And after undressing and blowing out the candle Mimotchka laid her pretty head, crowned with its row of curl-papers, on the pillow.... But somehow the thoughts and curl-papers got entangled with each other and prevented her sleeping.... What is he thinking of? what is he doing?...
And Valerian Nicolaevitch, having returned to his hotel, sat by Prince Kakoushadze, whose acquaintance he had made only the day before, and pouring himself out some Kachetinsk, said:
"Well, now at last I have made acquaintance with my general's wife. She does not particularly shine by her intelligence, but in her eyes there is a boundless sea. And her hand, her foot!..."
And Valerian Nicolaevitch blew an airy kiss in Mimotchka's direction.
The next day they went on horseback to Karass. The riding party consisted of ten persons, but Mimotchka and he rode together, and there were moments when they were left quite alone. He talked even more than the day before. Where did he get it all from? And how lightly he passed from one subject to another. Mimotchka asked him if he had had his dog long. And straight after answering her question he passed on to love. And it flowed on and on....
He said that life without love was wearisome, was like a desert without water, that a woman lives by love alone, that without it she struggles like a fish thrown on the dry sand, that woman's nature is demoralised and distorted by the absurd education given her, that women of their own free will lay on themselves chains and fetters, under the weight of which they afterwards almost sink. And if anyone were now to tell them that the end of the world, the end of life, would come to-morrow, and that the whole edifice of prejudices and conventional ideas would be broken down, they would throw aside their mask, lay bare their real feelings and desires, and speak in a real living tongue. ... The pent-up waters would burst through the dikes.... And he quoted now a verse from Heine, and then a verse from Byron, ... here a Latin citation, there a couplet from an operetta.
Love moves the world. Love is the flower of life, its perfume, its fragrance. Love is the crown, the cupola on the edifice of human happiness.... How beautifully Musset has said ... And Schiller, in speaking of ... And Baudelaire, and Setchenoff, and Fett, and King Solomon, and Dranmore, and Kousma Proutkoff.[20] ... Let the reader select what he likes from this poetical chaos!
Mimotchka's horse shook its ears, and Mimotchka herself put back her hair, which had blown forward from under her hat, and looked as lovely as the Caucasian sun itself.