'Certainly not, but it would enable her to do all I have done for the last three days, if she had only money enough; she could even give away Cadiga.'
'She could not get Cadiga accepted!' said Mme. Ottilie, drily. 'You are tired, my love, and so do not appreciate your own triumphs. It has been a very great success.'
'They were very kind; they are always so kind. But all the time I could not help thinking, were they not horribly fatigued. It wearied me so myself, I could not believe that they were otherwise than weary too.'
'It has been a great success,' repeated the Princess. 'But you are always discontented.'
Wanda did not reply; she leaned back against the Cordovan leather back of the chair, crushing her chestnut hair against the emblazoned scutcheon of her house; she was very fatigued, and her face was pale. For three whole days and evenings to preserve an incessant vigilance of courtesy, a continual assumption of interest, an unremitting appearance of enjoyment, a perpetual smile of welcome, is very tedious work: those in love with social successes are sustained by the consciousness of them, but she was not. An Imperial visit more or less could add not one hair's breadth to the greatness of the house of Szalras.
And there was a dull, half conscious pain at the bottom of her heart. She was thinking of Egon Vàsàrhely, who had said he could not leave his regiment; of Réné de Sabran, who had said he could not leave his country. Even to those who care nothing for society, and dislike the stir and noise of the world about them, there is still always a vague sense of depression in the dispersion of a great party; the house seems so strangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants flitting noiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, an oppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vase perhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan—these are all that are left of the teeming life crowded here one little moment ago. Though one may be glad they are all gone, yet there is a certain sadness in it. 'Le lendemain de la fête' keeps its pathos, even though the fête itself has possessed no poetry and no power to amuse.
The Princess, who was very fatigued too, though she would not confess that social duties could ever exhaust anyone, went softly away to her own room, and Wanda sat alone in the great Rittersäal, with the afternoon light pouring through the painted casements on to the damascened armour, and the Flemish tapestries, and the great dais at the end of the hall, with its two-headed eagle that Dante cursed, its draperies of gold-coloured velvet, its escutcheons in beaten and enamelled metal.
Discontented! The Princess had left that truthful word behind her like a little asp creeping upon a marble floor. It stung her conscience with a certain reproach, her pride with a certain impatience. Discontented! She who had always been so equable of temper, so enamoured of solitude, so honestly loyal to her people and her duties, so entirely grateful to the placid days that came and went as calmly as the breathing of her breast!
Was it possible she was discontented?
How all the great world that had just left her would have laughed at her, and asked what doubled rose-leaf made her misery?