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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est filmd A partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et du haut en bas. en prencnt le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 S 6 ^^^ 4 IN A WINTER CITY. 1 Shctch. Ry OUIDA, ^..^ci. AUIHMIJ OK 'iri.K,' sKiNA,' ' TKI' i>TKI \,' ' TWn LITTI.K WOODKM SHOES," ETC. A NEW EDITION. SToronto : BiVLFORD 'BROTHERS. MDCCCLXXVII. OUIDA'S NOVELS. Uniform. Edition. FOLLE FAlllNE. IDALIA: A Homaiicc. CHANDOS: A Novel. UNDER TWO FLAGS. TRICOTUIN. CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GACrt.. HELD IN BONDAGE. PASCAREL : Only a Story. PUCK: His Vicistitudes, Adventures, &c. A DOG OF FLANDERS. STRATHMORE. TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES. SIGNA. IN A WINTER CITY. BELFOKD lUlOlHEHS, Tohonto. / IN A WINTER CITY. CHAPTER I. 1 Floralia was once a city of great fame. It stands upon an historical river. It is adorned with all that the Arts can assemble of beauty, of grace, and of majesty. Its chronicles blaze with heroical deeds and with the achievements of genius. Great men have been bred within its walls ; men so great that the world has never seen their like again. Floralia, in her liberties, in her citizens, in her poets and paintexd and sculptors, once upon a IN A WINTER CITY, time had few rivals, perhaps, indeed, no equals, upon earth. By what strange irony of fate, by what singular cynical caprice of accident, has this fairest of cities, with her time-honoured towers lilted to her radiant skies, become the universal hostelry of cosmopolitan fashion and of fashion- able idleness ? Sad vicissitudes of fallen fortunes ! — to such base uses do the greatest come. It is Belisarius turned croupier to a gaming- table ; it is Caesar selling cigars and news- papers; it is Apelles drawing for th^ "Albums pour Kh^e ; " it is Pindar rhyming the couplets for " Fleur de The ;" it is Praxiteles designing costumes for a Calico-baD ; it is Phidias form- ing the poses of a ballet ! Perhaps the mighty ghosts of mediaeval FIo- ralia do walk, sadly and ashamed, by midnight under the shadow of its exquisite piles of marble and of stone. If llicy do, nobody sees them : the cigarette smoke is too thick. As for the modern rulers of Floralia, they have risen elastic and elated to the height of the situa- tion, and have done their best and uttermost to de- IN A WINTER CITY. 3 grade their city into clue accordance with her pre- sent circumstances, and have destroyed as much as they dared of her noble picturesqueness and ancient ways. They have tacked or. to her vcn* rable palaces and graceful towers, stucco man- sions and straight hideous streets, and staring walls covered with advertisements, and barren boulevr.rds studded with toy t^'ees that are cropped as soon as they presume to grow a leaf, and have striven all they know to fit her for her fortunes, as her inn-keepers, when they take an antique palace, hasten to fit uj) a smoking-room, and, making a paradise of gas jets and liqueurs, write over it ** II Bar Ameri- cano." It is considered very clever to adapt oneself to one's fortunes ; and if so, the rulers of Flo- ralia are very clever indeed ; only the stucco and the straight streets and the frightful boulevards cost money, and Floralia has no money and a very heavy and terrible debt ; and whether it be really worth while to deface a most beautiful and artistic city, and ruin your nobles and gentry, and grind down youi' artizans B 2 IN A WINTER CITY. and peasants, and make your whole province impoverished and ill-content for the mere sake of pleasing some strangers hy the stucco and the hoardings taat their eyes are used to at home; — well, tJiat perhaps may be an open question. The Lady Hilda Vorarlberg had written thus far when she got tired, left off, and looked out of the window on to the mountain-bom and poet- hymned river of Floralia. She had an idea that she would write a novel ; she was always going to do things that she never did do. After all they were not her own ideas that she had written ; but only those of a Floralian, the Duca della Eocca, whom she had met the night before. But then the ideas of every- body have been somebody else's beforehand, — Plato's, or Bion's, or Theophrastus's ; or your ffivourite newspaper's ; — and the Lady Hilda, al- though she had been but two days in the Winter City, had already in her first drive shuddered at the stucco end the hoardings, and shivered at tlxe boulevards and the little shaven trees. For she was a person o very refined and fasti- IN A WINTER CITY. o dioiis taste, and did really know something about the arts, and such persons suffer very acutely from what the peculiar mind of your modern municipalities calls, in its innocence, " improve- ments." The Lady Hilda had been to a reception too the night before, and had gone with the pre- conceived conviction that a certain illustrious Sovereign had not been far wrong when she had called Floralia the Botany Bay of modern society ; but then the Lady Hilda was easily bored, and not easily pleased, and liked very few things, almost none ; — she liked her horses, she liked M. Worth, she liked bric-k-brac, she liked her brother. Lord Clau'vaux, and when she came to think of it, — well, that was really all. The Lady Hilda was a beautiful woman, and knew it ; she was dressed in the height of fashion, i.e., like a mediaeval saint out of a picture ; her velvet robe clung close to her, and her gold belt, with its chains and pouch and fittings, would not have disgraced Cellini's own working; her hair was in a cloud in front and in a club behind ; her figure was perfect : M. ^ 1 ■ 1 6 IN A WINTER CITY. Worth, who is accustomed to furnish figures as well as clothes, had a great reverence for her; in her, Nature, of whom general!}- speaking he is disposed to think very poorl}', did not need his assistance ; he thought it extraordinary, but as he could not improve her in that respect, he had to be content with draping Perfection, which he did to perfection of course. Her face also was left to nature, in a very blamable degree for a woman of fashion. Her friends argued to her that any woman, however fair a skin she might have, must look washed out without enamel or rouge at the least. But the Lady Hilda, conscious of her own delicate bloom, was obdurate on the point. ** I would rather look washed out than caked over," she would reply : which was cruel but conclusive. So she went into the world with- out painting, and made them all look beside her as if they had come out of a comic opera. In everything else she was, however, as arti- ficial as became her sex, her station, and her century. She was a very fortunate woman ; at least .: IN A WINTER CITY. i society always ^aid so. The Clairvaux people were very terribly poor, though very noble and mighty. She had been married at sixteen, immediately on her presentation, to a gi'cat European capitalist of nondescript nationality, who had made an enormous fortune upon the Stock Exchanges in ways that were never enquired into, and this gentleman, whose wealth was as solid as it sounded fabulous, had had the good taste to die in the first months of their wedded life, leaving her fifty tliousand a year, and bequeathing the rest of his money to the Prince Imperial. Besides her large income she had the biggest jewels, the choicest horses, the handsomest house in London, the prettiest hotel in Paris, Sic.f (fcc, &c. ; and she could very well afford to have a fresh toilette a-day from her friend Worth if she chose. Very often she did choose. " What a lucky creature," said every other woman : and so she was. B"t she would have been still more so had she not been quite so mucJi bored. Boredom is the ni-natured pebble that dways will get in the golden slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure. i 8 IN A WINTER CITY, The Lady Hilda looked out of the window and found it raining heavily. When the sky of Flo- ralia does rain, it does it thoroughly, and gets the disagreeable duty over, which is much more merciAil to mankind than the perpetual drizzle and dripping of Scotland, Irelar^d, Wales, or Middlesex. Il was the rain that had made her almost inclined to think she would write a novel ; she was so tired of reading them. She countermanded her carnage ; had some more wood thrown on the fire ; and felt disposed to regret that she had decided to winter here. Phe missed all her hihelotSy and all the wonderful shades and graces of colour with which her ov n houses were made as rich, yet as subdued in tone as any old cloisonne enamel. She had the finest rooms, here, in an hotel which had been the old palace of Murat ; and she had sent for flowers to fill everj nook and corner of them, an order which Floralia will execute for as many francs as any other city would ask in napoleons. But there is always a nakedness and a gaudiness in the finest suites of any hotel; and the Lady Hilda, though she had educated IN A WINTER CITY. 9 « little else, had so educated her eyes and her taste that a criant bit of furniture hurt her as the grating of a false quantity hurts a scholar. She knew the value of greys and creams and lavenders and olive greens and pale sea blues and dead gold and oriental blendings. She had to seat herself now in tin arm-chair that was of a brightness and newness in magenta brocade that made her close her eyelids involuntarily to avoid the hoiTor of it, as she took up some letters from female friends and wondered why they wrote them, and took up a tale of Zola's and threw it aside in disgust, and began to think tliat ghe would go to Algeria, since her doctors had agreed that her lungs would not bear the cold of Paris thib winter. Only t^iere was no art in Algeria and tliere was plenty in Flcralia, present and traditional, and so far as a woman of fashion can demean herself to think seriously of anything bayond dress and rivalry, she had in a way studied art of all kinds, languidly indeed and perhaps super- ficially, but still with some true understanding of it ; for, although she had done her best, as 10 IN A WINTER CITY. became 9.femme comme ilfaut, to stifle the intel- ligence she had been created with, slie yet had moments in which M. Worth did not seem Jehovah, and in which Society scarcely appeared the Alpha and Omega of human existence, as of course .