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Introduction to Mathematical Logic 5th Edition
Mendelson Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Mendelson, Elliott
ISBN(s): 9781584888765, 1584888768
Edition: 5
File Details: PDF, 2.95 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
 INTRODUCTION TO
MATHEMATIC AL LOGIC
FIFTH EDITION
 DISCRETE
MATHEMATICS
ITS APPLICATIONS
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 DISCRETE MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Series Editor KENNETH H. ROSEN

INTRODUCTION TO
MATHEMATIC AL LOGIC
FIFTH EDITION

Elliott Mendelson
Queens College
Department of Mathematics
F l u s h i n g , N ew Yo r k , U. S . A .
Chapman & Hall/CRC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mendelson, Elliott.
Introduction to mathematical logic / Elliott Mendelson. -- 5th ed.
p. cm. -- (Discrete mathematics and its applications ; 48)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58488-876-5
ISBN-10: 1-58488-876-8
1. Logic, Symbolic and mathematical. I. Title.

QA9.M4 2009
511.3--dc22 2009002833

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To Arlene
Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................. xiii
Introduction .......................................................................................................... xv

1. The Propositional Calculus ............................................................................ 1

1.1 Propositional Connectives. Truth Tables.......................................... 1
1.2 Tautologies ............................................................................................ 5
1.3 Adequate Sets of Connectives .......................................................... 18
1.4 An Axiom System for the Propositional Calculus ........................ 24
1.5 Independence. Many-Valued Logics ............................................... 34
1.6 Other Axiomatizations ...................................................................... 37

2. First-Order Logic and Model Theory......................................................... 41

2.1 Quantifiers........................................................................................... 41
2.1.1 Parentheses ............................................................................ 44
2.2 First-Order Languages and Their Interpretations.
Satisfiability and Truth. Models.................................................... 48
2.3 First-Order Theories........................................................................... 61
2.3.1 Logical Axioms...................................................................... 62
2.3.2 Proper Axioms ...................................................................... 62
2.3.3 Rules of Inference ................................................................. 62
2.4 Properties of First-Order Theories ................................................... 64
2.5 Additional Metatheorems and Derived Rules ............................... 69
2.5.1 Particularization Rule A4 .................................................... 69
2.5.2 Existential Rule E4 ................................................................ 69
2.6 Rule C .................................................................................................. 73
2.7 Completeness Theorems ................................................................... 77
2.8 First-Order Theories with Equality.................................................. 88
2.9 Definitions of New Function Letters
and Individual Constants ................................................................. 97
2.10 Prenex Normal Forms ..................................................................... 100
2.11 Isomorphism of Interpretations. Categoricity of Theories ......... 105
2.12 Generalized First-Order Theories. Completeness
and Decidability ............................................................................... 107
2.12.1 Mathematical Applications.............................................. 111
2.13 Elementary Equivalence. Elementary Extensions........................ 117
2.14 Ultrapowers. Nonstandard Analysis.......................................... 123
2.14.1 Reduced Direct Products ................................................. 125
2.14.2 Nonstandard Analysis ..................................................... 131
2.15 Semantic Trees .................................................................................. 135
2.16 Quantification Theory Allowing Empty Domains...................... 141

ix
x Contents

3. Formal Number Theory .............................................................................. 149

3.1 An Axiom System .............................................................................. 149
3.2 Number-Theoretic Functions and Relations .................................. 166
3.3 Primitive Recursive and Recursive Functions ............................... 171
3.4 Arithmetization. Gödel Numbers .................................................... 188
3.5 The Fixed-Point Theorem. Gödel’s
Incompleteness Theorem................................................................... 202
3.6 Recursive Undecidability. Church’s Theorem ............................... 214
3.7 Nonstandard Models ......................................................................... 224

4. Axiomatic Set Theory.................................................................................. 227

4.1 An Axiom System .............................................................................. 227
4.2 Ordinal Numbers ............................................................................... 242
4.3 Equinumerosity. Finite and Denumerable Sets ............................. 256
4.3.1 Finite Sets............................................................................... 261
4.4 Hartogs’ Theorem. Initial Ordinals. Ordinal Arithmetic ............ 266
4.5 The Axiom of Choice. The Axiom of Regularity........................... 279
4.6 Other Axiomatizations of Set Theory.............................................. 290
4.6.1 Morse–Kelley (MK) .............................................................. 291
4.6.2 Zermelo–Fraenkel (ZF) ........................................................ 291
4.6.3 The Theory of Types (ST).................................................... 293
4.6.3.1 ST1 (Extensionality Axiom).................................. 294
4.6.3.2 ST2 (Comprehension
Axiom Scheme) ...................................................... 294
4.6.3.3 ST3 (Axiom of Infinity) ......................................... 295
4.6.4 Quine’s Theories NF and ML ............................................. 297
4.6.4.1 NF1 (Extensionality).............................................. 297
4.6.4.2 NF2 (Comprehension)........................................... 298
4.6.5 Set Theory with Urelements ............................................... 300

5. Computability ............................................................................................... 309

5.1 Algorithms. Turing Machines .......................................................... 309
5.2 Diagrams ............................................................................................. 315
5.3 Partial Recursive Functions. Unsolvable Problems....................... 322
5.4 The Kleene–Mostowski Hierarchy. Recursively
Enumerable Sets ................................................................................. 338
5.5 Other Notions of Computability...................................................... 350
5.6 Decision Problems.............................................................................. 368

Appendix A: Second-Order Logic.................................................................. 375

Appendix B: First Steps in Modal Propositional Logic............................. 391
Contents xi

Answers to Selected Exercises ........................................................................ 403

Bibliography....................................................................................................... 433
Notation............................................................................................................... 447
Index .................................................................................................................... 453
Preface

This is a compact introduction to some of the principal topics of mathemat-

ical logic. In the belief that beginners should be exposed to the easiest and
most natural proofs, I have used free-swinging set-theoretic methods. The
significance of a demand for constructive proofs can be evaluated only after a
certain amount of experience with mathematical logic has been obtained. If
we are to be expelled from ‘‘Cantor’s paradise’’ (as nonconstructive set
theory was called by Hilbert), at least we should know what we would be
missing. Readers who wish to learn about constructive mathematics and
intuitionism can consult the books by van Atten (2003), van Atten, Boldini,
Bourdeau, and Heinzmann (2008), Brouwer (1976), George and Velleman
(2001), Heyting (1956), Mancosu (1997), and Troelstra and van Dalen (1988).
The more important changes in this new edition are the following:

1. There is an entirely new exposition, Section 3.7, of some basic ideas

and results about nonstandard models of number theory.
2. A second appendix, Appendix B, has been added as an introduction
to modal propositional logic. The most important application in this
area has to do with provability logic (see Boolos [1993]), but it is also
of great interest elsewhere in logic.
3. The Bibliography has been greatly enlarged, although it is still not
able to do full justice to the enormous expansion of research and
scholarship in logic and related areas.
4. The exercises and the Answers to Selected Exercises have been
expanded and necessary corrections have been made.

