise at it, because her caprices were so well known.
As he entered a little note had entered behind him; when Mme. de Vannes had said all her pretty greetings to him she glanced at it.
‘“Désolée—migraine—temps détestable,”’ she murmured, as she ran her eyes over it. ‘Of course!’ she said, aloud, ‘that is always Nadine’s way—she does it on purpose. She loves to disappoint people. She was out riding this afternoon; I saw her in the distance with Boris Seliedoff. She treated the Empress in that fashion last winter at Petersburg, and when the Dames du Palais told her that the Tsarina was so displeased that she would exclude her from Court, Nadine said to them quite simply: "Trop de bonté! Je m’habitue si mal à ces corvées-là."’
‘And has she been excluded?’ asked one of the guests.
‘Ouf!’ cried the Duchesse de Vannes, ‘I see you do not know her. No empress in the world would dare to exclude her. Imagine how she would avenge herself! Courts cannot afford to be brave nowadays.’
Othmar heard every syllable she said as he conversed with De Vannes, a tall man of some eight-and-thirty years old, with a look of extreme distinction and of as supreme fatigue. ‘Who is Boris Seliedoff?’ he thought, with the restless jealousy of an unsatisfied passion. He regretted his tent in Tartary: the elegant rooms, the perfumed air, the pretty women, the low buzz of conversation, the little breaks of laughter, the artificiality, the monotony of the whole thing, wearied him already.
The dinner was gay and even brilliant; to him alone it seemed tedious. Why had she not come? he thought, and that disappointment alone occupied him. He was angered that she should have so much power to make la pluie et le beau temps of his time and of his moods.
‘Is Othmar cured by Central Asia?’ said one of the guests to the Duchesse de Vannes who looked across the table at him, and answered, ‘I should say not. He would hardly be within five leagues of La Jacquemerille if he were so. Besides, Nadine has a power of making herself remembered which I have seen in no one else. It is because she remembers nothing herself. The law of contrasts is the law of affinity.’
‘Madame Napraxine is the only woman in whom virtue does not look ridiculous,’ said an old gentleman to his neighbour, overhearing her name. ‘But then, true, this is because it is not virtue at all, but something much more disdainful and unapproachable. Have you seen a peacock ravage a flower-garden? He does not care for any one of the flowers, but all the same the carnations and roses and geraniums fall in showers as he goes, strewing them right and left, and drawing his plumes carelessly over the waste he has made behind him. Her lovers are no more to Madame Napraxine than the flowers to the peacock; but the result is the same.’