-hey did to her when she was in her riglit frame of mind. *' I shall go to Algeria or Rome," she said to herself: it rained pitilessly, hiding even the bridges on the opposite side of the river; she had a dreadful magenta-coloured chair, and the window curtains were scarlet; the letters were on thin foreign paper and crossed ; the hook was unreadable ; at luncheon they had given her horrible soup and a vol-au-vent that for all flavour it possessed might have been made of acorns, ship-biscuit and shalots ; and she had just heard that her cousin the Countess do Caviare, whom she never approved of, and who always bor- rowed money of her, was coming also to the Hotel Murat. It was not wonderful that she settled in her own mind to leave Floralia as soon as she had come to it. It was four o'clock. J IN A WINTER CITY. 11 1 She thought she would send round to the bric-a-hrac dealers, and tell them to bring her what china and enamels p-nd things they had in their shops for her to look at; little that is worth having ever comes into the market in these days, save when private collections are publicly sold ; she knew the Hotel Drouot and Christie and Manson's too well not to know that; still it would be something to do. Her hand was on the bell when one of her servants entered. He had a card on a salver, " Does Madame receive ? " he asked, in some trepidation, for do what her servants might they generally did wrong ; when they obeyed her she had almost invariably changed her mind before her command could be executed, and when thev did not obey her, then the Clairvaux blood, which . was crossed with French and Russian, and had been Norman to begin with, made itself felt in her usually tranquil veins. She glanced at the card. It might be a bric- a-brac dealer's. On it was written ** Duca della Rocca." She paused doubtfully some moments. 12 IN A WINTER CITY. "It is raining very hard," she thought; then gave a sign of assent. Ever3^body wearied her after ten minutes ; still when it was raining so hard- : CHAPTER IT. " They say," the great assassin who slays as many thousands as ever did plague or cholera, drink or warfare ; " they say," the thief of re- putation, who steals, with stealthy step and coward's mask, to filch good names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny ; "they say," a giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, a fleet, elusive, vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, wlicn you would seize and choke it ; "they say," mighty Thug though it be which strangles from behind the purest victim, had not been ever known to touch the Lady Hilda. She seemed very passionless and cold ; and no one ever whispered that she was not what she seemed. Possibly she enjoyed so unusual u IN A WINTER CITY. an immunity, first, because she was so very rich ; secondly, because she had many male relations ; thirdly, because women, whilst they envied, were afraid of her. Anyway, her name was altogether without reproach ; the only defect to be found in her in the estimate of many of her adorers. Married without any wish of her own being consulted, and left so soon afterwards mistress of herself and of very large wealth, she had remained altogether indifferent and insensible to all forms of love. Other women fell in love in all sorts of ways, feebly or forcibly, according to their natures, but she never. The passions she excited broke against her serene contempt, like surf on a rocky shore. She was the despair of all the ** tueurs de femmes" of Europe. "Le mieux est rennemi du bien," she said to her brother once, when she had refused the hereditary Prince of Deutschland ; " 1 can do exactly as I like ; I have everything I want ; I can follow all my own whims ; I am per- fectly happy ; why ever should I alter all this ? IN A WINTER CITY. 15 What could any man ever offer me that would be better?" Lord Clakvaux was obliged to grumble that he did not know what any man could. " Unless you were to care for the man," he muttered shamefacedly. " Oh !— h !— h ! " said the Lady HUda, with the most prolonged delicate and eloquent inter- jection of amazed scorn. Lord Clairvaux felt that he had been as silly and rustic as if he were a ploughboy. He was an affectionate creature himself, in character very lilte a Newfoundland dog, and had none of his sister's talent and temperament; he loved her dearly, but he was always a little afraid of her. ** Hilda don't say much to you, but she just gives you a look ; and don't you sink into your shoes ! " he said once to a friend. He stood six feet three without the shoes, to whose level her single glance could so patheti- cally reduce him. But except before herself. Lord Clairvaux, in liis shoes or out of them, was the bravest and frankest gentleman that ever walked the 16 JiV A WINTER CITY. earth ; and the universal recollection of him and of his unhesitating hahit of " setting things straight," probably kept so in awe the calumny- makers, that he produced the miracle of a woman who actually was blameless getting the credit of being so. Usually snow is deemed black, and coal is called swans- down, with that refreshing habit of contrariety which alone saves society from stagnation. It never occurred to her what a tower of strength for her honour was that good-looking, good-tempered, stupid, big brother of her's, who could not spell a trisyllable were it ever so, and was only learned in racing stock and greyhound pedigrees ; but she was fond of him in a cool and careless way, as she might have been of a big dog, and was prodigal in gifts to him of great winners and brood mares. She never went to stay with him at Broomsdon j she disliked his wife, her sister-in-law, and she wad always bored to death in English country houses, where the men were out shooting all day, and half asleep all the evening. The country people, the salt of the earth in their own eyes, were in* IN A WINTER CITY. 17 finitesimnl as ants in hers. She detested drives in pony-carriages, humdrum chit chat, and after- noon tea in the library ; she did not care in the least who had hagi d how many brace ; the details of fast runs with hounds were as horribly tiresome to her as the boys homo from Eton ; and she would rather have gone a pilgrimage to Lourdes tlian have descended to the ball, where all sorts of nondescripts had to be asked, and the dresses positively haunted her like ghosts. Five years before, at Broomsden, she had taken up her candlestick after three nights of unutterable boredom between her sister-in-law and a fat duchess, and had mentally vowed never to return there. The vow she had kept, and she had always seen Claii'vaux in Paris, in London, in Baden — anywhere rather than in the home of their childhood, towards which she had no tenderness of sentiment, but merely recollections of the fierce tyrannies of many German governesses. She would often buy him a colt out of the La- grange or Lafitte stables ; and always send half Boissier's and Siraudin's shops to his child reu m m 18 IN A WINTER CITY, at Christmas time. That done, she considered nothing more could be expected of her : it was certainly not necessary that she should bore her- self. To spend money was an easy undemonstrative manner of acknowledging the ties of nature, which pleased and suited her. Perhaps she would have been capable of showing her afl'ec- tion in nobler and more self-sacrificing ways ; but then there was nothing in her circumstances to call for that kind of tiling ; no trouble ever came nigh her ; and the cliariot of her life rolled as smoothly as her own victoria a huit ressorts. For the ten years of her womanhood the Lady Hilda had had the command of immense wealth. Anything short of that seemed to her abject poverty. She could theorise about making her- self into Greuze or Gainsboro' pictures in serge or dimity; but, in fact, she could not imagine herself without all the black sables and silver fox, the velvets and silks, the diamonds and emeralds, the embroideries and laces tliat made her a thing which Titian would have woKshipped. She could not imagine herself for an instant IN A WINTER CITY, 19 without power of limitless command, limitless caprice, ceaseless indulge^ice, \ oundless patron- age, and all the gratifications of whim and will which go with the possession of a great fortune and the enjoyment of an entire irresponsibilit3\ She was bored and annoyed very often indeed because Pleasure is not as inventive a god as he ought to be, and his catalogue is very soon run through ; but it never by any chance oc- curred to her that it might be her money which bored her. When, on a very dreary day early in November, Lady Hilda, known by repute all over Europe as the proudest, handsomest, coldest woman in the world, and famous as an elegante in every fashion- able city, arrived at the Hotel Murat, in the town of Floralia, and it was known that she had come to establish herself there for the winter (un- less, indeed, she changed her mind, which was pro- bable), the stir in the city was extraordinary. She brought with her several servants, several carriage horses, immense jewel cases, and a pug dog. She was the great anival of the season. There was a Grand Duchess of Dresden, in- 3 so IN A WINTER CITY. deed, who came at the same time, but she brought no horses ; she hired her coiijic from a livery- stable, and her star, notwithstanding its royalty, paled in proportion. Besides, the Grand Duchess was a