'You cannot tell that. I think you have that facility which is the first note of genius. It is true all your wonderful talents seem the more wonderful to me because I have none myself. I feel art, but I have no power over it; and as for what are called accomplishments I have none. I could, perhaps, beat you in the shooting gallery, and I will try some day if you like, and I can ride—well, like my Kaiserin—but accomplishments I have none.'
'Surely you were yesterday reading Plato in his own text?'
'I learnt Greek and Latin with my brother. You cannot call that an accomplishment. The ladies of the old time often knew the learned tongues, though they were greater at tapestry or distilling and at the ordering of their household. In a solitary place like this it is needful to know so many useful things. I can shoe my horse and harness a sleigh; I can tell every useful herb and flower in the woods; I know well what to do in frostbite or accidents; if I were lost in the hills I could make my way by the stars; I can milk a cow, and can row any boat, and I can climb with crampons; I am a mountaineer. Do not be so surprised. I do all that I have the children taught in my schools. But in a salon I am useless and stupid; the last new lady whose lord has been decorated because he sold something wholesale or cheated successfully at the Bourse would, I assure you, eclipse me easily in the talents of the drawing-room.'
Sabran looked at her and laughed outright. A compliment would have seemed ridiculous before this beautiful patrician, with her serene dignity, her instinctive grace, her unconscious hauteur, her entire possession of all those attributes which are the best heirlooms of a great nobility. To protest against her words would have been like an insult to this daughter of knights and princes, to whom half the sovereigns of modern Europe would have seemed but parvenus, the accidental mushroom growth of the decay in the contest of nations.
His laughter amused her, though it was, perhaps, the most discreet and delicate of compliments. She was not offended by it as she would have been with any spoken flattery.
'After all, do not think me modest in what I have said,' she pursued. 'Talents de société are but slight things at the best, and in our day need not even have either wit or culture: a good travesty at a costume-ball, a startling gown on a racecourse, a series of adventures more or less true, a trick of laughing often and laughing long—any one of these is enough for renown in your Paris. In Vienna we do more homage to tradition still; our Court life has still something of the grace of the minuet.'
'Yet even in Vienna you refuse——'
'To spend my time? Why not? The ceremonies of a Court are wearisome to me; my duties lie here; and for the mirth and pomp of society I have had no heart since the grief that you know of fell upon me.'
It was the first time that she had ever spoken of her brother's loss to him: he bowed very low in silent sympathy.
'Who would not envy his death, since it has brought such remembrance!' he said in a low tone, after some moments.