"My friend Ladislas Worsky," said Boris introducing him, "that is a friend for you! He rode over here in all this weather only to see us and warn us against some bridge or other."
Again Ladislas showed his white teeth. "Oh," said he, "that is the merit of my old saddle-mare: she finds the way in all weathers and the blackest darkness, perhaps because she only has one eye. But, friend Wolf, on with the samovar and whatever else you have. Let your 'youthful blessings' withdraw, and make things a little cosy here; and Mother Wolf, assume a more amiable expression. Boris, old fellow, no dejection! Let us sit down to our souper."
And he seated himself at the table, bent over toward Billy, looked at her with his shining eyes attentively and a trifle impudently, and began to converse, cheerful and polite, as if he were sitting in a salon.
"Souper, oh well, what goes by that name; the delicacies of our friend Wolf we have no use for. Eggs at most: they are not penetrated by the Old Testament. And so I permitted myself to coax a cold chicken in secret from our old housekeeper at home and bring it with me."
He unwrapped the chicken from a paper, laid it on the plate, and began to carve it, very neatly and correctly; a trifle too dainty and then again too flourishing were the motions of the white hands with the many sparkling rings. He spoke the while without ceasing of the weather, of the road, of the Jew Wolf, and Billy answered as if he were a young gentleman who was making his first visit and whom she had to receive.
"This piece, Countess, if you please," he said, laying a chicken- wing on Billy's plate; "this is a Spanish fowl: my mother is interested in special breeds. But Boris, you are not saying anything, tu n'es pas en train, mon vieux, you are wrong, brother. You have every reason to be of good cheer, a tremendous lot of reason," and he bowed slightly toward Billy, "but we'll manage that all right. Wolf, come here with some of your sinful champagne. You know, our friend Wolf always has champagne on tap, and uses it to bring happiness by secret routes to the barbarians beyond the border."
Billy could not eat; the blue-and-white plates, the knives and forks, the tablecloth, were all repugnant to her. Yonder behind the counter the Jewess was still sitting, her yellow, regular face unmoved; the almond eyes looked at Billy indifferently, proudly, and patiently, seeming to say, "I endure you because I must." These eyes tortured Billy, she felt as if she had never been so looked at. She forced herself to look away from those eyes, and to listen to Ladislas Worsky, who continued his conversation with ardor. Now he was speaking of literature:
"Bourget, oh yes, of course very fine, but he tries to analyze the female heart, like sticking butterflies on pins, but that is just the one thing in this world that cannot be analyzed. You do not know Bourget, Countess? Ah yes, young German ladies do not read novels, they read nothing but Schiller. Well, your Schiller ..."
Billy was grateful to him for thus entertaining her, for the hyper-elegance of his movements, for the white cuffs which he kept incessantly pulling out of his coat-sleeves, and for the slender, feminine, beringed hands. All this put something familiar, something homelike into this alien, hostile environment. Billy answered, laughed a little, endeavored to act as if she were sitting on the porch at Kadullen, even imitated a little the lady-of-the-world manners of her sister Lisa. The champagne was brought.
"There, a different expression, if you please, brother," cried Ladislas to Boris, pouring out the wine. "But he is always that way," turning to Billy, "je connais mon Boris. If something alters his program, his good humor is gone: he always used to spoil half of every Sunday for us with his bad humor, only because the next day was Monday. Well, that couldn't be helped. In our senior year we had a comrade named Andreijsky, you remember, Boris, a mad, merry fellow. All of a sudden he shoots himself. Why! There was talk of sickness and such things. No, I know he shot himself because the vacation was over, simply because the vacation was over, for he hated school like sin. Boris is just like that too."