verj' little, shabby, insignificant person, who wore black stuff dresses, and a wig without any art in it. She was music-mad, and Wagner was her prophet. The Club took no account of her. There is a club in Floralia, nay, it is the Club ; — all other clubs being for pui-j)oses gymnas- tic, patriotic, theatric, or political, and out of society altogether. The Club is very fond of black-balling, and gives very odd reasons for doing so, instead of the simple and true one, that it wants to keep itself to itself. It has been known to object to one man because his hair curled, and to an- other because he was the son of a king, and to another because his boots were not made in Paris. Be its reasons, however, good, bad, or indifferent, it pleases itself; by its fiat newly-arrived women are exalted to the empyrean, or perish in obscu- rity, and its members are the cream of masculine Floralia, and sj)end all fine afternoons on the IN A WINTER CITY. 21 steps and the pavement, blocking up the passage way in the chief street, and criticising all equi- pages and their occupants. Wlien the Lady Hilda's victoria, with the two blacks, and the white and black liveries, swept past the Club, there was a great stir in these l)hilosophers of the stones. Most knew her by sight very well ; two or three knew her personally, and these fortunate few, who had the privilege to raise their hats as that carriage went by, rose im- mediately in the esteem of their fellows. " Je n'ai jamais rien connu de si ^patant,'* said the French Due de St. Louis, who belongs to a past generation, but is much more charming and witty than anything to be found in the present one. " Twelve hundred and fifty thousand francs a-year," murmured the Marchese Sampierdareno, "dth a sigh. He was married himself. *' Here is your * affaire,' Paolo," said Don Carlo Mai'emma to a man next him. The Duca della Rocca, to whom he spoke, stroked his moustache, and smiled a little. " She is a very beautiful person," he answered ; '•■U i.-' M 22 IN A WINTER CITY. *' I have seen her before at the Tuileries and at Trouville, but I do not know her at all. I was never presented." " That will arrange itself easily," said the Due de St. Louis, who was one of those who had raised their hats ; ** Maremma is perfectly right ; it is in every way the very thing for you. Moi, je m'en charge." The Dnca della Rocia shrugged his shoulders a very little, and lighted a fresh cigar. But his face grew grave, and he looked thoughtfully after the black horses, and the white and black liveries. At the English reception that night, which the Lady Hilda disdainfully hkened in her own mind to a penal settlement, M. de St. Louis, whom she knew very well, begged to be permitted to present to her his friend the Duca della Rocca. She was dressed like a mediaeval saint of a morning ; at night she was a mediaeval princess. She had feuiUe morte velvet slashed with the palest of ambers ; a high fraise ; sleeves of the renaissance; pointed shoes, and a great many w IN A WINTER CITY. 23 jewels. Delia Eocca thought she might have stepped down out of a Giorgione canvas, and ven- tured to tell her so. He g"YC her the cai'te du pays of the penal settlement around her, and talked to her more seriously for some considerable time. Himself and the Due de St. Louis were the only people she deigned to take any notice of; and she went away in an hcui, or rather less, leaving a kind of flame from her many jewels be- hind her, and a frozen sense of despair in the hearts of the women, who had watched her, appalled yet fascinated. ** Mais quelle femnie impossible ! " said Delia Hocca, as he went out into the nigl.it air. "Impossible! mais comment done ? " said the Due de St. Louis, with vivacity and some anger. The Due de St. Louis worshipped her, as eveiy year of his life he worshipped three hundred and sixty-five ladies. *' Impossible ! " echoed Delia Hocca, with a cigar in his mouth. Nevertheless, the next day, when ^*\ie rain was falling in such torrents tliat no female cr'^ature was likely to be anywhere but before her fire, he ■ ^j * •£ r^ 24 IN A WINTER CITY. called at the Hotel Miirat, and inquired if Miladi were visible, and being admitted, as better than nothing, as she would have admitted the bric-a-brac man, followed the servant upstairs, and walked into an atmosphere scented with some three hundred pots of tea roses, lilies of the val- ley, and hothouse heliotrope. **Ah, ah! you have been to see her. Quite riglit," said the Due de St. Louis, meeting him as he came down the steps of the hotel in the rain, when it was half-past five by the clock. ** I am going also so soon as I have seen Salvareo at the Club about the theatricals ; it will not take me a moment ; get into my cab. you are going there too ? How is Miladi ? You found her charming ? " " Slie was in a very bad humour," replied Delia llocca, closing the cab door on himself. ** Tlie more interesting for you to put her in a good one." ** Would either good or bad last ten minutes? —you know her : I do not, but I should doubt it." The Due arranged the fur collar of h.ia coat. m\\ IN A WINTER CITY. 25 " She is a woman, and rich ; too rich, if one can say so. Of course she has her caprices — Delia Eocca shrugged his shoulders. »> "She is very handsome. But she does not interest me." The Due smiled, and glanced at him. ** Then you probably interested her. It is much better you should not be interested. Men who are interested may blunder." **She is vain — she is selfish — she is arrogant," said Delia Eocca, with great decision. ** Oh ho ! — all that you find out already ? You did not amuse her long ? " ** C'est une femme exageree en tout." pur- sued Delia Rocca, disregarding. " No ! Exaggeration is vulgar — is bad taste. Her taste is excellent — unexceptionable " " Exageree en tout ! " repeated Delia Eocca, with much emphasis. " Dress — jewels — habits — temper — everything. She had three hundred pots of flowers in her room ! " " Flower-pots, pooh ! that is English. It is very odd," pursaed the Due pensively, **but tliey really do like the smell of flowers." . ■XT- 26 IN A WINTER CITY. ** Only because tliey cost so much to rear in their fogs. If they were common as with us, they would throw them out of the window as we do." *' Nevertheless, send her three nundred pots more. II faut commencer la cour, mon cher." Delia Eocca looked out into the rain. ** I have no inclination — I dislike a woman of the world." The Due chuckled a little. " Ah, ah ! since when, caro mio ? " ** There is no simplicity — there is no inno- cence — there is no sincerity- it **Bah!" said the Due, with much disdain; ** I do not know where you have got those new ideas, nor do I think they are your own at all. Have you fallen m love with a * jeune Mees * with apple-red cheeks and sweatmeats in her pocket ? Simplicity — innocence — sincerity. Very pretty. Our old friend of a million vaudevilles, L'Ingenue. "We all know her. What is she in real truth ? — A swaddled bundle of Ignorance. Cut the swad- dling band — ugh ! and Ignorance flies to Know- ledge as Eve did, only Ignorance does not want to know good and evil : the evil contents her : IN A WINTER CITY, 27 she stops short at that. Yes — yes, L'Ingenue will marry you that she may read Zola and Belot ; that she may go to La Biche au Bois : that she may smoke cigars with young men; that she may have her dresses cut half-way down her spL that she may romp like a half drunk harlot in all the cotillons of the year ! Whereas your woman of the world, if well chosen ** " Will have done all these things beforehand at some one else's expense, and will have tired of them, — or not have tired ; of the display of spine and of the cotillon she will certainly never have tired unless she be fifty— »» " That is not precisely what I mean," said the Due, caressing his small white moustache. ** No ; I said well cho£;en — well chosen. What it can matter to you whether your wife smokes with young men, or reads bad novels, or romps till breakfast, I do not see myself. There is a natural destiny for husbands. The unwise fret over it — the wise profit by it. But considering that you dislike these things in your own wife, however much vou like and admire them in the 28 IN A WINTER CITY, vjiYci of other i)ersons, I would still say, avoid our friend of a million vaudevilles ^a petite Mees de seize ans. Ignorance is not innocence, it is a great mistake to suppose that it even secures it. Your Mees would seize Belot and Zola a la reveille des noces . Miladi yonder, for in- stance, when they come to her from her book- seller's, throws them aside, unread— »> ** There was a book of Zola's on her table to- day »' " I would bet ten thousand francs that she had not gone beyond the title-page," inteiTupted the Due, with petulance. '* Taste, mon cher Delia Rocca, is the only sure guarantee in these matters. Women, believe me, never have any principle. Principle is a backbone, and no wo- man — except bodily — ever possesses any back- bone. Their priests and their teachers and their mothers fill them with doctrines and convention- alities — all things of mere word and wind. No woman has any settled principles ; if she have any vague ones, it is the uttermost she ever reaches, and those can always be overturned by any man who has any influence over her. But Tasi-e is IN A WINTER CITjT. 