The Walter family and I determined to walk to the Boulevard Kozarsky. After we had passed the memorial of this hero of the sea, we remained standing by a little Kiosk. Our eyes traveled delightedly over the picturesque landscape outspread beneath us. Calmly the marvelous Gulf shone at our feet, a glittering blue sapphire set in sun-burnished shores.
After we had looked long enough we went down into the city. The Professor worked himself up into such furors of Ciceronian eloquence, that his brow cleared and he became happy. The nephew appeared nervous and impatient. He looked about shyly, and from time to time his eyes rested upon the form of Frau Walter, who was fluttering along beside her husband, in unalloyed delight.
In front of a ruin, whose half-fallen wall the enthusiastic professor began to climb, the nephew suddenly felt in his breast pocket, and after he had pulled his hand out empty, he went up to his aunt and began to whisper to her. She took from her dress a pretty little notebook, tore a leaf out and handed it to him, along with a handsome pencil.
The youth sat down hurriedly near the ruins and wrote a few lines. When the zealous and inspired uncle fell down exactly at his nephew’s feet, the latter had already written the note, and returned the pencil to its owner.
We went on. Presently the pretty woman became faint, said that she had a headache, and felt so ill that she must return to the steamer. The professor was so absorbed in his study of the ruins that he let her go away unobserved.
After a while he asked me where she had gone, but he paid no attention to my answer. He signalled an isvochtschik and invited me to drive with him. We visited the Malakaf-Kurhan, the graveyards, and heaven knows what else we should have seen, had I not called his attention to the fact that it was high time for us to return to the steamer. And it was in fact high time. When our troika reached the harbor, the sailors were loosening the ropes that made it fast. We jumped out and hastened toward the ship. Just then, from among the gaping crowd a figure stepped forth and handed Walter a folded letter. He opened and read it. His face turned white; his hands trembled. When he turned the paper over and read the words on the other side, it fluttered from his hands. He stood there as if he had been struck by lightning, his eyes wide, his face white. Then he groaned and covered his face with his hands. A Greek standing near picked the paper up and handed it to him. Walter dropped his hands from his face and looked at me despairingly.
“Read that! Deceived! Deserted!”
I took the paper. It was the one Frau Walter had torn from her notebook and read:
Dear Uncle:
While you are reading these lines I shall be far away, beyond Sevastopol. I’ve got to confess that that manuscript of yours about the new science—from which you read to us morning and evening, all your learned articles, have given your wife and me many an unhappy hour. So then, farewell! Our ways part. I have taken nothing with me that was yours—that is, only one thing. Probably that is your greatest treasure. But it had to be. Otherwise you would have tormented your poor wife to death. I, therefore, take this pearl with me; it rests upon my heart. The bells of the troika sound merrily in our ears. You will never be able to catch us.