‘This is a very pleasant meeting,’ she continued now in French. ‘Let me introduce you to my husband. Valérien, Monsieur Litvinov, un ami d’enfance; Valerian Vladimirovitch Ratmirov, my husband.’
One of the young generals, almost the most elegant of all, got up from his seat, and with excessive courtesy bowed to Litvinov, while the rest of his companions faintly knitted their brows, or rather each of them withdrew for an instant into himself, as though protesting betimes against any contact with an extraneous civilian, and the other ladies taking part in the picnic thought fit to screw up their eyes a little and simper, and even to assume an air of perplexity.
‘Have you—er—been long in Baden?’ asked General Ratmirov, with a dandified air utterly un-Russian. He obviously did not know what to talk about with the friend of his wife’s childhood.
‘No, not long!’ replied Litvinov.
‘And do you intend to stay long?’ pursued the polite general.
‘I have not made up my mind yet.’
‘Ah! that is very delightful ... very.’
The general paused. Litvinov, too, was speechless. Both held their hats in their hands and bending forward with a grin, gazed at the top of each other’s heads.
‘Deux gendarmes un beau dimanche,’ began humming—out of tune of course, we have never come across a Russian nobleman who did not sing out of tune—a dull-eyed and yellow-faced general, with an expression of constant irritability on his face, as though he could not forgive himself for his own appearance. Among all his companions he alone had not the complexion of a rose.