I am having a very dull time, and my spirits are down to zero. I do want Sergy so badly, so very badly! Oh! if I had only not come to that horrid Cernobbio! I am spending my days stretched in an easy-chair, yawning over a book. Melle. Nadine’s room is next to mine, and I can hear her singing or chatting with her intimate friend, Baroness B⸺ a tall, rather ungainly girl, with red hands and very bad manners. Her mother is a very troublesome, bad-tempered old lady, embellished by a horrid black wig. She is vulgarity itself, and resembles a cook trying to play the lady. That detestable woman generally makes her appearance with a horrid pug-dog tucked under one arm, which snarls at you, and flies out of her arms trying to bite your toes.
Melle. Nadine and her friend carried on a flirtation with a young Italian tenor, and ran after him in a most barefaced fashion, contriving both to catch him. Melle. Nadine, who was determined to keep him for herself, took him in hand and totally eclipsed the young Baroness, which led to a succession of stormy scenes. I perceived that the atmosphere was highly charged with electricity, and that there will be a row presently. One day they had a fearful dispute about the hero of their romance, after which the young Baroness did not appear for a week. Her mother, wishing to reconcile the rivals, brought over her daughter to make up her quarrel with Melle. Nadine, but the interview was not pleasant. Melle. Nadine refused to see her friend’s outstretched hand, at which the old Baroness flew into a rage and fell on Melle. Nadine with fiery reproaches. “What!” screamed the old lady at the top of her voice and rolling infuriated eyes, “My daughter wants to make up with you and this is the way you treat her. You base, ungrateful girl! I will never allow her after that to set foot in your house!” Having said her say, the old Baroness sank into an armchair, holding strong smelling-salts to her nose, and throwing back her head, she waited for a fit of hysterics which would not come, and two minutes after she made her exit, banging the door after her. If I were in the place of Melle. Nadine I should have nothing more to do with the Baroness and her daughter, but half-an-hour afterwards I saw both young ladies seated close together on a bank in the garden, hand in hand, mingling their tears together, after having made each other the vow of eternal friendship.
Melle. Nadine had another admirer in the person of Doctor Bianchi, a forty-year old cherub, who worshipped the very ground that she trod on, and cooed his romance into her ears like a real troubadour. But he is far from being the ideal Lohengrin, with his bald head and prominent abdomen. He wouldn’t have been my hero even with more hair on his head, being rather a fool and very ignorant, especially of geography. To him Russia represented only snow, bears, and tallow candles. “May I ask you if you are English?” he inquired when being presented to me.—“Russian?” he exclaimed in blank astonishment. “Oh! I can’t believe it, you look quite European.” Stupid fellow! I detested him after that, for I am exceedingly tenacious in questions of patriotic pride. Doctor Bianchi had made several times the offer of his hand and heart to Melle. Nadine, but she refused him flatly over and over again. She treats him very harshly and hates the very sight of him. When Doctor Bianchi enters one door she goes out by the other. But the long-suffering physician makes an ass of himself and continues to persecute his lady-love with his tenacious wooing and poor Melle. Nadine doesn’t know how to get rid of him. As for me I would have known how to knock the calf-love out of him soon enough. What awful idiots men make themselves when they are in love.
Our landlord, Signor Bonsignore, is a magnificent old beau, awfully stuck up and prim, belonging to the ancient school, and suited rather to the eighteenth century than to our modern era. He affected an antiquated style of dress, his chin resting within the points of a high collar, which reached to his ears. One day he came to keep me company whilst I had my lunch in my room, and remained quite a long time paying me old-fashioned compliments. He said that he regretted that he had not met my second-self in his young days, and that it was the reason why he is still single. Signor Bonsignore is an awful old screw, one could see it by the motto carved over the door of our dining-room saying: “One never repents of having eaten too little.” Frau Weidemann follows the motto to the letter in respect of her boarders, practising rigorous economy, rarely varying her scanty menus and making mental photographs of the joints before they are removed. My frugal breakfast, day after day, has been coffee, one egg and insufficient bread and butter. My lunch is brought in to me on a tray; the limited menu is unvariably composed of cold meat, green beans and a dessert of two biscuits and half an apple. Marie, the household treasure, whilst clearing away my scanty repasts, always asks as if in derision: “Madame a bien mangé?” which made me groan inwardly.
