It had been quite a time since he had been there, and he was received with genuine enthusiasm by his numerous friends, who talked at once of killing the fatted calf for his benefit. In consequence, he dined that night with half a dozen men who had been his comrades when he was in the Gardes-à-Cheval, and in spite of his peculiarly unjoyful mood he became, as the feast progressed, much more cheerful than he had been for weeks.
“Where can one be better than in the bosom of one’s patriotic family?” laughed Count Mourièff, throwing himself back in his chair as the coffee was brought, and blowing volumes of cigar-smoke toward the heavily gilded ceiling. The salon in which the dinner had taken place gave excellent testimony to the entrain of the occasion. In the corners of the big room huge Chinese urns were crowned with pyrotechnic bouquets of long-stemmed flowers; along the table windrows of rare fruits and gaily caparisoned bonbons demonstrated once more that in the very deeps of his nature the Russian is always more or less of a child, over-fond of sweets and pretty baubles—blossoms and luxuries of all sorts!
“You don’t miss your patriotic family, Palitzin, you lucky beggar!” cried Captain Zàptine, one of Basil’s most intimate friends. “You are too well provided otherwise! Gentlemen,” he continued, turning to the others, “this long-legged animal here before you has discovered the secret of eternal youth and happiness. Let us envy him with all our hearts. Do you remember how he left us one fine evening at the camp of Krasnöe-Sèloe during the fateful season of nesting and of love—left us, the wretch, without a word of warning concerning his roseate and orange-budded plans?”
“Did he at least bear away a feather in his beak as a token of peace and good will toward woman?” queried a remarkably tall and handsome man still very much on the right side of forty, who was known far and wide as a hardened misogynist, and wore the Cross of St. George upon his tunic—in commemoration, his compeers alleged, of his many victories over the dragon as represented by the fair sex.
“No; but he has come back, doubtless with an olive branch to make us forgive his desertion. Ah, my friends, my dear friends!” cried Zàptine; “he owed us this apology for neglecting our sisters and cousins in order to annex the most beautiful woman out of Russia! Let us therefore drink to his ever-increasing felicity, now that he has apologized.”
“I have done nothing of the sort!” Basil tried to assert, but his voice was drowned by laughter, and with a serio-comic gesture he sat down again. And then there followed a general hurrah and loud calls for a “monster” punch to honor the toast, and presently the beverage made its appearance, flaming like all the fires of the lower regions in an immense silver “crater,” embossed with the arms of the club, and flanked by little silver bowls marked in the same fashion. Without losing a moment Zàptine seized hold of the great ladle and began to make the punch dance—as he termed the operation.
“Ah!” the Chevalier-de-St. George declaimed. “Now we shall feel quite at home! No ‘Wein, Weib, und Gesang’ for me! Punch, and good old comrades to swallow it at command, that’s the only real thing!”
“Pfuhh ... h!” retorted Zàptine, assiduously stirring the Vesuvius before him. “Don’t listen to him, brothers; he is going to talk nonsense!”
“Nonsense! I? You don’t know me! Is it nonsense to deprive oneself of the anxieties, the troubles, the imprisonment, and other delights of home rule? I am a sensible man, and intend to remain my own master, for ever and for ever—as in the old song, whatever it’s entitled. Petticoats! Don’t talk to me of them. It makes me sweat icicles to think of them!”
“How do you account, then,” put in Mourièff, scornfully, “for the charming Lesghise, who through some miracle worked by your Honor, finally passed from the high rank of a Caucasian prisoner of state to that of one of Petersburg’s most admired demi-mondaines? Eh? Answer that if you can?”