PRINCESS MARY [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
CHAPTER I. 11th May.
YESTERDAY I arrived at Pyatigorsk. I have engaged lodgings at the extreme end of the town, the highest part, at the foot of Mount Mashuk: during a storm the clouds will descend on to the roof of my dwelling.
This morning at five o’clock, when I opened my window, the room was filled with the fragrance of the flowers growing in the modest little front-garden. Branches of bloom-laden bird-cherry trees peep in at my window, and now and again the breeze bestrews my writing-table with their white petals. The view which meets my gaze on three sides is wonderful: westward towers five-peaked Beshtau, blue as “the last cloud of a dispersed storm,” [25] and northward rises Mashuk, like a shaggy Persian cap, shutting in the whole of that quarter of the horizon. Eastward the outlook is more cheery: down below are displayed the varied hues of the brand-new, spotlessly clean, little town, with its murmuring, health-giving springs and its babbling, many-tongued throng. Yonder, further away, the mountains tower up in an amphitheatre, ever bluer and mistier; and, at the edge of the horizon, stretches the silver chain of snow-clad summits, beginning with Kazbek and ending with two-peaked Elbruz... Blithe is life in such a land! A feeling akin to rapture is diffused through all my veins. The air is pure and fresh, like the kiss of a child; the sun is bright, the sky is blue—what more could one possibly wish for? What need, in such a place as this, of passions, desires, regrets?
However, it is time to be stirring. I will go to the Elizaveta spring—I am told that the whole society of the watering-place assembles there in the morning.
Descending into the middle of the town, I walked along the boulevard, on which I met a few melancholy groups slowly ascending the mountain. These, for the most part, were the families of landed-gentry from the steppes—as could be guessed at once from the threadbare, old-fashioned frock-coats of the husbands and the exquisite attire of the wives and daughters. Evidently they already had all the young men of the watering-place at their fingers’ ends, because they looked at me with a tender curiosity. The Petersburg cut of my coat misled them; but they soon recognised the military epaulettes, and turned away with indignation.
The wives of the local authorities—the hostesses, so to speak, of the waters—were more graciously inclined. They carry lorgnettes, and they pay less attention to a uniform—they have grown accustomed in the Caucasus to meeting a fervid heart beneath a numbered button and a cultured intellect beneath a white forage-cap. These ladies are very charming, and long continue to be charming. Each year their adorers are exchanged for new ones, and in that very fact, it may be, lies the secret of their unwearying amiability.
Ascending by the narrow path to the Elizaveta spring, I overtook a crowd of officials and military men, who, as I subsequently learned, compose a class apart amongst those who place their hopes in the medicinal waters. They drink—but not water—take but few walks, indulge in only mild flirtations, gamble, and complain of boredom.
They are dandies. In letting their wicker-sheathed tumblers down into the well of sulphurous water they assume academical poses. The officials wear bright blue cravats; the military men have ruffs sticking out above their collars. They affect a profound contempt for provincial ladies, and sigh for the aristocratic drawing-rooms of the capitals—to which they are not admitted.