The Enemies of Women Part 11

The English millions afforded him a year of respite. The administrator paid the huge debts, and he was able to live without economizing, in Paris, a Paris nearing the end of its third year of war with inexplicable tranquillity, resuming its usual pleasures as though all danger were past. Love affairs with two distinguished women, whose husbands were called to arms--although they were not at the front--caused him to spend a few months, now at Biarritz, now on the Riviera, and now at Aix-les-Bains.

His agent disturbed these enjoyments. He was constantly repeating the same advice: "You must sell." The Prince's fortune was already like an old ship drifting aimlessly. The administrator had stopped the last leaks with the money from the most recent sale, but warned him at every moment that she was taking in water through new ones.

In the end Michael Fedor grew accustomed to misfortune, accepting it serenely.

The sale of the palace built by his mother moved him less than that of his yacht.

At the same time his desires had changed. He was beginning to tire of love adventures, which seemed to be the only object of existence. His fresh and vigorous const.i.tution, which had amazed Castro, suddenly broke down. But this was more the result of worry than of physical wear and tear.

He felt that he was poor, and was he not accustomed to pay royally for his love affairs? Not being able to reward women with luxury, he would rather flee in order not to accept from them and be obliged to tolerate from them their caprices. He preferred to master his desires, as long as he could not satisfy them with all the grandeur of an oriental potentate. Besides he was tired of love, and all the pleasant things of life a man can find in this world!...

He thought of his friend Atilio, of the Colonel, of Villa Sirena, white and shining in the Mediterranean sunlight, among the olive trees and cypresses.

"The earth is being swept by the deluge. Perhaps the old lands will once more appear; perhaps they will remain submerged forever.... Let us take refuge in our Ark, and wait and hope."

CHAPTER IV

After glancing with satisfaction at the imposing aspect of Villa Sirena, the adjoining buildings, and the surrounding groves, the Colonel said to Novoa:

"The part you see cost less than what you don't see. There is a great deal of money spent under ground here."

Turning away from the residence, Don Marcos pointed to the gardens, which lay extended before them in terraces, some on a level with the roof of the "villa," others descending like a mighty stairway almost to the water's edge.

He recalled the promontory as it was when the late Princess first thought of buying it; an ancient refuge of pirates; a tongue of rocks wild and storm-swept when the _mistral_ was blowing, with deep caves gnawed by the surge, which caused the land above to crumble, and threatened to break it lengthwise into a chain of reefs and islets.

"The bulwarks we have had to build!" he continued. "You should have seen the stone we had to put in here,--enough to build a wall around the whole city!"

There were walls more than twenty yards thick, descending in a gradual slope from the gardens to the sea. In places, it was possible to see their foundations in the natural rocks which emerged from the water like greenish beads always awash in the foam; in other places the masonry went down and down until it was lost from view in the watery depths.

They were like the breakwaters one sees in harbors. They covered the original hollows of the promontory, the caves, the inlets that were forming, and all the jagged s.p.a.ces, which had been filled with rich soil.

These tremendous works of masonry were Toledo's pride, owing to their cost and grandeur. He called his fellow-countryman's attention to the proportions of the ramparts, worthy of a monarch of olden times.

"And they are not only strong," he continued, "but look, Professor! They are all 'artistic.'"

The blocks of stone had been cut in large hexagons which fitted together in a uniform mosaic, each piece outlined by a cement border.

At intervals there were large openings, so that the earth might rid itself of its moisture; but each one of these blind windows held some sort of wild vegetation, some hardy, aromatic plant, obstinately parasitic, spreading downward over the wall and covering it with flowers for the greater part of the year. The thick groves at the summit, and the long bal.u.s.trades arched with wine-colored clematis, seemed to exude a flowery, green, inferior form of life, pouring it out seaward through the gaps in the wall.

"When you see it from a boat below you will appreciate it better. Senor Castro says it reminds him of the hanging gardens of Babylon, and of Queen Semiramis. He is the only one who would think of such comparisons.

All I can say is that it meant doing all this! Imagine all the stone. A whole quarry! And I wish you could have seen the bargeloads of rich soil it took to fill the hollows, level the ground, and make a decent garden!"

He grew enthusiastic as he talked about the modern flower gardens stretching around the villa and along the iron railing bordering the Menton road; and he lavished his praise on their harmonious elegance, and the majestic regulation to which the plants were forced to conform.

That was how _he_ felt a garden should be, like many another thing in life: perfect order, a sense of subordination, and respect for the hierarchies, each thing in its place, with no individual rivalries to cause confusion. But he was afraid to expound his "old-fashioned"

tastes, recalling the jests of the Prince and Castro. They preferred the park, which the Colonel always thought of as the "wild garden."

They had availed themselves of the extremely ancient olive trees already on the promontory as a beginning for the park. These trees could not be called old, exactly. Such an appellation would have been petty and inadequate to their age. They were simply ancient, of no visible age.

