"Can he feel at home with these men?" Nikolai asks himself, and looks at him scrutinizingly.
At first he sits quite silently there, and only addresses a few friendly words across the table to Madame Bulatow, the wife of a poor, unrecognized composer. His boundless kindness of heart never fails with poor unfortunates, however raging, untamably wild, quite rough he may otherwise be. But to no one is he so tender as to his own country people. Poor Russians in a strange land he treats as relatives.
The further the dinner progresses, the worse becomes the universal tone, the more unrestrained Lensky. His manner to the Countess d'Olbreuse becomes completely inadmissible.
In the beginning he scarcely noticed her. But as she, from vanity and a whim, had evidently determined to make his conquest, to rouse him from his indifference with all kinds of flatteries and coquetries, he gradually warms, presses her hand, whispers all kinds of insidious remarks to her with wicked glances, permits himself so much that at last she is frightened and tries to restrain him. But to restrain Lensky after the second bottle of wine, at the close of a good dinner, and near a very pretty woman, who has suddenly become prudish after she had, a few minutes before, thrown herself at his head, is no easy thing.
Nikolai, whose blood burns in his brown cheeks, foolishly lets himself be brought to remark a shy, "Mais, mon père!" and by that attains a not at all pleasing result. Always excited by the slightest weight or restraint, to violent opposition, Lensky is least of all inclined to submit to be lectured by his "aristocratic son." His face, flushed by wine, becomes distorted, his eyes glisten. He is just about to say something horrible, unpardonable--the word dies on his lips; he turns his head and listens. A very excited child's voice outside is heard by turns with a waiter's voice: "I wish to go in, laissez-moi donc!"
Was it possible? The door opens. Breathless, with cheeks flushed from the cold, a girl of perhaps seventeen years bursts in and into Lensky's arms, who has hastily sprung up.
"Here I am at last!" said she, breathless, between laughing and weeping, in Russian. "Oh, if you knew how much trouble I had in getting to you! They would not let me in. What does it matter, now I am with you? And how are you? Are you well again? Oh, you poor dear, I could not bear it any longer, I was so worried about you!"
He holds her delightedly to his breast, covers her whole face with kisses. "It is my daughter," he explains to his astonished-looking guests. "Please make room for her near me, Madame Grévin." And as a waiter pushes a chair between the old woman and the virtuoso, he continues: "Take off your coat and hat, Mascha, and now sit down and get your breath." Then he passes his hand over her soft dark hair. His touching tenderness has wiped away every trace from his face of the hateful expression which formerly disfigured it. "Yes, yes, this is my daughter, my foolish, ignorant daughter, a little goose, who loves me dearly." And the voice of the spoiled despot, who recently only tolerated the homage of hundreds of women crazy about him, trembles at these words quite as if he wondered that his own child loves him! "Are you hungry, my little dove?" asks he.
"No, papa, I am too happy to be hungry; but I am thirsty." And she reaches for his champagne glass.