Though his boots were wet through, he squatted down and began to recall all that he had done: how he had climbed the fence, looked for her window, and at last espied a white shadow; how, listening to the faintest rustle, he had several times approached the window and gone back again; how at one moment he felt sure she was waiting, vexed at his tardiness, and the next, that it was impossible she should so readily agreed to a rendezvous; how at last, persuading himself that it was only the bashfulness of a country-bred girl that made her pretend to be asleep, he went up resolutely and distinctly saw how she sat but then for some reason ran away again and only after severely taunting himself for cowardice boldly drew near to her and touched her hand.
The watchman again made a husky sound and the gate creaked as he left the garden. The girl’s window was slammed to and a shutter fastened from inside. This was very provoking. The count would have given a good deal for a chance to begin all over again; he would not have acted so stupidly now. … “And she is a wonderful girl-so fresh-quite charming! And I have let her slip through my fingers. … Awkward fool that I am!” He did not want to sleep now and went at random, with the firm tread of one who has been crossed, along the covered lime-tree avenue.
And here the night brought to him all its peaceful gifts of soothing sadness and the need of love.
The straight pale beams of the moon threw spots of light through the thick foliage of the limes onto the clay path, where a few blades of grass grew or a dead branch lay here and there. The light falling on one side of a bent bough made it seem as if covered with white moss. The silvered leaves whispered now and then. There were no lights in the house and all was silent; the voice of the nightingale alone seemed to fill the bright, still, limitless space. “O God, what a night! What a wonderful night!” thought the count, inhaling the fragrant freshness of the garden. “Yet I feel a kind of regret-as if I were discontented with myself and with others, discontented with life generally. A splendid, sweet girl! Perhaps she was really hurt. … “ Here his dreams became mixed: he imagined himself in this garden with the country-bred girl in various extraordinary situations. Then the role of the girl was taken by his beloved Mina. “Eh, what a fool I was! I ought simply to have caught her round the waist and kissed her.” And regretting that he had not done so, the count returned to his room.
The cornet was still awake. He at once turned in his bed and faced the count.
“Not asleep yet?” asked the count.
“No.”
“Shall I tell you what has happened?”
“Well?”
“No, I’d better not, or … all right, I’ll tell you-draw in your legs.”
And the count, having mentally abandoned the intrigue that had miscarried, sat down on his comrade’s bed with an animated smile.
“Would you believe it, that young lady gave me a rendezvous!”
“What are you saying?” cried Polozov, jumping out of bed.
“No, but listen.”
“But how? When? It’s impossible!”
“Why, while you were adding up after we had played preference, she told me she would be at the window in the night and that one could get in at the window. There, you see what it is to be practical! While you were calculating with the old woman, I arranged that little matter. Why, you heard her say in your presence that she would sit by the window tonight and look at the pond.”
“Yes, but she didn’t mean anything of the kind.”
“Well, that’s just what I can’t make out: did she say it intentionally or not? Maybe she didn’t really wish to agree so suddenly, but it looked very like it. It turned out horribly. I quiet played the fool,” he added, smiling contemptuously at himself.
“What do you mean? Where have you been?”
The count, omitting his manifold irresolute approaches, related everything as it had happened.
“I spoilt it myself: I ought to have been bolder. She screamed and ran from the window.”
“So she screamed and ran away,” said the cornet, smiling uneasily in answer to the count’s smile, which for such a long time had had so strong an influence over him.
“Yes, but it’s time to go to sleep.”
The cornet again turned his back to the door and lay silent for about ten minutes. Heaven knows what went on in his soul, but when he turned again, his face bore an expression of suffering and resolve.
“Count Turbin!” he said abruptly.
“Are you delirious?” quietly replied the count. “What is it, Cornet Polozov?”
“Count Turbin, you are a scoundrel!” cried Polozov and again jumped out of bed.
