A TRAGIC IDYL

BY

PAUL BOURGET

AUTHOR OF "OUTRE-MER," ETC.

LONDON

DOWNEY AND CO. LTD.

12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN

1896

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. Le "Tout Europe"
II. The Cry of a Soul
III. A Scruple
IV. Lovers' Resolutions
V. Afloat
VI. Il Matrimonio Segreto
VII. Olivier du Prat
VIII. Friend and Mistress
IX. Friend and Mistress—continued
X. A Vow
XI. Between Two Tragedies
XII. The Dénouement

A TRAGIC IDYL

CHAPTER I

LE "TOUT EUROPE"

That night (toward the end of February, 188—) a vast crowd wasthronging the halls of the Casino at Monte Carlo. It was one of themomentary occasions, well known to all who have passed the winter seasonon the Corniche, when a sudden and prodigious afflux of compositehumanity transfigures that place, ordinarily so vulgar with the brutalluxury of the people whom it satisfies. The gay madness that breaks outat Nice during the Carnival attracts to this little point of the Rivierathe moving army of pleasure hunters and adventurers, while the beauty ofthe climate allures thousands of invalids and people weary of living,the victims of disease and of ill fortune; and on certain nights, likethat on which this narrative begins, when the countless representativesof the various classes, scattered ordinarily along the coast, suddenlyrush together into the gaming-house, their fantastic variety ofcharacter appears in all its startling incongruities, with the aspect ofa cosmopolitan pandemonium, dazzling and sinister, deafening andtragical, ridiculous and painful, strewn with all the wrecks of luxuryand vice of every country and of every class, the victims of everymisfortune and disaster. In this stifling atmosphere, amid the glitterof insolent and ignoble wealth, the ancient monarchies were representedby three princes of the house of Bourbon, and the modern by twogrand-nephews of Bonaparte, all five recognizable by their profiles,which were reproduced on hundreds of the gold and silver coins rollingbefore them on the green tables.

Neither these princes nor their neighbors noticed the presence at one ofthe tables of a man who had borne the title of King in one of the statesimprovised on the Balkan Peninsula. Men had fought for this man, men haddied for him, but his royal interests seemed now to be restricted to thepasteboard monarchs on the table of trente-et-quarante. And kingand princes, grand-nephews and cousins of emperors, in the promiscuityof this international resort, elbowed noblemen whose ancestors hadserved or betrayed their own; and these lords elbowed the sons oftradesmen, dressed like them, nourished like them, amused like them; andthese bourgeois brushed against celebrated artists—here themost famous of our portrait painters, there a well-known singer, therean illustrious writer—while fashionable women mingled with thiscrowd in toilets which rivalled in splendor those of thedemi-mond