CHAPTER XXIV.
‘Othmar filant le parfait amour while he gathers wet violets under his Valois woods, is a truly admirable idyl!’ said the Princess Napraxine, with her unkind little smile, a month later, while her eyes, from under an umbrella covered with old point duchesse, went indolently from the shining sea upon her right to the romantic gorge leading up to distant peaks of snow, which could be seen on her left through boughs of eucalyptus and mimosa. She was seated on the white terraces of a famous villa, crowning a promontory which carried luxuriant and fantastic gardens far out into the lazy blue water, across whose then smiling plains of azure light it looked straight southward to the cloud which was Corsica. It was the villa of another Russian magnate, Prince Ezarhédine, with whom there was at that time staying a mighty statesman at whose nod or frown Europe breathed lightly or held her breath; and under the guise of a breakfast there was an informal conference of diplomatists at his house that day.
Friederich Othmar was staying at S. Pharamond for two days to meet the great Russian, and conduct, over a cigarette and a glass of kümmel, one of those delicate and intricate negotiations in which finance and diplomacy had equal parts, and which were the delight of his soul, and made the special fame of the House of Othmar.
The great statesman was a charming person, Oriental in morals, Athenian in mind, and French in manners; and Nadine Napraxine, who so seldom could be persuaded to go anywhere, had deigned to come and breakfast with him there and allow him to recall her childhood.
‘You would never give me a smile,’ he said to her. ‘At five years old you were as cruel as you are now. I remember taking you what I thought an irresistible bribe; a gardener in Saxe driving a wheelbarrow of bonbons. But you just looked at it—smileless—and said cruelly, “Merci, Monsieur—mais j’en ai tant!” You were five years old then.’
‘“Tant” and “trop” are the spoilers of our existence,’ she replied. ‘I remember as a child I never cared for bonbons; I used to say that if they hung up where the church bells were, and one could not get them, one would care——’
‘My intention was good,’ said the great man piteously; ‘you might have smiled on me for that.’