This happened in the middle of summer, when there were many guests at Pampeln, and certainly the princess had only to choose. None of them, however, brilliant as they were, pleased her so much that she distinguished him by particular favor.
They were what the young men were who had formed her court since her marriage—most of them military men, handsome cavaliers, elegant, brave, extravagant. They had all much the same good qualities and much the same bad. Their declarations offered no variety, they scarcely made her smile. Their attempts to win her heart were alike. The same madrigals were used, the same melodramatic protestations were spoken by all. There was nothing about them that was simple or natural, true or from the heart. Some of them loved or desired her ardently, no doubt; but such of them as dared to tell her so, all did it in the same way, with the tone of that frivolous world for which love is a pleasant episode of life, and not its end and aim.
Besides, each of these sighers and adorers was a friend of the prince, and Lise was revolted by the thought. She thought them vile to wish to abuse the confidence of the man whose hand they pressed with a thousand protestations of devotion.
This was the state of mind of the Countess Barineff's daughter when Count Barewski, a regular visitor at Pampeln, arrived at the château. He brought with him his wife and a young painter from Paris, M. Paul Meyrin, whom General Podoi had already presented to the Olsdorfs at one of their last receptions of the previous winter, on the eve, almost, of their departure for Courland, so that the prince scarcely remembered the young man's name.
Paul Meyrin was none the less hospitably received, like all guests at the château. When he approached and saluted the princess, she recalled so vividly at the sight of him how the beauty of this young foreigner had struck her at St. Petersburg, that she was for the moment confused.
She recovered herself quickly, however, and offering her hand, after the English and Russian fashion, to the young man, she bade him welcome in a perfectly calm voice.
Still, while Count Barewski was telling Prince Olsdorf that M. Paul Meyrin was only an indifferent huntsman, though a skillful horseman, so that he was more often to be seen with his sketching materials than with a gun, Lise examined the new-comer with curious eyes, such as she had turned on nobody else as yet.
Above the middle height, broad-shouldered, and carrying himself with a slight swagger, the friend of Count Barewski was quite the romantic hero in appearance. His colorless face made his silky beard look the darker. He had fine eyes, and boldly marked eyebrows. On his full red lips the smile of youth played. His expression of face was gentle in the extreme, almost simple. Born in Bucharest, he was, in a word, one of the purest specimens of that handsome Latin race which crossing is making rarer and rarer.
As though he felt the young woman's eyes were fixed on him, Paul Meyrin turned abruptly toward her, and as their eyes met both of them felt a secret tremor.
Lise, surprised, bent to caress a dog lying at her feet, while Paul, certainly not analyzing or fully understanding what he felt, took leave of the prince for the moment, Pierre having said kindly, in reply to Count Barewski: