At that moment the ladies left the well and came up to where we were.Grushnitski suc-ceeded in assuming a dramatic pose with the aid of his crutch,and in a loud tone of voice answered me in French:
"Mon cher,je hais les hommes pour ne pas les mepriser,car autrement la vie serait une farce trop degoutante."The pretty Princess Mary turned round and favoured the orator with a long and curious glance.Her expression was quite indefinite,but it was not contemptuous,a fact on which Iinwardly congratulated Grushnitski from my heart.
"She is an extremely pretty girl,"I said."She has such velvet eyes --yes,velvet is the word.Ishould advise you to appropriate the expression when speaking of her eyes.The lower and upper lashes are so long that the sunbeams are not reflected in her pupils.I love those eyes without a glitter,they are so soft that they appear to caress you.However,her eyes seem to be her only good feature...Tell me,are her teeth white?That is most important!It is a pity that she did not smile at that high-sounding phrase of yours.""You are speaking of a pretty woman just as you might of an English horse,"said Grushnitski indignantly.
"Mon cher,"I answered,trying to mimic his tone,"je meprise les femmes,pour ne pas les aimer,car autrement la vie serait un melodrame trop ridicule."I turned and left him.For half an hour or so I walked about the avenues of the vines,the limestone cliffs and the bushes hanging between them.The day grew hot,and I hurried home-wards.Passing the sulphur spring,I stopped at the covered gallery in order to regain my breath under its shade,and by so doing I was afforded the opportunity of witnessing a rather interesting scene.This is the position in which the dramatis personae were disposed:Princess Ligovski and the Moscow dandy were sitting on a bench in the covered gallery --apparently engaged in serious conversation.Princess Mary,who had doubtless by this time finished her last tumbler,was walking pensively to and fro by the well.
Grushnitski was standing by the well itself;there was nobody else on the square.
I went up closer and concealed myself behind a corner of the gallery.At that moment Grush-nitski let his tumbler fall on the sand and made strenuous efforts to stoop in order to pick it up;but his injured foot prevented him.Poor fellow!How he tried all kinds of artifices,as he leaned on his crutch,and all in vain!His expressive countenance was,in fact,a picture of suffering.
Princess Mary saw the whole scene better than I.
Lighter than a bird she sprang towards him,stooped,picked up the tumbler,and handed it to him with a gesture full of ineffable charm.Then she blushed furiously,glanced round at the gallery,and,having assured herself that her mother apparently had not seen anything,im-mediately regained her composure.By the time Grushnitski had opened his mouth to thank her she was a long way off.A moment after,she came out of the gallery with her mother and the dandy,but,in passing by Grushnitski,she assumed a most decorous and serious air.She did not even turn round,she did not even observe the passionate gaze which he kept fixed upon her for a long time until she had descended the mountain and was hidden behind the lime trees of the boulevard...
Presently I caught glimpses of her hat as she walked along the street.She hurried through the gate of one of the best houses in Pyatigorsk;her mother walked behind her and bowed adieu to Raevich at the gate.
It was only then that the poor,passionate cadet noticed my presence.
"Did you see?"he said,pressing my hand vigorously."She is an angel,simply an angel!""Why?"I inquired,with an air of the purest simplicity.
"Did you not see,then?"
"No.I saw her picking up your tumbler.If there had been an attendant there he would have done the same thing --and quicker too,in the hope of receiving a tip.It is quite easy,however,to understand that she pitied you;you made such a terrible grimace when you walked on the wounded foot.""And can it be that seeing her,as you did,at that moment when her soul was shining in her eyes,you were not in the least affected?""No."
I was lying,but I wanted to exasperate him.Ihave an innate passion for contradiction --my whole life has been nothing but a series of melan-choly and vain contradictions of heart or reason.
The presence of an enthusiast chills me with a twelfth-night cold,and I believe that constant association with a person of a flaccid and phleg-matic temperament would have turned me into an impassioned visionary.I confess,too,that an unpleasant but familiar sensation was coursing lightly through my heart at that moment.It was --envy.I say "envy"boldly,because I am accustomed to acknowledge everything to myself.
It would be hard to find a young man who,if his idle fancy had been attracted by a pretty woman and he had suddenly found her openly singling out before his eyes another man equally unknown to her --it would be hard,I say,to find such a young man (living,of course,in the great world and accustomed to indulge his self-love)who would not have been unpleasantly taken aback in such a case.
In silence Grushnitski and I descended the mountain and walked along the boulevard,past the windows of the house where our beauty had hidden herself.She was sitting by the window.
Grushnitski,plucking me by the arm,cast upon her one of those gloomily tender glances which have so little effect upon women.I directed my lorgnette at her,and observed that she smiled at his glance and that my insolent lorgnette made her downright angry.And how,indeed,should a Caucasian military man presume to direct his eyeglass at a princess from Moscow?...
CHAPTER II
13th May.
THIS morning the doctor came to see me.
His name is Werner,but he is a Russian.
What is there surprising in that?I have known a man named Ivanov,who was a German.