29 another matter altogether. A woman whose iaste is excellent is preserved from nil eccentricities and most follies. You never see a woman of good sense afficher her improprieties or adver- tise her liaisons as women of vulgarity do. Nay, if her taste be perfect, though she have weak- nesses, I doubt if she will ever have vices. Vice will seem to her like a gaudy colour, or too much gold braid, or very large plaids, or buttons as big as saucers, or anything else such as vulgar women like. Fastidiousness, at any rate, is very good iiostiche for modesty : it is always decent, it can never be coarse. Good taste, inherent and ingrained, natural and culti- vated, cannot alter. Principles — ouf ! — they go on and off like a slipper; but good taste is inde- structible; it is a compass that never errs. If your wife have it — well, it is possible she ma}^ be false to you; she is human, she is feminine; but she will never make you ridiculous, she will never compromise you, and she will rot romp in a cotillon till the morning sun shows the paint oy her face washed away in the rain of her perspira- tion. Virtue is, after all, as Mme. de Montes- 30 12, A WINTER CITY. m !!tl pan said, une chose tout purement gdographique. It varies with tlie hemisphere like the human skin and the human hair ; what is vile in one latitude is harmless in another. No philosophic person can put any trust in a thing which merely depends upon climate; but, Good Taste " The cab stopped at the club, and the Due in his disquisition, ** Va faire la cour," he said, paternally, to his companion as they went through the doors of their Cercle. " I can assure you, mon cher, that the taste of Miladi is perfect." " In dress, perhaps," assented Delia Rocca. *' In everything. Va faire la cour." Paolo, Duca della Rocca, was a very handsome man, of the finest and the most delicate type of beauty ; he was very tall, and he carried himself with stateliness and grace ; his face was grave, pensive, and poetic ; in the largest assembly people who were strangers to him always looked at him, and asked, " Who is that ? " He was the head of a family, very ancient and distinguished, but very impoverished ; in wars and IN A WINTER CITY. 31 civil war all their possessions had drifted away from them piece by piece, hence, he was a great noble on a slender pittance. It had always been said to him, and of him, as a matter of course, that ho would mend his position by espousing a large fortune, and he had been brought up to regard such a transaction in the light of a painful but inevitable destiny. But although he was now thirty- eight years of age, he had never seen, amongst the many young persons pointed out to him as possessing milUons, anyone to whom he could prevail upon himself to sell his old name and title. The Great Republic inspires, as it is well known, a p*ission for social and titular distinc- tions in its enterprising sons and daughters, which is, to the original flunkeyism of the mother country, as a Gloire de Dijon to a dog-rose, as a Reine Claude to a common blue plum. Nor are the pretty virgins whom the Atlantic wafts across, in any way afflicted with delicacy or hesitation if they can but see their way to getting what they want ; and they strike the bargain, or their mothers do so for them, with a cynical candour III t' .-1 m % I i-i,: 32 IN A WINTER CITY. as to their object which would almost stagger tho manager of a Bureau dc Mariage. Many and various were the gold-laden damsels of the West, who were offered; or offered them- selves, to him. But he could not induce himself; — his pride, or his taste, or his hereditary in- stincts, were too strong for him to be able to ally himself with rag and bone merchants from New York, or oil-strikers from Pennsylvania, or speculators from Wall Street. No doubt it was very weak of him ; a dozen men of the great old races of Europe married thus every year, but Paolo della Rocca loved his name, as a soldier does his flag, and he could not brave the idea of possibly transmitting to his children traits and taints of untraceable or ignoble inherited influences. Over and over again he allowed himself to be the subject of discucsion amongst those ladies whose especial i)leasure it is to arrange this sort of matters; but when from discussion it had been ready to pass into action, he had always murmured to his match-making friend — " A little more time ! — next year." IN A WINTER CITY. 33 ** Ball ! ce n'est qu'iine affaire do notaire," said his special protectress in those matters, a still charming Russian ex-ambassadress, who con- stantly wintered in Floralia, and who, having had him as a lover when he was twenty and she was thirty, felt quite a maternal interest in him still as to his marriage and prospects. Delia llocca was too much a man of the world and of his countrv not to be well aware that she spoke the truth; it was only an affair for the notaries, like any other barter ; still he put it off ; it would have to be done one day, but there was no haste, — there would always be heiresses wilUng and eager to become the Duchess della Rocca, Princess of Palmarola, and Marchioness of Tavig- nano, as his roll of old titles ran. And so year by year had gone by, and he vaguely imagined that he would in time meet what he wanted without any drawbacks : a delusion common to everyone, and realised by no one. Meanwhile, the life he led, if somewhat pu^' poseless, was not disagreeable ; being an Italian, he Could live like a gentleman, with simplicity, and effort to conceal his lack of riches; D ' t •'•♦ 34 IX A WINTER CITY. nor did he tliink liis dignity imperilled because he did not get into debt for the sake of display ; ho would dine frugally without thinking himself dis- honoured; refuse to join in play withouf feeling degraded; and look the finest gentleman in Europe without owing his tailor a bill. For other matters he was somewhat dt^soeuvre. He had fought, like most other young men of that time, in the campaign of '59, but the result disappointed him ; and he was at heart too honest and too disdainful to find any place for himself in that struggle between cunning and cor- ruption, of which the political life of our reg( ne- rated Italy is at present composed. Besides, he was also too indolent. So for his amusement he went to the wovld, and chiefly to the world of great ladies ; u ;«1 for his duties made sufficient for himself out of the various interests of the neglect- ed old estates which he had inherited ; for the rest he was a man of the world ; that he had a perfect manner, all society knew ; whether he had character as well, nobody cared ; that he had a heart at all, was only known to himself, his pea- santry, and a few women. CHAPTER III. The next morning the sun f>hone brilliantly ; the sky was blue ; the wind was a very gentle breeze from the sea ; Lady Hilda's breakfast chocolate was well made ; the tea-roses and the heliotrope almost hid the magenta furniture and the gilded plaster consoles, and the staring mirrors. They had sent her in a new story of Octave Feuillet ; M. de St. Louis had forwarded her a new volume of charming verse by Sully Pi-udhomme, only sold on the Boulevards two days before, with a note of such grace and wit that i1; ought to have been addressed to Elysium for Mme. de SevJgne ; the post brought her only one letter, which announced that her brother, Lord Clair- vaux, would come thither to please her, after tlie p 2 f 36 IN A WINTER CITY. Newmarket Spring Meeting, or perhaps before, since he had to see " Major Fridolin " in Paris, On the whole, the next morning Lady Hilda, looking out of the hotel window, decided to stay in Floralia. She ordered her carriage out early, and drove hither and thither to enjoy tranquilly the innu- merable treasures of all the arts in which the city of Floralia is so rich. A Monsignore whom she knew well, learned, without pedantry, and who united the more vivacious accomplishments of the virtuoso to the polished softness of the churchman, accompanied her. The Clairvaux people from time immemorial had been good Catholics. Lady Hilda for her part never troubled her head about those things, but she thought un- belief was very bad form, and tliat to throw over your family re]igion was an impertinence to your ancestors. Some things in the cere- monials of her church grated on her oesthetic and artistic ideas, but then these things she attributed to the general decadence of the whole age in taste. IN A WINTER CITY. 37 Her Monsignore went home to luncheon with her, and made himself as agreeable as a coui-tly churchman always is to every one ; and afterwards she studied the Penal Settlement more closely by calling on those leaders of it whose cards lay in a heap in her anteroom, and amused herself with its mind and manners, its attributes and antecedents. ** After all, the only people in any oountry that one can trust oneself to know are the natives of it," she said to herself, as she went to the weekly ** day " of the infinitely charming Marchesa del Trasimenc, nata Da Bolsena, where she met Delia Eocca and M. de St. Louis, as everybody meets ever}'body else, morning, afternoon, and evening, fifty times in the twenty -four hours in Floralia, the results being antipathy or sympathy in a fatal degree. In her girations she herself excited extreme attention and endless envy, especially in the breasts of those unhappy outsiders whom she termed the Penal Settlement, There was something about her ! — Worth Pingat and La Ferriere dressed the Penal Settle- P k-. I : ^%: |n iff?"' if If: It $ p I 38 IN A WINTEB CITY. 11 ment, or it said they did. Carlo Maremma always swore that there was a little dressmalcer who lived opposite his stable who could have told sad truths about many of these Paris-born toilettes ; but no doubt Marennna was wrong, because men know nothing about these things, and are not aware that a practised eye can tell the sweep of Worth's scissors under the sjioii- "- blades as surely as a connoisseur recognises the hand of Boule or Vernis Martin on a cabinet or an etid. At any rate, the Penal Settlement swore it was adorned by Worth, Pingat and La Ferriere in all the glories and eccentricities imaginable of confections, unics and mtlangees, Directoire and Premier Empire, Juive and Louis Quinze ; and if talking about a theory could prove it, certainly they proved that they bore all Paris on their persons. But there was something about her — it was difficult to say what ; perhaps it was in