The material in this book can be covered in two semesters, but Chapters 1–3
are quite adequate for a one-semester course (Sections 1.5, 1.6, 3.7, and
2.10–2.16 can be omitted in an abbreviated course). I have adopted the
convention of prefixing a ‘‘D’’ to any section or exercise that will probably
be difficult for a beginner, and an ‘‘A’’ to any section or exercise that
presupposes familiarity with a topic that has not been carefully explained
in the text. Bibliographic references are given to the best source of informa-
tion, which is not always the earliest; hence these references give no indi-
cation as to priority.
I believe that the essential parts of the book can be read with ease by
anyone with some experience in abstract mathematical thinking. There is,
however, no specific prerequisite.

xiii
xiv Preface

This book owes an obvious debt to the standard works of Hilbert and
Bernays (1934, 1939), Kleene (1952), Rosser (1953), and Church (1956). I am
grateful to many people for their help, including those who helped with
earlier editions, as well as Katalin Bimbo, Frank Cannonito, John Corcoran,
George Hacken, Maidim Malkov, and Gordon McLean, Jr. I also want to
thank my editor, Bob Stern, for his advice and patience.

Elliott Mendelson
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
sovereigns and sorceresses; where you yourself——'
'I shall never go there,' she said, abruptly interrupting him. 'Do not
talk about it. It makes me restless. I feel as I do when I look over
there.'
She pointed northward, where the unseen shore was.
'I see the sun shine on the mountains, and I see a dazzle of gold, a
gleam of white, a long low line under the blue of the hills, and I
know that is what they call the world, the big world; but I never land
there; it is not for me.'
'Let me take you,' he said softly.
'No,' she said with petulance and resolution. 'Grandfather does not
allow me ever to see the mainland without him; he says it is
accursed, that the people are all mad. And now, as you have eaten
and drunk all you will, it will be best that you should go: he may
return any time, and he does not love strangers.'
'But I may come back and bring you your portrait?'
Her eyes smiled, but she said carelessly, 'That can be as you like.
You are very welcome to what you have had. I will show you the
way to the shore, though I dare say you would find it again by
yourself.'
He endeavoured to linger, but she gave him no leisure to do so. She
escorted him to the edge of the steep descent, and there bade him a
decided adieu.
Loswa, with all his grace and ease and habits of the world, felt at a
loss before this child. He would have kissed her hand in farewell, but
her arms were folded on her chest as she stood on the rock above
him, and nodded to him a good-humoured good-bye; cheerfully,
indifferently, as any boy of her years might have done.
'It is easy to see that you come from Paris!' she called after him,
watching his descent along the passerelle with a kindly little laugh at
the hesitation of his steps.
'Let her marry Gros Louis!' he thought angrily as that clear childish
laughter echoed through the sunlit air from above his head. 'I have
her portrait—that is all that matters.'
What a feature of the next year's Salon would be that brilliant, bold
head when it should be hung in the full light of a May day, for all
Paris to gaze upon, marked 'D'après Nature,' and signed Loswa!
He soon, despite his indolent limbs, which were more used to the
boulevards than the sand and the shingle, regained his boat, and
pushed it in deep water.
Damaris Bérarde stood above on the brow of the cliff, amongst the
olive-boughs and the great leaves of the fig-trees, looking towards
that pale golden far-off shore where 'the world' was a world with
other men than Raphael and Gros Louis, with other fruits than the
round orange and the black olive, with other music than the tinkle of
the throat-bells of the goats.
 CHAPTER IX.
Two days later Loswa entered the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond,
bearing with him a covered panel, which, after his ceremonious
salutation of his hostess, he uncovered and placed on an unoccupied
easel before her.
'Ah! my charming sea-born savage!' said Nadine as she approached
it.
It still looked only a sketch, but it is a very sincere man who will
display a sketch without touching it up and embellishing it, and
Loswa was not sincere in that way, or in many others. He had copied
his original drawing done upon the island, enlarging and improving
it, and, though the portrait had the look of an impromptu creation,
an impression vivid and masterly, it was in reality the product of
many hours of painstaking labour and elaborate thought. Produced
however it might be, it was one of the most brilliant studies which
had ever come from his hand. It was not idealised or made artificial;
it was the head of the girl as he had seen it in the full light of the
morning on Bonaventure. The eyes had the frank, fearless, childish
regard which hers had, and the whole face seemed speaking with
courage, ardour, health, and imagination.
There was a chorus of admiration from all the great people who
were there; it was her jour, and the rooms were full. Anything drawn
by Loswa instantly elicited the homage of that world of fashion in
which his powers were deemed godlike, and this sketch had qualities
so rare and true that even his enemies and hostile critics would have
been forced to concede to it a great triumph of art.
'You have succeeded,' said Nadine, as she put out her hand to him
with a smile. 'You were right and I was wrong. You have painted the
portrait without spoiling it by any affectations. No living painter could
have done it better, and few dead ones.'
Loswa inclined his graceful person to the ground before her, and
murmured his undying gratitude for the condescension of her praise.
'Tout de même, elle me le paiera,' he thought, remembering the
words she had spoken to him on the sea-terrace.
'And how did Perseus find Andromeda?' she asked. 'It must be a
story to be told in verse in the old fashion. Relate it!'
'There has been very little romance about it,' said Loswa, 'and
Andromeda, alas! is contentedly going to marry a boat-builder, stout,
ugly, and old!'
'My dear Loris, that will be for you to prevent,' said Nadine, still
gazing at the sketch. 'I have never seen a face with more character
or more suggestion. C'est un type, as the novelists say. If she do
marry the boat-builder, he will have a stormy existence. There are
daring and genius in her face. Come—sit there and narrate your
adventures with her.'
Never unwilling to be the hero of his own stories, Loswa seated
himself where she bade him, and, becoming the centre of a circle of
lovely ladies, he embellished and heightened the narrative of his
expedition to Bonaventure as he had done the sketch, making his
own part in it more romantic, and the reception of Damaris warmer
than either had been. He had a very picturesque fashion of speech,
and the little incident, under his skilful treatment, obtained the grace
and the colour of a story of Ludovic Halévy's. The portrait could not
open its lips and contradict him. Only his hostess thought to herself,
with amusement: 'I wonder how much of all that is true!'
Whilst he was talking and drawing towards a close in his admirably-
coloured narrative, Melville and Othmar together entered the room
behind him, and the former caught the name of his favourite of the
isle.
He listened in silence till Loswa paused to take breath at the end of
a sentence; then, with a very angry gleam in his clear eyes, he
interposed:
'So, M. Loswa, you have found the latitude and longitude of
Bonaventure without a pilot! Your portrait on that easel is very like,
but I confess I do not recognise the same verisimilitude in your
narrative.'
Loswa, who had paused to meditate on the end of his adventure,
which he felt could not be told with the tame finale which it had had
in real life, was disconcerted, and for a moment silent.
'I have seen your heroine this morning,' pursued Melville; 'I am
distressed to disturb your romance, but she is not the mingling of
Gretchen and Graziella you have just described. I left her busied in
feeding the pigs.'
'I dare say Gretchen and Graziella both fed pigs,' said Loswa with
some ill-humour. 'At least, Monsignor, you will admit that I have
proved to the Countess Othmar that I was capable of making a
study of the betrothed of Gros Louis.'
'That is feeding the pigs with pearls indeed,' said Nadine.
'The pigs are a better destiny than many another,' said Melville.
'You cannot seriously think so?'
'I do, indeed. If you had seen the dark side of life, Madame, as I
have done, you would think so too.'
'No, never. That young girl has genius, or something very like it, in
her face. I will send for her, and show her that there are other fates