They had an air of changeless eternity about them which made them seem contemporaries of the rocks and the waves themselves. They looked more like ruins than like trees, like heaps of black wood, twisted and overthrown by a storm, or piles of wood, warped and hollowed and scorched by some fire long since past. With them also the invisible part was more important than the portions exposed to the light. Their roots, as large around as tree trunks, went out of sight, wound their way through the red earth, and then appeared once more thirty or forty yards beyond. Some of the trees had died on one side, only to come to life again on the other. What had been the trunk five hundred years before, now appeared as a mutilated stump, table shaped, severed by ax or shattered by thunderbolt; and the root, showing above the soil, was flowering again in its turn, changing into a tree, to continue an apparently limitless existence, in which centuries counted as years. The hearts of other trees were gnawed away and empty; and these supported only half of their outer sh.e.l.l, looking like a tower with one side blown out by an explosion; but on high they displayed an almost ridiculous crown of foliage, a few handfuls of silvery leaves scattering along the sinuous black branches. Below, the gnarled roots which seemed to have preserved in their knotted windings the sap that was the first life of the earth, embraced a much larger radius on the ground than that occupied by the branches in the air. Other olive trees, that were only three or four hundred years old, stood erect with the arrogance of youth, leafy and exuberant, casting a light, trembling, almost diaphanous shadow, like that of frosted gla.s.s which swayed with the capricious will of the wind.

"His Excellency says that there are olive trees here that were seen by the Romans. Do you believe it, Professor? Can it be that any of these trees date back to the time of Jesus Christ?"

Novoa hesitated in replying. The Colonel continued his observations as they walked along between walls of well-trimmed shrubbery towards the end of the park.

"Look: there is the Greek garden."

It was an avenue of laurels and cypress trees with curving marble benches, and in the background a semi-circular colonnade.

"I would have liked to plant a great many palms: African, j.a.panese, and Brazilian, like those in the gardens of the Casino. But the Prince and Don Atilio detest them. They say that they are an anachronism, that they never existed in this region, and were imported by the wealthy people who have been building for the last fifty years on the Blue Coast. All those two fellows admire is the ancient Provencal or Italian garden: olive trees, laurels, and cypresses--but not the huge, funereal cypresses with bushy tops, that we use in Spain, to decorate the _calvaries_ and cemeteries. Look at them: they are as light and slender as feathers. To keep the wind from blowing them over you have to plant two or three together in a clump."

They had reached the extreme limit of the park, where the leafiest olive trees were growing. They walked along open pathways through high ma.s.ses of wild and fragrant vegetation, whose vigorous vitality seemed to challenge the salt breeze. The plants had stiff leaves, and gave out strong exotic perfumes. As Novoa breathed in the fragrance, it evoked visions of far-off lands; and in truth it seemed almost as though an odor of Hindoo cooking or Oriental incense were floating through that wild garden. A variety of creepers hung from tree to tree. Though it was still winter these natural garlands had already begun to bloom, owing to the warm breezes of an early Spring. They stood out with all the gay splendor of a courtly festival, against the chaste pale green of the olive trees.

"Don Atilio says that all this makes him think of a Mozart symphony."

The deep blue Mediterranean lay at their feet, its slow swells combed by a sharp reef that broke the streaming water into clouds of spray. Here the promontory divided, forming two arms of unequal length. The shortest was a prolongation of the park, carrying the magnificent vegetation which flourished on its back, into the very waters. The other descended to the sea in a chaos of rocks and loose earth, with no growth save a few twisted pines, clinging to the soil, obstinately determined to prolong their death struggle. The barren loneliness of this tongue of land drew a sad smile from the Colonel each time he gazed at the dividing wall. The rugged point was eaten away by the sea with caves that threatened to cut it in two. It had no regular place of entrance, being separated from the mainland by the gardens of Villa Sirena, and shut off by a hostile wall, which represented the inalienable rights of ownership, and was a source of constant indignation and amazement to Don Marcos.

Doubtless that was why he turned away from it, gazing out toward where Monaco lay beyond the rocky cliffs.

"It is lovely, Professor: one of the most delightful panoramas anywhere.

There is good reason for people to come here from the farthest ends of the earth!"

He let his glance rest on the violet colored mountains that, at the farthest horizon, projected out upon the sea, like the limit of a world.

They were the so-called Mountains of the Moors, which, with Esterel Point, form a branch of the Maritime Alps, a separate mountain chain, which juts into the Mediterranean. In the opposite direction lay a portion of the pseudo-Blue Coast, which begins at Toulon and Hyeres. But this part did not interest the Colonel. What he saw, more in imagination than in reality, was a bird's-eye view of the real Blue Coast, his own Blue Coast--that of the aristocratic and wealthy people on whom he was in the habit of calling, in their elegant villas and expensive hotels.