the tip of her Pompadour boot, or perhajjs it hid in the back widths of her skirt, or perhaps it lurked in the black sable fur of her dolman, but a something that made them feel there was m A WINTER CITY. 39 a gulf never to be passed between them and this world-famed elegante. Lady Hilda would have said her secret lay in her always being just a quarter oi an hour in advance of the iiishion. She was always the first person to be seen, in what six weeks after- wards was the rage : and when the rage came, then Lady Hilda had dropped the fashion. Hence she was the perpetual despair of all her sex — a distinction which she was quite human enough to enjoy in a contemptuous sort of way ; as contemptuous of herself as of others ; for she had a certain vague generosity and largeness of mind which lifted her above mean and small emotions in general. She had been steeped in the world, as people call that combination of ennui, excitement, selfish- ness, fatigue, and glitter, which forms the various delights of modem existence, till it had pene- trated her through and through, as a petrifying stream does the supple J^ough put in it. But there were little corners in her mind which the petrifaction had not reached. This morning — it was lialf-past five o'clock in ■I 40 IN A WINTER CITY. i a November afternoon, and pitch dark, but of course it was morning still as nobody had dined, the advent of soup and sherry bringing the only meridian recognised in society — the Lady Hilda refreshed with a cup of tea from the samo- var of her friend the Princess Olga Schouvaloff, who came yearly to her palace in the historical river- street of historical Fl or alia, and having been assured by Princess Olga, that if they kept quite amongst themselves, and never knew any- body else but the Floralian Russian and German nobility, and steadfastly refused to allow any- body else to be i^resentcd to them, Floralia was bearable — nay, even really agreeable, — she got into her coupe, and was driven through the gloom to her hotel. Her head servant made her two announce' ments : — Madame de Caviare had arrived that morning, and honied to see her before dinner. Lady Hilda's brows frowned a little. The Duca della Rocca had sent these flowers. Lady Hilda's eyes smiled a little. They were only some cyclamens fresh from the country, in moss. She had regretted to him IN A WINTER CITY. 41 the day before that those lovely simple wood flowers could not be found at florists' shops nor in flower women's baskets. After all, she said to herself, it did not matter that Mila had come ; she was silly and not very proper, and a nuisance altogether ; but Mila was responsible for her own sins, and sometimes could be amusing. So the Lady Hilda, in a good- humoured and serene frame of mind, crossed the corridor to the apartments her cousin had taken just opposite to her own. ** He is certainly very striking looking — like a Vandyke picture," she thought to herself irrele- vantly, as she tapped at her cousin's door ; those cyclamens had pleased her; yet she had let thousands of the loveliest and costliest bouquets wither in her anteroom every year of her life, without deigning to ask or heed who were even the senders of them. " Come in, if it's you, dear," said Madame Mila, ungrammatically and vaguely, in answer to the tap. The Countess de Caviare was an English- woman, and a cousin, one of the great West mi Mm h. isma 42 IN A WINIER CITY, countiy Trehill3'ons whom everybody knows, her mother havmg been a Claii'vaux. She had been grandly married 'n her first season to a very high and mighty and almost imperial Eussian, himseli a most good-humoured and popular per- son, who lolled all his horses with fast driving, gambled very heavily, and never amused himself anywhere so well as in the little low dancing places round Paris. Madame Mila, as her friends always called her, was as pretty a little woman as could be imagined, who enamelled herself to such perfection that she had a face of fifteen, on the most fashionable and wonderfully costumed of bodies; she was very fond of her cousin Hilda, because she could borrow so much money of her, and she had come to Floralia this winter because in Paris there was a rumour that she had cheated at cards — false, of course, but still odious. If she had made a little pencil mark on some of the aces, where was the harm in that ? She almost always played with the same people, and they had won heaps of money of her. 5* IN A WINTER CITY. 43 Whilst those horrid creatures in the city and on the bourse were allowed to " rig the market," and nobody thought the worse of them for spreading false news to send their shares up or down, why should not one poor little woman try to help on Chance a httit bit qt play ? She was always in debt, though she admitted that her husband allowed her liberally. She had eighty thousand francs a year by her settle- ments to spend on herself, and he gave her another fifty thousand to do as she pleased with : on the whole about one half what he allowed to Blanche Souris, of the Chateau Gaillard theatre. She had had six children, three were living and three were dead ; she thought herself a good mother, because she gave her wet-nurses ever so many silk gowns, and when she wanted the childi'en for a fancy ball or u drive, always saw that they were faultlessly dressed, and besides she always took them to Trouville. She bad never had any grief in her life, except the loss of the Second Empire, and even that she got over when she found that flying the Red •if Ml ^■' I ! 44 IN A WINTER CITY. m Cross flag had saved her hotel, without so much as a teacup being broken in it, that MM. Worth and Offenbach were safe from all bullets, and that society, under the Septennate, promised to be every bit as Icste as under the Empire. In a word, Madame Mila was a type of the women of her time. The women who go semi-nude in an age which has begun to discover that the nude in sculpture is very immoral ; who discuss * Tue-la ' in a gene- ration which decrees Moliere to be coarse, and Beaumont and Fletcher indecent; who have the Journal pci x* Hire on their tables in a day when no one who respects himself would name the Harlot's Progress ; who read Beaudelaire and patronise Teresa and Schneider ir an era which finds * Don Juan ' gross, and Shakespeare far too plain ; who strain all their energies to rival Miles. Rose The and La Petite Boulotte in everything ; who go shi^imping or oyster-liunting on fashionable sea- shores, with their legs bare to the knee ; who go to the mountains with confections, high heels, and gold-tipped canes, shriek over their gambling IN A WINTER CITY. 45 as the dawn reddens over the Alps, and know no more of the glories of earth and sky, of sunrise and sunset, than do the porcelain pots that hold their paint, or the silver dressing-hox that carries tlieir hair-dye. Women who are in convulsions one day, and on the top of a drag the next; who are in hysterics for tlieir lovers at noon-day, and in ecsta- cies over haccarat at midnight ; who laugh in little nooks together over each other's immoralities, and have a moral code so elastic that it will pardon anything except innocence ; who gossip over each other's dresses, and each other's passions, in the self-same, self-satisfied chirp of contentment, and who never resent anything on earth, except any eccentric suggestion that life could be anything except a perpetual fete a la Watteau in a per- petual blaze of lime-light. Pain ? — Are there not chloral and a flatterinjr doctor ? Sorrow ? — Are there not a course at the Baths, play at Monte Carlo, and new cases from Worth ? Shame ? — Is it not a famine fe\er which never comes near a well laden table ? Old Age ? — ^Is there not white and red paint, and heads of 1 '^.^A! J r \l\ 46 IN A WINTER CITY. dead hair, and even false bosoms? Death? — Well, no doubt there is death, but they do not realise it ; they hardly beUeve in it, they think about it so little. There is something unknown somewhere to fall on them some day that they dread vaguely, for they are terrible cowards. But they worry as little about it as possible. They give the milHonth part of what they possess away in its name to whatever church they belong to, and they think they have an'anged quite comfortably for all possible contingencies hereafter. If it make things safe, they will head bazaars for the poor, or wear black in holy week, turn lottery-wheels for charity, or put on fancy dresses in the name of benevolence, or do any little amiable trifle of that sort. But as for changing their lives, — pas si lete ! A bird in ^iie hand thev hold worth two in the bush ; and though your birds may be winged on strong desire, and your bush the burning parterre of Moses, they will have none of them. These women are not all bad ; oh, no ! they are like sheep, that is all. If it were fashionable to IN A WINTER CITY. 47 be virtuous, very likely tliey would be so. If it were chic to be devout, no doubt tliey would pass their life on their knees. But, as it is, they know that a flavoui* of vice is as necessary to their reputation as great ladies, as sorrel-leaves to soup a la bonne femme. They affect a license if they take it not. They are like the barber, who said, with much pride, to Voltaire, "Je ne suis qu'un pauvre diable de perruquier, mais je ne crois pas en Dieu plus que les autres." They may be worth very little, but they are desperately afraid that you should make such a mistake as to think them worth anything at all. You are not likely, if you know them. Still, they are apprehensive. Though one were to arise from the dead to preach to them, they would only make of him a nine days* wonder, and then laugh a little, and yawn a little, and go on in their own paths. Out of the eater came forth meat, and from evil there may be begotten good; but out of nullity there can only come nullity. They have wadded their ears, and though Jerehmia i m 1* s» 48 JN A Wir ETt CITY. wailed of desolation, or Isaiah thundered the wrath of heaven, they would not hear, — they would go on looking at each other's dresses. What could Paul himself say that would change them? You cannot make saw-dust into marble ; you cannot make sea-sand into gold. ** Let us alone," is all they ask ; and it is all that you could do, though the force and flame of Horeb were in you. Ilila, Countess de Caviare having arrive arly in the morning and remained invisible an day, had awakened at five to a cup of tea, an ex- quisite dressing-gown, and her choicest enamel ; she now gave many bii'd-like kisses to her cousin, heaped innumerable endearments upon her, and hearing there was nothing to do, sent out for a box at the French Theatre. " It is wretched acting," said the Lady Hilda ; *'I went the other night but I did not stay half-an-hour." " Thai of course, ma chere," said Mt.