possible for a young Hebe with the brows of Athene.'
'That would be a cruel kindness if you like,' said Othmar, who had
been attentively studying the portrait.
'And that is for once a commonplace remark, my dear Otho. Nothing
which takes the band off the eyes is really unkind.'
'I do not know,' said Othmar. 'Great ladies like you have pets which
are not the happier fated for the petting; the dog is shaved and
frizzed, the bird is caged and killed, the marmoset is adored and
neglected; if they were all left to their natural fates they would be
less honoured but longer lived. Yonder palms are honoured too, no
doubt, by being allowed to stand in a corner of your room behind a
lacquered screen and in a gilded basket, but they have neither light
nor air, and will be dead, and when they are so, will be replaced in a
month.'
She smiled. 'How little you know about it! and what perilous things
metaphors always are! The palms go back to their glass-houses and
thrive as well as they did before, while other palms take their place
in my rooms. You talk a little like a Socialist lecturer; your arguments
are all invectives and—what is the logician's word?—pathetic
fallacies!'
'Which is the glass-house to which you could send any human being
whom you had taken from obscurity and contentment?'
'The glass-house is the world, which is always ready for novelties as
the hothouses are ready for new seedlings. How can you tell that
this handsome child may not be destined to make the world her
slave? Besides, even in the interests of Gros Louis himself, it is as
well that the consciousness should come before instead of after.'
'And certainly,' said Loswa, 'no one can say that Gros Louis is a fate
meet for this exquisite child?'
Melville hesitated: 'Gros Louis is not a very admirable person; he is
an unbeliever, of course very avaricious, and of a rough coarse
exterior; but he is a good-tempered man and a very laborious
worker. On the whole, worse things might happen to Damaris
Bérarde than to live always on her island and rear her children there,
as she now rears her poussins and her puppies.'
'That is looked at from a very low plane, Monsignor; unusually low
for you.'
'I can imagine so many things worse for her, that is all,' said Melville,
with an apology in his tone. 'Certainly she ought to have a mate like
a shepherd in Theocritus' pastorals, but as those shepherds exist
not, at least this side of the Alps——'
'Why a shepherd at all?'
'Because they are better than hunters,' said Melville curtly.
Loswa smiled.
'Monsignor is prejudiced to-day,' said his hostess. 'Decidedly this
Galatea must be worth seeing, and the island itself sounds idyllic. I
did not know there was anything so near us still so like Bernardin de
St. Pierre. Dear Melville, go and bring your treasure to us just as she
is; just as Loswa has sketched her, red cap, bare feet, and striped
sea-gown. The moment these people are endimanchées they are
horrible.'
'She does not belong to "those people,"' said Melville, a little
impatiently. 'Her mother was an actress of Paris. I think you might
dress her how you would, she would look well. She has a patrician
look like those girls of Magna Grecia, who are as ignorant as the
stones they tread, but have the port of goddesses.'
'I will see this especial young goddess,' said Nadine, who never
relinquished a whim when it encountered opposition.
Melville was seriously annoyed.
'Will you make Gros Louis more acceptable to her?' he said angrily.
'No; we shall make him impossible.'
'You will create one more déclassée, then, when there are already so
many!'
'What? By seeing her once?'
'Yes,' replied Melville with a certain sternness. 'Once is enough.
Discontent is born at a touch. Content is a thing which no one can
create; but discontent almost anyone can bring about with a word.
Merely to see you, Madame, would be to render this poor child
wretched and ashamed all the rest of her days. I mean no
compliment; only a fact. You float in the very empyrean of culture;
you can only make this young barbarian conscious of her
barbarianism. What is the curse of our age? That every class is
wretched because it is straining forever on tiptoe, striving to reach
into the class above it.'
'Dear Monsignor, I think they always did. Colbert stretched the
draper's yard measure till it reached the throne, and Wolsey stood
on the chopping-block till he was tall enough to touch hands with
king and pope. It is nothing new, though modern democracy thinks
it is.'
'The just ambition of the man of genius is not the restless
monomania of the déclassée.'
'Who can tell what ambition may lie under this Phrygian cap?' said
his tormentor, as she looked once more at the sketch of Damaris.
'Dear Monsignor, I am so delighted when you become a little cross!
It makes us feel that, after all, you are really human!'
'I am exceedingly cross,' said Melville; 'or, to speak more truly,
infinitely distressed.'
'After all, Monsignor, it is not absolutely just to this involuntary
recluse never to give her an occasion to estimate Gros Louis at his
actual worth. According to what you and Loswa say, there are the
gases of revolt already smouldering in her; surely it will be better for
them to take flame before than after.'
'There are a great many lives,' said Melville, with a tinge of personal
bitterness, 'in which those gases are never extinct, yet in which they
are, nevertheless, not allowed to come to the surface and take fire.
It may very well be so with hers.'
'Oh, the cruelty of a priest! Decidedly you will not let her come to us
if you can help it. Well, we will go to her. I owe her an apology.'
Melville trusted to his usual experience of his hostess; he knew that
with her, very often, a caprice ardently desired at sunset was
forgotten by sunrise; that, in default of opposition, such a mere
whim as this would most likely expire as soon as conceived. He said
nothing more to her, and Loswa took his sketch down from the
easel.
'I fear you are angry with me, Monsignor,' he murmured to Melville,
to whom he was always courteous and deferential. 'Indeed, but for
the challenge that Madame Nadège cast at me, I should not have
ventured to find out your inviolate isle.'
'There is no harm done,' said Melville curtly. 'You will not find there
either Gretchen or Graziella.'
Othmar had no sympathy with this new fancy.
'With all the world at your feet, what can you want with a fisher-
girl?' he said, when they were alone, to his wife, who replied:
'She may be original and amuse me. There is hardly anything
original in these days. One never sees anything; and I do not think
she is a fisher-girl. She may even be a genius—an Aimée Desclée—a
Rachel.'
'And do you think it is better to be a Desclée than to live and die, a
happy wife and mother, en bonne bourgeoise?'
'Oh, my dear, it is you who are bourgeois if you see anything
enviable in the prose of Fate! You may be sure that, if she be a
genius, and I help to open her prison doors, I am only the
instrument of Destiny. Someone else would open them if not I.'
'I thought you always ridiculed the idea of Destiny?'
'For ordinary mortals-yes. But genius is accompanied by the Parcæ.
It cannot escape them. Men may kill the body of Chatterton, but
they cannot prevent the dead boy being greater than they.'
'I think your project cruel,' said Othmar. 'If you go to this child, or
bring her here, you will interfere unwarrantably with her peace and
quietude, you will take her out of her sphere; and you can never
make a déclassée happy. Melville is quite right.'
'A déclassée! My dear Otho, what a very conventional reply. A
déclassée is a person uprooted from her own sphere, to be placed
in, or to long to be placed in, one for which she is not the least
adapted. Genius is much more than adapted, it is armed in advance
for any world it choose to take as its own. Rachel was an unlettered
and unwashed Jewess, and Desclée was a tattered little Bohemian:
but the one ruled the world, and the other made it weep like a
child!'
'But I do not know why you should suppose this little girl on her
island is necessarily destined to possess genius?'
'It is in her face, and it would be amusing to discover it. It would
give one a Marco Polo sort of feeling.'
'It is a dangerous kind of exploration. You cannot tell what mischief
may not come out of it.'
'And you do not understand that the supreme charm of a caprice lies
precisely in never knowing in the least what one may come out of it.'
'But where your toys are human souls——'
'There are no such things as human souls. It is an exploded
expression. There are only conglomerates of gases and tissues,
moved by automatic action, and adhering together for a few years,
more or less. That is the new creed. It is not an exhilarating one, but
il en vaut bien un autre.'
'All this does not explain why you have taken a fancy to disturb the
