To his wife wrote Sergei at the same time: "I do not understand the man!--figurez-vous that I myself for a moment, was sous le charme. What a depth of nobility is in this prodigy! His is an enormous nature!"
* * * * * *
As long as the separation was still impending, as long as the conferences still lasted, a kind of restless life fevered in Natalie; she forced her being, naturally inclined to tender reliance and dependence, to an independent strength of will, of which no one had thought her capable.
But when the last word was spoken, the separation at length validly arranged, she fell into a condition of brooding sadness from which nothing more could rouse her.
For still three years she lived after the separation; three years, in which every hour endlessly dragged itself along, and which flowed together in the recollection into a single endless, cold, dull day; a day in that northern zone where the sun, with far-extending, weak, weary beams, tardily remains the whole twenty-four hours long, standing on the horizon, and grudges the night its refreshing darkness and the day its light.
Her torment reached an exquisite culmination when Maschenka, who idolized her father, and who, in her childish innocence, had no idea of the state of affairs, in the beginning incessantly and anxiously asked her mother little questions referring to the separation. Natalie gave her no answer, frowned and turned away her head. And sometimes Maschenka then became ungovernable and angry. Her little warm, loving heart could not understand why they had taken away her idol.
Once, Lensky asked for his daughter for two weeks. Maschenka, with her English governess, was sent to Nice to her grandmother, where Lensky daily visited her. When, loaded with presents, her heart full of sweet, tender recollections, she came back again to Cannes, where Natalie had meanwhile awaited her, with fearful obstinacy she insisted in relating to Natalie endless things about the goodness and lovability of the father, and especially how impressively and anxiously he had inquired after mamma. Her full, deep little voice trembled resentfully thereby, and an angry reproach darkened her large, clear child's eyes.
For a while Natalie was quite calm, then, without having replied a word to the child, she stood up and left the room.
Maschenka observed with astonishment how she tottered and hit against the furniture like a blind person. Thereupon the child remained as if rooted to the ground, with thoughtfully wrinkled brow, her little hands glued to her sides, standing, staring down at the carpet as if she there sought the solution to the great, sad riddle which so occupied her. Then with a short motion as if shaking off something, which she had caught from her father, like so much else, she threw her little head back and hurried after her mother.
Natalie had retired to her bedroom. Maschenka found her deathly pale, with helpless, stiff bearing, and hands folded straight before her, sitting in an easy chair; her weary glance, directed in front of her, expressed inconsolable despair.