“Et le grand soleil qui me brûle
Est dans mon cœur.”
CHAPTER XVI
ON her return to Petrograd for the winter, my Aunt Cherwachidze took up again her charitable rôle of confidante to her protégés, who overwhelmed her with visits, disputed for her favours or her kind looks, paid court to her, were jealous of each other, even hated each other. One of them, Baroness K..., a very pronounced type of the real Tartar, with waved black hair, great round black eyes, and lips outrageously reddened, came to see her very often. Her showy toilettes, red and yellow, a relic of barbarous times, made one’s eyes ache. A big hat, a real lampshade, generally scarlet, completed a toilette of the most doubtful taste.
Her gait was slow, her feet were much turned out; and as she walked, balancing herself on her heels, slowly and deliberately, the chest out and the head thrown back, she looked rather alarming. Her cousins, real, savage Tartars living in their own country, were always threatening to kill her, in order to possess themselves of her fortune which they believed to be immense. Divorced and redivorced, it really was beyond one’s comprehension.
She was the terror of my Aunt de Nicolay—to whose charge especially I had been entrusted—this on my account only, but without any reason for being so as far as I was concerned, for I was frightened of her and always kept at a distance.
Her case seemed to me a bad one, almost desperate!
The next in assiduity was small and plump; she used to arrive dressed as often as not in a tight black voile dress, in the old-fashioned style. Her sleeves of transparent gauze eternally displayed the white skin of her plump little arms, of which she was very proud.
She used to sink into a vast arm-chair, take breath, confer in low tones with my aunt, and then they would both disappear into the comfortable study, the usual scene of confidences. Her confession made, she would reappear, more smiling and plump than ever, and seizing the parchments from which she was never parted began to declaim verses, certainly doomed to perish with her. In vain had she tried to flood the editorial pastures, for the editors proved to be an impenetrable barrier to her literary attempts.
One day she arrived for lunch much too early—my aunt, the little feather of her hat blowing in the wind, not having yet returned—with the added attraction of her son, a young puppy with a fascinating and conquering air. His hair was fair, his face was pink with fairly good features but—I could hardly repress a smile when, looking down, I saw his little form clothed in a frock coat, tightly moulding his figure. And what a figure, so Lilliputian. Choked by his high collar, he clasped a shiny tall hat in his hands; a pair of gloves of delicate tint and patent-leather shoes completed the accoutrement of this ridiculous little fop.
The lady was dressed that day in canary yellow up to the waist, a bodice very transparent on all sides, the marble of her little arms delicious under the tissue, and her neck! and her throat! and—luckily my aunt was short-sighted!