destiny of a little girl whom you have seen once in a boat.'
'Because, I think it may amuse me; all original creatures and
unconventional types are amusing for a little time at any rate.'
'Oh,' said Othmar, half in jest and half in earnest, 'when you have
once taken the idea that anything is amusing, I know cities may
burn and men may die, you will not relinquish your idea till you have
exhausted it.'
'No. I do not think I easily relinquish my ideas; it is only weak people
who do that. It is true few ideas live long; they are all belles du jour,
the bloom of a day.'
Melville had for once erred in his estimate of his hostess. As
tenacious when she was opposed as she was indifferent when
unopposed, she that evening announced her intention of taking
Loswa as her pilot, and of going in person to Bonaventure.
The opposition of Melville, and of her husband, the attraction of
something new, and that charm which always existed for her in the
discovery and examination of anything unusual in human nature, all
contributed to make her dwell on an idea which, had it not been
opposed, might probably have never taken serious shape.
The master passion of her temperament remained the pleasure she
took in the excitation and the analysis of character. She had always
liked to bring about singular scenes, unusual situations, strange
emotions, merely for the sake of observing them with the same
subtle and intellectual pleasure, as a writer of romance feels in the
complications and characters which he creates at will, and at will
destroys. She had always brought about a perilous position when
she could do so, because to enter upon one was as agreeable to her
as it is to a good mountaineer to ascend to perilous heights. She had
been often tempted to regret her own physical coldness, which
rendered such heat of emotion and of danger as d'Aubiac's royal
mistress had known impossible to her. It was less the tragedy of
passion than the psychological intricacies of character which
interested her. 'Tous les amoureux sont bêtes,' she had so often
said, and so continually thought. Of all things which had bored her
throughout her life the love of the male human animal had bored her
the most.
But a complicated situation, a set of emotions on an ascending scale
—a spectacle of troubled consciences and of disturbing elements—
these it had always diverted her to watch, calm and untouched by
them as any marble statue which looks from a glass window upon a
storm at sea. In the language which she used the most, she said to
herself that she would have given nearly all she possessed to be for
once 'empoignée' by an intense emotion.
Sometimes she would look at Othmar and think: 'It is not his fault; it
has certainly not been his fault, and yet there has never been a
second when my heart beat really any quicker for his coming.' In the
highest heights of his own exaltation and ecstasy he had always left
her irresponsive. 'You want Mignon or Juliet for all that,' she had said
to him once.
It amused her now; this fancy of that unknown little island lying
hidden in these gay and crowded seas. She had a fancy to see it and
to divert herself with the human creature on it who she had said was
'un type.' In the afternoon of the following day she sailed thither.
Who could have hoped for an undiscovered isle on these crowded
seas? She was accompanied by Béthune, Loswa, and three other of
her courtiers. Othmar refused to condone what he did not approve;
and Melville had been suddenly called away to Rome.
'To the new Desclée!' she said, as her yacht glided out of its harbour
and bore southward through smooth sparkling sapphire waters.
'A name of melancholy omen,' said Gui de Béthune. 'Sometimes I
think Aimée Desclée is the most pathetic figure of our century.'
'She was a sensitive, and she was a poitrinaire,' answered Nadine
with her sceptical little smile. 'What does physiology tell us? That
genius is only a question of brain tissue and blood-globules, and that
the Mois de Mai and the Prometheus Unbound are only the
consequence of a kind of disease. It is so consoling for us; who have
no disease, perhaps, but have also, alas, no genius! That is why the
world is so fond of the physiologists. They are the great consolers of
all mediocrity.'
 CHAPTER X.
Damaris was gathering oranges and carrying them to the packing-
sheds. She was bearing an empty skip upon her head, and kicking
one of the golden balls before her through the grass, when a
woman, unlike any woman that she had seen before, appeared to
her astonished eyes amidst the emerald foliage of the orange-
boughs and the lilac of the hepaticas which filled the grass.
'I am sure you know me again?' said the sweetest and coldest of
voices. 'I am come to apologise to you for my rudeness. Here is
Loswa, who is afraid to approach you; he will vouch for me.'
Damaris stood still and mute; she put the basket off her head, and
looked in blank stupor at her visitant; her colour came and went
painfully; all in a moment she seemed to herself to grow ugly,
awkward, coarse, foolish, everything which was hideous and painful.
She had no words at her command, she might have been born
dumb. No man had any power to confuse her, but this beautiful
woman paralysed her every nerve.
'I am come to apologise to you for my involuntary rudeness,' said
her visitant in her sweetest manner. 'Your rebuke was apt and very
deserved, but you may be sure that, had I really seen you I should
not have incurred it.'
'It was I who was rude,' said Damaris, with her cheeks scarlet.
Loswa had been unable to embarrass her, but a cruel confusion
possessed her before this woman, who was so unlike herself, who
was so languid, so delicate, so marvellous.
'Not that she is so very beautiful either,' thought the child even in
her bewilderment. 'But she is—she is—wonderful! She is like those
gauze-winged dragon-flies, all silver and gossamer; she is like the
delicate white lilies of the tree datura; she is like, like——I did not
think a woman could be like that!'
'Do you forgive me?' said her visitor with her sweetest smile. 'I did
not really see you, or I should not have made such a blunder—I who
detest such mistakes.'
'I was rude,' stammered the girl again, with difficulty finding her
tongue, whilst her colour came and went with violence.
'Oh no, you were justly on the defensive. You were offended, and
took a just reprisal; the only one in your power. My dear child, M.
Loswa has shown me the sketch he made of you, and told me of
your hospitality to him. Will you not be as hospitable to me? I want
much to make friends with you.' The words were spoken with all the
exquisite charm and graciousness in which she could put such
magic, when she chose, that no one living would have resisted
them, and all such little courage or such vague prejudice as might
have moved Damaris against her melted before them like little
snowflakes in spring before the sun amidst the lilac-buds.
'If Madame will honour me,' she stammered, not even seeing the
men who were present, only thinking of her own rough gown, of her
tumbled hair, of the state of the house filled with wood smoke, as
the oven was getting ready for the baking; of the lines of washed
linen that were stretching from one wall to another.
'How did Clovis let you pass?' she said, struck with a sudden
thought.
'Clovis knew me again,' said Loswa. 'Besides, a man was at the foot
of the passerelle, and brought us up to you.'
'He did not do his duty,' said the girl with a little frown, which drew
together her pencilled eyebrows.
'The man or the dog?' asked Nadine, amused.
'Neither,' said Damaris. She was angered, though she did not divine
how many napoleons had passed into Raphael's hand, who had been
pruning olives, and had had much trouble to hold back the faithful
Clovis, for whom gold had no charm.
'If Brunehildt had not been shut up with her puppies,' she added
regretfully; 'she is much more savage than Clovis.'
'You seem very sorrowful that we did not all have the fate of
Penelope's suitors,' said Nadine, much amused. 'We are the friends
of Monsignor Melville; may not that fact protect us? Is your
grandfather at home?'
No; he was away in the sloop; gone to St. Jean with a cargo.
Damaris did not add that he would have been much worse to pass
than even Brunehildt.
'But I pray you come into the house, Madame,' she added, her
natural courtesy gaining the ascendancy over her embarrassment. 'It
is a poor place, but there is a fine view, and if I had only known——'
'You would have been endimanchée and hideous,' thought Nadine,
as she answered with her sweetest grace that she would go willingly
to that balcony of the beauties of which she had heard so much
from Loswa.
'All her eyes are for me,' she whispered to Béthune. 'She does not
see that any of you exist.'
'I suppose,' rejoined Béthune, 'that we, after all, do not differ so
very much from Raphael and Gros Louis; but between a woman and
