The cynicism of the proceeding revolted me.
"But now, if you please, I should very much like to know what's the meaning of it all. Is it a practical joke you are playing upon me?"
"Oh, no! certainly not! Pray don't suppose that I have dressed up on your account. I am now a real peasant woman, and such I mean to remain. It is a serious thing for me, I can tell you, and I've come to you, not that you may write about it in your paper, but that you may give me advice."
"I give you advice?"
"Certainly! Whom else should I ask? The whole world condemns and tramples upon me, and yet I have offended nobody, not even in thought. You are the only one I have injured, bitterly injured, so it is from you that I must seek protection."
Woman's logic with a vengeance! I stood up in front of her, leaning on the edge of the table. I was contriving all the time to prevent her from seeing the portrait I was painting.
"I'll begin from the very beginning," continued the lady, lowering her long eyelashes. "I was married. So much you know. We gave a splendid banquet. The whole town, half the county was there. I fancy they described it in the newspapers; and why shouldn't they, when the richest, best-known, and most handsome girl in the town was married to the ideal cavalier? The lady brought a dowry of 100,000 florins, and the gentleman conveyed his bride to his ancestral castle in a carriage drawn by four fiery horses. The universal envy was a more piquant grace to the meal than the benediction of the priest. The gentlemen envied the bridegroom, and the ladies envied the bride, and every one was forced to say: 'A couple made for each other.' Alas! the only joy which remained in my heart when I came out of church and looked among the crowd was the thought, 'Ah! you all envy me, I know!'
"We went straight from church to my husband's castle," continued Bessy. "Thirty carriages escorted us. I counted them. A splendid banquet followed. That day I changed my dress four times. The fifth time I put on a lace négligé, and the bridesmaids led me to the bridal chamber. This room was a veritable masterpiece of upholstery. A Vienna furnisher had decorated it most elaborately. I couldn't sleep all night. The voice of the bass viol and the clarionet resounded in my ears from the banqueting-room, and the noise and uproar of the guests also. I did not see my husband till the morning. Then the guests began to disperse. Only now and then did a cracked and piping voice mingle with the frantic music of the gipsies. Then it was that my husband appeared before me, and a pitiable object he looked. He called me his darling little sister, and asked me if I could tell him where he lived. Then he undressed himself on the sofa and talked such nonsense that at last I couldn't help laughing. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'I suppose this is always the way when they take leave of their bachelordom.' Then sleep overcame me and I dreamed the silliest stuff. You were continually in my dreams. But why mention such things now?"
With that she readjusted the kerchief which was tied around her head-dress and proceeded:—
"It was afternoon when I awoke. I must have wept a great deal in my dreams, for the pillow on which my head lay was quite wet. My husband was no longer reposing on the sofa, but sprawling on the floor like a stuffed frog. It cost me a great deal of trouble to shake him into life again. It was a still greater effort to make him understand in what part of the world he was, and in what relations we stood to each other here below. After that he insisted upon my crawling with him under the sofa, and when I wouldn't hear of it, he began to cry like a child, and demanded a pistol from me that he might blow his brains out. Then I brought a washing-basin and washed his face for him, and ducked it once or twice in cold water. He roared like a baby who is being tubbed, but finally recovered his spirits, and allowed himself to be raised from the ground. Then he drank out of the water-jug, and his eyes opened, but they were as tiny as a mole's, and I now perceived for the first time that they were a little crooked."