Текст книги "The Gambler and other stories. Poor People. The Landlady"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
I ran up to my storey and rapidly opened the door. Polina was there, sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed, with .a lighted candle before her. She looked at me with amazement, and no doubt at that moment I must have looked rather strange. I stood before her and began flinging down all my piles of money on the table.
CHAPTER XV
I REMEMBER she fixed a very intent look on my face, but without even moving from her seat or changing her position.
"I've won two hundred thousand francs!" I cried, as I flung down the last roll of notes.
The huge bundles of notes and piles of gold filled up the whole table; I could not take my eyes off it. At moments I completely forgot Polina. At one moment I began arranging the heap of banknotes, folding them up together, at the next I began undoing the rolls of gold and heaping them up in one pile; then I abandoned it all and strode rapidly up and down the room, lost in thought, then went up to the table, counting the money again. Suddenly, as though coming to myself, I ran to the door and locked it with two turns of the key. Then I stood pondering before my Uttle portmanteau.
"Shall I put it in the portmanteau till to-morrow?" I said, suddenly remembering Polina and turning towards her.
She was still sitting in the same place without stirring, but watching me attentively. Her expression was somehow strange; I did not like that expression. I am not mistaken if I say that there was hatred in it.
I went up to her quickly.
"Polina, here are twenty-five thousand florins—that's fifty thousand francs—^more, in fact. Take it, throw it in his face to-morrow."
She did not answer me.
"If you like I will take you away early in the morning. Shall I?"
She suddenly burst out laughing. She laughed for a long time.
I looked at her with wonder and a mortified feeling. That laugh was very much like sarcastic laughter at my expense, which had always been so frequent at the times of my most passionate declarations.
At last she ceased laughing and frowned; she looked at me sternly from under her brows.
"I won't take your money," she declared contemptuously.
"How? What's this?" I cried. "Polina, why?"
"I won't take money for nothing."
"I offer it you as a friend; I offer you my life."
She looked at me with a long, penetrating look, as though she would pierce me through with it.
"You give too much," she said, with a laugh; "De Grieux's mistress is not worth fifty thousand francs."
"Polina, how can you talk to me hke that!" I cried, reproachfully. "Am I a De Grieux?"
"I hate you 1 Yes . . . yes! . . . I love you no more than De Grieux," she cried, her eyes suddenly flashing.
Then she suddenly covered her face with her hands and went into hysterics. I rushed to her.
I realised that something had happened to her while I was away. She seemed quite out of her mind.
"Buy me! Do you want to? Do you want to? For fifty thousand francs, like De Grieux?" broke from her with convulsive sobs.
I held her in my arms, kissed her hands, her feet, fell on my knees before her.
Her hysterics passed off. She put both hands on my shoulders, and looked at me intently; she seemed trying to read something in my face. She Ustened to me, but evidently did not heeir what I was saymg, to her. Some doubt and anxiety betrayed itself in her face. I was anxious about her; it seemed to me that her brain was giving way. Then she began softly drawing me to her; a trustful smile began stra5/ing over her face; but she suddenly pushed me away, and again fell to scanning me with a darkened look.
Suddenly she feU to embracing me.
"You love me, you love me, don't you?" she said. "Why, you . . . why, you . . . wanted to fight the Baron for my sake!"
And suddenly she burst out laughing—as though she had recalled something sweet and funny. She cried and laughed all at once. Well, what was I to do? I was in a fever myself. I remember she began sajdng something to me—^but I could scarcely understand anj^thing. It was a sort of delirium—a sort of babble-^as though she wanted to tell me something as rapidly as possible—a delirium which was interrupted from time to time with the merriest laughter, which at last frightened me. "No, no; you are sweet, sweet," she repeated. "You are my faithful one!" And again she put her hand on my shoulders, again she looked at me and repeated, "You love me . . . love me . . . will love me?" I could not take my eyes off her; I had never seen her before in such a mood of love and
tenderness; it is true this, of course, was delirium, but , . . noticing my passionate expression, she suddenly began smiling slyly; apropos of nothing she began suddenly talking of Mr. Astley.
