"The less they know till after they've married, the better for them. A young girl should be pure in every thought." And then they begin to make love to us.
There are two brothers who have taken refuge in the Tchedesky pension, with a collection of servants. Their house was burned under their eyes, and their property is now in the Austrians' hands. The eldest brother, Count S——, is very handsome and aristocratic, with a cherished gray mustache carefully twisted upward, and soft, brown eyes, which he uses with advantage. Evidently the Romantic poets influenced his youth, and he has found the melancholy Byronic traditions the most effective for his ends, since he continues the attitude.
"He is very sad," his brother whispers a dozen times a day. "Of course his experiences these past months have been frightful for one of his nature. I am not so sensitive. But he has always been this way. Sometimes I'm afraid. Our other brother died insane."
Count S—— affects to believe that the Germans can do anything.
"They are devils! What can we do against them?" he cries at dinner, combing his mustache with the little tortoise-shell comb he carries in his vest.
He never forgets his soda tablets after eating.
His younger brother is round and red-faced, with twinkly blue eyes. He limps, and follows his elder brother round like a faithful dog. The slightest thing amuses him. Indeed, he laughs at nothing at all. He kept the books on his brother's estates and he brought them with him in his flight. They are his pride and joy. Sometimes he brings them into the drawing-room after supper, with photographs of the property. There are pictures of boar hunts, and huntsmen on horseback, with wolf-hounds in the snow, and the tenants merry-making and the house and different sections of the property, and the horses and dogs and cattle. I look at them night after night. They love to live over again their life in telling me about it.
Among the servants with the S—— brothers is an old woman, a kindly, slack one, who rarely goes out, but observes the passing life from her windows. She wears a short, loose wrapper and petticoat, and scuffs about in list slippers.
Then there is a young girl with shy eyes and quiet, womanlike actions. We often see her peeking through a crack in the door when Janchu is naughty.
And then there is Sigmund, a sly, goody-goody child of six or seven, whom the old woman treats like a son, and whom the eldest S—— brother has adopted as his heir. He plays with Janchu. The brothers adore him and take him to Koupietsky Park, and watch him when he plays in the pension garden. We have heard that he is Count S——'s illegitimate child, and that the old woman is his mother. It seems quite probable when you think of the life on a big Polish estate—the loneliness, etc. These three people live together in one room. The samovar is always boiling and some one is always drinking tea there. The brothers share an adjoining room, but they are usually with those in there, who constitute all that remains of their former habits.