A little farther on, beyond the table, you will see in front of you the room in which sits the French woman behind the desk, always with a disgusting exterior, and yet with the cleanest of cuffs and in the most charming of modish gowns. Next the Frenchwoman you will see an officer with unbuttoned coat, sipping vodka and read-ing a newspaper, and a pair of civil or military legs stretched out in a velvet chair, and you will hear a chatter of French and more or less genuine and hearty laughter.
If you wish to find out what is going on in that room, then I should advise you not to go into it, but simply to keep your eyes open as you go by, pretending that you want to obtain a tartine. Otherwise you would be greeted with a questioning silence and with the eyes of the habitues of the room fixed on you, and probably you will put your tail between your legs and take refuge at one of the tables in the big “hall” or in the winter garden. There no one will disturb you. These tables are for the general public, and there in your solitude you may call the garden and order truffles, as much as you please. This room with the French woman exists for the select gilded youth of Moscow, and to become one of the chosen is not so easy as it may seem to you.
Mr. Chevalier, returning to this room, told his spouse that the man from Siberia was a bore, but on the other hand his son and daughter were young people such as could be brought up only in Siberia.
“You ought to look at the daughter, what a-rose she is!”
“Oh, he loves fresh young women this old man does! “exclaimed one of the guests, who was smoking a cigar.
The conversation, of course, was carried on in French, but I translate it into Russian, as I shall do throughout this story.
“Oh, I am very fond, too, of them,” replied Mr. Cheva-lier. “Women are my passion. Don’t you believe me?”
“Hear that, Madame Chevalier,” cried a stout young Cossack officer, who was deeply in the debt of the es-tablishment and liked to chat with the landlady.
“Why, you see he shares my taste,” said Chevalier, tapping the stout officer on the epaulet.
“And so the little Sibiryatchka is pretty, is she?”
Chevalier put his fingers together and kissed them.
Whereupon ensued among the occupants a very gay and confidential conversation. It concerned the stout officer; he smiled as he listened to what was said about him.
“Can he have such mutable tastes,” shouted one man through the laughter. “Mademoiselle Clarisse, you know Strugof likes above all things, next to women, hens’ legs.”
Although Mademoiselle Clarisse, from behind her desk, did not see the wit of this remark, she broke out into laughter as silvery as her bad teeth and declining years allowed.
“Has the Siberian girl awakened such thoughts in him? “and again they all laughed harder than ever. Even Mr. Chevalier almost died with laughing, add-ing, “Ce vieux coquin” and patting the Cossack officer on the head and shoulders.
“But who are they these Sibiryaki manufacturers or merchants? “asked one of the gentlemen when the laughter had somewhat subsided.
“Nikit! Go and ask the gentleman who has just come for his passport,” said Mr. Chevalier.”’ We Alex-ander, Autocrat.’
Chevalier was just beginning to read the passport which was brought him, when the Cossack officer snatched the paper out of his hands, but his face suddenly ex-pressed amazement.
“Well, now, guess who it is,” said he; “all of you know him by reputation.”
“How can we guess, tell us.” ….
“Well, Abd-el Kader, ha, ha, ha Well, Caglios-
tro, ha, ha, ha Well, then, Peter III., ha, ha, ha. “….
“Well, then, read for yourselves.” ….
The Cossack officer unfolded the paper and read : the former Prince Piotr Ivanovitch and one of those Russian names which every one knows and pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure when speaking of any one bearing that name, as of a personal friend or intimate.
We will call it Labazof.
The Cossack officer vaguely remembered that this Piotr Labazof was a person of some consequence in ‘25, and that he was sent to the mines of Siberia as a convict, but why he was famous he did not remember very well.
The others knew nothing about it, and they replied :
“Oh, yes, famous,” just exactly as they would have likewise said “Famous “of Shakespeare who wrote the “Aeneid”!
The most that they knew about him was what the stout officer said, that he was the brother of Prince Ivan, uncle of the Chikins, the Countess Prunk, yes, “famous.”….
“Why, he must be very rich if he is a brother of Prince Ivan,” remarked one of the young men. “If they have restored his estates to him. They have re-stored their property to some.”
“How many of these exiles are coming back nowa-days,” remarked another person present. “Truly I don’t believe there were so many sent as have already returned. Yes, Zhikinsky, tell us that story about the eighteenth of the month,” said he, addressing an officer of light infantry, reputed as a clever story-teller.
“Yes, tell us it.”
“In the first place, it is genuine truth and happened here, at Chevalier’s, in the large ‘ hall.’ Three Deka-brists came here to dinner. They took seats at one table, they ate, they drank, they talked. Now opposite them was sitting a man of respectable appearance, of about the same age, and he kept listening to what they had to say about Siberia : ‘ And do you know Ner-chinsk?’ ‘Why, yes, I lived there.’ ‘And do you know Tatyana Ivanovna?’ ‘Why, of course I do.’ ‘ Permit me to ask if you were also exiled? ‘ ‘ Yes, I had to suffer that misfortune.’ ‘ ‘ And you? ‘ ‘ We were all sent on the I4th of December. Strange that we* don’t know you, if you also were among those sent on the 14th. Will you tell us your name? ‘— ‘ Feo-dorof.’ ‘Were you also on the 14th?’-’No, on the 18th.’ ‘How on the 18th?’ ‘ i8th of September; for a gold watch; I was falsely charged with stealing it, and though I was innocent, I had to go.’ ‘
All burst out laughing except the narrator, who with a preternaturally solemn face looked at his hearers each and all, and swore that it was a true story.
Shortly after this tale one of the gilded youths got up and went to his club. After passing through the room furnished with tables, where old men were playing cards; after turning into the “infernalnaya “where al-ready the famous “Puchin “was beginning his game against the “assembled crowd”; after lingering awhile near one of the billiard-tables at which a little old man of distinction was making chance shots; and after glancing into the library where some general was read-ing sedately over his glasses, holding his newspaper far from his eyes, and where a literary young man, striving not to make a noise, was turning over the files of papers, the gilded youth sat down on a divan in the billiard-room with another man, who like himself be-longed to the same gilded youth, and was playing back-gammon.
It was the luncheon day, and there were present many gentlemen who were frequenters of the club. Among the number was Ivan Pavlovitch Pakhtin. He was a man of forty, of medium height, pale complexion, stout, with wide shoulders and hips, with a bald head, a shiny, jolly, smooth-shaven face. Though he did not play back-gammon, he joined Prince D , with whom he was on
intimate terms, and he did not refuse the glass of cham-pagne which was offered to him. He arranged himself so comfortably after his dinner, slightly smoothing the seat of his trousers, that any one would think he had been sitting there a century, smoking his cigar, sipping his champagne, and happily conscious of the nearness of princes and counts and the sons of ministers. The tidings of the return of the Labazofs disturbed his equanimity. “Where are you going, Pakhtin? “asked the son of a minister, who in the interval of his play, noticed that Pakhtin got up, pulled down his waistcoat, and drank his champagne in great swallows.
“Seviernikof invited me,” said Pakhtin, feeling a certain unsteadiness in his legs, “say, are you going?”
Anastasya, Anastasya, otvorya’i-ka vorota.
This was a gipsy song that was in great vogue at the time.
“Perhaps so. And you?”
“How should I go, an old married man?”
“There now.”
Pakhtin, smiling, went to find Seviernikof in the “glass room.” He liked to have his last word take the form of a jest. And so it was now.
“Tell me, how is the countess’s health?” he asked, as he joined Seviernikof, who did not know him at
