Read Ebook: Dictionnaire étymologique historique et anecdotique des proverbes et des locutions proverbiales de la Langue Française en rapport avec de proverbes et des locutions proverbiales des autres langues by Quitard P M Pierre Marie

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The two months' probation that Pierre Olsdorf had undergone had not lowered him in the estimation of his sweetheart. Certainly Lise did not feel her heart beat violently when the man whose name she was to bear kissed her hand, for this grave cavalier, with his slight fair mustache and half-closed blue eyes, was, perhaps, not the husband of whom she had caught glimpses in her dreams; but he would make a princess of her, and the Countess Barineff told her daughter that the happiest unions were often those which love had not preceded.

The ex-comedienne had made up her mind that the house of the young couple should become the liveliest place in the world. She would introduce her friends there; all the artistes that she loved to receive, all the foreigners who for years back had given her own house a deserved reputation for wit and elegance.

The last unconscious hesitations of Lise vanished on seeing the marriage present that the prince offered to her a few days before the ceremony. There was a fortune in jewels and furs, which were marvels, too, of good taste. Nevertheless, she slept that evening with her accustomed calm, and her last nights of maidenhood were troubled by none of the dreams that haunt the purest on the eve of the most important act of life.

So, too, on the next day but one, when she set out for the Church of Isaac, where the ceremony was to take place, she was as fresh and bright-looking, in her dress of white moir? covered with wonderful lace that had belonged to her husband's mother.

Her entry into the basilica, leaning on the arm of General Podoi, was an undoubted triumph. The middle-aged lover of the countess would not, for anything in the world, have delegated his right to lead to the altar, as her "father of honor," her whom more and more he regarded as his daughter. Lise, to gain the chair with armorial bearings that awaited her, had to pass through a friendly crowd made up of all the nobility of St. Petersburg. The frogged and decorated uniforms, the fine dresses, the diamonds and their beautiful wearers, were a dazzling sight.

The prince offered his arm to one of the greatest ladies of the court, the Princess Iwacheff, who acted as "mother of honor" to him, but was not a relative, as the custom usually requires.

Then came the Countess Barineff. Gratified as her pride was, she still wore a calm and dignified air. She might have been by right of birth of the world into one of the first ranks of which her daughter was entering.

A few hours later a princely dinner was served to more than a hundred guests at Pierre Olsdorf's mansion. Next day the Princess Lise entered on the noble life for which she had been so long under preparation.

The prince had intended to quit the city for Pampeln immediately after his marriage; but the season was far advanced, the winter was coming on rapidly, and the Countess Barineff pointed out that he ought not to deprive his young wife of the entertainments to which she would be invited in St. Petersburg, in order to shut her up in a ch?teau at a season of the year when it must necessarily be lonely.

Pierre, as much out of deference to his mother-in-law as from affection for Lise--of whom he seemed very fond--put off the departure for his estate until the following spring. His house--as the countess had promised herself it should--soon became one of the most brilliant in St. Petersburg.

The fact was not altogether pleasing to the prince. He had never cared much for the world, and he would rather have had his wife more for himself alone; but he gave way with a good grace, and balls and receptions succeeded each other at his house throughout the first six months of his marriage. The Princess Olsdorf had her box at the Michael Theatre and at the Italian opera; she was to be seen at all the court balls; no sledge was horsed like hers; the greatest ladies of the Russian nobility became her friends; she was famed in all the gossip of the day for her elegance, wit, and beauty.

As for the prince, he was always rather too grave. He was away only once during all this bustling six months, and that was in order to pay a short visit to Courland that he might see for himself that Pampeln would be worthy to receive its mistress in the spring.

Pierre Olsdorf loved his wife; but with his serious character, and the temperament of a man born in northern latitudes, he knew nothing of trouble and fierce passions. It seemed, too, that it was well he was not otherwise, for Lise was still the woman General Podoi had described her as--gentle, amiable, free from inquietude and jealousy. Her husband was for her, above all, a friend. Neither her heart nor her passions seemed to require more from him. So that all was for the best, and the Countess Barineff, justly proud of her work, was feeling the satisfaction its contemplation gave her when one day the good fellow Podoi reminded her of the promise she had made to accept his name after her daughter's marriage.

"Do you, then, still think of making me your wife?" asked Lise's mother.

"More than ever," replied the general, in a feeling voice. "Come, now, have not I, too, worked for your daughter's happiness, and do not I deserve a reward? What is the only one I covet? Reflect, my dear Madeleine; I have loved you for fifteen years."

"True; and that has aged us both, eh?"

"You are still young and beautiful. As for me, you will give me back my youth."

The general had spoken those words with so dandified an air that the countess could not help smiling in offering him her hand.

"You give it me?" exclaimed Podoi, seizing the hand and covering it with kisses.

"I can not do otherwise," said Madeleine. "Will not people laugh at us a little, though? I shall soon be a grandmother."

"Well, well, we will begin by having grandchildren, that is all."

And the general straightened himself proudly, while the ex-actress tried to summon a faint blush at this freedom of speech in her old lover.

Within a fortnight, very quietly, the marriage of the Countess Barineff and General Podoi was celebrated at the Church of Isaac. The general, in truth, seemed younger than he was by the fifteen years of his constancy and devotion.

The same day, by a strange coincidence, Dumesnil appeared anew in the character of Georges Dandin at the Od?on.

AT PAMPELN.

Toward the end of May, after a most brilliant winter season, all the society of St. Petersburg made ready for its departure. The sledges were put away in the coach-houses, the theaters were closed, and very soon all that were not kept back by their duties or business began their flight.

