"Shall you see the prince?"
"How can I do otherwise?"
"Shall we go back home?"
"No. People saw the letter handed to me. Our going would seem strange, and my return home would surprise my servants too much to not set them thinking. We will sit out the 'Pré aux Clercs.' When it is over we will decide what is best to be done."
Taking again the attentive attitude that she always assumed at the theater, the princess seated at the front of the box seemed to forget the terrible news she had just received.
At the thought of the struggle she was about to engage in, at the idea of the dangers that threatened her, on the eve of the conjugal drama of which she was the heroine, the actress's nature that she inherited from her mother and from her true father awoke in her, counseling revolt and strategy. She might have feared violence; but as the prince wrote that she had nothing of the sort to face, she cared little for the rest, provided always that she was not to be separated from her lover; as she was prepared for everything but this sacrifice, her calmness had suddenly returned.
Paul Meyrin was less at his ease. He thought more of the next day than his mistress seemed to do. Would the prince force his wife to retire to some convent far from Paris, not in France? From him, the lover, the husband would surely demand satisfaction for the stain upon his honor. The painter, without being a coward, was no duelist. He scarcely knew how to hold a sword, and with a pistol he could not hit the target more than once in ten shots. In a word, he loved Lise as much as his egotism suffered him to love. She was a mistress that flattered his pride and cost him nothing. We might even say that she was, on the contrary, profitable to him, since, as we have seen, she heaped presents on the whole Meyrin family and let slip no chance of offering Paul a trinket or some costly knickknack.
And this baby a few months old whom the prince would not shelter! Paul foresaw with alarm, for the paternal sentiment scarcely existed in him, that it would fall to his care, and he did not hide from himself that his mother, Mme. Meyrin, would refuse downright to take charge of it. Foreseeing disputes without end, a thousand domestic worries, he forgot completely in thinking only of himself what the princess might have to dread and suffer.
It was in this frame of mind that the painter sat out the last two acts of Hérold's masterpiece, and when, accompanying Lise home, he found himself again in the little room in the Rue Lafitte, where, in the course of the past few months, he had spent so many long and happy hours, he was seized by a deep sadness.
Lise Olsdorf, who had left him alone while her maid took off her things, soon returned, wearing a long dressing-gown of blue velvet, but even when she knelt before the artist, laying her head on his knees, Paul scarcely roused himself.