CHAPTER CXXIV
KISSINGEN
Every day in Paris was too short for me, and I left the Great Babylon with immense regret. Sergy went to Kissingen to begin his cure, and I returned to St. Petersburg to publish my book.
About a week after my arrival I was on my way to Kissingen. Sergy wrote to me entreating me to come, as he couldn’t do without me, and had been very miserable since we parted. He said that he would give up his cure and start for St. Petersburg if I would not rejoin him. I telegraphed back that I was starting off immediately.
Spoilt by the comforts of my travels in Turkestan, I felt very uncomfortable in a train full of passengers. We were crowded together like herrings in a barrel. I squeezed myself into my place in the corner of the carriage, pressing close my elbows. My fellow-passengers were going straight to Berlin and I couldn’t stretch my legs the whole night to get the cramp out of them. We looked at one another with no great love in our eyes. I was placed by the side of a well preserved lady of about fifty years of age, trying to pass off for thirty, who had still the remains of what she had been in her young days and did not like to part with them. I caught her practising her fascinations in the mirror. She was accompanied by her daughter, a grown-up girl of about eighteen, clad in a short frock, with her hair down her back in a plait. When I heard them say “I reckon,” I knew they were Americans. My neighbour opened her basket and offered a part of her supper to me. She was most communicative respecting her own concerns, and chatted away like a magpie. She told me that they were going to do Paris, and spoke all the time of her conquests, stating to me that she had got all the men at her feet. I scarcely listened to her prattle, but she chatted on, accustomed to do without answers. Opposite me, sat a full contrast to that chatter-box, a placid materfamilias endowed with three babies aged respectively five, four and two, who kept singing praises to the many charms and wondrous perfection of her offsprings. The children were petted and fondled by their mother, who crammed them all the way with bonbons and cake in profusion. Her little girl hugging in her arms an immense doll, began quarreling with her brother, an ugly and anything but well-behaved brat, with nose and mouth blackened with chocolate; they kicked and screamed until they were both black in the face. I only just stopped short of throwing my book at their heads. The baby, the pet of the family, was cutting a tooth and kept roaring the whole night.
We arrived early in the morning at the frontier of Prussia. At the Customs my trunks were unmercifully turned topsy-turvy, the horrid officials stirring them up as I used to do with my nursery pudding when all the plums had sunk to the bottom.
When we approached Kissingen, I thrust my head out of the railway-carriage, with my body half out of the window, to catch the first sight of my husband’s face. As we drew up at the station I perceived him on the platform, beaming with delight. I jumped out of the train joyfully, and the next moment I was in Sergy’s arms.
Kissingen is surrounded by mountains and buried in verdure. It is the favourite meeting-place for aristocratic Europe. There is a great rush of ailing humanity towards these healing waters.
I found Sergy comfortably established in a villa belonging to Doctor Sautier, by whom he was treated. The next day I accompanied my husband when he made his visit to the doctor. The drawing-room was crowded with patients who had arrived from all parts of the world. They perused magazines, and plunged their heads into large books of photographs, awaiting their turn to appear before the esculapius.
Early in the morning, as soon as I heard the postilion sounding his horn, I hastened to jump out of bed, and accompanied Sergy to the Kurhaus, where he took his waters. A beautiful string-orchestra entertained the Kurhaus guests from six to eight. The sick, undergoing a cure, walk in the broad alley, carrying their glasses with them. They stroll from one spring to another, sipping the water on the way. We saw invalids in wheeled chairs, basking in the sun with a shawl over their legs, discussing and comparing their various diseases.
The outskirts of Kissingen are beautiful. We made long walks every afternoon; exercise gave me a ravenous appetite, and I was far from being satisfied with our meagre dinner when we returned home, being put on low diet like my husband, for company’s sake. We were kept with a discipline that was worse than that of a convent, and were all put to bed at nine o’clock, in accordance with the doctor’s order. I didn’t like at all to be under hospital rules, and began to revolt against this tedious discipline. At the end of three days I longed for change of air and surroundings, and wanted much to run away. I am sick to death of seeing the same faces every day and of hearing the same sort of talk of people drinking disgusting waters and occupied only with the engrossing pastime of taking care of one’s health. We have also become imaginary sufferers, and very often came upon Maria Michaelovna looking at her tongue in the glass.