Re: Not So Innocent Shattered Glass 2 By Dani Alexander Epub To Pdf
Fe Gillenwaters
The Viaticum -- The Relics -- The Thief -- A Rupture -- A Useful House -- The Accent -- Ghosts -- Crash -- An Honest Ideal -- Stable Perfume -- The Ill-Omened Groom -- An Exotic Prince -- Virtue in the Ballet -- In His Sweetheart's Livery -- Delila -- A Mesalliance -- Bertha -- Abandoned -- A Night in Whitechapel -- Countess Satan -- Kind Girls -- Profitable Business -- Violated -- Jeroboam -- The Log -- Margot's Tapers -- Caught in the Very Act -- The Confession -- Was It a Dream -- The Last Step -- The Will -- A Country Excursion -- The Lancer's Wife -- The Colonel's Ideas -- One Evening -- The Hermaphrodite -- Marroca -- An Artifice -- The Assignation -- An Adventure -- The Double Pins -- Under the Yoke -- The Real One and the Other -- The Upstart -- The Carter's Wench -- The Marquis -- The Bed -- An Adventure in Paris -- Madame Baptiste -- Happiness
"After all," Count d'Avorsy said, stirring his tea with the slowmovements of a prelate, "what truth was there in anything that was saidat Court, almost without any restraint, and did the Empress, whosebeauty has been ruined by some secret grief, who will no longer seeanyone and who soothes her continual mental weariness by some journeyswithout an object and without a rest, in foggy and melancholy islands,and did she really forget Caesar's wife ought not even to be suspected,did she really give herself to that strange and attractive corrupter,Ladislas Ferkoz?"
The bright night seemed to be scattering handfuls of stars into theplacid sea, which was as calm as a blue pond, slumbering in the depthsof a forest. Among the tall climbing roses, which hung a mantle ofyellow flowers to the fretted baluster of the terrace, there stood outin the distance the illuminated fronts of the hotels and villas, andoccasionally women's laughter was heard above the dull, monotonous soundof surf and the noise of the fog-horns.
Then Captain Sigmund Oroshaz, whose sad and pensive face of a soldierwho has seen too much slaughter and too many charnel houses, was markedby a large scar, raised his head and said in a grave, haughty voice:
Madame de Laumires, who had begun an animated conversation oncrinolines, admist the fragrant odor of Russian cigarettes, and who wasmaking fun of the striking toilets, with which she had amused herself byscanning through her opera glass a few hours previously at the races,stopped, for even when she was talking most volubly she always kept herears open to hear what was being said around her, and as her curiositywas aroused, she interrupted Sigmund Oroshaz.
"Ah! Monsieur," she said, "you are not going to leave our curiosityunsatisfied.... A story about the Empress puts all our scandals on thebeach, and all our questions of dress into the shade, and, I am sure,"she added with a smile at the corners of her mouth, "that even ourfriend, Madame d'Ormonde will leave off flirting with Monsieur LeBrassard to listen to you."
"It was in the middle of a grand ball that the Emperor was giving on theoccasion of some family anniversary, though I forget exactly what, andwhere Maria-Gloriosa, who was in great grief, as she had heard that herlover was ill and his life almost despaired of, far from her, was goingabout with her face as pale as that of Our Lady of Sorrows, seemed tobe a soul in affliction, appeared to be ashamed of her bare shoulders,as if she were being made a parade of in the light, while he, the adoredof her heart, was lying on a bed of sickness, getting weaker everymoment, longing for her and perhaps calling for her in his distress.About midnight, when the violins were striking up the quadrille, whichthe Emperor was to dance with the wife of the French Ambassador, one ofthe ladies of honor, Countess Szegedin, went up to the Empress, andwhispered a few words to her, in a very low voice. Maria-Gloriosa grewstill paler, but mastered her emotion and waited until the end of thelast figure. Then, however, she could not restrain herself any longer,and even without giving any pretext for running away in such a manner,and leaning on the arm of her lady of honor, she made her way throughthe crowd as if she were in a dream and went to her own apartments. Itold you that I was on duty that evening at the door of her rooms, andaccording to etiquette, I was going to salute her respectfully, but shedid not give me time.
"'Captain,' she said excitedly and vehemently, 'give orders for my ownprivate coachman, Hans Hildersheim, to get a carriage ready for meimmediately,' but thinking better of it immediately she went on: 'Butno, we should only lose time, and every minute is precious; give me acloak quickly, Madame, and a lace veil; we will go out of one of thesmall doors in the park, and take the first conveyance we see."