a woman of the world there is as much difference as between a raw
egg and a soufflé, between a hen and a peahen.'
'You might find a more poetic comparison; say a poppy and a
gardenia,' said Nadine smiling. 'She is not at the age to think of you.
Have patience; ça viendra. She is really very handsome, lovelier than
Loswa's sketch.'
Damaris, meanwhile, was thinking with agony that there were ready
no cakes, no cream, no white bread, nothing which this delicate and
ethereal visitant would be able to touch—thinking of the linen
swinging in the wind, and of the bacon grey with smoke, and of
Catherine, who, on washing-days, was in her crossest mood!
Nadine, with that swift intuition into, the thoughts of others which
made her the most sympathetic of companions where she deigned
to be sympathetic at all, guessed what was passing through the girl's
mind, and hastened to relieve her embarrassment by asking to be
permitted to remain out of doors, alleging that the air was so soft
and the scent of the orange-blossoms so sweet, that she was
reluctant to leave either.
'Will Madame really prefer it?' said Damaris, unable to conceal her
relief.
'There is the same view to be seen from here,' she added as she
opened a door in the wall and showed them the southern sea
stretching far away, shining blue and violet through arches of olive-
boughs lying all hushed and bright and warm in the glow of the
afternoon sun.
Then she caught a little boy by the shoulder, the son of Raphael,
who was looking on stupidly.
'Run and bring some wine and some fruit,' she whispered to him,
'and ask Catherine to send the old silver.'
Her sense of the obligations of hospitality was stronger than the
dread of her great lady.
'It is not because she is great,' she told herself, angry with her own
timidity. 'But she is so wonderful, so wonderful!'
That supreme distinction in the wife of Othmar, which, when she
walked down a throne-room, made half the other women there look
vulgar, had its charm even for this child, who could not have given a
name to the superiority which awed and fascinated her, even whilst
it made her ready to hide her head beneath the stones like the
lizards.
Nadine, pleased with everything, or so professing herself, sat on a
stone bench within sight of the sea and quartered a mandarin
orange with her white fingers, whilst the sun played on the jewels of
her great rings.
'Of all your many conquests, perhaps you have had none more
flattering than the adoration and amazement of this child,' whispered
Béthune to her.
She smiled.
'And I should not think,' she answered, 'that she was by nature
easily daunted or easily impressed. She has reigned here, the
innocent Alcina of a bucolic paradise. She has character, whether she
have genius or no. Look how coolly she puts poor Loswa aside! As
he discovered Alcina, it will be hard on him if he be not her Rinaldo!'
'You are kinder to him than to her,' said Béthune.
'You always think ill of him.'
'I think of his character much as I do of his art.'
'Surely his art is admirable?'
'It is clever; it is not sincere.'
'My dear Duke, is not that a little hypercritical? You mean that it is a
mannerism.'
'And what is a mannerism but an affectation? And what is an
affectation but a want of truth?'
'That is a wide subject. I cannot discuss it with you just now,
because I want to speak to this child.—My dear, I am a neighbour of
yours; I live on the coast which you see every day; will you come
and stay a few hours with me? We would show you things which
would amuse you.'
'Stay with you?'
The eyes of Damaris opened to their fullest, her face flushed scarlet;
she was so amazed that she forgot her awe of the speaker.
'Why should you want me?' she said bluntly.
'When you are older you will know that people want many things
without knowing why they want them. But I can give you very good
reasons: Monsignor Melville has interested me in you, and I think it
a pity anyone so gifted as you are by nature should never see
anything better than your yard-dogs and—what is your fiancé's
name?—Gros Louis? My poor child, how can you know what it is you
do with yourself? You cannot tell what the world is like.'
'I am very happy,' said Damaris.
The world was a name of magic to her. How often had she not
looked over the strip of sea which severed her from that dazzling
shore where amethystine hills and ivory snows and silvery olive
woods spoke of a world from which she was forever severed!
'I would come to you if I were ever alone,' she said after a pause.
'Well, come with us,' said her temptress smiling. 'It is three o'clock
only now. We will take you with us for a while and send you back by
twilight. Loris has told you who I am.'
The name of Othmar was, even to the ears of Damaris, a spell of
might upon those shores. She was flattered, amazed, touched to
intense emotion, but she stammered out that, although she was
most grateful, yet she dared not; her grandfather would kill her if
she left the island; he was most severe; he never forgave.
'I promise to disarm your grandfather if that is all your fear,' said
Nadine, as she thought to herself, 'These good Communists, je les
connais! They would string us all up to the lamp-posts, if they could,
and yet, when we speak to them, they are in heaven!'
The more terrified and resolute in resistance Damaris grew, the
more decided was her visitant to carry her point and succeed in her
caprice.
'It is really cruel,' murmured Béthune. 'The child is happy: oh
Madame! why pluck this wild rose only to droop in your glass-house,
and be good for nothing ever afterwards? You cannot put it back
upon its stem if once you break it off——'
'Do you think to flower for Gros Louis's buttonhole is a better fate?'
said Nadine with amusement. 'I think you all are very hard to please.
Usually I never notice anybody, and you say I am cruel; when I do
notice anybody you say that is cruel also! I am just in the mood to
play at being a benefactress, and you all oppose my charitable
inclinations. To-morrow I may not be in the humour.'
'Precisely,' said Béthune. 'To-morrow you will wonder what you ever
saw in a hedge rose, but that will not put the rose back in bloom on
the hedge again.'
'The rose will cease to bloom certainly anywhere, and that is
nature's fault, and not mine.'
'I hear you love the old poets,' she said, turning to Damaris. 'Will
you recite something to me? I love them too.'
'And you yawn before every stage in Paris!' murmured Béthune. But
Damaris did not hear him.
'I shall say it very ill, Madame,' she murmured. She was diffident,
terrified indeed; yet her vague consciousness that she had some sort
of power in her, as the lark had, as the nightingale had, made the
old remembered poetry come thronging in her brain and trembling
on her lips as she spoke of it.
'If, after all, I have talent?' she thought, her heart seeming to beat
up to her throat.
'Give us something from Esther,' said her visitor; 'that is the one play
permissible to young girls.'
Damaris smiled, as if at the name of a dear friend. Those verses,
which generation after generation of children have spoken since the
young disciples of the early years of St. Cyr first wept over the perils
of the Jewish heroine, were amongst those which most touched her
heart and pleased her imagination. Unknown to herself, she had
something of the sense of loneliness of an exile, of an alien, on this
little island, which yet she loved so well.
'Voyons, voyons!' said Nadine impatiently, not accustomed to, or
tolerant of, being made to wait. 'Do not be afraid. I will tell you
frankly whether you have any artistic aptitude, or whether you had
better stay and gather oranges and never open a poem all your life.
These gentlemen will flatter you, but I shall not. Voyons!'
She spoke imperatively, and with the imperial air of her most
resolute will. Damaris grew very pale, even to her lips, but she did
not dare refuse to obey. She opened her mouth once, twice, with a
deep-drawn, fluttering, frightened breath; then she began to recite,
with tremulous voice, the
Notre ennemi cruel devant vous se déclare:
C'est lui, c'est le ministre infidèle et barbare
Qui, d'un zèle trompeur à vos yeux revêtu,
Contre notre innocence arma votre vertu.
Et quel autre, grand Dieu! qu'un Scythe impitoyable
Aurait de tant d'horreurs dicté l'ordre effroyable?
and passed on to the passage,
O Dieu, confonds l'audace et l'imposture!
At first her timidity was so great that she was almost inaudible, but
at the fifth and sixth lines the charm which the words possessed for
her began to absorb her thoughts, to take her out of herself into the
region of poetic feeling, to spur and stimulate and strengthen her.
Nature had given her tones full of tenderness and power, and
capable of many varying emotions, and the dramatic instinct, which
was either inherited or innate in her, made her give wholly
