It fell to my lot to entertain the little dandy, her son, during the whole of lunch. He embarked on every subject with the same self-possession, and when I asked him how he spent his time, and he had answered me over his high collar in a voice necessarily rather choky, “I occupy myself with sport,” I felt myself suffocating with laughter. He had lately been doing a little motoring and was consumed with pride, the little puppet!
She, poor woman, had in the Caucasus a husband who had deserted her for another fair temptress, and wished to divorce her—hence these whisperings, this mystery, these tears when she spoke of him. Was there no virtue then in these round and shapely arms?
I do not at all know how my aunt managed it, but the fact remains that when I left Petrograd, the ex-unfaithful one, too, was always there, and husband and wife seemed like two turtle doves. And more than ever the fine, white gauzes fluttered round the white arms and the short neck, and all her plump little being seemed to revel at the restoration of her conjugal rights.
Prince Lucien Murat spent part of the winter at Petrograd. He sometimes took us to see the wrestlers. He had a box there and this entertainment was also a very smart rendezvous. Many officers were there and smart young women. These wrestlers were real colossal masses of human flesh, and most of them bore animal countenances. They began by parading one behind the other in a long file in the arena, then in pairs they wrestled together, he whose back first touched the ground being the vanquished one, and the others in succession. They were of all nationalities. They did not appear to make any real effort, at any rate their movements were calm and slow, but they must have made some, for by degrees one saw their skins begin to shine with heat.
Their costume was of the simplest, a little pair of bathing drawers.
It was forbidden to walk on the quays with a camera, for fear of its containing a bomb. That did not prevent my doing so all the winter without being troubled. Was I then in the good books of the police?
The Russian custom of not addressing others by their family names, but only joining to their Christian names the name of their father, is at first very perplexing for strangers. Thus, supposing your name to be Olga, if your father’s for instance is Peter, you will be spoken of as “Olga Petrovna,” and so on, really enough to make one’s head ache. In the masculine the termination is altered to “vitch,” as for example “Petro Petrovitch.”
In Russia all luxuries are very dear, but the first necessaries of life are not more so than elsewhere, and my aunts asserted that flats were cheaper than in Paris, where they become very dear when they are of any size. At Easter it is the custom to give delightful little trinkets in the shape of eggs, decorated with a little coloured stone, often real ones. I brought back many of these. That day the dish consisted of boiled eggs, painted red, blue, etc., and all the household ate them too.
I terminated my winter at my Aunt de Nicolay’s, continuing with her my social life and met a good many of her relations who were charming.
Sometimes there came to lunch some austere Protestant missionaries, returned from far-off countries where they might have been eaten, had they been more delectable morsels, but where they had escaped from cannibal jaws. Some of them were good and interesting talkers.