Some went to Yalta, to be at the sea-side with the court, which goes every year for the summer to the Palace of Livadia; others to the Caucasus, to hunt the lynx and the bear. Many prepared to refill their places at Paris and the watering-places of north-eastern France, in the charming Russian colony which is so truly French in its elegance and tastes.

The moment, then, was come for the Prince Olsdorf, like other great landed proprietors, to visit his estates. He had given his orders at Pampeln some time back. Moreover, as we have said, he had been thither in person to see that all was ready for the reception, not only of his wife, but also of General Podoi, his wife, and the many guests invited to pass part of the summer in Courland.

Somewhat fatigued by balls and receptions, Lise Olsdorf was not less wishful than her husband to quit the city, so that on the appointed day she did not keep the post-chaise waiting that was to take them to Pampeln.

At the time of which we are writing, in 1860, the railway that now joins St. Petersburg and Konigsberg did not exist. The distance between the prince's town house and his country place at Pampeln was not less than a hundred leagues.

All the household he took with him to Courland where his valet, a faithful servant who, so to speak, had seen his master born; his cook, formerly the head cook at the French Embassy, and two women servants for the princess. One of them was a French woman. General Podoi had transferred her services to his daughter when Lise married, being assured thus of always knowing what might be passing in the young people's household when he himself would be away from it.

The servants followed their master and mistress in a big coach, which carried the necessary provisions as well, for no dependence was to be placed on the hotel accommodation in the towns they had to pass through. In most of them the only thing that could be found was the "samovar," ready for the brewing of tea.

After a three days' journey the prince and his people reached the end of their journey.

It was dark when they arrived. All that the princess could make out of the ch?teau was its monumental appearance, but next day she had to confess that all that had been told her of Pampeln was short of the truth.

Built in the reign of the Empress Anne on a hill which overlooks the Wandau River, the residence of the Olsdorfs shows signs of the eclecticism which influenced Russian architecture in the eighteenth century. After having been Grecian in style, and then Italian, it did not take a truly national character until the time of the Czar Nicholas. Though, regarded as a building, the massive and heavy-looking ch?teau offered nothing remarkable to the view in its colossal dimensions, the Pampeln estate was, nevertheless, the most important in the neighborhood, from its extent, the richness of the soil, and the immensity of its forests.

A true gentleman farmer, as his father had been before him, Prince Pierre overlooked everything himself, sometimes being on horseback at day-break to visit the most distant parts of his property. His care was not wholly for the improvement of the land; as we have said before, he was ever anxious for the well-being of his tenants.

The inside of the ch?teau was luxuriously and comfortably furnished.

As for the suite of apartments of the princess, it was easy for her to think in entering it that she had not left St. Petersburg, so scrupulous had the prince been about the furnishing of it, and every petty detail.

Besides the principal bed and reception-rooms there were forty guest chambers. The stables could accommodate at least a hundred horses, and the kennels were filled by the handsomest packs of hounds in the country.

The servants' quarters were at the end of the great shady park full of old trees, where huntsmen, grooms, and all the servants, to the number of forty or fifty, who were not employed within the mansion, were lodged. Counting in the gamekeepers who looked after his ponds and woods, the master of Pampeln had thus at his orders quite a small army, disciplined, alert, and wholly devoted to him.

The pride can easily be imagined that Lise Olsdorf felt when a few days after her arrival her husband conducted her over this splendid domain of which she was to be the queen, and wished to be the benefactress.

A week later her mother and General Podoi arrived. About a score of guests soon followed them, and the hunting season began in full earnest.

From this time forth she was satisfied to go with the hunters in her carriage, as far as the state of the roads would permit. Then with her mother and some women friends she would return to the ch?teau, where in the evening she did the honors of the house with a grace and ease that charmed the guests.

Toward the end of August, Lise, to the great joy of her husband, was delivered of a son, whom they named Alexander. The happy event formed an excuse for a series of entertainments, which brought the season to a close in princely fashion.

September came, and everybody was making the best of their way back to St. Petersburg. The Olsdorf mansion was open again. The princess often stole away from the drawing-room to be with her son.

Lise Olsdorf made a good mother. For two years she was not a single day absent from her child. She had scruples even about trusting him for a few hours to strange hands, and she nursed him through all his infantile troubles.

This tender, complete, and devoted maternal love estranged her somewhat from her husband, and gave her a special distaste for the life he led at Pampeln. She went with the prince, of course, to Courland, but she was rarely to be seen with him on his hunting expeditions and excursions on the banks of the Livonian gulf. The result of this was the birth of a sort of coolness between the prince and his wife, which was sure to grow day by day. Mme. Podoi very quickly saw what was happening. She spoke to her daughter about it, but Lise only replied:

"Why, mother, the prince is a very amiable man, but he is far from being the husband I dreamed of. He never in his life had a passion, and never will have, except for horses and dogs; I am sure of it."

The princess spoke the words in so bitter a tone, and with such a gleam in her fine eyes, that the ex-actress, well versed in this sort of thing, felt a presentiment of some catastrophe in the future.

She was careful, however, to betray no sign of uneasiness. She smiled even, and, smiling, made up her mind to watch.

At the end of three years from the birth of her son, when her constant care for him had become less indispensable, the princess showed a disposition to return to worldly pleasures. At first she was seen at the Michael Theatre, then she began to hold receptions anew, opening her doors to the foreign artistes that her mother introduced to her; and, finally, her reappearance at the court balls was triumphantly welcomed. Then, when the season in the capital was over, she became, to the surprise and joy of the prince, the hardy amazon that she had been in the first months of their marriage.

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