unconsciously the just expression, the true emphasis, the accent
which best aided the meaning of the verse, and best shaped its
harmonies and grace.
Her first embarrassment once passed, the animation and spirit
natural to her returned; her intuitive perception made her lend the
required force and feeling to each verse; she could have recited the
whole of the play with ease, so familiar to her were the lines of all
the few volumes she possessed. Night after night, in her little
balcony, when everyone slept except herself and the nightingales,
she had declaimed the speeches sotto voce for her own delight,
living for the hour in the scenes they suggested, and forgetting all
the more sordid details of the existence which surrounded her,
seeing only the moon and the sea and the orange flowers. At any
other time her meridional accent, her childish exaggeration of
emphasis, and southerner's excess of gesture, would have incurred
the ridicule of her hypercritical auditor. But now the critic was in the
mood to be kind and to be easily pleased. She closed her ears to the
defects, and only noted with approbation the much there was to
praise and to approve in the untaught recitation of a girl of fifteen,
who had never seen a stage or heard a recital in the whole of her
short life.
Damaris paused abruptly, and with a startled look, like one
awakened out of dreamland into rough reality.
'I beg your pardon, I forgot myself,' she said stupidly, not well
knowing what she meant and hardly where she was.
She did not hear the eager praises of the gentlemen about her; she
only heard the sweet cool voice of the woman who was her judge,
and who had listened in impassive silence:
'My dear, you have talent,' said that voice. 'Perhaps you have even
genius. With all that music in your shut soul you must not marry
Gros Louis.'
Damaris looked at her wistfully, with all the colour hot in her face,
and her heart beating visibly. Then, she could not have told her why,
she burst into tears.
'Une sensitive!' murmured her visitant a little impatiently. 'You see,
my dear Duke!—it is Aimée Desclée, not Rachel; Adrienne
Lecouvreur, not Mlle. Mars.'
'The greater pity then to take her from her orange-groves,' answered
Béthune. 'What will Paris or the world give that will compensate for
all her loss!'
Damaris did not hear. With shame at her own emotion, and
unwillingness that it should be pitied or observed, she had turned
away, and had been sobbing silently over the uplifted head and
questioning face of Clovis, who had come upward to inspect the
strangers.
'If Esther can move her so greatly,' said Nadine with her little ironical
smile, 'what will Dona Sol do and Marion de l'Orme?'
'I do not think,' said Béthune, 'that it is Esther which moves her
now; it is your abrupt revelation to her of her own powers. Surely to
discover you have genius must be like discovering that you have a
snake in your breast and eternal life in your hand.'
She laughed, and went to where Damaris stood with the dog,
striving to conquer her weakness.
'My dear child, surely you cannot weep for Gros Louis? Nay, I
understand; I startled you because I told you that if you study and
strive you can do great things. I believe so. If you wish I will help
you to do them.'
The girl was silent. So immense was the vision which opened before
her, and so enormous to her fancy were the perils and difficulties
which stretched between her and this promised land, that she was
mute from awe and from amazement.
Always to dwell on Bonaventure, always to steer and sail on the sea,
always to gather the olives and oranges, always to see the sun rise
over the wild shores of Italy and set over the coast of Spain far away
in immeasurable golden distances, always to run up and down the
rocks like the goats, and swim like the dolphins, and go to bed with
the birds and get up with them—this had been the only life she had
known. For the moment she could attain no conception of any other.
She had seen the churches at Villefranche and Eza, and she had
seen the building yards of Villefranche and St. Tropez, and that was
all; her only idea of the great world was of a perpetual fête-day, with
the priests always in their broidered canonicals, and the church bells
always ringing, and the people always thronging in holiday attire,
and going up and down sunny streets noisily and laughing.
That was all she could think of; and yet Imagination, that kindliest of
all the ministers of humanity, had told her there must be more than
this somewhere; had filled her mind with many dim, gorgeous,
marvellous pageantries which grew up for her from the black printed
lines of 'Sintram' and 'The Cid.' There must be something better than
the Sundays of the mainland—— And yet to leave her island seemed
to her like leaving life itself!
All these conflicting thoughts striving together in a mind which was
vivid in its fancies and childish in its ignorance moved her to an
emotion which she could neither have controlled nor have described;
she could find no words with which to answer this great lady, who
seemed to her to have thrown open great golden gates before her,
and let in a flood of light which dazzled her, streaming on her from
unknown skies. And at last she yielded.
'Catherine, I am going on the sea,' she cried, as she ran indoors,
blushing to the roots of her hair at the subterfuge, for she was very
truthful.
The old woman, invisible for the smoke as she stooped over the
great oven, with the handle of its door in her hand, grumbled some
cross words which were neither assent nor dissent. Damaris took
them as the former, and waited for no more; she passed half her life
on the sea, the old servant would find nothing strange in her
absence if she were out till sunset.
'You are sure I shall be back by Ave Maria?' she said timidly to her
temptress.
'Certainly,' said Nadine, who knew well that it was not possible.
'I am sure I ought not to come,' said the girl wistfully.
Her temptress smiled a little.
'Oh, my dear, if you be as feminine as you look, that consideration
will only add la pointe à la sauce.'
Damaris gazed at her with pathetic, impassioned eyes. She did not
understand; she said nothing; she only sighed.
'Come,' said the enchantress.
'I think Othmar was right. It is cruel,' murmured Béthune.
'Men are always so timid,' said Nadine with her customary indulgent
contempt for them. 'Ignorance is not bliss, my dear friend, although
the copybooks say so.—Come, my pretty demoiselle, come and see
our enchanted coasts; we will not harm you, and we will only give
you a little spray of moly such as Ulysses gathered; and perhaps a
magic ring and a wishing-cap, nothing worse.'
The child hesitated still; she knew that she was doing very wrong;
she knew that if what she was doing were discovered, her
grandfather's chastisement would be pitiless; but curiosity,
imagination, interest, were all enlisted on the side of disobedience,
and she had a certain turbulence and ardour of self-will in her nature
which had brought her many hard words from Catherine, and even
blows from Jean Bérarde. All these together conquered her
conscience, her judgment, and her prudence; the gates of the
enchanted world stood open; she might never pass through them, or
see what was beyond them unless she went now.
With that reasoning she sprang down the first ledges of the stone
staircase, and as lightly as a kid would have done leaped from one
step to the other till she reached the edge of the sea.
She allowed her feet to be guided into the barge, and felt it dance
beneath them with a strange thrill; it seemed all to be as unreal as a
chapter of 'Sintram;' the lovely lady who wooed and tempted her
appeared like a being from another world; the gilded prow, the
embroidered flag, the rich awnings fringed with silver wavered
before her in the sunlight.
Before she had known what she had actually done, the oars of the
men cleft the sunshiny water, letting it flow in streams of diamonds
off their blades, and the vessel had already glided away from her
home.
Clovis, who was accustomed never to leave the island, but never
failed to give voice to his grief when he saw her leave him for the
sea, either by swimming or sailing, stood on the strip of sand
beneath the rocky steep of Bonaventure and howled in dismal
solitude. She put her hands to her ears not to hear him; it seemed
as if he reproached and rebuked her.
Soon he became but a little white speck beneath the red sandstone
of the cliff, and the boat had reached the side of the stately
schooner which awaited them in the midst of gay sunshine and
azure water, whilst a flute-player discoursed sweet music from some
unseen retreat.
When the island also began to recede from sight she then, and only
then, began to realise what she had done.
'C'est Bernardin de St.-Pierre tout pur,' said Nadine, surveying with
diversion the amazement and the awe of her captive.