\dame Mila; **but we shall be sure to see people wc laiow, — Cheaps of peo]3le." ** Such as they are," said the Lady Hilda. IN A WINTER CITY. 49 "At any rate it is better than spcndinff an evening alone. I never spent an evening alono in my life," said Mme. dc Caviare, who could no more live without a crowd about her than sho could sleep without chlorodyne, or put on a petticoat without two or three maids' assist- ance. The French company in Floralia is usually about the average of the weakly patchwork troops of poor actors tliat pass on third rate little stnges in the French departments; but Floralia, feminine and fashionable, ilocks to the French company because it can rely on some- thing tant soit peu hazanle, and is quite sure not to be bored with decency, and if by any oversight or bad taste the management should put any serious sort of piece on the stage, it can always turn its back to the stage and whisper to its lovers, or chatter shrilly to its allies. They went into their box as the second act ended of Mme. de Scahreuse ; a play of the period, written by a celebrated author; in which* the lady married her nephew, and finding out that he was enamoui'ed of her daughter, the offspring -iif. 1 1:. »*•* 60 IN A WINTER CITY. of a first marriage, bought poison for them both, and then suddenly changing her mind, with magnificent magnanimity drank it herself, and J)lessed the lovers as she died in great agonies. It had been brought out in Paris with enor- mous success., and as Lady Hilda and the Countess had both seen it half-a-dozen times they could take no interest in it. ** You ivould come ! " said the former, raising her eyebrows and seating herself so as to see nothing whatever of the stage and as little as possible of the house. ** Of course," replied Madame Mila, whose lorgnon was ranging hither and thither, like a general's spy-glass before a battle. " There was nothing else to do — at least you said there was no- thing. Look ! some of those women have actually got the ceuf de Paques corsage — good heaven ! — those went out last year, utterly, utterly ! Ah, there is Lucia San Luca — what big emeralds — and there is Maria Castelfidai'do, how old she is looking That is Lady Featherleigh — you re- member that horrid scandal ? — Yes, I hear iiiei^ do visit her here. How handsome Luina IN A WINTER CITY. 51 Oitoseccoli loots ; powder becomes her so ; her son is a pretty boy — oh, you never stoop to boys ; you are wrong ; nothing amuses you like a boy ; how they believe in one ! There is that Canadian woman who tried to get into notice in Paris two seasons ago — you remember ? — they make her quite Creme in this place — the idea ! She is dressed very well, I dare say if she were always dumb she might pass. She never would have been heard of even here, only Attavante pushed her right and left, bribed the best people to her parties, and induced all his other tendrcsses to send her cards. In love ! of course not ! Who is in love with a face like a Mohican squaw's, and a squeak like a goose's ? But they are immensely rich ; at least they have mountains of ready money ; he must have suffered dreadfully before he made her dress well. Teach her gram- mar, in any language, he never will. There is the old Duchess — why, slie was a centenarian when we were babies — but they say she plays every atom as keenly as ever — nobody can beat her for lace either — look at tluit Spanish point. I 2 it 52 IN A WINTER CITY. There are a few decent peoj)le here this winter ; not many though ; I think it would have heen wiser to have stopped at Nice. Ah mon cher, comment 9a va ? — tell me, Maurice, who is that woman in black with good diamonds, there, with Sampierdareno and San Marco?" 'Maurice,' pressing her pretty hand, sank down on to the hard bench behind her armchair, and insinuated gracefully that the woman in black with good diamonds was not " d*une vertu assez forte," to be noticed by or described to such ladies as Mila, Countess de Caviare ; but since identification of her was insisted on, proceeded to confess that she was no less a person than the wild Duke of Stirling's Gloria. " Ah ! is that Gloria ! " said [Madame, with the keenest interest, bringing her lorgnon to bear instantly. ** How curious ! I never chanced to see her before. How quiet she looks, and how plainly she is dressed." ** I am afraid we have left Gloria and he/ class no other way of being singular ! " said tlie Lady Hilda, who had muttered her welcome somewhat coldly to Maurice. IN A WINTER CITY. 53 Maurice, Vicomte des Gommeux, was a young Parisian, famous for leading cotillons and driving piebalds; he followed Mme. de Caviare with the regularity of her afternoon shadow ; was as much an institution with her as her anodynes ; and much more useful than her courier. To avoid all appearances that might set a v/icked world talking, he generally arrived in a city about twenty-four hours after her, and, as she was a woman of good-breeding who insisted on les mceiirs, always went to another hotel. He had held his present post actually so long as three years, and there weie as yet no signs of iiis being dismissed and replaced, for he was very devoted, very obedient, very weak, saw nothing that he was intended not to see, and was very adroit at rolling cigarettes. " II est si bon enfant j " said the Count de Caviare, to everybody; he really was gi'atefnl to the young man, some of whose prcdccessoja had much disturbed his wife's temper and his own personal peace. **Bon soir, Mesdames," said the Due de St. Louis, entering the box. " Comtesse, charme de ¥ mm* 64 IN A WINTER CITY. vous voir — Miladi a vos pieds. What a wretched creature that is playing Julie de Scabreuse. I blush for my country, Wlien I was a young man, the smallest theatre in France would not have en- dured that woman. There was a public then with proper feeling for the histrionic as for every other art ; a bad gesture or a false intonation was hissed by every audience, were that audience only composed of workmen and work girls ; but now " "May one enter, Mesdames?" asked his friend, Delia Rocca. " One may — if you will only shut the door. Thanks for the cyclamens," said the Lady Hilda, with a little of the weariness going oflf her deli- cate, proud face. Delia Rocca took the seat behind her, as the slave Maurice surrendered his to M. de St. Louis. " Happy flowers ! I found them in my own woods this morning," he said, as he took his seat. ** You do not seem much amused, Madame." " Amused ! The play is odious. Even poor Desclee's genius could only give it a horrible fas- cination." IN A WINTER CITY, 65 *' It has the worst fault of all, it is unnatural." " Yes ; it is very curious, hut the Frcncli will have so much vice in the drama, and the English must have so much virtue, that a natural or pos- sible play is an impossibility now upon either stage." ** You looked more interested in the Majolica this morning " ' *' How, did you see me ? " "I was passing through the tower of the Podesta on business. Is it not wonderful our old pottery? It is intensely to be regretted that Ginori and Carocci imitate it so closely ; it vul- garises a thing whose chief beauty after all is association and age." " Yes ; what charm there is in a marriage plate of Maestro Giorgio's, or a sweetmeat dish of your Orazio Fontana's ! But there is very scanty pleasure in reproductions of them, how- ever clever these may be, such as Pietro Gay sends out to Paris and Vienna Exhibitions." ** You mean, there can be no mind in an imi- tation?" " Of course ; I would rather have the crudest 60 IN A WINTER CITY. original thing than the mere galvanism of the corpse of a dead genius. I would give a thousand l^aintings by Froment, Damousse, or any of the finest living artists of Sevres, for one piece by old Yan der Meer of Delft ; but I would prefer a painting on Sevres done yesterday by Froment or Damousse, or even any much less famous worker, provided only it had originality in it, to the best reproduction of a Van der Meer that modern manufacturers could produce." ** I think you are right ; but I fear our old pottery painters were not very original. They copied from the pictures and engravings of Man- tegna, Raffaelle, Marcantonio, Marco di Ra- venna, Beatricius, and a score of others." ** The application was original, and the senti- ment they brought to it. Those old artists put so much heart into their work." "Because when they painted a stemma on the glaze they had still feudal faith in nobility, and when they painted a Madonna or Ecce Homo they had still child-lilie belief in divinity. What does the pottery painter of to-day care for the coat of arms or the religious subject he may be IN A WINTER CITY. 57 ■m commissioned to execute for a dinner service or a chapel ? It may be admirable painting — if you give a very high price — but it will still be only manufacture." " Then what pleasant lives those pottery paint- ers of the early days must have led ! They were never long stationary. They wandered about decorating at their fancy, now here and now there ; now a vase for a pharmacy, and now a stove for a kmg. You find German names on Italian ware, and Italian names on Ilemish gres ; the Nuremberger would work in Venice, the Dutchman would work in Eouen." ''Sometimes however they were accused of sorcery ; the great potter, Hans Kraut, you re- member, was feared by his townsmen as possessed by the devil, and was buried ignominiously out- side the gates, in his nook of the Black Forest. But on the whole they were happy, no doubt : men of simple habits and of wortliy lives.