Part 41 (2/2)
”Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is this of mine,--a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,--laughing, or insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady.
Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically about the day's business, but I hunger more than ever--”
”This,” said the Grand Duke, ”is insanity.”
”Yet I love better the dreams of the night,” de Chateauroux went on; ”for they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances which my love weaves out of mult.i.tudinous memories,--fantastic stories of just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohe, it is a wonderful vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of my heart's desire, and though the waking be bitter...! Need it be just a dream, Victoria?”
”Not but that he does it rather well, you know,” whispered the Grand Duke to the Baroness von Altenburg, ”although the style is florid. Yet that last speech was quite in my earlier and more rococo manner.”
The Grand d.u.c.h.ess did not stir as de Chateauroux bent over her jewelled hand.
”Come! come now!” he said. ”Let us not lose our only chance of happiness.
'Come forth, O Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I already have forgot, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go a-shepherding--!'”
”Oh, but to think of dragging in Theocritus!” observed his Highness. ”Can this be what they call seduction nowadays!”
”I cannot,” the Grand d.u.c.h.ess whispered, and her voice trembled. ”You know that I cannot, dear.”
”You will go!” said de Chateauroux.
”My husband--”
”A man who leaves you for each new caprice, who flaunts his mistresses in the face of Europe.”
”My children--”
”Eh, mon Dieu! are they or aught else to stand in my way, now that I know you love me!”
”--it would be criminal--”
”Ah, yes, but then you love me!”
”--you act a dishonorable part, de Chateauroux,--”
”That does not matter. You love me!”
”I will never see you again,” said the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, firmly. ”Go! I loathe you, I loathe you, monsieur, even more than I loathe myself for having stooped to listen to you.”
”You love me!” said de Chateauroux, and took her in his arms.
Then the Grand d.u.c.h.ess rested her head upon the shoulder of de Chateauroux, and breathed, ”G.o.d help me!--yes!”
”Really,” said the Grand Duke, ”I would never have thought it of Victoria.
It seems incredible for any woman of taste to be thus lured astray by citations of the almanac and secondary Greek poets.”
”You will come, then?” the Count said.
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