Nothing could be more enchantingly kind than her manner, or more
gentle and encouraging in its patience with the girl's stupor and
timidity. She had gratified her caprice, she had won her wager, and
she was sweet and gracious to the object of it. Obedience had
always found her benignant if at times it had found her as quickly
oblivious. This had been a little thing indeed; a very little thing; but
she would have been irritated if it had escaped or beaten her; would
almost have been mortified.
All her world had told her that to bring the girl thither would be a
folly if not a cruelty; and for that reason beyond all others she had
persevered.
Damaris, seated in the prow of the barge, had the charm for her of
representing the triumph of her own will. So might some young
slave, hardly acquired, on whom her fancy had been strongly and
waywardly set, have represented hers to Cleopatra.
 CHAPTER XI.
Othmar was leaning over the balustrade of the sea-terrace as the
vessel returned. He looked and saw the captive from Bonaventure. A
sort of vague pity mingled with irritation as he did so. Why had
Nadine brought this hapless child from her safe sea silences and
solitudes? It was a jest, but the jest was cruel; as cruel as that
which ties the little living bird on to the bouquet that is tossed from
hand to hand in jests of Carnival.
The poor sea-born curlew would do well enough left to its own nest
upon the rocks, but once taken prisoner its day was done.
There were moments when the caprices of her wayward and
dominant will irritated him; when her profound indifference to the
consequences of any action which amused herself, and compromised
others, repelled him by its coldness. What could this poor little
peasant be to her? A toy for five minutes, a plaything sought out of
mere contradiction, and destined to be cast aside ere the day was
done!
He watched the graceful shape of the schooner as it bore down
upon the coast with a sense of regret as from some definite
misfortune which might have been averted by exercise of his own
will. But he had never used his will in any opposition to his wife.
Wisely or unwisely, he had never made the slightest opposition to
her desires or even her fancies. Begun in the blind adoration of a
lover, the habit of deference to her had continued with him, not out
of feebleness or uxoriousness, but out of that gradual growth of
custom which is one of the most potent influences of life. She had
power over him to make him relinquish many a project, abandon
many a desire, but this power was not reciprocal; it seldom or never
is so between two human beings. The old proverb, that of any twain
one is booted and spurred and the other saddled and bridled, has a
rough truth in it.
Othmar knew nothing of, and cared as little for, this girl whose face
looked with so frank an audacity, so wistful an innocence, out of the
brilliant drawing of Loswa. But he was sorry that she was not let
alone. He had suffered many a bitter moment, even since his
marriage, from the uncertainty of his wife's moods, from the
mutability of her fancies. Constant in his own tastes, and very
unwilling to wound others, her rapid changes from interest to
weariness, and her profound indifference for the bruises she gave to
the amour propre of her fellow-creatures, frequently troubled and
distressed him. He was often kind to persons he disliked, to
compensate them for her unkindness, or to prevent them from
perceiving it.
Nadine, he knew, would think this poor child of no more account
than the briar-rose to which he had likened her; but to him it
seemed wanton and cruel to have disturbed the peacefulness of her
life, merely as a child casts a stone at a bird, and then runs on, not
even looking to see whether the bird be bruised or has fallen.
'Life is but a spectacle,' she had once said to him. 'When you go to
the Gymnase do you distress yourself as to whether the actors catch
cold at the wings or take a contagious disease in a cab as they go
home? Of course you do not? Then why not view life in the same
manner? People bore us or please us; that is all we are concerned
with. We do not follow them home in fact; we need not, even in
imagination.'
But Othmar did not agree with her. Life seemed to him much more
often tragedy rather than comedy; he could not divest himself of a
compassion for the players, with which much fellow-feeling mingled.
'Since I married him he has become very amiable,' she once said
jestingly. 'It is due to the spirit of contradiction which always exists
in human nature, and which is never so strongly developed as in
marriage.'
It was a jest; but there was a truth in the jest. Often he felt so much
irritated at his wife's indifference, that it stimulated him to more
interest or sympathy than he would otherwise have felt on many
subjects and in many persons.
As he saw the yacht approach the sea-wall now, he turned away
impatiently and went into the house to his books. He did not choose
to assist at the festive procession which was conducting this poor
little wild goat of the cliffs to be offered upon the altars of caprice
and flattery.
As if, he thought, a life out of the world were not such an enviable
thing that we should be as afraid to destroy it as we are afraid to
break a Tanagra statuette!
Meanwhile, unretarded by his displeasure, the schooner approached
as nearly as the draught of water would permit, and the boat from it
landed Damaris Bérarde at the foot of the rose-marble stairs.
Béthune would have assisted her, but she sprang from the boat to
the landing-stair with the assured and graceful agility of one who
passed all her life in the open air, and was practised in the free
exercise of all her muscles. Her eyes gazed in delighted wonder at
the beauty of the place.
'It is like Alcina's palace,' she said with a quick breath of admiration.
'What do you know of Alcina?' asked her hostess, amused.
'I have read Ariosto,' she answered, and then, with her extreme care
for perfect truthfulness, added, 'I mean I have read his poems,
translated.'
'It is rather your island which is like Alcina's,' said her hostess.
Then they led her through the gardens, which seemed all a maze of
rose, of yellow, and of white from the innumerable thickets of azalea
which were in bloom. Here and there, out of their gorgeous glow of
colour, there rose the white form of a statue or the white column of
a fountain. The sun was still high in the west; the gardens seemed
to laugh like children in its warmth.
It was all so beautiful, so magical, so strange; the child whose
imagination had been fed on poets' fancies, and had grown
unchecked in an almost complete solitude, expected some
marvellous message, some wondrous destiny to meet her there on
this threshold of a new life.
She found herself the centre of attention and of homage; everyone
looked at her, spoke to her, strove to gain her notice. A vague fancy
came into her mind—perhaps she was a king's daughter after all,
like the Goose Girl in Grimm's stories, of whom Melville had told her
once. Anything would have seemed possible to her, and nothing too
incredible to happen at the close of this astonishing day.
They led her into the house, which was entered from the garden
through conservatories filled with Asiatic and South American plants
and gaily peopled by green paroquets and rose-crested cockatoos,
and scarlet cardinals, which flew at their will amongst the feathery
foliage.
They were all kind to her; full of compliment and of thoughtfulness
for her; even her hostess took trouble to interest her, to explain
things to her, to make her feel that she was welcome and admired.
In her serge frock and her thick shoes, with her rope of pearls
twisted round her throat, and her face in a rose glow of surprise and
of innocent vanity and pleasure, she sat the centre of their interest,
their approval, and their praise. She was a very picturesque figure
with her short blue rough gown and her scarlet worsted cap. She
had twisted her big pearls round her throat, and she had slipped on
her Sunday shoes. She was tall, and lithe, and erect; she looked
astonished, but not intimidated. If a smile were exchanged between
them at her expense she did not see it, and if they looked at her
much as they would have done at a ouistiti or a topaza pyra from
wild woods, she was unconscious of it.
The whole scene was enchantment to her eyes. Her natural sense of
the beauties of form and of colour was at once soothed and excited
by the beauty of these chambers, which had all the subdued glow of
old jewels. It was still daylight, but rose-shaded lamps were burning
there, and shed a mellow hue over all the brilliant colours. They
brought her tea, and ices, and bonbons, things all as strange to her
as they would have been to a savage from South Sea isles.
Her ignorance, her simplicity, her frank surprise amused them, and
