I used to take bribes to the inspector of the Yarmarka and to other necessary people, from whom I received what the master called papers, which permitted all kinds of illegalities. For this service I obtained the right to wait for my employers at the door on the front steps when they went out to see their friends in the evenings. This did not often happen, but when it did, they never returned until after midnight. I used to sit at the top of the steps, or on the heap of planks opposite them, for hours, looking into the windows of my lady's flat, thirstily listening to the gay conversation and the music.
The windows were open. Through the curtains and the screen of flowers I could see the fine figures of officers moving about the room. The rotund major waddled about, and she floated about, dressed with astonishing simplicity, but beautifully.
In my own mind I called her "Queen Margot."
"This is the gay life that they write about in French books," I thought, looking in at the window. And I always felt rather sad about it. A childish jealousy made it painful for me to see "Queen Margot" surrounded by men, who buzzed about her like bees over flowers.
Her least-frequent visitor was a tall, unhappy-looking officer, with a furrowed brow and deep-sunken eyes, who always brought his violin with him and played marvelously—so marvelously that the passers-by used to stop under the window, and all the dwellers in the street used to gather round. Even my employers, if they happened to be at home, would open the window, listen, and praise. I never remember their praising any one else except the subdeacon of the cathedral, and I knew that a fish-pie was more pleasing to them than any kind of music.
Sometimes this officer sang, or recited verses in a muffled voice, sighing strangely and pressing his hand to his brow. Once when I was playing under the window with the little girl and "Queen Margot" asked him to sing, he refused for a long time. Then he said clearly:
"Only a song has need of beauty,
While beauty has no need of songs."
I thought these lines were lovely, and for some reason I felt sorry for the officer.
What I liked best was to look at my lady when she sat at the piano, alone in the room, and played. Music intoxicated me, and I could see nothing but the window, and beyond that, in the yellow light of the lamp, the finely formed figure of the woman, with her haughty profile and her white hands hovering like birds over the keys. I gazed at her, listened to the plaintive music, and dreamed. If I could find some treasure, I would give it all to her, so that she should be rich. If I had been Skobelev, I would have declared war on the Turks again. I would have taken money for ransoms, and built a house for her on the Otkossa, the best site in the whole town, and made her a present of it. If only she would leave this street, where every one talked offensively about her. The neighbors, the servants belonging to our yard, and my employers more than all spoke about "Queen Margot" as evilly and spitefully as they had talked about the tailor's wife, though more cautiously, with lowered voices, and looking about them as they spoke.
They were afraid of her, probably because she was the widow of a very distinguished man. The writings on the walls of her rooms, too, were privileges bestowed on her husband's ancestors by the old Russian emperors Goudonov, Alexei, and Peter the Great. This was told me by the soldier Tuphyaev, a man of education, who was always reading the gospels. Or it may have been that people were afraid lest she should thrash them with her whip with the lilac-colored stone in the handle. It was said that she had once struck a person of position with it.