LOVE’S INTERMEZZO

LOSCHWITZ, April 10, 1901.

Fortunately Bernhardt came for a few days to relieve the monotony of my alcove life par lé droit du plus fort.

Tall stories of dissipation, indiscipline, scandal, had preceded the poor fellow. No doubt, his military superiors got orders to make his life as unhappy as they possibly can, and he retaliates.

The Prince told me that, at last, he had succeeded arranging for an audience with the King. His Majesty had denied himself to Bernhardt for months past. He managed the coveted boon only by the intervention of various high generals and the threat to appeal to the Kaiser.

The Royal House of Saxony, while compelled to recognize William as War-Lord, doesn’t court his interference, or attempted interference, in matters military.

Flushed with this initial success and expecting lots of good things in the future, Bernhardt was bent upon having a good time. He drank with Frederick Augustus, made love to Lucretia and squeezed the chambermaids on his floor to his heart’s content.

To me he was the most gallant of cousins and, glad to contribute to the happiness of the poor fellow, I gave him plenty of rope, perhaps too much.

On the second day of his stay we had a very merry dinner, having dispensed for the time with titled servants.

After dinner the three of us retired to the veranda. I was in a rocker, showing perhaps more of my ankles than was absolutely necessary. Frederick Augustus was smoking dreamily. Like an animal he likes to sleep after he has gorged himself.

Bernhardt, with my permission, had thrown himself on a wicker lounge and was absorbing cigarettes at a killing rate. I bantered him on his laziness. But he only sighed.

“You wish that audience was past and forgotten,” I asked.

“Pshaw, I’m thinking of something prettier than the King.”

Remembering Bernhardt’s chief weakness, I indulged in the old joke, “Cherchez la femme.”

Bernhardt replied, with another succession of groans, “You are right, Louise; parfaitement, cherchez la femme.”

“Egads,” grunted Frederick Augustus, glad for an excuse to go to his room, or play a game of pinochle with his aides, “egads, if you indulge in intellectualities, I had better go. A full stomach and French conversation whew!”

The Tisch was in Dresden; Fraeulein von Schoenberg with the children, Lucretia flirting somewhere at a neighboring country chalet. We were alone on the remote terrace and it was getting dark. Bernhardt sat up and looked at me with eyes of life-giving fire, but continued silent.

“You want me to think that you command the rays of the sun stolen by Prometheus?”

He answered not, but sought to burn the skin of my neck and bosom by those Prometheus rays.

Now, in the morning I got a note from Henry, and I had been thinking of the dear boy every minute. I was longing for him; my heart, my senses were crying for him.

I forgot Bernhardt; I forgot all around me. With my fancies focussed on my lover, I leaned back in my armchair, gazing at the rising moon. My word, at that moment I was lost to everything.

I half-awoke from my dream when I heard Bernhardt rise. A moment later I felt his eyes prowling over my body. Then a shadow darkened my face and Bernhardt said with a strange quaver in his voice:

“Cherchez la femme. You are the woman, Louise, you and none else.”

And wild, forbidden kisses burned on my face, on my neck, on my breasts. Both hands claimed a lover’s liberties.

I was taken completely unawares; in my mind of minds I was in the Countess’s pavilion, receiving Henry’s caresses. All sense of location had vanished. And, thinking of my lover, I clasped both arms about Bernhardt’s neck and drew him to me. We kissed like mad. The love feast for Henry became Bernhardt’s in the twinkling of an eye.

Whether he felt like a thief, I don’t know; for my part my senses responded to Henry, not to his substitute.

How long this embrace lasted, I don’t know. Somebody, or some noise, caused us to separate.

I fled and locked myself in my room.

“Tell His Royal Highness he must excuse me. I can’t see him before he goes away. Say I have a headache, or the gout, I don’t care which,” I commanded Lucretia next morning.

The previous night I had denied myself to Frederick Augustus, though he entreated and raved.

While I appreciate the arch-Lais’s bon mot that “one can’t judge of a family by a single specimen,” which made Ninon talk of her lovers not as Coligny, Villarceau, Sevigne, Conde, d’Albret, etc., but as les Rochefoucaults, les d’Effiats, les Condés, les Sevignes, etc., I was determined not to betray Henry by the whole House of Saxony in a single twelve-hours.

I wonder whether this Bernhardt loves me? Perhaps, on his part, it was the longing for the girl he adores, as, on mine, it was longing for Henry that drew us together with electric force. And, of course, environment had something to do with it: moon, opportunity, Frederick Augustus’s indolent gaucherie. Yes, why deny it, the good dinner we had, the champagne.