‘I am glad that I did not meet her, or one like her, thirty years ago; she would have unnerved me,’ he thought, as he stooped and wrote his own name.
Amongst the nuptial gifts had been one of great value from the Princess Napraxine. It was a gold statuette of Love, modelled by Mercié and standing on a base of jade and agate. It had all the cruelty and irony of the modern Italian school in it, for the poor Amorino was trying to drink out of a gourd which was empty, and the expression of his disappointed, distressed, pathetic features was rendered with admirable mockery and skill. He turned his sad eyes ruefully on those who looked at him; some withered passion-flowers and a little asp were near his feet. When Othmar saw it, his face darkened; he thought it a jest at himself, nor had the giver selected it without intention. Behind the gold Amorino he seemed to see her smiling, serene, jewel-like eyes, her delicate, contemptuous mouth, which said: ‘Va donc! C’est le vieux jeu!’
‘The only woman that I shall ever love!’ he thought with a thrill of remorse, of shame, and of anger, all in one.
What right had he, while his veins were hot with those unholy fires, to simulate love for an innocent and virgin life?
The morning came for which Blanchette and Toinon had been longing for a month; and clothed in palest blue velvet, carrying white bouquets as large as themselves, they wore at their throats the new diamond lockets of their ambition, with the miniature of their cousin within each, for which they cared nothing at all. But the diamonds were as large and as numerous as ever their hearts could desire. ‘Vrai! Il est bon prince!’ they cried in chorus, as they skipped round each other, and made the sun sparkle in the jewels, and sang the song of Judic.
Then they went to the church of S. Philippe du Roule, and made their little naughty faces as grave as mice that see a cat, while the incense rose and the organ pealed, and the Latin words rolled out sonorously, and the pale wintry sunshine shone over the brilliant crowd assembled there for the marriage.
Yseulte herself looked like a slender white lily.
The deep peace and serenity of her convent days had come there with her; certain instincts of her race kept her still and composed with the eyes of so many strangers upon her; a dignity that was exquisitely graceful blended with her childish air; she looked like some young princess of the Valois time, such as poets and painters still see in their dreams.
One of those special trains which Blanchette thought the supreme privilege of marriage bore them without a pause through the wintry landscapes between Paris and Blois.
The day was fine and windless; there was a scent of spring which breathed through the leafless poplars and willows, and over the frosted fields and vineyards, with sweet, vague promise; here and there burst in to sight, out from a forest glade beside some château, some gaily-clad hunting party, the last of the season; ever and anon there was some little town, with its old ruined castle, or its monastic church, shut in, in leafless orchards. The broad river glistened in the light under the burden of its many islands, its breaking blocks of ice drifting on turbid green waters, its flood of mud and melted snow rolling heavily beneath the colliers and the merchant craft, which made their way slowly against the floes. In the drear blackened vineyards, peasants, like pictures by Millet, were at work; sometimes a woman with faggots on her bowed shoulders straightened herself to watch the swiftness of the train, or a bluefrocked herd-boy stopped his cattle at a crossing.