We met like a couple of old friends. I began to question him about the personages of note and as to the sort of life which was led at the waters.
“It is a rather prosaic life,” he said, with a sigh. “Those who drink the waters in the morning are inert—like all invalids, and those who drink the wines in the evening are unendurable—like all healthy people! There are ladies who entertain, but there is no great amusement to be obtained from them. They play whist, they dress badly and speak French dreadfully! The only Moscow people here this year are Princess Ligovski and her daughter—but I am not acquainted with them. My soldier’s cloak is like a seal of renunciation. The sympathy which it arouses is as painful as charity.”
At that moment two ladies walked past us in the direction of the well; one elderly, the other youthful and slender. I could not obtain a good view of their faces on account of their hats, but they were dressed in accordance with the strict rules of the best taste—nothing superfluous. The second lady was wearing a high-necked dress of pearl-grey, and a light silk kerchief was wound round her supple neck. Puce-coloured boots clasped her slim little ankle so charmingly, that even those uninitiated into the mysteries of beauty would infallibly have sighed, if only from wonder. There was something maidenly in her easy, but aristocratic gait, something eluding definition yet intelligible to the glance. As she walked past us an indefinable perfume, like that which sometimes breathes from the note of a charming woman, was wafted from her.
“Look!” said Grushnitski, “there is Princess Ligovski with her daughter Mary, as she calls her after the English manner. They have been here only three days.”
“You already know her name, though?”
“Yes, I heard it by chance,” he answered, with a blush. “I confess I do not desire to make their acquaintance. These haughty aristocrats look upon us army men just as they would upon savages. What care they if there is an intellect beneath a numbered forage-cap, and a heart beneath a thick cloak?”
“Poor cloak!” I said, with a laugh. “But who is the gentleman who is just going up to them and handing them a tumbler so officiously?”
“Oh, that is Raevich, the Moscow dandy. He is a gambler; you can see as much at once from that immense gold chain coiling across his skyblue waistcoat. And what a thick cane he has! Just like Robinson Crusoe’s—and so is his beard too, and his hair is done like a peasant’s.”
“You are embittered against the whole human race?”
“And I have cause to be”...