*' ** You care for art youi'self, M. Delia Rocca ? " There came a gleam of interest in her hand- some, languid hazel eyes, as she turned them upon him. ;4' m 68 IN A WINTER CITY. ** Every Italian does," he answered her. " I do not think we are ever, or I think, if ever, very seldom connoisseurs in the way that your Eng- lishman and Frenchman is so. We are never verv learned as to styles and drtes ; we cannot boast the huckster's eye of the northern bric-a-brac hunter ; it is quite another thing with us ; we love art as children their nurses' tales and cradle songs; it is a familiar affection with us, and affection is never very analytical; the Robbia over the chapel-door, the apostle-pot that the men in the stables drink out of; the Sodoma or the Beato Angelico that hangs before our eyes daily as we dine ; the old bronze secchia that we wash our hands in as boys in the Loggia — these are all so homely and dear to us that we grow up with a love for them all as natural as our love for our mothers. You will say the children of all rich people see beautiful and ancient things from their birth ; so they do, but not as we see them — here they are too often degraded to the basest household uses, and made no more account of than the dust which gathers on them ; but that very neglect of them makes them the more IN A WINTER CITY. 59 kindred to us. Art elsewhere is the guest of the salon — with us she is the play-mate of the infant and the serving-maid of the peasant : the mules may drink from an Etruscan sarcophagus, and the pigeons be fed from a patina of the twelfth century." Lady Plilda listened with the look of awakened interest still in her large eyes ; he spoke in his own tongue, and with feeling and grace ; it was new to her to find a man with whom art was an emo- tion instead of an opinion. The art world she had met wHh was one that was very positive, very eclectic, very hyper- critical, very highly cultured ; it had many theories and elegant phrases ; it laid down end- less doctrines, and found pleasure in endless dis- putations. Whenever she had tired of the world of fashion, this was the world she had turned to ; it had imbued her with knowledge of art, and immeasurable contempt for those to whom avi was a dead letter ; but art had remained with her rather an intellectual dissipation than a tender- ness of sentiment. " As you care for these things, Madame," con- 60 IN A WINTER CITY. tinuod Delia Rocca, with hesitation, "might I one clay hope that you would honour my poor villa ? It has little else left in it ; but there are still a few rare pieces of Gubbio and Urbino and Faenza, and I have a Calvary which, if not by Lucca himself, is certainly by Andrea della Robbia.* **I shall be glad to see them. 7our villa is near?" " About ten miles' distance, up in the hills. It was once a great stronghold as well as palace. Now it can boast no interest save such as may go with fallen fortunes. For more than a century we have been too poor to be able to do any more than keep wind and water out of it ; and it had been cleared before my time of almost everything of value. Happily, however, the chestnut woods outside it have not been touched. They shroud its nakedness." "Your villa, Delia Rocca? " cried Madame de Caviare, who had known him for several j'ears. " I have never seen it ; we will drive out there some day when the cold winds are gone— t» " Vous me comblez de bontds," he answered, IN A WINTER CITY. CI with a low bow. ** Alas, Madame, there is very little that will repay you : it is hardly more than a ruin. But if you and Miladi will indeed honour it " **It is a very fine place still," said the Due de St. Louis, a little impatiently. " It has suffered in sieges; and is by so much the more interesting. For myself, I endure very much pain from having a whole house, and one built no later than 1730. My great grandfather pulled down the noble old castle, built at the same time as Chateau Gaillard — imagine the barbarism ! — and employed the pon- derous rocaille of Oppenord to replace it. It is very curious, but loss of taste in the nobles has always been followed by a revolution of the mob. The decadence always ushers in the democracy." **\Ve may well be threatened then in this day with universal equality ! " said the Lady Hilda, hiding a very small ya .vn behind her fan. *' Nay, Madame," said Delia Kocca. *' In this day the nobles do not even do so much as to lead a wrong taste ; they accept and adopt every form of it, as imposed on them by their tailors, their architects, their clubs and their munici- -^?^ ■ f '-■" i' 62 IN A WINTER CITY. I palities, as rocaille was imposed by the cabinet- makers." ** How fearfully serious you all are ! " said Madame de Caviare. *' There is that dreadful Canadian woman standing up — what rubies ! how fond vulgar women always are of rubies. That passe-partout of hers is rather pretty ; gold thread on hlondine satin, is it not, Hilda ? My glass is not very strong— >t Lady Hilda looked through her glass, and decided the important point in the affirma- tive. ** How she is rouged ! " pursued the Countess. *' I am sure Altavan^< did not lay that on ; he is much too artistic. Maurice, have you a cigarette ? " "It is not allowed, ma chere," said the Lady Hilda. " Pooh ! " said Madame de Caviare, accepting a little delicate paper roll. " It was very kind of you, Hilda, to remind me of that ; you wished me to enjoy it. Won't you have one too ?" Lady Hilda said ** No " with her fan. ** If the Rocaille brought the Revolution, IN A WINTER CITY. 63 Due," she asked, ** what will our smoking bring? —the end of the world ? " **It will bring animosity of the sexes, aboli- tion of the marriage laws, and large increase of paralysis," rei)lied M. de St. Louis with great decision. ** You have answered me without a compliment — what flattery to my intelligence." ** Miladi, I never flatter you. I am not in the habit of imitating all the world." ** You look severe, Delia Eocca," said Madame Mila. ** Do you disa^iprove of women smoking? " " Madame, a woman of grace lends grace to all she does, no doubt." ** That is to say, you don't approve ii'?'* "Madame, I merely doubt whether Lionardo would have painted Mona Lisa had she smoked." " What a good idea you give me ! — I will be painted by Millais or Cabanel, smoking. It will be novel. The cigar shall be in my mouth. I will send you the first photograph. Ah! there is Nordlingen ; he will come over here, and he is the greatest bore in Europe. You know what your King here said, when Nord- i «!«r- C4 IN A WINTER CITY. i I lingen liad bored him at three audiences about heaven knows what. — ' I iiever knew the use of seutinels before; let that man be shot if he ask audience again ! ' We cannot shoot him ; let i:s go to supper. Due, you will follow us, with M, des Gommeux? — and you, too, Delia Rocca? There is that odious Canadian woman going; let us make haste ; I should like to see that blon- dine cloak close ; I shall know whether it looks like Worth or Pingat." She passed out on the Due's arm, and the Lady Hilda accepted Delia llocca's, while the well- trained Maurice, who knew his duties, rushed to find the footmen in the vestibule, and to arrest another gilded youth and kindred spirit, a M. des Poisseux, whom Madame Mila had espied in the crowd, and charged him to bring with him to supper. Madame Mila preferred, to all the world, the young men of her world of five and twenty or less ; they had no mind whatever, they had not character enough to be jealous, and they were as full of the last new scandals as any dowager of sixty.. it T hey talk of the progress of this nge : con- lon- IN A WINTER CITY. 65 trast M. de 8t. Louis with M. des Gommeux and M. des Poisseux ! " said the Lady Hilda, with her little contemptuous smile Delia Rocca laughed. ** You make me for the first time, Madame, well content to belong to what the Gommeux and the Poisseux would call a past generation. But there are not many like our friend the Due ; he has stepped down to us from the terraces of Marly ; I am certain he went to sleep one night after a gavotte with Montespan, and has only just awakened." The supper was gay and bright ; Lady Hilda, rejecting chicken and champagne, and accepting only ice-water and cigarettes, deigned to be amusing, though sarcastic, and Madame Mila was always in one of the two extremes — either syn- cope, sal volatile, and hysterics, or laughter, frolic, smoke and risqu-e stories. She and her sisterhood spend their lives in this see-saw ; the first state is for the mornings, when they remember their losses at play, their lovers* looks at other women, the compromising notes they have written, and how much — too much to bo .It 66 IN A WINTER CITY. safe — their maids knew of them ; the second state is for the evenings, when they have their war-paint on, have taken a Httle nip of some stimulant at afternoon tea, are going to half-a-dozen houses hctween midnight and dawn, and are quite sure their lovers never even see that any other women exist. " He could not have a better illustration of the difference between a woman with taste and a woman without it," thought the Due de St. Louis, surveying the two ; the Countess had a million or two of false curls in a tower above her pretty tiny face, was almost as decolletee as a Greuze pic- ture, chirped