“Parbleu, one never knows,” Florian replied, as he lay smiling lazily at the smiling cupids who held up the bed-canopies. “It is a very beautiful feature of my character that at thirty-five I am still the optimist. When I marry I always believe the ceremony to begin a new and permanent era.”
“Oh, very naturally, since everywhere that frame of mind is considered appropriate to a bridegroom.”
The girl had turned her sleek brown head a little, resting it more comfortably upon the pillow, and she regarded Florian with appraising eyes. “My friend, in this, as in much else, I find your subserviency to convention almost excessive. It becomes a notorious mania with you to do nothing whatever without the backing of logic and good precedent—”
“My father, mademoiselle, impressed upon me a great while ago the philosophy of these virtues.”
“Yes, all that is very fine. Yet I at times suspect your logic and your precedents to be in reality patched-up excuses for following the moment’s whim: or else I seem to see you adjusting them, like colored spectacles, to improve in your eyes the appearance of that which you have in hand.”
“Now you misjudge me, mademoiselle, with the ruthlessness of intimate personal acquaintance—”
“But indeed, indeed, those precedents which you educe are often rather far-fetched. You are much too ready to refer us to the customs of the Visigoths, or to cite the table-talk of Aristotle, or to appeal to the rulings of Quintilian. It sounds welclass="underline" I concede that. Yet these, and the similar sonorous pedantries with which you are so glib to justify your prank’s, do not, my friend, let me assure you, seem always wholly relevant to the conditions of modern life—”
“My race descends from a most notable scholar, mademoiselle, and it well may be the great Jurgen has bequeathed to me some flavor of his unique erudition. For that I certainly need not apologize—”
“No, you should rather apologize because that ancient hero appears also to have bequeathed to you a sad tendency to self-indulgence in matrimony. Now to get married has always seemed to me an indelicate advertising of one’s intentions: and I assuredly cannot condone in anybody a selfish habit which to-day leads to my being turned out of doors—”
“A pest! you talk as if I too did not sincerely regret those social conventions which make necessary your departure—”
“Yet it is you who evoke those silly conventions by marrying again.”
“—But in a grave matter like matrimony one must not be obstinate and illiberal. Raoul assures me, you conceive, that his little sister-in-law is a delightful creature. He thinks that as a co-heiress of Nerac, without any meddlesome male relatives, she is the person logically suited to be my wife. And I like to indulge the dear fellow’s wishes.”
“Behold a fine sample of your indulgence of others, by marrying a great fortune! After all, though,” Cecile reflected, philosophically, “I would not change shoes with her. For it is not wholesome, my friend, to be your wife. But it has been eminently pleasant to be your playfellow.”
Florian smiled. And Florian somewhat altered his position.
“Bels doux amies,” sang Florian, softly, “fassam un joc novel—!”
“I must ask for some explanation of, at least,” Cecile stated, with that light, half-muffled laugh which Florian found adorable, “your words.”
“I was about to sing, mademoiselle, a very ancient aubade. I was beginning a morning-song such as each lover in the days of troubadours was used, here in Poictesme, to sing to his mistress at arising.”
“So that, now you are, as I perceive, arising, you plan to honor the old custom ? That is well enough for you, who are a Duke of Puysange, and who have so much respect for precedent and logic. But I am not logical, I am, as you can see, a woman. Moreover, I am modern in all, I abhor antiquity. I find it particularly misplaced in a bedroom. And so, my friend, I must entreat you, whatever you do, not to sing any of those old songs, which may, for anything I know, have some improper significance.”
Florian humored this young lady’s rather strict notions of propriety, and they for a while stopped talking. Then they parted with a friendly kiss, and they dressed each for travelling: and Mademoiselle Cecile rode south upon a tentative visit to Cardinal Borgia, whose proffered benefactions had thus far been phrased with magniloquence and vagueness. This fair girl had the religious temperament, and she delighted in submitting herself to her spiritual fathers, but she required some daily comforts also.
Florian next sent for the boy Gian Paolo, who had now for seven months been Florian’s guest. “I am marrying,” said Florian. “We must part, Gian Paolo.”
“Do you think so?” the boy said. “Ah, but you would regret me!”
“Regretting would become a lost art if people did not sometimes do their duty. Now that I am about to take a wife, you comprehend, I shall for the while be more or less pre-empted by my bride. It is unlikely that I shall be able, at all events during the first ardors of the honeymoon, to entertain my friends with any adequacy. Let us be logical, dear Gian Paolo! I find no fault in you, beloved boy, I concede you to be fit friend for an emperor. It is merely that the advent of my new duchess now compels me to ensure the privacy of our honeymoon by parting, however regretfully, with Mademoiselle Cecile and with you also.”
“Your decision does not surprise me, Florian, for they say that you have parted with many persons who loved you, and who left you—”
“Yes?” said Florian.
“—Very suddenly—”
“Yes?” Florian said, again.
“—And yet without their departure surprising you at all, dear Florian.”
“Oh, it is merely that in moments of extreme anguish I attempt to control my emotions, and to give them no undignified display,” said Florian. “Doubtless, I was as surprised as anybody. Well, but this foolish gossip of this very censorious neighborhood does not concern us, Gian Paolo: and, now that you too are about to go, I can assure you that all your needs”—here for an instant Florian hesitated,—“have been provided for.”
“Indeed, I see that you have wine set ready. Is it”—and the boy smiled subtly, for he was confident of his power over Florian,—“is it my stirrup-cup, dear Florian ?”
Florian now looked full upon him. “Yes,” Florian said, rather sadly. Then they drank, but not of the same wine, to the new Duchess of Puysange. And the boy Gian Paolo died without pain.
“It is better so,” said Florian. “Time would have spoiled your beauty. Time would have spoiled your joy in life, Gian Paolo, and would have shaken your fond belief that I was your slave in everything. Time lay in wait to travesty this velvet chin with a harsh beard, to waken harsh doublings in the merry heart, and to abate your lovely perversities with harsh repentance. For time ruins all, but you escape him, dear Gian Paolo, unmarred.”
Now Florian was smiling wistfully, for he found heartache in this thinking of the evanescence of beauty everywhere, and heartache too in thinking of the fate of that charming old lady, La Tophania, who had been so kind to him in Naples. For Florian could rarely make use of her recipes without recollecting how cruelly the mob had dealt with his venerable instructress: that was, he knew, a sentimental side to his nature, which he could never quite restrain. So he now thought sadly of this stately old-world gentlewoman, so impiously dragged from a convent and strangled, now four years ago, because of her charity toward those who were afflicted by the longevity of others. Yes, life was wasteful, sparing nobody, not even one who was so wise and amiable as La Tophania, nor so lovable as Gian Paolo. The thought depressed him: such wastefulness was illogicaclass="underline" and it seemed to Florian, too, that this putting of his household into fit order for the reception of his bride was not wholly a merry business.