The baroness, with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing through a lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd. Among the red, white, blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the uniform figures of the men resembled large, squat, black beetles. Rovinskaya negligently, yet at the same time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand and the spectators, and her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps also that satiation with all spectacles, which are such matters of course to celebrities. The splendid, long, slender fingers of her left hand were lying upon the crimson velvet of the box-seat. Emeralds of a rare beauty hung upon them so negligently that it seemed as though they would fall off at any second, and suddenly she began laughing.
“Look” she said; “what a funny figure, or, to put it more correctly, what a funny profession! There, there, that one who’s playing on a ‘syrinx of seven reeds.’”
Everyone looked in the direction of her hand. And really, the picture was funny enough. Behind the Roumanian orchestra was sitting a stout, whiskered man, probably the father, and perhaps even the grandfather, of a numerous family, and with all his might was whistling into seven little pipes glued together. As it was difficult for him, probably, to move this instrument between his lips, he therefore, with an unusual rapidity, turned his head now to the left, now to the right.
“An amazing occupation,” said Rovinskaya. “Well now, Chaplinsky, you try to toss your head about like that.”
Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste, immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a minute desisted.
“It’s impossible,” he said, “either long training, or, perhaps, hereditary abilities, are necessary for this.”
The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her rose and throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty suppressing a yawn, she said, making just the least bit of a wry face:
“But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K—! Look: no laughter, no singing, no dances. Just like some herd that’s been driven here, in order to be gay on purpose!”
Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and answered apathetically in his enchanting voice:
“Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice? Why, it must be confessed—mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of human life, and it is scarcely possible that they will ever return. One must regard people with more patience, it seems to me. Who knows, perhaps for all those sitting here, below, the present evening is a rest, a holiday?”