Yosef's new lodgings were in a house of several stories. They consisted of two large and good-looking rooms. Besides the money which he had brought from home, Yosef immediately after his arrival found means which permitted him to save his capital to the utmost. He began to think then of a more comfortable mode of life, and at last arranged things far better really than at the beginning. From the first glance one might note ease and plenty in the new dwelling. The bed was made in good order every day, the floor swept, and in the small porcelain stove a cheerful fire burned daily, toward evening—it was so comfortable there that the soul rejoiced!
For that matter, the whole house was far better arranged than the other, it was even elegant. On the first story lived some general with his wife and two daughters, as ugly as two winter nights; on the second story lived Yosef, and a French engineer from whom the rooms were hired; and on the third some reduced count, a man immensely rich on a time, perhaps, but at that moment bankrupt; he lived in three or four rooms with his grown-up daughter and two or three servant-maids from the Ukraine. Such were Yosef's neighbors.
Soon they gave evidence of themselves, for all day in the engineer's rooms groaned a piano at which children were learning to play all the contra-dances ever danced up to that time in any land; at the general's were continual amusements, dances, and evening parties. Whole nights through there was stamping there, as in a mill, servants moving about on the stairway; there was no lack of noise and rattle.
The count alone lived quietly. There is nothing wonderful in this, that he and his daughter sat there meditating sadly over their own ruin like Jews over the ruins of Jerusalem. Yosef of course did not know them yet, but at times about dusk, by the clatter on the stairs and the heavy tread, he divined that the old count was taking his daughter to walk; but not being fond of titles or coronets, he had in truth no curiosity to look at them.
Once, however, he saw something which interested him more. A certain day, while going to his room, he saw between the first story and the second a certain bust bent over the banisters with a head altogether shapely, blue eyes, and dark hair. Those eyes, shaded by a hand, were looking carefully for something in the half light of the passage. Seeing Yosef, the head pushed forward, and with it the body, and when the student hurried on, wishing to see the young lady more nearly, he saw only two small feet in black boots and white stockings. The feet were fleeing upstairs with all speed.
"Ah, that is the countess then!" thought he.
The countess roused his curiosity. He did not know himself why in the dusk sitting in front of the fire he saw definitely before him that pair of eyes covered with the hand, the white forehead surrounded with curls of dark hair, and the feet in black boots.
A couple of evenings later when at an advanced hour he had put out the light and lain down in bed, he heard some voice singing a melancholy song in Italian. The passage and Yosef's room also were filled with those tones, youthful, resonant, sympathetic; the fond and passionate adjurations and reproaches were given out with a marvellous charm; in the stillness of night the words came forth clearly.
"Ah! the countess is singing!" murmured Yosef.
Next morning early, he knew not why, while dressing and rubbing his hands with soap stubbornly, he sang with much pathos as if to lend himself energy.