I smoked on in silence and in wonder. The situation certainly presented a problem which I was utterly unable to solve. That the affections of such a woman as the Princess von Leutenberg were not to be trifled with I knew well, for women of her temperament are capable of anything when once they love with a fierce, uncontrollable, reckless passion such as she had seen fit to display that evening in the deep silence of the forest. Her proposition had, indeed, been a startling one. She had offered me the secret of the plot in return for my love!
With my two companions I chatted on until nearly two o’clock; then we separated, and I passed through the long oak corridors to my room. Upon the dressing-table I found a note lying. It was sealed with black wax, with the Leutenberg arms. I tore it open. It gave out an odour of fresh violets, and I saw instantly that the handwriting was Léonie’s.
“I have been foolish in my confession to you, Gerald,” she wrote in French. “But my heart was so full that I could conceal the truth no longer. I saw from your manner at dinner to-night that you despise me, and intend to hold me at a distance as an unwelcome woman who has flung herself into your arms. But I cannot help it. The misfortune—nay, the curse upon me—is that I love you. Would to Heaven that I did not! Because of you I have forgotten eatery thing—my duty to myself as a woman, my duty to my family as one of a noble house, my duty to my country, my duty to my Creator. When I left Paris long ago, I crossed the Atlantic, resolved to forget you; but all was in vain. I returned to Rudolstadt and shut myself up in retirement, striving to wean myself from the mad passion which had arisen within me. All, however, was futile, and at last I broke the bonds and returned to Paris. A month has gone by, and now I have told you the truth; I have confessed. To-morrow morning at eleven I shall walk alone through the forest, along the road that leads to By. My offer to you—an offer made, I admit, in desperation—still stands. If you accept it you will be enabled to save your country from her enemies, and we shall both find peace and happiness; if not, then the plot will be carried out, and at least one woman’s life will be wrecked—the solitary and unhappy woman who writes these lines and whose name is Léonie.”
She had written that letter calmly and coolly, for the handwriting showed no haste. Evidently she had penned it in the seclusion of her chamber, and Suzanne, her maid, had placed it upon my dressing-table.
I stood with the letter in my hand. My eyes caught my own reflection in the long silver-framed mirror, and I was struck by the haggard, anxious expression upon my own countenance. My personal appearance startled me.
Well I knew the character of this pale and beautiful woman whom all Paris had admired. The impression she gave everyone was that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. I had long ago recognised her high mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman’s wit and woman’s wiles, her almost irresistible allurements, her moments of classic grandeur, her storms of temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, and her princely pride. She had dazzled my faculties, perplexed my judgment, bewildered and bewitched my fancy. I was conscious of a kind of fascination against which my moral sense rebelled.
With all her perverseness, egotism, and caprice, she, nevertheless, I knew, mingled a capacity for warm affection and kindly feeling, or, rather, what one might call a constitutional good-nature, and was lavishly generous to her favourites and dependants. She was a Princess in every sense of the word, her right royal wilfulness and impatience often fathering the strangest caprice. There were actually moments when she seemed desirous of picking a quarrel with such immensities as time and space, and, with the air of a lioness at bay, regarded those who dared to remember what she chose to forget.
She had given me but little time to decide. To-morrow at eleven she would slip away from her guests and await me in that long, tunnel-like passage leading through the forest to the ancient town of Moret, at the confluence of the willow-lined Loing with the broad Seine. Its walls and gates, dating from the time of Charlemagne, still remain, and right in the heart of the little town stands the square old donjon keep, now ivy-grown and with its moat full of a profusion of sweet-smelling tea-roses.
I could save England if, in return for her secret, I gave her my love. Has any man ever found himself in similar perplexity?
Calmly I reasoned with myself, turning again to her letter, and feeling convinced that this sudden passion of hers was but a momentary caprice. No woman, if she were cool and reasonable, would have acted as she had done, for she must have recognised that the difference in our stations rendered marriage impossible.