The princess was listening with an air of pompous assent, barely following the general drift of his talk. Her majestic crutches terrified him.
A man servant brought in a silver samovar and a tray of Little-Russian cookies. As Vigdoroff took up his glass of tea the princess said:
“I did not know you were so much of a Russian patriot. Quite an unusual thing in an educated young man these days. I certainly agree with you that Turgeneff is a good writer. He is perfectly charming.”
Later on she asked, with lazy curiosity and in her pampered enunciation:
“Do you really think our novelists greater than the great writers of France?”
“I certainly do.”
“That’s interesting,” she said, preparing to get rid of him.
“You see, the average Russian represents a remarkable duality. He is simple-hearted and frank, like a child, yet he is possessed of an intuitive sense of human nature that would be considered marvellous in a sage. In addition, he is the most soulful fellow in the world, and to turn his soul inside out, to himself as well as to others, is one of his ruling passions. That accounts for the inimitable naturalness and the ardent human interest of our literature. Whether Russia knows how to construct machinery or not, she certainly knows how to write.”
“You do love Russia, and literature, too”—yawning demonstratively. “I had an idea Hebrews were only interested in money matters.” She smiled, an embarrassed smile in which there was as much malice as apology, and dismissed him quite unceremoniously.
He got into the street with his face on fire. It was as if he had been subjected to some brutal physical indignities. “‘I didn’t know you were so much of a Russian patriot,’” he recalled in his agony. “Of course, I’m only a Jew, not a Russian. It makes no difference how many centuries my people have lived and suffered here. And I, idiot that I am, make a display of my love for Gogol, Turgeneff, Dostoyevski, as if I, ‘a mere Jew,’ had a right to them! She must have thought it was all affectation, Jewish cunning. As if a Jew could care for anything but ‘money matters.’ The idea of one of my race caring for books, and for Gentile books, too!”