She talked incessantly of Mr. Astley, however (she talked of him particularly when she had been trjdng to tell me of something that evening), but what she meant exactly I could not quite grasp; she seemed to be actually laughing at him. She repeated continually that he was waiting and that, did I know, he was certainly standing under the window?
"Yes, yes, under the window; come, open it: look out: look out: he certainly is here!" She pushed me to the window, but as soon as I made a movement to go she went off into p>eals of laughter and I remained with her, and she fell to embracing me.
"Shall we go away? shall we go away to-morrow?" The question suddenly came into her mind imeasily. "Well ..." (and she sank into thought). "Well, shall we overtake Granny; what do you think? I think we might overtake her at Berlin. What do you think she will say when she sees us? And Mr. Astley? . . . Well, he won't leap off the Schlangenberg—^what do you think?" (She burst out laughing.) "Come, listen, do you know where he is going next summer? He wants to go to the North Pole for scientific investigations, and he has adced me to go with him, ha-ha-ha I He says that we Russians can do nothing without Europeans and are incapable of anything. . . . But he is good-natured, too! Do you know he makes excuses for the General? He says that Blanche . . . that passion—oh, I don't know, I don't know," she repeated, as though she didn't know what she was talldng about. "They are poor—^how sorry I am for them, and Gnumy . . . Come, listen, listen, how could you kill De Grieux? And did you really imagine you could kill him? Oh, silly fellow! Can you really thiiik I would let you fight with De Grieux? Why, you did not even kill the Baron," she added, suddenly laughmg. "Oh, how funny you were then with the Baron. I looked at you both from the seat; and how unwiUing you were to go then, when I sent you. How I laughed then, how I laughed," she added, laughing.
And suddenly she kissed and embraced me again. Again she pressed her face to mine passionately and tenderly. I heard nothing and thought of nothing more. My head was in a whirl . . .
I think it was about seven o'clock in the morning when I woke up. The sun was shining into the room. Polina was sitting beside me and looking about her strangely, as though she were waiving from some darkness and trying to collect her thoughts. She, too, had only just woken up and was gazing, at the table and the money. My head ached and was heavy. I tried to take Polina by tiie hand: she pushed me away and jumped up from the sofa. The dawning day was overcast. Rain had fallen before sunrise. She went to the window, she opened it, put out her head and shoulders and with her face in her hands and her elbows on the window-sill, stayed for three minutes looking out without turning to me or hearing what I said to her. I wondered with dread what would happen now and how it would end. All at once she got up from the window, went up to the table and, looking at me with infinite hatred, with lips trembling with anger, she said to me:
"Well, give me my fifty thousand francs now!"
"Polina, again, again?" I was beginning.
"Or have you changed your mind? Ha-ha-ha! Perhaps you regret it now."
Twenty-five thousand florins, counted out the evening before, were lying on the table; I took the money and gave it to her.
"It's mine now, isn't it? That's so, isn't it? Isn't it?" she asked me, spitefully holding the money in her hand.
"Yes, it was always yours," I answered.
"WeU, there are your fifty thousand francs for you I"
With a swing of her arm she flung the money at me. It hit me a stinging blow in the face and the coins flew all over the table. After doing this Polina ran out of the room.
I know that at that njoment she was certainly not in her right mind, though I don't understand such temporary insanity. It is true that she is still ill, even now, a month later. What was the cause of her condition, and, above all, of this whim? Was it wounded pride? Despair at having brought herself to come to me? Had I shown any sign of priding myself on my happiness, and did I, like De Grieux, want to get rid of her by giving her fifty thousand francs? But that was not so; I know Siat, on my conscience. I believe that her vanity was partly responsible; her vanity prompted her to distrust and insult me, although all that, perhaps, was not clear, even to herself. In that case, of course, I was punished for De Grieux and was made responsible, though I was not much to blame. It is true
that all this was almost only dehrium; it is true, too, that I knew she was in delirium and , . . did not take that fact into consideration; perhaps she cannot forgive me for that now. Yes, but that is now; but then, then? Why, she was not in such a delirium and so ill then as to be utterly obhvious of what she was doing; when she came to me with De Grieux's letter she knew what she was doing.
