Sanin felt something like a stab at his heart. He remembered that in a conversation with Signora Roselli and her daughter about serfdom, which, in his own words, aroused his deepest indignation, he had repeatedly assured them that never on any account would he sell his peasants, as he regarded such a sale as an immoral act.
“I will try and sell my estate to some man I know something of,” he articulated, not without faltering, “or perhaps the peasants themselves will want to buy their freedom.”
“That would be best of all,” Frau Lenore agreed. “Though indeed selling live people …”
“Barbari!” grumbled Pantaleone, who showed himself behind Emil in the doorway, shook his topknot, and vanished.
“It’s a bad business!” Sanin thought to himself, and stole a look at Gemma. She seemed not to have heard his last words. “Well, never mind!” he thought again. In this way the practical talk continued almost uninterruptedly till dinner-time. Frau Lenore was completely softened at last, and already called Sanin “Dimitri,” shook her finger affectionately at him, and promised she would punish him for his treachery. She asked many and minute questions about his relations, because “that too is very important”; asked him to describe the ceremony of marriage as performed by the ritual of the Russian Church, and was in raptures already at Gemma in a white dress, with a gold crown on her head.
“She’s as lovely as a queen,” she murmured with motherly pride, “indeed there’s no queen like her in the world!”
“There is no one like Gemma in the world!” Sanin chimed in.
“Yes; that’s why she is Gemma!” (Gemma, as every one knows, means in Italian a precious stone.)
Gemma flew to kiss her mother…. It seemed as if only then she breathed freely again, and the load that had been oppressing her dropped from off her soul.
Sanin felt all at once so happy, his heart was filled with such childish gaiety at the thought, that here, after all, the dreams had come true to which he had abandoned himself not long ago in these very rooms, his whole being was in such a turmoil that he went quickly out into the shop. He felt a great desire, come what might, to sell something in the shop, as he had done a few days before…. “I have a full right to do so now!” he felt. “Why, I am one of the family now!” And he actually stood behind the counter, and actually kept shop, that is, sold two little girls, who came in, a pound of sweets, giving them fully two pounds, and only taking half the price from them.