"She wrapped herself in her furs, hid her face in her mantilla, and Iaccompanied her, without at first knowing what this mystery was, andwhere we were going to, on this mad expedition. I hailed a cab that wasdawdling by the side of the pavement, and when the Empress gave me theaddress of Ladislas Ferkoz, the Minister of State, in a low voice, inspite of my usual phlegm, I felt a vague shiver of emotion, one of thosemovements of hesitation and recoil, from which the bravest are notexempt at times. But how could I get out of this unpleasant part ofacting as her companion, and how show want of politeness to a sovereignwho had completely lost her head? Accordingly, we started, but theEmpress did not pay any more attention to me than if I had not beensitting by her side in that narrow conveyance, but stifled her sobs withher pocket handkerchief, muttered a few incoherent words, andoccasionally trembled from head to foot. Her lover's name rose to herlips as if it had been a response in a litany, and I thought that shewas praying to the Virgin that she might not arrive too late to seeLadislas Ferkoz again in the possession of his faculties, and keep himalive for a few hours. Suddenly, as if in reply to herself, she said: 'Iwill not cry any more; he must see me looking beautiful, so that he mayremember me, even in death!'
"When we arrived, I saw that we were expected, and that they had notdoubted that the Empress would come to close her lover's eyes with alast kiss. She left me there, and hurried to Ladislas Ferkoz's room,without even shutting the doors behind her, where his beautiful,sensual, gipsy head stood out from the whiteness of the pillows; but hisface was quite bloodless, and there was no life left in it, except inhis large, strange eyes, that were striated with gold, like the eyes ofan astrologer or of a bearded vulture.
"The cold numbness of the death struggle had already laid hold of hisrobust body and paralyzed his lips and arms, and he could not reply evenby a sound of tenderness to Maria-Gloriosa's wild lamentations andamorous cries. Neither reply nor smile, alas! But his eyes dilated, andglistened like the last flame that shoots up from an expiring fire, andfilled them with a world of dying thoughts, of divine recollections, ofdelirious love. They appeared to envelope her in kisses, they spoke toher, they thanked her, they followed her movements, and seemed delightedat her grief. And as if she were replying to their mute supplications,as if she had understood them, Maria-Gloriosa suddenly tore off herlace, threw aside her fur cloak, stood erect beside the dying man, whoseeyes were radiant, desirable in her supreme beauty with her bareshoulders, her bust like marble and her fair hair, in which diamondsglistened, surrounding her proud head, like that of the Goddess Diana,the huntress, and with her arms stretched out towards him in an attitudeof love, of embrace and of blessing. He looked at her in ecstacy, hefeasted on her beauty, and seemed to be having a terrible struggle withdeath, in order that he might gaze at her, that apparition of love, alittle longer, see her beyond eternal sleep and prolong this unexpecteddream. And when he felt that it was all over with him, and that even hiseyes were growing dim, two great tears rolled down his cheeks....
"When Maria-Gloriosa saw that he was dead, she piously and devoutlykissed his lips and closed his eyes, like a priest who closes the goldtabernacle after service, on an evening after benediction, and then,without exchanging a word, we returned through the darkness to thepalace where the ball was still going on."
There was a minute's silence, and while Madame de Laumires, who wasvery much touched by this story and whose nerves were rather highlystrung, was drying her tears behind her open fan, suddenly the harsh andshrill voices of the fast women who were returning from the Casino, bythe strange irony of fate, struck up an idiotic song which was then invogue: "Oh! the poor, oh! the poor, oh! the poor, dear girl!"
They had given him a grand public funeral, like they do victorioussoldiers who have added some dazzling pages to the glorious annals oftheir country, who have restored courage to desponding heads and castover other nations the proud shadow of their country's flag, like a yokeunder which those went who were no longer to have a country, or liberty.
During a whole bright and calm night, when falling stars made peoplethink of unknown metamorphoses and the transmigration of souls, whoknows whether tall cavalry soldiers in their cuirasses and sitting asmotionless as statues on their horses, had watched by the dead man'scoffin, which was resting, covered with wreaths, under the porch of theheroes, every stone of which is engraved with the name of a brave man,and of a battle.
The whole town was in mourning, as if it had lost the only object thathad possession of its heart, and which it loved. The crowd went silentlyand thoughtfully down the avenue of the Champs Elyses, and theyalmost fought for the commemorative medals and the common portraitswhich hawkers were selling, or climbed upon the stands which street boyshad erected here and there, and whence they could see over the heads ofthe crowd. The Place de la Concorde had something solemn about it,with its circle of statues hung from head to foot with long crapecoverings, which looked in the distance like widows, weeping andpraying.
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