I made haste to thrust all my notes and my heap of gold into the bed, covered it over and went out ten minutes after Polina. I made sure she would run home, and I thought I would slip into them on the sly, and in the hall ask the nurse how the young lady was. What was my astonishment when I learnt from nurse, whom I met on the stairs, that Polina had not yet returned home and that nurse was coming to me for her.
"She only just left my room about ten minutes ago; where can she have gone?"
Nurse looked at me reproachfully.
And meanwhile it had caused a regular scandal, which by now was all over the hotel. In the porter's room and at the ober-kellner's it was whispered that Fraiilein had run out of the hotel in the rain at six o'clock in the morning in the direction of the H6tel d'Angleteire. From what they said and hinted, I noticed that they all knew already that she had spent the night in my room. However, stories were being told of the whole family: it had become known all through the hotel that the General had gone out of his mind and was crying. The story was that Granny was his mother, who had come expressly from Russia to prevent her son's marriage with Mile, de Cominges, and was going to cut him out of her will if he disobeyed her, and, as he certainly would disobey her, the Countess had purposely thrown away all her money at roulette before his eyes, so that he should get nothing. "Diese Russen!" repeated the ober-kellner, shaking his head indignantly. The others laughed. The ober-kellne>r was making out his bill. My winning was known about already. Karl, my corridor attendant, was the first to congratulate me. But I had no thought for any of them. 1 rushed to the H6tel d'Angleterre.
It was early; Mr. Astley was seeing no one; learning that it was I, he came out into the corridor to me and stopped before me, turning his pewtery eyes upon me in silence, waiting to hear what I.should say. I inquired about Polina.
"She is ill," answered Mr. Astley, looking at me as fixedly as before.
no
"Then she really is with you?"
"Yes, she is."
"Then, what do you ... do you mean to keep her?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Astley, it will make a scandal; it's impossible. Besides, she is quite ill; perhaps you don't see it?"
"Oh, yes, I notice it, and I've just told you she is ill. If she had not been ill she would not have spent the night with you."
"Then you know that?"
"Yes, I know it. She came here yesterday and I would have taken her to a relation of mine, but as she was ill, she made a mistake and went to you."
"Fancy that! Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Astley. By the way, you've given me an idea: weren't you standing all night under our window? Miss Polina was making me open the window and look out all night to see whether you were standing under the window; she kept laughing about it."
"Really? No, I didn't stand under the window; but I was waiting in the corridor and walking round."
"But she must be looked after, Mr. Astley."
"Oh, yes, I've sent for the doctor, smd, if she dies, you will answer to me for her death."
I was amazed.
"Upon my word, Mr. Astley, what do you want?"
"And is it true liat you won two hundred thousand thalers yesterday?"
"Only a hundred thouscind florins."
"Weil, do you see, you had better go off to Paris this morning!"
"What for?"
"All Russians who have money go to Paris," Mr. Astley explained, in a tone of voice as though he had read this in a book.
"What could I do now in Paris, in the summer? I love her, Mr. Astley, you know it yourself."
"Really? I am convinced you don't. If you remain here you will certainly lose all you have won and you will have nothing left to go to Paris with. But, good-bye, I am perfectly certain you will go to Paris to-day."
"Vety well, good-bye, only I shan't go to Paris. Think, Mr. Astley, what will be happening here? The General . . . and now this adventure with Miss Polina—why, that will be all over the town."
"Yes, all over the town; I believe the General is not thinking about that: he has no thoughts to spare for that. Besides, Miss Polina has a perfect right to live where she likes. In regard to that family, one may say quite correctly that the family no longer exists."
