‘Amyôt is his choice as much as hers,’ said Friederich Othmar. ‘You know he always liked solitude. They will be in Paris in the first days of April——’
‘Two months, or to speak precisely, seven weeks, of Amyôt in midwinter is precisely the mistake that a very young girl would be sure to make,’ continued his tormentor. ‘Amyôt is a delightful place in its way; it is like a page of Brantôme. I remember the admirable hunting parties he gave there for the Orleans princes. But all the same, seven whole weeks of Amyôt in the rain of February and March would damp any ardour that he might begin with—do you think he began with very much? What a pity there was no one to tell her that a man is bored so soon! And Othmar is like Chateaubriand; he is the grand ennuyé just because his ideals are so high that it is wholly impossible to find anything like them anywhere. I am quite sure that he has imagined in this poor child an angel and a goddess; a kind of Greek nymph and Christian virgin blent in one. When he finds that she is only a child, who has had the narrowest of all educations, and is not even a woman in her comprehension or her sympathies, he will be intolerably wearied. If they were in the world, the disillusion might be postponed; at Amyôt it must come in two days.’
‘You are very clever, Madame,’ said the Baron with some irritation, ‘but even you may perhaps for once be mistaken. She is very young, as you say; but for that very reason she will be like clay in his hands which he can mould as he will.’
‘If he take the trouble to model it at all,’ said Nadine Napraxine. ‘If the sculptor do not touch the clay, it lies in a lump neglected till somebody else comes. She will not know, I fear, how to tempt him to make anything of her. Do you suppose they have taught her the art of provocation in her Breton convent? She will only sob aloud if he go away for an hour, and be plunged into despair if his kisses be one less in number. My dear Baron, you lost all your wisdom when you failed to persuade them to leave Amyôt. They say there is no living woman who can be seen at sunrise after a ball and keep her lover; I am sure there is not one who can be shut up with a man for two months in the country, in winter, and retain his belief in her.’
‘You are very learned in these matters,’ said the Baron, more and more irritated, ‘and yet everyone knows that the Princess Napraxine has always herself despised all human affections!’
‘It is not necessary to have sat in the midst of a maelstrom to have studied the laws of whirlpools,’ said his tormentor. ‘And what have human affections to do with it? You know as well as I do that humanity has only caprices and passions, with their natural issue, disillusions.’
Friederich Othmar thought of the terrace at Amyôt and the face of Yseulte.
Walking with her a moment, alone, in the afternoon sunshine, he had ventured on a word of counsel.
‘My dear child, you are very young. Let an old man tell you something. Otho has one serious malady; nay, do not look so alarmed, it is only the malady of his generation—caprice and ennui. He has not an idea that he is capricious, but he is so. Do not let his caprices pain you; but, as far as you can, vary with his varying moods; I think that is the secret of sympathy. Just now it is high noon with you; so there are no shadows; but shadows will fall. I want you to understand that. Otho is not perfect; in a way, he is very weak, though he has more intellect than most men. Do not make a god of him. You will only spoil him and blind yourself.’
And then she had looked at him with that look which he recalled now as he sat by Nadine Napraxine, and had said with a dignity of reproach which had sat very prettily on her youthfulness: ‘If he have faults, I shall never see them—you maybe sure of that; and if you will tell me how to please him, I will never think of myself.’