"Quelle idée, ma tante!... Why, there was no one there. At least, there were many sympathetic, agreeable people, but nobody of that sort." ...
And Mimotchka, smiling her old Petersburg smile, shakes her head in denial.
"And is nature really so beautiful there?" asks Aunt Julia; "Vava goes into ecstasies about the mountains."
"But they didn't see anything," said Spiridon Ivanovitch regretfully. "How was it you never went to Bermamout? Why, I wrote and told you to go. To be at Kislovodsk and not go to Bermamout! Oh, you!... you were among the real mountains and never went to see them."
"But there was no one to go with," said Mimotchka, defending herself. "The X—— 's had left before our arrival, and somehow we three never managed it alone. I really did so try to go and see everything."
"Yes, it must be very lovely there," says Aunt Mary, looking through the stereoscope at some views of the Caucasus that Vava had brought back. "How beautiful this is! What is it?"
"This?" says Mimotchka, bending over Aunt Mary to look through the stereoscope. "This is the 'Castle of Love and Treachery.' They are rocks that look like a castle, and that is what they are called."
"And is it really as beautiful? Did you go there?"
"Yes, I went there on horseback.... It's very beautiful, especially by moon-light—c'est féerique."