I walked away laughing at this Englishman's strange conviction that I was going to Paris. "He wants to shoot me in a duel, though," I thought, "if Mile. Polina dies—what a complication 1" I swear I was sorry for Polina, but, strange to say, from the very moment when I reached the gambling tables the previous evening and began winning a pile of money, my love had retreated, so to speak, into the background. I say this now; but at the time I did not reaHse all this clearly. Can I really be a gambler? Can I really . . . have loved Polina so , strangely? No, I love her to this day. God is my witness! , And then, when I left Mr. Astley and went home, I was * genuinely miserable and blaming myself. But ... at this point a very strange and silly thing happened to me.
I was hurrying to see the General, when suddenly, not far from his rooms, a door was opened and someone called me. It was Madame la veuve Cominges, and she called me at the bidding of Mile. Blanche. I went in to see Mile. Blanche.
They had a small suite of apartments, consisting of two rooms. I could hear Mile. Blanche laugh and call out from the bedroom.
She was getting up.
"A, c'est ltd! Viens done, bete! Is it true, que tu as gagne une montagne d'or et d'atrgent? J'aimerais mieux Vor."
"Yes, I did win," I answered, laughing.
"How much?"
"A hundred thousand florins."
"Bihi, comme tu es bete. Why, come in here. I can't hear anything. Nous ferans bombcmce, n'est ce pas?"
I went in to her. She was lying under a pink satin quilt, above which her robust, swarthy, wonderfully swarthy, shoulders were visible, shoulders such as one only sees in one's dreams, covered to some extent by a batiste nightgown bordered with white lace which was wonderfully becoming to her dark skin.
"Mon fits, as-tu dm coew?" she cried, seeing me, and burst out laughing. She laughed very good-humouredly, and sometimes quite genuinely.
"Tout autre," I began, paraphrasing Comeille.
"Here you see, vots-ki," she began babbling; "to begin with, find my stockings, help me to put them on; and then, si tu n'es pas trop bete, je te prends d, Paris. You know I am just going."
"Just going?"
"In half an hour."
All her things were indeed packed. All her portmanteaux and things were ready. Coffee had been served some time before.
"Eh bient, if you like, Ut verras Paris. Dis dcmc qu'est ce que c'est qu'tm outchitel? Tu ettds bien bete, qtumd tu etcds outchitel. Where are my stockings? Put them on for me!"
She thrust out some positively fascinating feet, little dark-skinned feet, not in the least misshapen, as feet that look so small in shoes always are. I laughed and began drawing her silk stockings on for her. Meanwhile Mile. Blanche sat up in bed, pratthng away.
"Eh bien, que feras-tu, si je te prends avec? To begin with, I want fifty thousand francs. You'll give them to me at Frankfurt. Nous allons a Paris: there we'll play together: et je te jerai voir des etoiles en plein jour. You will see women such as you have never seen before. Listen ..."
"Wait a minute—if I give you fifty thousand francs, what will be left for me?"
"Et cent cunqumde mille francs, you have forgotten: and what's more, I consent to live with you a month, two months: qiie scns-je! In those two months we shall certainly get through tiiat hundred and fifty thousand francs, you see, je suis botme enfant, and I tell you beforehand, mais tu verras des etoiles."
"What! all in two months!"
"Why! does that horrify you? Ah, vil esclave! But, do you know? one month of such a life is worth your whole existence. One month– et apres le deluge! Mais tu ne peux comprendre; va! Go along, go along, you are not worth it! Aie, que fads tu?"
At that moment I was putting a stocking on the other leg, but could not resist kissing it. She pulled it away and began hitting me on the head with the tip of her foot. At last, she turned me out altogether.
"Et bien! nwn outchitel, je f attends, si tu veux; I am starting in a quarter of an hour!" she called after me.
On returning home I felt as though my head were going round. Well, it was not my fault that Mile. Polina had thrown the whole pile of money in my face, and had even yesterday
preferred Mr. Astley to me. Some of the banknotes that had been scattered about were still lying on the floor; I picked them up. At that moment the door opened and the ober-keU^ter himself made his appearance (he had never deigned to look into my room before) with a suggestion that I might like to move downstairs to a magnificent suite of apartments which had just been vacated by Count V.
