Noticing for the first time how changed she was, he was so troubled by the fact that he understood at once what his own feelings were. He had not lived two months with this adorable and devoted child for nothing; he loved her.
At first the knowledge of the feeling frightened him, and he hesitated to go to Vera. But the young girl's great eyes were raised to his with such softness in their depths, they expressed such pain, that Pierre, charmed, went to her gently, and kneeling by the couch on which she was half lying, he said, in a troubled voice:
"Soon, Vera, there will be no Princess Olsdorf. Now I can tell you that, with my son, you are what I love most in the world."
The daughter of the serf Soublaieff did not reply by a single word; but she raised herself suddenly, and the blood rushed so violently to her heart that she fell, half dead, in the arms that the prince held out to receive her.
CHAPTER XI.
THE MEYRINS.
Things were passing at the home of the Meyrins less worthily and less poetically than in the Rue Auber.
Faithful to the advice of his mistress, Paul had been careful to say nothing of his brother and sister-in-law of the serious events of which he was the hero. Neither Frantz Meyrin, however, nor his wife was ignorant of his amours, but they affected, by one of those middle-class hypocrisies that are so common, to suppose that the ties between the artist and the princess were perfectly moral. Their vanity was flattered at receiving the great Russian lady. If they had acknowledged that they knew the truth they would have been obliged to confess they were playing a degraded part, or to break with the noble foreigner, who was so generous to each of them, and so charming.
For Lise Olsdorf, since her coming to Paris, had used every means to win the Meyrins. She had played on all their weaknesses, good and bad; pride, interest, and maternal love. If the Meyrins received a few friends or gave a musical matinée, she was always there as an intimate friend of the family, helping Barbe, as it were, to do the honors of the house, and one may be sure the Meyrins spoke often enough of "their friend, the princess." Moreover, she let slip no chance of making presents to them all round. Now it would be a piece of jewelry for the violinist, as a mark of her gratitude for the pleasure she had enjoyed in hearing him play such or such a piece; now a dress for Mme. Meyrin, a silver trinket, or a piece of lace for her saint's day, the beginning of the new year, her birthday, or the anniversary of her marriage; while Nadeje received all the finery that could delight the heart of a coquettish young girl.
In exchange for some very paltry pictures by Paul she had adorned his studio with arms, hangings, and costly objects of all sorts. When Frantz gave a concert the princess undertook to dispose of tickets among her Russian friends in the city, and whether they took them or not it is certain the Meyrins pocketed the price of them. So that they all worshiped Lise Olsdorf, and had arrived at the singular state of mind, though without acknowledging it, of being proud that Paul had for his mistress a fine lady whom they had made their friend. They did not say to themselves that each of her presents was, in a manner, the price of their complaisance; and they made a great to-do with the little Tekla, whose real father they well knew, when the princess sent the baby by its nurse to the Rue de Douai.
This was the footing the Meyrins were on with Lise when the prince, coming suddenly to Paris and taking the tone we have seen, forced his wife not to see her lover except in secret, and to restrict her visits to the artist's family.