The Maritime Alps form a giant wall, parallel to the sea. In some places they fall steeply toward the Mediterranean with the sharp slope of a bulwark, without the slightest break to mask the abrupt descent. At other points the incline is gentler, creating waves of stone, miniature mountains which stand out above the water, forming capes and placid inlets. And on these sheltered sh.o.r.es, from Esterel to the Italian frontier, wealthy people, sensitive to cold, arriving in pilgrimages every winter, had finally converted the sleepy provincial villages into world-famous capitals. Fishing hamlets were transformed into elegant towns; the large Paris and London hotels erected enormous annexes on the deserted bays; the most expensive shops of the Boulevards opened branches in tiny settlements where a few years before every one had gone barefoot.

In his mind Toledo went over the undulating line of celebrated places, overlooking the sea from the promontories, or nestling in the little horseshoe bays to profit more directly by the refraction of the winter sunlight from the red walls of the Alps: Cannes, which inspired in him a certain awe on account of its quiet distinction--the place where consumptives and old people of renown desire to die--Antibes, with its square harbor and its walls which, according to Castro, recalled the romantic seascapes painted by Vernet; Nice, the capital where people come together to spend their money, copying Parisian life; the deep bay of Villefranche, the harborage of battleships; Cap-Ferrat and the beautiful Point Saint-Hospice, a former den of African pirates, jutting out from it; Beaulieu, with its Tunisian palaces, the homes of American multimillionaires, who always keep open house, and who had often invited the Colonel to luncheon there; Eze, the feudal hamlet, hanging grimly to the side of the Alps, and falling in ruins around its decaying castle, while down below, the people who fled from it are forming a new town, beside the gulf which their predecessors proudly called the Sea of Eze; Cap d'Ail, which serves as a sort of portico to the adjoining Princ.i.p.ality; the Rock of Monaco, carrying on its giant's back a walled city; opposite it the dazzling Monte Carlo; and beyond, Cap-Martin, with somber vegetation, reserved and lordly, the ultimate shelter of dethroned kings; and lastly, close to Italy, pleasant Menton, the stronghold of Englishmen, another place for invalids of distinction, where every self-respecting consumptive feels obliged to end his days.

"Think of the money that has been spent here!" Don Marcos exclaimed.

Fifty years before, the Corniche railway in successfully finding its way through this mountain region had been considered a marvelous piece of work; but now for the convenience of winter visitors, the same work had been repeated in every direction. Smoothly curving roads, clean and firm as a drawing-room floor, extended along the seash.o.r.e, ascended the Alpine heights, pa.s.sing from crest to crest on lofty viaducts, or burrowing the hills in long tunnels. Where the perpendicular rock would not allow a ledge to be cut the engineer had made one with b.u.t.tresses many yards high, the bases of which were lost to view in the waves.

A new dream had been added to the many which the blessed in this world's goods may realize--the owning of a house on the Riviera! Within fifty years, every architectural whim, every possible fancy of rich people bent on creating sensations, had covered this sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean with villas, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Venetian, and Tuscan palaces, and dwellings of other distinct or indescribable styles. The palm tree was imported and acclimated as a native plant.

"Enormous fortunes have been invested here; three generations have been ruined, and as many more enriched. When you think what it was a century ago, and see what it is now...!"

The Colonel spoke of an Englishwoman's tomb, completely abandoned on the extreme point of Cap-Ferrat. She was a forerunner of the present winter visitors, a youthful contemporary of Byron, charmed by the beauty of the Mediterranean, and by the pathless and practically unexplored mountains.

On her death, they buried her on the deserted promontory, because she was a Protestant. The fishermen and peasants of this lonely coast shunned the stranger, denying her the rights of hospitality even in their cemeteries.

"This happened less than a century ago. And such poverty as there was!

The only products of the country were thick skinned oranges, lemons, and these olives. The trees are very pretty, very decorative, but they bear an exceedingly small pointed olive, all pit. Compare them with ours in Andalusia, Professor! And to-day there are millionaires, born right here on the Riviera, who have grown rich merely by selling the wretched fields of their fathers. The red land, abounding in stones, is bought by the yard, even in the most out of the way spots, like lots in large cities. When you least expect it, at a turn in the road, you come across a miserable hut with a little land around it that takes your fancy. The roof of the building sags, and the wind blows through the cracks in the wall. The owners sleep with the pig, the chickens, and the horse. This same poverty and shiftlessness you find among the peasants almost everywhere. You happen to think that you might build up a country home there without much expense. Surely the good people won't ask very much, no matter how inflated their ideas of value may be! But when you ask the price, after much talk, and many doubts, they finally say in the most casual manner: 'A hundred and fifty thousand francs, or two hundred thousand.' When you protest in amazement they reply, pointing to the mountains, the sun, and the sea: 'And the view, monsieur.'"

The red soil of the Alps amounts to little for its power of production: it is the situation that gives it its value. And the native has grown rich selling, so much per yard, the sunlight, the azure of the Mediterranean, the orange color of the mountains and the dazzling glory of the clouds at sunset, the shelter of the distant rock which, like a screen, turns aside the icy breeze of the _mistral_.

"If you only knew how inexplicably obstinate some of these people are!"