I stood still and thought a little.
"My bill—I am just leaving, in ten minutes," I cried. "If it's to be Paris, let it be Paris," I thought to myself; "it seems it was fated at my birth!"
A quarter of an hour later we were actually sitting in a reserved compartment. Mile. Blanche, Madame la veuve Cominges and I. Mile. Blanche, looking at me, laughed till she was almost hysterical. Madame de Cominges followed suit; I cannot say that I felt cheerful. My life had broken in two, but since the previous day I had grown used to staking everything on a card. Perhaps it is reaJly the truth that my sudden wealth was too much for me and had turned my head. Peut-etre, je ne demmidcds pas mieux. It seemed to me for a time– but only for a time, the scenes were shifted. "But in a month I shall be here, and then . . . and then we will try our strength, Mr. Astley!" No, as I recall it now, I was awfully sad then, though I did laugh as loudly as that idiot, Blanche.
"But what is the matter with you? How silly you are! Oh! how silly you are!" Blanche kept exclaiming, interrupting her laughter to scold me in earnest. "Oh well, oh well, we'U spend your two hundred thousand francs: but in exchange mcds t seras heweux comme im petit foi; I will tie your cravat myself and introduce you to Hortense. And when we have spent all our money, you will come back here cind break the Ixmk again. What did the Jews tell you? The great thing is– boldness, and you have it, and you will bring me money to Paris more than once again. Qunmt a moi, je veux cmqwmte miUe francs de rentes 06 aHws . . ."
"And the General?" I asked her.
"Why, the General, as you know, comes to see me every day with a bouquet. This time I purposely asked him to get me some very rare flowers. The poor fellow will come back and will find the bird has flown. He'll fly after us, you will see. Ha-ha-ha! I shall be awfully pleased to see him. He'll be of use to me in Paris; Mr. Astley will pay his bill here. . . ."
And so that was the way in which I went to Paris.
CHAPTER XVI
WHAT shall I say about Paris? It was madness, of course, and foolery. I only spent a little over three weeks in Paris, and by the end of that time my hundred thousand francs was finished. I speak only of a hundred thousand. The other hundred thousand I gave to Mile. Blanche in hard cash—^fifty thousand at Frankfurt and three days later in Paris I gave her an lOU for another fifty thousand francs, though a week later she exchanged this for cash from me. "Et les cent miU& frimes, qui nous restent, tu les tnamgeras av0c moi, man ouichitel." She always called me an outchitel, i.e., a tutor. It is difficult to imagine anything in the world meaner, stingier and more niggardly than the class of creaures to which MUe. Blanche belonged. But that was in the spending of her own money. As regards my hundred thousand francs, she openly informed me, later on, that she needed them to establish herself in Paris, "as now I am going to settle in decent style once for all, and now no one shall turn me aside for a long time; at least, that is my plan," she added. I hardly saw that hundred thousand, however; she kept the money the whole time, and in my purse, into which she looked every day, there was never more than a hundred francs, and always less and less.
"What do you want money for?" she would say, sometimes, in the simplest way, and I did not dispute with her. But she furnished and decorated her flat very nicely with that money, and afterwards, when she took me to her new abode, as she showed me the rooms, she said: "You see what care and taste can do even with the scantiest means." These "scanty means" amounted to fifty thousand francs, however. With the second fifty thousand she provided herself with a carriage and horses. Moreover, we gave two balls, that is, two evening parties at which were present Hortense, Lizette and Cleopatra, women remarkable in very many respects and even quite good-looking. At those two evenings I had to play the very foolish part of host, to receive and entertain the stupidest rich tradesmen, incredibly ignorant and shameless, various army lieutenants and miserable little authors and journalistic insects, who appeared in the most fashionable swallow-tails and straw-coloured gloves, and displayed a vanity and affectation whose proportions were beyond anything conceivable in Petersburg—and
that is saying a great deal. Many of them thought fit to jeer at me; but I got drunk with champagne and lolled at full length in a back room. To me it was all loathsome to the last degree. "C'esi im outchiDel," Blanche kept saying about me, "ii a gagnd deux ceni milh francs. Without me he wouldn't have known how to spend it. And afterwards he will be an ot^chitel again; don't you know of a place for one? we ought to do something for him."