XVI
The squadron left next day. The two officers did not see their hosts again and did not bid them farewell. Neither did they speak to one another. They intended to fight a duel at the first halting-place. But Captain Schulz, a good comrade and splendid horseman, beloved by everyone in the regiment and chosen by the count to act as his second, managed to settle the affair so well that not only did they not fight but no one in the regiment knew anything about the matter, and Turbin and Polozov, though no longer on the old friendly footing, still continued to speak in familiar terms to one another and to meet at dinners and card-Parties.
Lucerne
Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole 1905
FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF PRINCE NEKHLIUDOF
July 20, 1857.
Yesterday evening I arrived at Lucerne, and put up at the best inn there, the Schweitzerhof. “Lucerne, the chief city of the canton, situated on the shore of the Vierwaldstatter See,” says Murray, “is one of the most romantic places of Switzerland: here cross three important highways, and it is only an hour’s distance by steamboat to Mount Righi, from which is obtained one of the most magnificent views in the world.”
Whether that be true or no, other guides say the same thing, and consequently at Lucerne there are throngs of travelers of all nationalities, especially the English.
The magnificent five-storied building of the Hotel Schweitzerhof is situated on the quay, at the very edge of the lake, where in olden times there used to be the crooked covered wooden bridge with chapels on the corners and pictures on the roof. Now, thanks to the tremendous inroad of Englishmen, with their necessities, their tastes, and their money, they have torn down the old bridge, and in its place erected a granite quay, straight as a stick. On the quay they have built straight, quadrangular five-storied houses; in front of the houses they have set out two rows of lindens and provided them with supports, and between the lindens is the usual supply of green benches.
This is the promenade; and here back and forth stroll the Englishwomen in their Swiss straw hats, and the Englishmen in simple and comfortable attire, and rejoice in their work. Possibly these quays and houses and lindens and Englishmen would be excellent in their way anywhere else, but here they seem discordant amid this strangely magnificent, and at the same time indescribably harmonious and smiling nature.
As soon as I went up to my room, and opened the window facing the lake, the beauty of the sheet of water, of the mountains, and of the sky, at the first moment literally dazzled and overwhelmed me. I experienced an inward unrest, and the necessity of expressing in some manner the feelings that suddenly filled my soul to overflowing. I felt a desire to embrace, powerfully to embrace, some one, to tickle him, or to pinch him; in short to do to him and to myself something extraordinary.
It was seven o’clock in the evening. The rain had been falling all day, but now it had cleared.
The lake, iridescent as melted sulphur, and dotted with boats, which left behind them vanishing trails, spread out before my windows smooth, motionless as it were, between the variegated green shores. Farther away it was contracted between two monstrous headlands, and, darkling, set itself against and disappeared behind a confused pile of mountains, clouds, and glaciers. In the foreground stretched a panorama of moist, fresh green shores, with reeds, meadows, gardens, and villas. Farther away, the dark green wooded heights, crowned with the ruins of feudal castles; in the background, the rolling, pale lilac-colored vista of mountains, with fantastic peaks built up of crags and pallid snow-capped summits. And everything was bathed in a fresh, transparent azure atmosphere, and kindled by the warm rays of the setting sun, bursting forth through the riven skies.
Not on the lake or on the mountains or in the skies was there a single completed line, a single unmixed color, a single moment of repose; everywhere motion, irregularity, fantasy, endless conglomeration and variety of shades and lines; and above all, a calm, a softness, a unity, and the inevitability of beauty.
And here amid this indeterminate, kaleidoscopic, unfettered loveliness, before my very window, stretched stupidly, compelling the gaze, the white line of the quay, the lindens with their supports, and the green seats, — miserable, tasteless creations of human ingenuity, not subordinated, like the distant villas and ruins, to the general harmony of the beautiful scene, but on the contrary brutally opposed to it…
Constantly, though against my will, my eyes were attracted to that horribly straight line of the quay; and mentally I should have liked to get rid of it, to
