The old colonel, of German origin, who had come to Moscow three years before, in order to marry a rich girl, decided as quickly as possible, before the young people knew anything about it, to present himself and propose. But the spinsters and ladies thought almost the same about the young Siberian.
"No doubt that is the one I am destined to marry," thought a spinster who had been going out for eight years.
"No doubt it was for the best that that stupid officer of the Chevalier Guards did not propose to me. I should certainly have been unhappy."
"Well, they will again grow yellow with envy, if this one, too, falls in love with me," thought a young and pretty lady.
We hear much about the provincialism of small towns,—but there is nothing worse than the provincialism of the upper classes. There are no new persons there, and society is prepared to receive all kinds of new persons, if they should make their appearance; but they are rarely, very rarely, recognized as belonging to their circle and accepted, as was the case with the Labázovs, and the sensation produced by them is stronger than in a provincial town.
III.
"This is Moscow, white-stoned Mother Moscow," said Peter Ivánovich, rubbing his eyes in the morning, and listening to the tolling of the bells which was proceeding from Gazette Lane. Nothing so vividly resurrects the past as sounds, and these sounds of the Moscow bells, combined with the sight of a white wall opposite the window, and with the rumbling of wheels, so vividly reminded him not only of the Moscow which he had known thirty-five years before, but also of the Moscow with the Kremlin, with the palaces, with Iván the bell, and so forth, which he had been carrying in his heart, that he experienced a childish joy at being a Russian, and in Moscow.
There appeared the Bukhara morning-gown, wide open over the broad chest with its chintz shirt, the pipe with its amber, the lackey with soft manners, tea, the odour of tobacco; a loud male voice was heard in Chevalier's apartments; there resounded the morning kisses, and the voices of daughter and son, and the Decembrist was as much at home as in Irkútsk, and as he would have been in New York or in Paris.
No matter how much I should like to present to my readers the Decembrist hero above all foibles, I must confess, for truth's sake, that Peter Ivánovich took great pains in shaving and combing himself, and in looking at himself in the mirror. He was dissatisfied with the garments, which had been made in Siberia with little elegance, and two or three times he buttoned and unbuttoned his coat.
But Natálya Nikoláevna entered the drawing-room, rustling with her black moire gown, with mittens and with ribbons in her cap, which, though not according to the latest fashion, were so arranged that, far from making her appear ridicule, they made her look distinguée. For this ladies have a special sixth sense and perspicacity, which cannot be compared to anything.