That he loved her very much she was fully aware—loved her as only big dogs and unintellectual people have the instinct to do—but the higher qualities which were in him, and might have been called out had she chosen, she never knew or would have cared to know. The natural nobility of his character was entirely obscured to her beneath the slowness and dulness of his intelligence, as his corpulent body and his large appetite wholly concealed the heroism of poor Louis Seize from France and from the world.
Napraxine, when he left her now, walked straight to a private club which he often frequented; a club of great exclusiveness and distinction, where very high play could be indulged in every morning, afternoon, and evening. There he breakfasted, played a little himself to while away time, and waited the coming of the Duc de Prangins. He waited until four o’clock; at that hour, which was his usual one for entrance there, the elder de Prangins arrived for his customary afternoon baccarat.
Napraxine threw down the cards he held, rose, and approached him.
‘M. le Duc,’ he said curtly, ‘I have learned that you have ventured to jest about Madame la Princesse Napraxine. I am here to tell you that I do not allow such jests. If you apologise for them—well. If not——’
‘I never apologise,’ said the Duc, as curtly.
Napraxine, without more words, struck him over the shoulders with a cane which he carried. Then he turned his back on him with supreme disdain, and sat down again to his écarté.
To such an insult there was only one answer possible. Within fifteen minutes a hostile meeting was arranged between him and M. de Prangins, which was to take place on the following morning at sunrise, in the gardens of a friend’s château situated on the road to Versailles.
The elder de Prangins, though a man of sixty-five years of age, was of great skill and address in all offensive and defensive science; it was he who had killed the young Piedmontese prince, d’Ivrea, some four years before. He was a slightly-made man, but very strong and agile, cold and sure in his attack, and very careful in his guard. He had the reputation of being a dangerous foe, and, secure in that reputation, had never condescended to bridle his tongue, which was at once coarse and caustic. For Nadine Napraxine he had conceived, years earlier, one of those gross, yet chill, passions of which a man, advanced in years, is at once tenacious and impatient, proud and ashamed.
Platon Napraxine finished his game of écarté and won it. He was in no degree disturbed or depressed by the ordeal which lay before him. He was as happy as a boy to think that he was about to fight in her cause, and he pictured to himself how, when all was over, he would tell her, and perhaps—perhaps—she would smile on him for the recital. Like many big, strong, and kindly men, he had a great deal of the lad in him; he was unworn in heart, despite all the experiences of his life in Paris and in Petersburg; the adoration of his wife, which he had preserved throughout all the vulgar amours with which he had sought to console himself, had served, in a great measure, to keep his youth alive in him. With a youth’s hopefulness and short-sightedness he longed now for the moment in which he would say to her, ‘They dared to jest of you, but I was there; and they have bitten the dust.’