Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sèvres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk, hung small pictures by great painters—a Sunset by Hippolyte Schinner beside a Terburg, one of Raphael’s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to a sketch by Géricault, while a Gérard Dow eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed, Hélène might have been the sovereign lady of some great country, and this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together all earth’s treasure to please his consort. The children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the Roman children in David’s Brutus, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious interest.
“What! is it possible?” cried Hélène, catching her father’s arm as if to assure herself that this was no vision.
“Hélène!”
“Father!”
They fell into each other’s arms, and the old man’s embrace was not so close and warm as Hélène’s.
“Were you on board that vessel?”
“Yes,” he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
“I was about to perish, but—”
“But for my husband,” she broke in. “I see how it was.”
“Ah!” cried the General, “why must I find you again like this, Hélène? After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your fate?”
“And why?” she asked, smiling. “Why should you be sorry to learn that I am the happiest woman under the sun?”
“Happy?” he cried with a start of surprise.
“Yes, happy, my kind father,” and she caught his hands in hers and covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
“And how is this?” he asked, wondering at his daughter’s life, forgetful now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
“Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk, his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini’s music—for he has Rossini’s music sent for me. I have everything that woman’s caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may be obeyed.—Ah!” she cried, interrupting herself, “happy did I say? Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share. Knowing one’s own great love and self-devotion, to find in his heart an infinite love in which a woman’s soul is lost, and lost forever—tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few paces distant from me—he cannot wander further from me than from stern to prow,” she added, with a shade of mischief in her manner. “Seven years! A love that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by all the moments that make up seven years—is this love? Oh, no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life … human language fails to express the bliss of heaven.”
A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
“Abel, darling,” said Hélène, “I am crying for joy.”
Hélène took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms about her queenly neck, as a lion’s whelp might play with the lioness.
“Do you never weary of your life?” asked the General, bewildered by his daughter’s enthusiastic language.
“Yes,” she said, “sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have never parted from my husband.”
“But you need to be fond of music and balls and fêtes.”
“His voice is music for me; and for fêtes, I devise new toilettes for him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying, ‘Hélène, as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to you.’ But for that I would fling them all overboard.”
“But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions—”
“I understand, father,” she said smiling. “Do not fear for me. Never was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very superstitious;
