Luxury - Gluttony: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins

"No, monseigneur, to draw music from the lyre, some one must make it vibrate."

"And who will that happy mortal be?"

"My God! who knows? Perhaps you, monseigneur."

"I!" cried the prince, charmed, transported. "I!"

"I say perhaps."

"Oh, what must I do?"

"Please me."

"And how shall I do that?"

"Listen, monseigneur."

"I pray you, do not call me monseigneur; it is too ceremonious."

"Oh, oh, monseigneur; it is a great favour for a prince to be treated with familiarity; he must deserve it. You ask me how you may please me. I will give you not an example, but a fact. The poet, Moser-Hartmann, whose apostasy you say I caused, addressed to me the most singular remark in the world. One day he met me at the house of a mutual friend, looked at me a long time, and then said, with an air of angry alarm: 'Madame, for the peace of spirituality, you ought to be buried alive!' And he went out, but next day he came to see me, madly in love, a victim, he told me, to a sudden passion, — as sudden and novel as it was uncontrollable. 'Let your passion burn,' I said to him, 'but hear the advice of a friend; the passion devours you, let it flow in your verse. Become a great poet, and perhaps your glory will intoxicate me.'"

"And did the inebriation ever come to you?" said the prince.

"No, but glory has come to my lover to console him, and a poet can be consoled for the loss of everything by glory. Ah, well, monseigneur, have I used my influence well or ill?"

Suddenly the archduke started.

A keen suspicion pierced his heart. Dissimulating this painful doubt, he said to Madeleine, with a forced smile:

"But, madame, your adventure with the cardinal legate did not have so happy an end for him. What is left to console him?"

"There rests with him the consciousness of having delivered a country that abhorred him from his presence," replied Madeleine, gaily. "Is there nothing in that, monseigneur?"

"Come now, between us, what interest had you in making this unhappy man the victim of a terrible scandal?"

"How! What interest, monseigneur? What but the interest of unmasking an infamous hypocrite, of chasing him out of a city that he oppressed, — in short, to cover him with contempt and shame. 'I believe in your passion,' said I to him, 'and perhaps I may share it if you will mask as a Hungarian hussar, and come with me to the ball of the Rialto, my dear cardinal; it is an extravagant, foolish caprice on my part, no doubt, but that is my condition, and, besides, who will recognise you under the mask?' This horrible priest had his head turned; he accepted, and I destroyed him."

"And you will destroy me, madame, as you did the cardinal legate," cried the archduke, rising and making a supreme effort to break the charm whose irresistible power he already felt. "I see the snare; I have enemies; you wish by your perfidious seductions, to drag me into some dangerous proceeding, and afterwards to hand me over to the contempt and ridicule that my weakness would deserve. But, bless God! he has opened my eyes in time. I recognise with horror that infernal fascination which took from me the use of my reason, and which was not love even, — no, I yielded to the grossest, most degrading passion which can lower man to the level of a brute, to that passion which, to my shame and to yours, I desire to stigmatise aloud as lust, madame!"

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders and began to laugh derisively, then rising from her seat and walking up to the prince, who had stepped back to the chimney, she took him gently by the hand, and led him back to a chair near her own, without his having the strength to resist this peaceable violence.

"Do me the favour to listen to me, monseigneur," said Madeleine. "I have only a few more words to say to you, and then you will not see the Marquise de Miranda again in your life."

CHAPTER XVI

When Madeleine had seated the prince near her, she said to him:

"Listen, monseigneur, I will be frank, so frank that I defy you not to believe me. I came here with the hope of turning your head."

"So," cried the prince, astonished, "you confess it!"

"Entirely. That end attained, I wished to use my influence over you, to obtain, as I told you, monseigneur, at the beginning of our interview, two things, one considered almost impossible, the other as altogether impossible."

"You are right, madame, to defy me not to believe you," replied the prince, with a constrained smile. "I believe you."

"The two deeds that I wished to obtain from you were great, noble, and generous; they would have made you esteemed and respected. That is very far, I think, from wishing to abuse my influence over you to excite you to evil or indignity, as you suppose."

"Well, madame, come to the point; what is it?"

"First, an act of clemency, or rather of justice, which would rally around you a multitude of hearts in Lombardy, — the free and full pardon of Colonel Pernetti."

The prince jumped up from his chair, and exclaimed:

"Never, madame, never!"

"The free and full pardon of Colonel Pernetti, one of the most honoured men in all Italy," pursued Madeleine, without noticing the interruption of the prince. "The reasonable pride of this noble-hearted man will prevent his asking you for the slightest alleviation of his woes, but come generously to his relief, and his gratitude will assure you of his devotion."

"I repeat to you, madame, that important reasons of state oppose your request. It is impossible, altogether impossible."

"To be sure. I began, you know, by telling you that, monseigneur. As to the other thing, doubtless more impossible still, it simply concerns your consent to the marriage of a young man whom you have brought up."

"I!" cried the archduke, as if he could not believe his ears. "I, consent to the marriage of Count Frantz?"

"I do not know if he is a count, but I do know that his name is Frantz, since it was told me this morning by Mlle. Antonine Hubert, an angel of sweetness and beauty, whom I have loved from her childhood, and for whom I feel the tenderness of a mother and a sister."

"Madame, in three hours from this moment Count Frantz will have left Paris, — that is my reply."

"My God, monseigneur, that is admirable! All this is impossible, absolutely impossible. I say again, I admit that it is impossible!"

"Then, madame, why do you ask it?"

"Why, to obtain it, of course, monseigneur."

"What! notwithstanding all I have just said to you, you dare hope still?"

"I have that presumption, monseigneur."

"Such self-conceit — "

"Is very modest because I am not counting on my presence."

"On what, then, madame, do you rely?"

"On my absence, monseigneur," said Madeleine, rising.

"On your absence?"

"On your remembrance, if you prefer it."