the fashionable slang of the boule- vards and salons in the shrillest and swiftest of voices, and poured forth slanders that were more diverting than decorous. Lady Hilda was dressed like a picture of Marie Antoinette, in 1780 ; her rich hair was lifted from her low fau' forehead in due keeping with her costume, she swept aside her cousin's naughty stories with as much tact as contempt, and spoke a French which Mai'ie Antoinette could have recognised as the language in which Voltaire once IN A WINTER CITY. 67 scoffed, and Andre Clienier sighed. To be sure, she did smoke a little, but then even the most perfect taste cannot quite escape the cachet of its era. " It was not necessary, my friend, to say that your place was so poor," said M. de St. Louis, as they went out of the hotel together; he had known his companion from boyhood. " I am not ashamed of my poverty," said Delia Eocca, somewhat coldly. " Besides," he added, with a laugh which had not much mirth in it, " our poverty is as well known as that of the city. I think the most dishonest Delia Rocca could not conceal it by any adroitness, any more than Floralia could conceal her public debt." ** "hat may be, but neither you nor the town need roclaim the state of your affairs," said the Due, who never gave up an opinion. "You should let her be interested in you before you make it so evident; such silence is quite permissible. You need say nothing ; you need hide nothing ; you need only let things alone." **My dear Due," said Delia Rocca;, with a r2 68 IN A WINTER CITY. laugh that had melancholy in it and some irritation, *' think for one moment of that woman's position, and say could anything ever induce her to change it — except one thing ? Riches could add nothing to her; the highest rank could scarcely be any charm to her; she has eveiything she can want or wish for ; — if she had the power of wishing left, which I doubt. The only spell that might enchain her would be love, if she hav3 any capacity to feel it, which I doubt also. Well — granted love aroused, — what would j)o- verty or riches in her lover matter to one who has secured for ever a golden pedestal of her own from which to survey the woes of the world? She refused the Prince of Deutchsland ; that I know, since he told me himself; and men do not boast of rejections ; — what position, pray, would ever tempt her since she refused Deutchs- land ? and he has all personal attractions, too, as well as his future crown." ** Still, granting all that, to make your lack of fortune so very conspicuous is to render youi' purpose conspicuous also, and to draw her atten- tion to it unwisely," said the Due, who viewed IN A WINTER CITY. 69 In- all these matters calmly, as a kind of mixture of dii)lomacy and business. " Caro mio ! " said Delia Kocca lightly, as he descended the last step. " Be very sure that if I ever have such a purpose, your Lady Hilda has too much wit not to perceive it in a day. But I have not such a purpose. I do not Hke a woman who smokes." And with a good night he walked away to his own house, which was a street or two distant. The Due chuckled, no wise discomfited. " An Italian always swears he will never do the thing he means to do in an hour," the Due re- flected as he got in his cab. The Delia Kocca Palace was let to many tenants and in various divisions ; he himself retained only a few chambers looking upon the old quiet green garden, high walled, dark with ilex, and musical with fountains. He crossed the silent courts, mounted the vast black stairways, and entered his solitary rooms. There was a lamp burning ; and his dog got up and welcomed him. He slipped on an old velvet smoking coat, lighted a cigar, and sat do^vn : the m m ^''t:i : '.u 70 IN A WINTER CITY. ,i councils and projects of M. de St. Louis were not so entirely rejected by him as he had wished tlie Due to suppose. He admired her ; he did not approve her ; he was not even sure that he liked her in any way ; but he could not but see that here at last was the marriage which would bring the resurrection of all his fortunes. Neither did he feel any of the humility which he had expressed to M. de St. Louis. Though she might be as cold as people all said she was, he had little fear, if he once endeavoured, that he would fail in making his way into her graces. With an Italian, love is too perfect a science for liim to be uncertain of its results. Besides, he believed that he detected a different character in her to what die world thought, and she also thought was her own. He thought men had all failed with her because they had not gone the right way to work. After all, to make a woman in love with you was easy enough. At least he had always found it so. She was a woman, too, of unusual beauty, and of supreme grace, and a great alHance ; her IN A WINTER CITY. 71 money would restore him to the lost pc .i^er of his ancestors, and save a mighty and stainless name from falling into that paralysis of poverty and that dust of obscurity, which are, sooner or later, its utter extinction. She seemed cast across his path by a caress of Fortune, from which it would be madness to turn aside. True, he had a wholly different ideal for his wife ; he disliked those world-famous elegantes ; he disliked women who smoked, and knew their Paris as thoroughly as Houssaye or Dumas ; he disliked the extrava- gant, artificial, empty, frivolous life they led; their endless chase after new excitements, and their insatiable appetite for frissons nouveaux; he disliked their literature, their habits, their cynicism, their ennui, their sensuality, and their dissipations; he knew them well, and disliked them in all things ; what he desired in his wife were natural emotions, unworn innocence, serenity, simplicity, and freshness of enjoyment; though he was of the world, he did not care very much for it ; he had a meditative, imagina- tive temperament, and the whirl of modern society was soon wearisome to him ; on the other i I'i 7Jt IN A WINTER CITY. hand, he knew the world too well to want a woman beside him who knew it equally well. On the whole, the project of M. de St. Louis repelled as much as it attracted him. Yet his wisdom told him that it was the marriage beyond all others which would best fulfil his destiny in the way which from his earUest years he had been accustomed to regard as in- evitable ; and, moreover, there was something about her which charmed his senses, though his judgment feared and in some things his taste dis- approved her. Besides, to make so self-engrossed a woman love ; — he smi' t d as he sat and smoked in the solitude of his great dim vaulted room, and then he sighed impatiently. After all, it was not a heau role to woo a woiiian for the sheer sake of her fortune ; and he was too true a gentleman not to know it. And what would money do for him if it were hers and not his ? — it would only humihate him, — he felt no taste for the position of a prince consort, — it would pass to his children certainly IN A WINTER CITY. 73 after him, and so raise up the okl name to its oklcn dignity ; but for himself I£e got up and walked to the window; the clear winter stars, large before morning, were shining through the iron bars and lozenged panes of the ancient casement; the fountain in the cortile waa shining in the moonlight ; the ducal coronet, carved in stone above the gate- way, stood out whitely from the shadows. ** After all, she would despise me, and I should despise myself," he thought ; the old coronet had been sadly battered in war, but it had never been chaffered and bought. ''4,1 CHAPTER IV. " What do you think oi" Delia Rocca, Hilda," asked Madame Mila at the same hour that night, toasting her pink satin slipper hefore her dress- ing-room fire. Lady Hilda yawned, unclasping her riviere of sapphires. ** He has a very good manner. There is some truth in what 01 ga SchouvalofF always maintains, that after an Italian all other men seem boors." ** I am sure Maurice is not a boor ! " said the Countess, j)ettishly. "Oh no, my dear; he parts his hair in the middle, talks the last new, unintelligible, aristo- cratic argotf and has the charms of every actress and dancer in Paris catalogued clearly in IN A WINTER CITY. 76 • t a brain otherwise duly clouded, as fashion re- quii'es, by brandy in the morning and absinthe before dinner ! Boors don't do those things, nor yet get half as learned as to Mile. Rose The and la Petite Boulotte." Madame Mila reddened angrily. "What spiteful things to say; he never looked at that hideous little Boulotte, or any of the horrible creatures, and he never drinks ; he is a perfect gentleman." " Not quite that, ma chore ; if he had been, he would never have let himself be called hon enfant by youi' husband ! " Madame Mila raged in passionate wrath for five minutes, and then began to cry a little, whimperingly. Lady Hilda gathered up her riviere, took her candlestick, and bade her good night. **It is no use makmg that noise, Mila," she said C00II3'. " You have always known what I think, but you prefer to be in the fashion ; of course you must go on as you like ; only please to remember, — don't let me see too much of Des Gommeux." III pi 76 IN A WINTER CITY. Madame Mila, left alone to the contemplation of her inuk slippers, fumed and sulked felt very angry indeed; but she had borrowed a thousand pounds some six or eight times from the Lady Hilda to pay her debts at i^lay ; and of course it was such a trifle that she had always forgotten to pay it again, because if ever she had any ready money there was always some jeweller, or man dressmaker, or creditor of some kind who would not wait; and then, though it was not her fault, because she i)layed as high as she could any night she got a chance to do so, somehow or other she generally lost, and never had a single sou *o spare ; — so she muttered her rage to the pink slip- ^)ers alone, and decided that it was never worth