Mrs. G⸺ and Melle. Nadine came in hopelessly late to table, and sometimes didn’t appear until after eight, keeping dinner waiting. One day when I descended to the dining-room, a smart young man, in the barber’s block style, wearing very yellow gloves and yellow boots, walked in. He had a white gardenia in his buttonhole and an eyeglass, which made him squint. Frau Weidemann introduced him to me as Signor Gorgolli, the son of her close friend. He shook hands with me raising his elbow to his ear, and bowed his head as politely as the exigencies of his high collar would allow. Mrs G⸺, who lighted up when men were present, but languished if there were only ladies in the room, had taken extraordinary pains with her toilette for Signor Gorgolli, and came down to dinner having put on her most becoming gown. She was displaying her best graces to him, and laid herself out to be irresistible, and encouraged the young snob, which I regretted, because you could see at once that he wasn’t the kind who needs encouragement, being thoroughly pleased with himself and seeming to think that every woman must fall in love with him. Edging his chair closer to where Mrs. G⸺ was sitting, he picked out a rose from a bowl of flowers that stood on the dinner-table, and pinned it into her low bodice. That coxcomb talked of himself all through the course of the meal, and didn’t want to hear what you say, only to tell you about himself. The letter “I” was the backbone of his conversation. He said “I this” and “I that” every time he opened his mouth; a more conceited ass I never set eyes upon. His manner struck me as peculiarly odious. He was trying all the time to impress the company with the idea that he belongs to a circle in society in which he certainly never set foot, and confessed barefacedly that his finances, being at low ebb, he was on the look-out for a rich heiress to pay off his debts, but that in the meanwhile he was disposed to get all the fun he could out of life, feeling far too young to settle into a sober family man.
Signor Gorgolli came back the next day and the day after. He tried to get up a flirtation with me and was always hanging about me, twisting up the ends of his moustache and prepared for conquest. He paid me compliments upon my looks and said that he came to Cernobbio only on my account, at which I assumed an expression of extreme innocence, and pretended not to understand what he was driving at. He was certainly a very compromising young man, and I tried to avoid every occasion of meeting him, but he was such a fool, and would imagine anything except that he is not wanted. Presuming young idiot!
One afternoon I sat with a book on the veranda whilst our ladies were out shopping, and Signor Gorgolli, who was quick to take advantage of it, came to keep me company. I grasped the fact that he intended to stay with me, and began to wish the ladies would come back. In the street a hand-organ was reeling out a waltz, and I was reckless enough to give Signor Gorgolli a dance. He put his arm round me and held me very tight. I had done wrong in allowing my hand to stay in his a second or two longer than necessary. Dating from that afternoon he became bolder than ever, and ventured even to press my hand under the table-cloth during dinner. I never heard of such impudence! The matter was going a bit too far, and I began to crush him with my scorn, and soon put him back to his proper place in throwing his photograph, which he had just given me, into the waste-paper basket, whilst he pulled his moustache and looked silly. He left the room feeling terribly snubbed. A week went by and I saw nothing of him. I was awfully glad to be free from his detestable society. He might go to Jericho for what I cared.
The evenings were getting longer, and dragged like an eternity. To shorten them somehow we played society games and puzzles, which bored me to death and made me yawn.
One night after I had gone to bed, a terrible storm arose; ceaseless lightning harrowed the sky, and the rain came pouring down. Suddenly one of my windows was blown open. I jumped out of bed and went to shut it, and was nearly carried away by a gust of wind. After having wedged the frames with matches I crept back to bed, when bang! bang!! went the windows, and I had to get up again, and the match work had to be done all over once more. When I awoke next morning I opened the window and breathed the fresh pure air with delight. The mist was hanging like a grey curtain across the lake and the swallows were flying low over the water. From afar I heard the church bells ringing the Ave Maria. As a contrast to this peaceful scene, I saw under my window our cook chasing the hens, innocently awaiting their hasty doom in the patch of garden which was the resort of Frau Weidemann’s fowls. The pacha of these poor victims, a little crested cock, didn’t seem to remark the diminution of his harem, and continued to fling out his shrill Koukarikou joyously.
The little Americans are quite their own masters. They are running about all day without no one to look after them, and spend most of their time in quarrelling, flying at each other’s faces, pulling each other by the hair, and pinching, and scratching. I hear Danys’s shrill little voice coming from the garden, shouting orders to her brother, “Hermann, go in the shade!” but he would not obey and paid no heed to her repeated calls to be quiet.