Remembering this, the Baron, who had never in his life cared greatly for any woman or believed much in one, felt a restless anger against the prophetess of woe.
‘When they predict fire they have already laid the powder,’ he thought, impatiently.
Friederich Othmar was surprised himself at the feeling of affection and of anxiety which Yseulte had aroused in him. He had wished Othmar to marry that the race might be continued, but he had never supposed that any young girl would fill him with the solicitude for her own welfare which she made him feel for hers.
Women had always been la femelle de l’homme with him; no more; he was astonished at himself for being moved by a genuine desire to secure for her those more subtle joys of the soul which he had always derided. Before her he felt ashamed of his own grosser convictions (which a month before would have been so confident) that she could want nothing more than the riches her marriage conferred on her. Though he had been a man of little feeling he was not altogether without kindliness, and his keen penetration told him that hers was a nature which the glories and gewgaws of the world would do very little to console if its affections were starved or its higher instincts humiliated, and the prophecies of Nadine Napraxine but irritated him more because he knew that her merciless intelligence was as a seismographic pendulum which foretold truly the convulsions of the future.
‘Surely,’ she continued, ‘S. Pharamond would have been a more natural place to select at this season. Amyôt is superb, but it must be sunk fathoms deep in snow.’
‘There is no snow; it was open weather, and even mild,’ replied the Baron, who was ready to declare that roses were blossoming in the ditches of the Orleannais.
‘But why did he not come to S. Pharamond? It is a paradise of azaleas and tulips at the present moment.’
‘It is a pretty place,’ he answered; ‘but perhaps more suggestive of Apates and Philotes than of the true Eros.’
‘The vicinity of the tripots hardly accords with the solemnity of Hymen? Do you mean that?’ she said, with her enigmatical little smile. ‘Who would ever have thought to live to hear Baron Friederich mention Eros! Well, we will hope that the god for once will be like the Salamander which is emblazoned, and carved so liberally, all over Amyôt. We will hope the fire that feeds him may not go out; but I am afraid the motto really means that what nourishes extinguishes.’
With that she rose and took herself and her sunshade, with its point duchesse, and her marvellous gown with its cascades of lace and soft pale hues, like tea roses, her provocative languor, and her admirable grace, from the terraces of the Prince Ezarhédine. She was followed by longing eyes and a silence which was the truest of compliments. To more than one there, the sun had set whenever she had passed from their sight.