Litvinov rose and interchanged bows with the good-looking general, while Irina, with no sign of haste, took her hand from her face, and looking coldly at her husband, remarked in French, ‘Ah! so you’ve come back! But what time is it?’
‘Nearly four, ma chère amie, and you not dressed yet—the princess will be expecting us,’ answered the general; and with an elegant bend of his tightly-laced figure in Litvinov’s direction, he added with the almost effeminate playfulness of intonation characteristic of him, ‘It’s clear an agreeable visitor has made you forgetful of time.’
The reader will permit us at this point to give him some information about General Ratmirov. His father was the natural ... what do you suppose? You are not wrong—but we didn’t mean to say that ... the natural son of an illustrious personage of the reign of Alexander I. and of a pretty little French actress. The illustrious personage brought his son forward in the world, but left him no fortune, and the son himself (the father of our hero) had not time to grow rich; he died before he had risen above the rank of a colonel in the police. A year before his death he had married a handsome young widow who had happened to put herself under his protection. His son by the widow, Valerian Alexandrovitch, having got into the Corps of Pages by favour, attracted the notice of the authorities, not so much by his success in the sciences, as by his fine bearing, his fine manners, and his good behaviour (though he had been exposed to all that pupils in the government military schools were inevitably exposed to in former days) and went into the Guards. His career was a brilliant one, thanks to the discreet gaiety of his disposition, his skill in dancing, his excellent seat on horseback when an orderly at reviews, and lastly, by a kind of special trick of deferential familiarity with his superiors, of tender, attentive almost clinging subservience, with a flavour of vague liberalism, light as air.... This liberalism had not, however, prevented him from flogging fifty peasants in a White Russian village, where he had been sent to put down a riot. His personal appearance was most prepossessing and singularly youthful-looking; smooth-faced and rosy-checked, pliant and persistent, he made the most of his amazing success with women; ladies of the highest rank and mature age simply went out of their senses over him. Cautious from habit, silent from motives of prudence, General Ratmirov moved constantly in the highest society, like the busy bee gathering honey even from the least attractive flowers—and without morals, without information of any kind, but with the reputation of being good at business; with an insight into men, and a ready comprehension of the exigencies of the moment, and above all, a never-swerving desire for his own advantage, he saw at last all paths lying open before him....
Litvinov smiled constrainedly, while Irina merely shrugged her shoulders.
‘Well,’ she said in the same cold tone, ‘did you see the Count?’
‘To be sure I saw him. He told me to remember him to you.’
‘Ah! is he as imbecile as ever, that patron of yours?’
General Ratmirov made no reply. He only smiled to himself, as though lenient to the over-hastiness of a woman’s judgment. With just such a smile kindly-disposed grown-up people respond to the nonsensical whims of children.
‘Yes,’ Irina went on, ‘the stupidity of your friend the Count is too striking, even when one has seen a good deal of the world.’
‘You sent me to him yourself,’ muttered the general, and turning to Litvinov he asked him in Russian, ‘Was he getting any benefit from the Baden waters?’