I had recourse to champagne very often, because I was often sad and dreadfully bored. I lived in the most bourgeois, in the most mercenary surroundings in which every sowi was reckoned and accounted for. Blanche disliked me for the first fortnight: I noticed that; it is true, she dressed me like a dandy, and tied my cravat for me every day, but in her soul she genuinely despised me. I did not pay the slightest attention to that. Bored and dispirited, I used to go usually to the Chateau de Fleurs, where regularly every evening I got drunk and practised the cancan (which they dance so disgustingly there), and acquired in the end a kind of celebrity.
At last Blanche gauged my true character. She had for some reason conceived tiie idea that I should spend all the time we were together walking after her with a pencil and paper in my hand, and should always be reckoning how much she had spent, how much she had stolen, how much she would spend and how much more she would steal. And she was, of course, convinced that we should have a regular battle over every ten-franc piece. She had an answer in readiness for every attack that she anticipated from me; but when she found I did not attack her, she could not at first refrain from defending herself, unprovoked. Sometimes she would begin with great heat, but seeing that I remained silent as a rule, l5^ng on a sofa gazing at the ceiling– at last, she was surprised. At first she thought I was simply stupid, "ttn omtcMtcL", and merely cut short her explanations, probably thinking to herself: "VTiy, he's a fool. There's no need to lay it on for him, since he doesn't understand." She would go away but come back again ten minutes later (this happened at a time when she was spending most ferociously, spending on a scale quite out of proportion to our means: she had, for instance, got rid of the horses first bought and bought another pair for sixteen thousand francs).
"Well, so you are not cross, bibi?" she said, coming up to me.
"N—n—n—no I You weary mel" I said, removing her
hands from me, but this seemed to her so curious that she immediately sat down beside me.
"You see, I only decided to pay so much because they could be sold later on if need be. They can be sold again for twenty thousand francs."
"No doubt, no doubt; they are splendid horses, and you have a fine turn-out now; it suits you; well, that's enough."
"Then you are not cross?"
"Why should I be? You are sensible to provide yourself with things that are necessary to you. All that will be of use to you afterwards. I see that it is quite necessary for you to estabUsh yourself in such a style; otherwise you will never save up your miUion. Our hundred thousand francs is only a beginning; a drop in the ocean."
Blanche had expected from me anj^thing but such reflections (instead of outcries and reproaches). She seemed to drop from the clouds.
"So that's what you are like! Mais tu as Vesprit pow com-prendre. Sais-tu, man gargon, though you are an outcMtel you ought to have been bom a prince. So you don't grudge the money's going so quickly?"
"Bother the money! the quicker the better!"
"Mais sais-tw . . . mais dis done, are you rich? Mais sais-tu. you really despise money too much. Qu'est ce que tu feras cupres, dis dionc?"
"Apres, I shall go to Homburg and win another hundred thousand francs."
"Old, om, c'est ga, c'esi magnifique! And I know you will certainly win it and bring it here. Dis done, why you will make me reaUy love you. Eh hien, I will love you all the time for being like that, and won't once be unfaithful to you. You see, I have not loved you all this time, parceque je croyais que tu n'etais qu'um outchitel [quelque chose comnne wn luquais, n'est-ce pas?), but I have been faithful to you aU the same, parceque je suis bonne fille."
"Come, you are Ij^ing! How about Albert, that swarthy-faced little officer; do you suppose I didn't see last time?"
"Oh, oh, mais tu es . . ."
"Come, you are yya%, you are lying; why, do you suppose I should be angry? Why, it's no matter; il faut que la jetmesse se passe. And there's no need for you to send him away if you had him before me and are fond of him. Only don't give him money, do you hear?"
"So you are not angry about it? Mods tu es tm vrai phih-sophe, scds-tu? Un vrcd philosophe!" she cried enthusiastically.
