Burton Egbert Stevenson

“ Madame, who had been watching him with evident anxiety, shook her head, but Davis did not see the gesture and filled the glass.
“Wait,” said Davis, and refilled all the glasses. “You remember I told you that I had a surprise for you to-night?”
“Ah, yes,” smiled the prince. “What is it?”
“It is that I am going to marry Miss Fayard,” answered Davis, unconsciously falling into his idiom. “This is my betrothal dinner.”
“Is it true?” cried the prince, and sprang to his feet. “Monsieur—madame—let us drink to the happy pair—to their health, to their happiness, to everything that is good!” ”

“ As for happiness—are your American marriages always happy?”
“No, not always,” Selden admitted with a smile.
“I have never seen one that appeared so,” said the baron; “not as a French marriage is very often happy. To me, American husbands and wives seem merely bored with each other. Why should two people stay together when they would be happier apart?”
“You see only the worst ones over here; and a lot of people are held together by habit, by fear of ridicule or loss of position. We are cowards in that respect.” ”

“ Yes, they were delicious.
“One reason I like to dine in a French restaurant,” said Selden, “is because every one is so pleased when one finds the food to one’s taste. In other countries nobody really cares, you can take the food or leave it; but here it is a matter of life or death; at least, they make it appear so. And they are wiser than we in another way. When a Frenchman enters a restaurant, he puts his affairs, his worries, out of his head; he thinks only that he is to eat; he is smiling and happy; he allows nothing to hurry him, so he enjoys his food and digests it easily. ”

“ The war has liberated the world from slavery to old forms and old ideas.”
“I believe so with all my heart,” said Selden. “Our task is to keep it from sliding back again.”
“But the war was not able to make men wise all at once,” said the king. “So we must also take care not to become the slaves of new ideas which are worse than the old ones, or which are really only the old ones cleverly disguised with a new name. There will always be in the world, monsieur, men who seek wealth and power for unscrupulous and selfish ends. ”

“ For his eldest son he had chosen a Hohenzollern princess; his eldest daughter was now queen of a dominion far larger than her father’s; two other daughters had captured Russian Grand Dukes; and a strange turn of fortune, combined with a bloody tragedy, had brought a grandson to a throne.
So, if any king could be safe, he had seemed to be—and yet all these safeguards had been swept away by the World War. The passion for democracy which emerged from it had decreed that kings must go, and Pietro had found himself cast aside with all the others. ”

“ That hasty meeting at the frontier, that declaration of a republic—he had been a man of action then, and might be again!
Yet, even as he talked with him, Jeneski had seemed too much of another world, and that impression was deepened now. Jeneski’s visions were all of toil and conflict, of scaling the heights in search of human brotherhood; but very few people cared to scale heights. By far the most of them preferred to sit quietly at home, before a good fire, with hands folded complacently over a full belly. And that was precisely what the king would offer.
Should he, Selden, help or hinder? ”

“ Madame Ghita flashed an ironic glance into Selden’s face. What she saw there seemed to amuse her.
“Au revoir, alors,” she said, and in a moment she was gone.
“So you see I was right,” commented the countess, as the door closed behind her.
“Yes,” agreed Selden, a wry smile upon his lips. “Yes; she is, as you said, a sensible woman!”
“Every woman in her position has to be sensible,” the countess pointed out. “She may treat herself to nerves occasionally, but she must never lose her head. And she is right—absolutely right!” ”

“ Only they demand more of a man than you do. They do not realize what half-tamed creatures we are, and sometimes they demand too much. I think you understand men better.”
“Ah, yes,” laughed Miss Fayard, shaking her finger at Davis. “We understand them! Never believe that I will not understand you! When you lie to me, I shall know it—but you will never suspect that I know—not until long, long afterwards. And then you will be very, very much ashamed!”
“All right,” said Davis, gazing at her in rapt adoration. “I am not afraid! Isn’t she a peach?” he added to Selden. ”

“ It was difficult to realize that the actual difference in their ages was probably not more than five or six years, and that the impression of maturity which Madame Ghita gave was due almost wholly to her finish, her ease, her perfect poise. As they passed from sight, Davis took off his hat and wiped his forehead and breathed a deep sigh.
“Is it as bad as that?” inquired Selden, with a smile.
“Oh, I’m in love all right,” Davis answered, “and I’m going to marry her—I don’t give a damn what anybody says. I’ve never met a girl who could hold a candle to her.” ”

