Look round for the last time on your young girl's room, look at your pretty pink room, in which you ate chocolat mignon and read French novels, and bid farewell to it! You will never come back here. What awaits you in the new life?
Mamma blesses Mimotchka, and sheds a few tears as she embraces and kisses her pale daughter. "You don't feel unwell, Mimi?"
"No, no, not at all...."
Mimotchka goes down the stairs. At the entrance on the pavement there already stands a group of curious, gaping spectators: the weeping housemaid Douniasha, the cook, the neighbour's servants, and some outsiders....
Aunt Julia, the little boy who is to carry the icon,[11] and the bride take their places in the carriage. The footman slams the door and jumps up on the box. The carriage fast disappears down the street.
[11] A little boy, generally a relative or the child of an intimate friend, carries an icon in the bridal procession.
Good-bye, Mimotchka, be happy!
You perhaps expected, Mimotchka, that I should follow you to the church, and further and further.... No, there are spectators enough at your wedding without me. Only look at that motley collection of people, whom the police are allowing to crowd on to the broad pavement of the Liteynaia, the whole length of the long line of carriages. Look at the seamstresses, housemaids" gossiping women, young and old, gazing open-mouthed as they go on their way, with bundles or bandboxes in their hands; they have not strength to resist the temptation of stopping to admire your uncle's orders and epaulets, your aunts' light, elegant toilettes, and above all they long to catch a glimpse of you, Mimotchka—you, the chief person in all this pageant.
They are waiting for you.... Do you see how they stand on tiptoe, how they crane their necks at your approach? Perhaps they have heard about you; perhaps one of those old gossips is even now giving the rest the most trustworthy or untrustworthy information about you; perhaps, looking at you, they exchange pitying remarks of the kind of those overheard and caught up from them by the great author of Anna Karénina.
"Isn't she a sweet pretty bride, decked out like a lamb for the sacrifice! But, say what you like, we women are sorry for our sister!"