CHAPTER VI.
A STUDENT OF LOVE AFFAIRS.
The departure to Biarritz was carried through without further overt hostilities. It chanced to be holidays with me, all my tutors were on their vacation, my governor, Vohrenlorf, on a visit at Berlin. Hearing of my solitude, he insisted on making arrangements to return speedily; but for a few days I was left quite alone, saving for the presence of my French body-servant Baptiste. I liked Baptiste; he was by conviction an anarchist, by prejudice a freethinker; one shrug of his shoulders disposed of the institutions of this world, another relegated the next to the limbo of delusions. He was always respectful, but possessed an unconquerably intimate manner; he could not forget that man spoke to man, although one might be putting on the other's boots for him. He regarded me with mingled affection and pity. I had overheard him speaking of le pauvre petit roi; the point of view was so much my own that from the instant my heart went out to Baptiste. Since he attributed to me no sacro-sanctity, he was not officious or persistent in his attendance while he was on duty; in fact he left me very much to my own devices. To my mother he was polite but cold; he adored Victoria, declaring that she was worthy of being French; his great hatred was for Hammerfeldt, whom he accused of embodying the devil of Teutonism. Hammerfeldt was aware of his feelings and played with them, while he trusted Baptiste more than anybody about me. He did not know how attached I was to the Frenchman, and I did not intend that he should learn. I had received a sharp lesson with regard to parading my preferences.
It was through Baptiste that I heard of Baron Fritz's side of the case, for Baptiste was friendly with Fritz's servants. The Baron, it appeared, was in despair. "They watch him when he walks by the river," declared Baptiste with a gesture in which dismay and satisfaction were curiously blended.
"Poor fellow!" said I, leaning back in the stern of the boat. To be in such a state on Victoria's account was odd and deplorable.
Baptiste laid down the sculls and leaned forward smiling.
"It is nothing, sire," said he. "It must happen now and again to all of us. M. le Baron will soon be well. Meanwhile he is—oh, miserable!"
"Is he all alone there?" I asked.
"Absolutely, sire. He will see nobody."
I looked up at Waldenweiter.
"He has not even his mother with him," said Baptiste; the remark, as Baptiste delivered it, was impertinent, and yet so intangibly impertinent as to afford no handle for reproof. He meant that the Baron was free from an aggravation; he said that he lacked a consolation.
"Shall I go and see him?" I asked. In truth I was rather curious about him; it was a pleasure to me to break out of my own surroundings.
"What would the Prince say?" said Baptiste.
"He need not know. Row ashore there."
"You must not go, sire. It would be known, and they would say——" Baptiste's shrug was eloquent.
"Do they always talk about everything one does?"
"Certainly, sire, it is your privilege," smiled my servant. "But I think he might come to you. That could be managed; not in the Schloss, but in the wood, quite privately. I can contrive it."
Baptiste did contrive it, and Baron Fritz came. I was now just too old to scorn love, just too young to sympathize fully with it. There is that age in a boy's life, but since he holds his tongue about it, it is apt to escape notice, and people jest on the sudden change in his attitude toward women. Nothing in nature is sudden; no more, then, is this transition. I looked curiously at Fritz; he was timid with me. I perceived that he was not an ordinary young nobleman, devoted only to sport and wine; he had something of Owen's romance, but in him it was self-centred, not open wide to embrace the universe of things beautiful and ugly. He thanked me for receiving him in a rather elaborate and artificial fashion. I wondered at once that he had caught Victoria's fancy; her temperament seemed too robust for him. He began to speak of her in some very poetical phrases; he quoted a line of poetry about Diana and Endymion. I had been made to turn it into Latin verses, and its sentiment fell cold on my soul. He spoke of his passion with desperation, and I thought with pride. He said that, happen what might, his whole life was the Princess's; but he did not mention Victoria's name, he said "her" with an air of mystery, as though spies lurked in the woods. There was nobody save Baptiste, standing sentry to guard this secret meeting. I gave the Baron a cigarette, and lit one myself; I had begun the habit, though still surreptitiously.
"You must have known there'd be a row?" I suggested.
"Tell me of her!" he cried. "Is she in great grief?"
I did not want to tell him about Victoria; I wanted him to tell me about himself. As soon as he understood this, I am bound to say that he gratified me at once. I sat looking at him while he described his feelings; all at once he turned and discovered my gaze on him.
"Go on," said I.
The Baron appeared uncomfortable. His eyes fell to the ground, and he tried to puff at his cigarette which he had allowed to go out. I daresay he thought me a strange boy; but he could not very well say so.
"You don't understand it?" he asked.
"Partly," I answered.
"We never had any hope," said he, almost luxuriously.
"But you enjoyed it very much?" I suggested; I was quite grave about it in my mind, as well as in my face.
"Ah!" sighed he softly.
"And now it's all over!"
"I see her no more. I think of her. She thinks of me."
"Perhaps," said I meditatively. I was wondering whether they did not think more about themselves. "Didn't you think you might manage it?"
"Alas, no. Sorrow was always in our joy."
"What are you going to do now?"
"What is there for me to do?" he asked despairingly. "Sometimes I think that I can not endure to live."
"Baptiste told me that they watched you when you walked by the river."
He turned to me with a very interested expression of face.
"Do they really?" he asked.
"So Baptiste said."
"I promised her that, whatever happened, I would do nothing rash," said he. "What would her feelings be?"
"We should all be very much distressed," said I, in my best court manner.
"Ah, the world, the world!" sighed Baron Fritz. Then with an air of great courage he went on. "Yet, how am I so different from her?"
"I think you are very much alike," said I.
"But she is—a Princess!"
I felt that he was laying a sort of responsibility on me. I could not help Victoria being a Princess. He laughed bitterly; I seemed to be put on my defence.
"I think it just as absurd as you do," I hastened to say.
"Absurd!" he echoed. "I didn't say that I thought it absurd. Would not your Majesty rather say tragic? There must be kings, princes, princesses—our hearts pay the price."
I was growing rather weary of this Baron, and wondering more and more what Victoria had discovered in him. But my lack of knowledge led me into an error; I attributed what wearied me in no degree to the Baron himself, but altogether to his condition. "This, then, is what it is to be in love," I was saying to myself; I summoned up the relics of my scorn once so abundant