“ I sometimes think it is even worse for a gambler to win than to lose. He is encouraged to go on—to commit new follies. You should be thankful you have not the temperament, M. Selden.”
“And you, madame?” he asked.
“Ah, I too gamble sometimes, it is true, not because I have the temperament but because I have great need to distract my thoughts. What would you, monsieur! Here am I the wife of a prince, but not recognized because I have no money; in a position the most equivocal, knowing that schemes are constantly afoot to marry him to some other woman. ”

“ The boy was curiously like her, but the daughter was of a different and much finer type, and Selden guessed that she carried on the father’s strain. Not strikingly beautiful, but fresh-skinned and wholesome, with a face delicately chiselled and touched just the slightest, when in repose, by sadness or disillusion—just a little too old and too reserved for its years; in this respect more of Europe than of America. ”

“ He has been partially tamed by centuries of restraint, his spirit has been broken by the manifold burdens laid upon him; for generation after generation, all the pillars of society have struggled to convince him that the greatest blessings he can hope to win in this world are a wife and children and that his highest privilege is to labour to support them; all the forces of law, of civilization, of public opinion, have conspired to hobble, shackle and coerce him. ”

“ The season at Deauville had been marked by an extravagance wild beyond parallel, by such gambling as the world had never seen. Now it was here, along the Riviera, that the orgy was continued. And not here only, as he well knew, but in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin—yes, [97] even in Vienna and Budapest and Warsaw, before the eyes of starving spectators—the dance whirled on. Thoughtful men looked on aghast, but no one was wise enough to foretell how or when it would end. That the end would be disaster Selden did not for a moment doubt. ”

“ Selden was well aware that nothing is more revealing of a man’s character than a glass of champagne too much. It loosens the tongue of the weak man—the ordinary man; breaks down his reserve and prods him on to talk carelessly and boastfully, to prove his importance at whatever cost. But with the strong man the effect is quite the contrary; he grows more guarded with every glass—the result, perhaps, of breeding, of wisdom gained by experience. ”

“ It is a masterpiece of its kind, this opera house, the work of that Charles Garnier who built the Paris opera, and whose style, if too gay and florid for a temple dedicated to the classics, is admirably suited to the frivolous atmosphere of Monte Carlo. Outside it is a medley of columns, mosaics, lyres, masks and minarets; inside, of gilding, garlands, friezes and frescoes. Vigorous young women support the domed ceiling, naked youths perch precariously on the cornices; one is confused and intimidated by the riot of colour and decoration. ”

“ They descended together to the atrium, but the prince was not among the people loitering there. The public gaming rooms beyond were jammed with the usual sordid crowd—shabby old men and women to whom the tables were the breath of life, who spent week after week, month after month, watching the wheel and recording every play, in the hope of discovering a system; cheap adventurers, striving to pick up a few francs; half-starved shop-girls, risking their last little notes with trembling hands; harpies of the underworld, trying to attach themselves to any man who seemed to be winning ”

“ They are not republics, but they are none the less democracies—more truly so in some respects, perhaps, even than your own. I, too, recognize the triumph of democracy, and I rejoice in it; but that does not mean that we must place the government of the country in the hands of a mob. Quite the contrary. There is no despotism worse than mob despotism—nothing further removed from the spirit of democracy. ”

“ A sudden thought startled Selden out of his moodiness. What had the prince meant when he promised to give his money to the bank? Why had he smiled so ironically? Which bank?
In a moment Selden was hurrying toward the Sporting Club, and the instant he entered the rooms he knew that his suspicion was correct. That dense crowd around a single table could mean only one thing—somebody was playing the limit. ”

“ You are still young....”
“Yes,” said Madame Ghita with a little smile, “so there is no reason why I should lead a life of poverty, unless I choose it.”
“That is true; but accept now, and you will have something very few women have—independence. You will be free to look for love—to wait for it!”
For an instant Madame Ghita’s eyes rested pensively upon Selden.
“Independence; yes, that is very nice,” she said. “But it is a pleasure to be dependent upon a man when one loves him!” Then she looked at the countess curiously. ”

“ Selden stood for a moment looking after it, as it sped down the slope toward the Condamine. Then he turned the other way toward his hotel.
A strange man, the baron. More royalist than the king, more concerned for the prince than the prince was for himself, a courtier to the bone, a man who knew the secrets of every court, the skeletons in every closet. ”

“ Well, our men believe that.”
“Yes,” said Selden in a low voice; “yes....”
“And after all,” went on the baron, lighting a cigarette, “it is a much greater compliment to a man—a much more difficult thing to achieve—to be a woman’s last lover than it is to be her first one. To be a woman’s first lover—that is nothing; she is curious, she wishes to know what love is, she has not perfected her defence. A man needs only to be a little good-looking and not too stupid. ”