Within a fortnight the portrait was nearly finished, and the prince, who naturally suspected nothing of his conjugal misfortunes, thanked Paul Meyrin, and authorized him to take the portrait to Paris for hanging in the next exhibition.
At each hour passed with Paul, the princess's love increased. It was in some sort purified by the admiration she felt for the artist at his work.
While the sittings lasted, at liberty to see him for a long time every day, she loved him better and less wantonly; but, wishful as the painter was to linger with his work, prudence obliged him at last to admit that he had finished, and consequently to put an end to the daily interviews in private. Then Lise's passion retook its first fierce form.
Deprived of the interviews in the course of which, satisfied and glutted, she could gather a store of calmness for the rest of the day, she became jealous, troubled, rash. Soon she was so little mistress of herself that General Podoi's wife, helped by her own experience in like affairs, guessed at a part, at least, of what was going on.
Alarmed—not in her virtue, but in her affection, which was wholly of pride—for her daughter, as to the consequences that might follow upon such an intrigue, the ex-Countess Barineff watched the princess more closely. It was soon impossible to have any doubt of her relations with the handsome foreigner, for one evening her mother caught them almost in each other's arms in the great alley of Pampeln, which had been the scene of the declaration of their love.
The general's wife was, as we have said, a woman of energy. The next morning, before breakfast, wasting no time in beating about the bush, she appeared in Paul Meyrin's room, without having her visit announced beforehand.
Astonished, to begin with, by her appearance, the artist was very soon still more so by her speech, for without preamble or oratorical devices she said:
"Monsieur, I come to ask you to bid adieu to the other guests this very day, and to leave Pampeln. You will write to the prince, who is away and will not be back before night, that you have had letters from Paris summoning you to return at once."
"I do not understand you, madame," stammered the young man.
"You had better, however, without forcing me to explain further. I introduced you to Prince Olsdorf, and I am therefore in some degree answerable for your behavior under his roof. This responsibility is already too great, and I desire not to be any longer under it."