They trifled away the summer on the Italian coast and in Switzerland. In the autumn Lensky made a concert tour through Germany and the Netherlands, on which his young wife accompanied him, and attempted with humorous zeal to accustom herself to the role of an artist's wife. In the beginning of December Lensky and she came to St. Petersburg. The residence had been prepared for the young pair by a friend of Natalie. Natalie made a discontented face when she entered her new kingdom. How new, how glaring, how unsuitable and tasteless everything looked. "It is as if one bit into a green apple," said she; and turning to Lensky she added, gayly, with a shrug of her shoulders: "The stupid Annette did not know any better; but do not trouble yourself. In a couple of weeks it will be different. You shall see how comfortably I will cushion your nest. You must feel happy in it, my restless eagle, or else you will fly away from me. What?"
She said this, smiling in proud consciousness of his passionate love. What pleasure would it give him to fly away? And teasingly, jestingly, she pushed back the thick hair from his temples.
Ah, how pleasant and yet tantalizing was the touch of her slender, delicate fingers, which made him at once nervous and happy! As he expressed it, it "almost made him jump out of his skin with rapture." At first he let her continue her foolish, tender playfulness to her heart's content; then he laughingly put himself on the defensive, preached a more dignified manner to her, and when she did not yield, but gayly continued her lovely, teasing ways, he at length seized her violently by both wrists and quite crushed her hands with kisses.
If in the first weeks of their married life both had been quite solemn, thoughtful, and confused in their manner to each other, now they often frolicked together like two gay children.
While he took up again his long-interrupted duties at the Petersburg Conservatory, she built him "his nest." She did not go lavishly to work. Oh, no! She knew that one must not press down a young artist with the burden of material cares. She imagined she was very economical. She did not cease to wonder over the cheapness with which she could get everything that was needed, beginning with the flowers--flowers in winter, in St. Petersburg! He never enlightened her as to how much the footing on which she maintained her "simple household" surpassed his present circumstances.
Every time that he came home he found a new, attractive change. She accomplished great things in artistic arrangement of the so-called "confused style," which at that time was not so common as to-day, but was still a bold innovation.
"C'est tres joli, mais un peu trop touffu," said he to her once when she met him, quite particularly conscious of victory and awaiting praise, with the knowledge of a new, costly improvement in the arrangement of the drawing-room.
"Yes, my love; but a drawing-room is neither an official audience-room nor a gymnasium," replied she, somewhat offended.
"Nor a ball-room nor riding-school," completed he, jestingly; "but--h'm--still one should be able to move in it. Do you not think so?"
"That is as one looks at it. I have nothing to do with it if you cannot brandish around too freely in it."