the natural shrewdness and pertinence of her replies stimulated
them with the sense of a new intellectual distraction. But when they
pressed her to recite, she grew shy and silent. She was not a
machine to be set in action by pressure of a spring; and a certain
suspicion that she had only been brought here as a plaything
dawned upon her; the idea suddenly came to her that these great
people were amusing themselves with her ignorance and
astonishment, and when once that sting of mortified doubt had
come into her mind, peace fled, and pride kept her mute and still.
Other persons came in, pretty women, and handsome men; there
was a murmur of laughter and a confusion of voices in all the rooms.
She began to feel less at her ease, less satisfied, less sure of her
own self. Some of the new-comers stared at her and sauntered away
laughing; her one little hour of triumph was already over; she had
been seen, she had ceased to be a novelty.
But it was too late to repent. She could not ask such strangers to
retrace their steps for her; and she felt by intuition that this lovely
sovereign, with her delicate face and her gracious smile, could have
become as chill as the north wind and as terrible as the white
storms, were she offended by caprice or ingratitude.
Damaris had strong natural courage, and all the hardiness of a
resolute and defiant youth; but she felt a vague fear of Nadine
Napraxine, which only served to intensify the fascination by which
she was subdued in her presence.
Her hostess still spoke kindly to her from time to time, but soon
ceased to think much about her: having once been captured and
brought thither, she had ceased to be an object of great interest.
It was five o'clock; more people had driven over from other villas;
great ladies, with their attendant gentlemen. There were the usual
laughter and murmurs of conversation, and general buzz of voices;
the rose-shaded lamps were shining through the daylight; the
sounds of a grand piano magnificently played came from the music-
room; the air was full of the scent of roses and gardenias, of incense
and perfume. Damaris, after a few glances cast at her, a few smiles
caused by her, was forgotten and left to herself. Her head turned;
her breath seemed oppressed in this atmosphere so different to her
own; she felt lonely, ashamed, miserable; she shrank into a corner
behind some palms and gloxinias, it was the saddest fall to pride and
expectation.
Othmar and Béthune, watching her, both thought, 'She has found
out she is only a plaything, and she is resentful.' Othmar thought, in
addition, 'If only she knew how very little time she will even be as
much as that!'
They saw without surprise, but with contempt, that Loswa, through
whose imprudence she was there, avoided her, was evidently
ashamed to seem acquainted with her, and devoted himself
assiduously to two or three of the great ladies. Loswa wished to
show her that if he had sought her for sake of his art, he had better
interests and occupation than a little peasant in knitted stockings
could afford him. In himself he was angered against her for the
slightness of the impression he had made on her, and the
indifference with which she had treated him after he had honoured
her by taking her for a model.
'She is a little sea-mouse that came up in Miladi's deepwater net to-
day,' he said with a slighting laugh to the great ladies who asked him
about her.
Damaris overheard, and her child's heart burnt with rage and scorn
against them.
'He broke bread with me yesterday, and he ridicules me to-day!' she
thought, with her primitive islander's notions as to the sanctity of the
rites of hospitality. She hated this soft-eyed, soft-voiced man, who
had made an effigy of her with his colours, and had brought to her
these cruel strangers, who had in a single hour made such havoc of
her peace. And they had told her that she should be back at Ave
Maria, and it was now night; deep night, she thought it; for she did
not know that though these rooms were all lit artificially, and the
windows had now been long closed, behind these thick draperies of
golden plush the last glow of daylight had scarcely then faded from
the western skies.
What would they think on the island?—and what would Catherine
and Raphael do?
No one now noticed her since they had ceased to stare at her as a
young barbarian; no one now remembered her, sought her, or cared
for her; she seemed likely to pass the whole afternoon in a corner,
undisturbed and unremembered, like a little sea-mouse, as he called
her, too insignificant even to be expelled!
On her island nothing could have daunted her, silenced her, troubled
her; she was mistress there of the soil and of herself; she was proud
and intrepid as any sovereign in her own tiny kingdom; but here all
her courage deserted her; she only realised how utterly she was
unlike all these people around her; she was only conscious of the
rude texture of her gown, of the rough wool of her hose, of the sea-
brown on her hands and arms, of the red on her cheeks blown there
by the wind and the weather.
All these women were delicate and pale as the waxen bells of the
begonia, as the creamy column of the tuberose.
She had been innocently vain, unconsciously proud of herself;
everybody had told her she was handsome, and her own sense had
told her that she was born with finer mind and higher organisation
than were possessed by those who were her daily companions. And
now she felt that she was nothing—nothing—only an ignorant and
common peasant. She was well enough at Bonaventure, but she was
a poor little savage here.
Suddenly there was a general murmur of excitation and a general
movement of personages, and from where she had been placed she
saw the mistress of the house going forward to greet a young man
who had entered as various voices had exclaimed:
'Prince Paul is come!'
They all surrounded this new-comer with murmurs of ardent
congratulation. He was the Rubenstein of the great world, a rare and
most sympathetic genius, and, ce qui ne gâte rien, he was the son
of a grand duke, though he held it as a much higher title that he had
been also the pupil of Liszt and the beloved of Wagner. He was one
of the innumerable cousins which Nadine could claim here, there,
and everywhere in the pages of the Almanach de Gotha, and he was
a person whose visits were always agreeable to her.
This visit was unexpected, and was, therefore, all the more
welcome. In the reception of Paul of Lemberg she altogether forgot
her poor little bit of seaweed off Bonaventure, and everyone did the
same.
Othmar, coming through his rooms to welcome his new and
unlooked-for visitor, who was a great favourite with himself, caught
sight of the figure so unlike all others there, which was seated
forlorn and alone on a low couch, with a group of palms and some
draperies of Ottoman silks behind her.
'So soon abandoned!' he thought with compassion. 'Poor child; she
looks sadly astray. She is very handsome—as handsome as Loswa's
sketch,' he thought also, with a few swift glances at her.
When he too had greeted Prince Paul he turned to his wife and said
in an undertone:
'Have you forgotten another guest whom you have left there all
alone?'
She looked fatigued and annoyed at the suggestion.
'My dear Otho, go and console her; you were always a squire of
distressed damsels.'
Othmar turned away and passed back through the apartments to the
place where he had seen Damaris.
'Poor little déclassée!' he thought pitifully. 'You have no power to
amuse them for more than five minutes. It was cruel to bring you
away from your own orange and olive shadows into a world with
which you have no single pulse in common!'
With his gentlest manner he addressed her:
'May I present myself to you, mademoiselle? My wife, I understand,
persuaded you to favour us by leaving your solitudes. I am afraid we
have not much to offer you in return.'
Damaris was silent. She was grateful for the kindness, but she was
too offended and pained by the position in which she had been
placed to be easily reconciled to herself.
'You are Count Othmar?' she asked abruptly.
She was thinking of the story told her, when she was a child, by
Catherine.
'That is what men call me,' said he. 'Believe me, I am your friend no
less than my wife is so, and I am most happy to see you beneath my
roof. I first made your acquaintance through Loswa's sketch.'
'He was not honest about that,' she said angrily.
Othmar smiled.
'No artists are honest when they are tempted by beautiful subjects.
He will make you the admiration of all the Paris art world next year.'
She did not reply at once. Then she repeated:
'It was not honest. I did not think he was going to show it, and bring
people to me.'
'No; in that I think he took unfair advantage of your hospitality.'
'That is what I mean. I shall not let him ever go back.'
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