Artist and Model (The Divorced Princess)

by René de Pont-Jest

Having thrown this first dart, Mme. Frantz went no further; but Paul returned home that day wondering that he had not noticed until then that he held a secondary place in the household, and thinking that it would become him to have a reform in the matter. However, he did not think for a moment of speaking to Lise on the subject. In the first place, he would not have known how to make a beginning; and when, as he entered the studio, his young wife drew him toward her by one of the passionate glances that she always had for him, the artist, a man governed by his sensations from moment to moment, quickly forgot the slight wound to his vanity that his sister-in-law's words had made him feel.

For that matter, the time would have been badly chosen to think of changes in their life, for Lise herself came to the point in regard to the state of her health. In fact, she was now within two months of her confinement; and she was so happy at the thought that she was about to become the mother of a child which this time would not be taken from her that she wished to take precautions such as previously, in like circumstances, she had not dreamed of.

When she was enceinte with Tekla she had hidden the fact up to the last moment from coquetry; but whom should she now put herself to inconvenience for? Was not she sure of the love of her husband? Had not she the right to be proud of the motherhood which would fill the sorrowful blank made by fate around her? She would not forget her absent children, their place was always in her heart. But she would love this sweet child with the love she bore to all three.

She was unwilling, therefore, to commit any imprudence, and once again in her nature the mistress made way for the mother. She began by staying away from the theater, then little by little her "At Homes" grew rarer and were given for fewer hours, until the day came when she put aside all that did not directly affect the event she awaited. She saw scarcely anybody but the Meyrins, Mme. Daubrel, and Dumesnil, which pleased Paul extremely. It looked as if he were delighted not to see his wife so surrounded as she had been since their marriage, and as he still passed nearly all his time beside her, as he had done then, Lise, certain that her husband loved her more every day, was as happy as a woman could be.

In two months' time Mme. Meyrin was delivered of a daughter, to whom the name of Marie was given. Paul, at his sister-in-law's suggestion, advised his wife to suckle it herself.

Lise had never thought of doing so, the practice being so entirely foreign to the custom of the world she had always lived in, but she welcomed the proposal with joy, to please her husband for one thing, and also because it seemed to her that her child, suckled by herself, would belong to her the more.

She gave no thought to the slavery, so to speak, of every moment to which she would condemn herself, nor to the sacrifices of every sort that the part of a mother so completely accepted would entail upon her.

The truth is that Paul eagerly fastened upon the chance to take the first step, without discussion and without seeming to act with an object, toward those reforms which his sister-in-law was always talking about when she was alone with him, awakening his jealousy and reminding him of the thrifty principles of which an example had been kept before his eyes from his infancy.

"When a woman becomes a mother," she said over and over again to him, "she should bid farewell to coquetry and the homage which always has an ulterior aim, of those who pay court to her. Lise is a great deal too much of a fine lady, with her loosely knotted hair, her elegant gowns, her low-cut bodices, her silken hose, and her profuse jewelry, which she wears at every opportunity. Who does not know whence and from whom these things come? They were all very well for the Princess Olsdorf. Why should she always be reminding people that there was a time when she was not Madame Paul Meyrin? A divorced woman is obliged to be more reserved than other women; men, with their usual vanity, being ever ready to believe that, as she has made one slip, she may make another. Besides, you live in a style out of accord with your income. All these dinner-parties and 'At Homes' will ruin you. You will have other children besides this one, and that means money to rear them. You must be economical, and as your wife has never been used to that, it is for you to keep an eye on the expenditure of the house, if you don't want to be without money one of these days."

This ill-meant though specious reasoning could not but bear fruit in a mind as ordinary and prosaic as Paul's was. His passion for Lise had only temporarily roused in him the instincts of a true artist. There was always in him a substratum of the commonplace, from which he could free himself at no time, save when his passions or his vanity got the upper hand. As for jealousy, the pretext alone of it was used to hold him, for he had the absolute confidence in his wife of which she was worthy in every respect.