He shrugs his shoulders, accustomed to the willful wanderings of the great city’s petted belle.
“How could I ever forget him,” he says in turn. “Was there ever a man who left more ineffaceable traces behind him? He was an original madman.”
“Original!” echoes Elisaveta. “Ah! what a cowardly word. Original?” she repeats, as though interrogating her own thought. The young man frowns slightly, but she goes on with calm retrospection. “Only three years ago,” she said, “and he appeared among us like some brilliant meteor; fabulously rich; astonishing the world with his eccentric prodigalities. Then all those clod rooting swine, they deserted him when he was no longer wealthy.”
Her lover’s white teeth are like a wolfish danger signal as he turns to look at her.
“My dear,” he says coldly, “you can’t expect the world to be faithful to a proscript.”
“Proscript?”
“Exactly. They say that political complications were his ruin. At any rate he is banished from St. Petersburg.”
“Then he is in Siberia?”
With all a soldier’s diplomacy he says indifferently: “I believe not. The peasants tell a story of a hermit of the Steppes, who mends kettles, and plows for the farmers. Many believe it to be Hotzka with the remains of his own famous stud.”
“Farmers,—Kettles,” echoes Elisaveta, absently.