"Eh hiem! je fmmertd, je t'aimerai – tu verras, tu seras comiemi!"
And from that time she really did seem to be attached to me, to be really affectionate; and so our last ten days passed. The "stars" promised me I did not see. But in some respects she really did keep her word. What is more, she introduced me to Hortense, who really was a remarkable woman in her own way, and in our circle was called Therese philosophe . . .
However, there is no need to enlarge upon that; all that might make a separate story, in a different tone, which I do not want to introduce into this story. The fact is, I longed above everything for this episode to be over. But our himdred thousand francs lasted, as I have mentioned already, almost a month– at which I was genuinely surprised; eighty thousand of that, at least, Blanche spent on things for herself, and we lived on no more than twenty thousand francs—and yet it was enough. Blanche, who was in the end almost open with me (or, at any rate, did not lie to me about some things), declared tint, anyway, the debts she had been obliged to make would not fall upon me: "I have never given you bills or lOUs to sign," she said, "because I was sorry for you; but any other girl would have certainly done it and got you into prison. You see, you see how I loved you and how good I am I Think of what that devil of a wedding alone is going to cost me 1"
We really were going to have a wedding. It took place at the very end of my month, and it may be assumed that the last remains of my hundred thousand francs went upon it; that was how the thing ended; that is, my month ended with that, and after it I received my formal dismissal.
This was how it happened: a week after our arrival in Paris the General suddenly turned up. He came straight to Blanche, and from his first call almost Uved with us. He had a lodging of his own, it is true. Blanche received him J057fully, with shrieks of laughter, and even flew to embrace him; as things had turned out, she was unwilling to let him go: and he had to follow her about everywhere, on the boulevards, and to the theatres, and to call on her acquaintances, and to take her for drives. The General was still of use for such purposes; he was of rather imposing and decorous appearance—he was above the average in height, with dyed whiskers and moustaches (he had once served in the Cuirassiers); he was still presentable-looking,
though his face was puffy. His manners were superb; he looked well in evening dress. In Paris he began wearing his decorations. The promenade on the boulevard with a man like this was not only possible, but advaniageous. The good-natured and senseless General was immensely delighted with all this; he had not reckoned upon it at all when he came to see us on arriving in Paris. He had come, then, almost trembling with terror; he was afraid that Blanche would make an uproar and order him to be turned out; and so he was highly delighted at the changed aspect of the position, and spent the whole month in a sort of senseless rapture: and he was in the same state when I left him. I learnt that on the morning of our sudden departure from Roulettenburg he had some sort of a fit. He had fallen insensible, and had been cill that week almost like a madman, talking incessantly. He was being nursed and doctored, but he suddenly threw up everything, got into the train and flew off to Paris. Of course, Blanche's reception was the best cure for him; but the traces of his illness remained long after, in spate of his joy and his enthusiastic condition. He was utterly incapable of reflection or even of carrying on a conversation on any serious subject; when any such topic was brought forward, he confined himself to nodding his head and ejaculating, "H'm!" at every word. He often laughed, but it was a nervous, sickly laugh, as though he were giggling; another time he would sit for hours looking as black as night, knitting his bushy brows. Of many things he had no recollection whatever; he had become absent-minded to an unseemly degree, and had acquired the habit of talking to himself. Blanche was the only person who could rouse him; and, indeed, his attacks of gloom and 4epression, when he hid himself in a comer, meant nothing but that he hadn't seen Blanche for a long time, or that Blanche had gone off somewhere without taking him, or had not been nice to him before going. At the same time he could not say what he wanted, and did not know why he was depressed and miserable. After sitting for two or three hours (I noticed this on two or three occasions when Blanche had gone out for the whole day, probably to see Albert), he would suddenly begin to look about him in a nervous fluster, to stare round, to recollect himself, and seem to be looking for something; but seeing no one and not remembering the question he meant to ask, he sank into forgetfulness again till Blanche reappeared, gay, frisky, gorgeously dressed, with her ringing laugh; she would run up to him, beging teasing him, and even kissing him—a
