“Well, how are you?” said the princess, sighing. “I hear that you have lost your wife. What a calamity!”
“Yes, Princess, for me it is a great calamity.”
“There’s nothing for it! We must bear our troubles with resignation. Not one hair of a man’s head is lost without the Divine Will.”
“Yes, Princess.”
To the princess’s friendly, gentle smile and her sighs the doctor responded coldly and dryly: “Yes, Princess.” And the expression of his face was cold and dry.
“What else can I say to him?” she wondered.
“How long it is since we met!” she said. “Five years! How much water has flowed under the bridge, how many changes in that time; it quite frightens one to think of it! You know, I am married. . . . I am not a countess now, but a princess. And by now I am separated from my husband too.”
“Yes, I heard so.”
“God has sent me many trials. No doubt you have heard, too, that I am almost ruined. My Dubovki, Sofyino, and Kiryakovo have all been sold for my unhappy husband’s debts. And I have only Baranovo and Mihaltsevo left. It’s terrible to look back: how many changes and misfortunes of all kinds, how many mistakes!”
“Yes, Princess, many mistakes.”