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Title: The Gambler

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by C. J. Hogarth

Release Date: May, 2000 [EBook #2197]

[Most recently updated: June 30, 2020]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAMBLER ***

Produced by Martin Adamson. HTML version by Al Haines.

The Gambler
 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by C. J. Hogarth
Contents

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
 I

At length I returned from two weeks leave of absence to find that my patrons
had arrived three days ago in Roulettenberg. I received from them a welcome
quite different to that which I had expected. The General eyed me coldly, greeted
me in rather haughty fashion, and dismissed me to pay my respects to his sister.
It was clear that from somewhere money had been acquired. I thought I could
even detect a certain shamefacedness in the General’s glance. Maria Philipovna,
too, seemed distraught, and conversed with me with an air of detachment.
Nevertheless, she took the money which I handed to her, counted it, and listened
to what I had to tell. To luncheon there were expected that day a Monsieur
Mezentsov, a French lady, and an Englishman; for, whenever money was in
hand, a banquet in Muscovite style was always given. Polina Alexandrovna, on
seeing me, inquired why I had been so long away. Then, without waiting for an
answer, she departed. Evidently this was not mere accident, and I felt that I must
throw some light upon matters. It was high time that I did so.
I was assigned a small room on the fourth floor of the hotel (for you must
know that I belonged to the General’s suite). So far as I could see, the party had
already gained some notoriety in the place, which had come to look upon the
General as a Russian nobleman of great wealth. Indeed, even before luncheon he
charged me, among other things, to get two thousand-franc notes changed for
him at the hotel counter, which put us in a position to be thought millionaires at
all events for a week! Later, I was about to take Mischa and Nadia for a walk
when a summons reached me from the staircase that I must attend the General.
He began by deigning to inquire of me where I was going to take the children;
and as he did so, I could see that he failed to look me in the eyes. He wanted to
do so, but each time was met by me with such a fixed, disrespectful stare that he
desisted in confusion. In pompous language, however, which jumbled one
sentence into another, and at length grew disconnected, he gave me to
understand that I was to lead the children altogether away from the Casino, and
out into the park. Finally his anger exploded, and he added sharply:
“I suppose you would like to take them to the Casino to play roulette? Well,
excuse my speaking so plainly, but I know how addicted you are to gambling.
Though I am not your mentor, nor wish to be, at least I have a right to require
that you shall not actually compromise me.”
“I have no money for gambling,” I quietly replied.
“But you will soon be in receipt of some,” retorted the General, reddening a
little as he dived into his writing desk and applied himself to a memorandum
book. From it he saw that he had 120 roubles of mine in his keeping.
“Let us calculate,” he went on. “We must translate these roubles into thalers.
Here—take 100 thalers, as a round sum. The rest will be safe in my hands.”
In silence I took the money.
“You must not be offended at what I say,” he continued. “You are too touchy
about these things. What I have said I have said merely as a warning. To do so is
no more than my right.”
When returning home with the children before luncheon, I met a cavalcade of
our party riding to view some ruins. Two splendid carriages, magnificently
horsed, with Mlle. Blanche, Maria Philipovna, and Polina Alexandrovna in one
of them, and the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the General in attendance on
horseback! The passers-by stopped to stare at them, for the effect was splendid—
the General could not have improved upon it. I calculated that, with the 4000
francs which I had brought with me, added to what my patrons seemed already
to have acquired, the party must be in possession of at least 7000 or 8000 francs
—though that would be none too much for Mlle. Blanche, who, with her mother
and the Frenchman, was also lodging in our hotel. The latter gentleman was
called by the lacqueys “Monsieur le Comte,” and Mlle. Blanche’s mother was
dubbed “Madame la Comtesse.” Perhaps in very truth they were “Comte et
Comtesse.”
I knew that “Monsieur le Comte” would take no notice of me when we met at
dinner, as also that the General would not dream of introducing us, nor of
recommending me to the “Comte.” However, the latter had lived awhile in
Russia, and knew that the person referred to as an “uchitel” is never looked upon
as a bird of fine feather. Of course, strictly speaking, he knew me; but I was an
uninvited guest at the luncheon—the General had forgotten to arrange otherwise,
or I should have been dispatched to dine at the table d’hôte. Nevertheless, I
presented myself in such guise that the General looked at me with a touch of
approval; and, though the good Maria Philipovna was for showing me my place,
the fact of my having previously met the Englishman, Mr. Astley, saved me, and
thenceforward I figured as one of the company.
 This strange Englishman I had met first in Prussia, where we had happened to
sit vis-à-vis in a railway train in which I was travelling to overtake our party;
while, later, I had run across him in France, and again in Switzerland—twice
within the space of two weeks! To think, therefore, that I should suddenly
encounter him again here, in Roulettenberg! Never in my life had I known a
more retiring man, for he was shy to the pitch of imbecility, yet well aware of the
fact (for he was no fool). At the same time, he was a gentle, amiable sort of an
individual, and, even on our first encounter in Prussia I had contrived to draw
him out, and he had told me that he had just been to the North Cape, and was
now anxious to visit the fair at Nizhni Novgorod. How he had come to make the
General’s acquaintance I do not know, but, apparently, he was much struck with
Polina. Also, he was delighted that I should sit next him at table, for he appeared
to look upon me as his bosom friend.
During the meal the Frenchman was in great feather: he was discursive and
pompous to every one. In Moscow too, I remembered, he had blown a great
many bubbles. Interminably he discoursed on finance and Russian politics, and
though, at times, the General made feints to contradict him, he did so humbly,
and as though wishing not wholly to lose sight of his own dignity.
For myself, I was in a curious frame of mind. Even before luncheon was half
finished I had asked myself the old, eternal question: “Why do I continue to
dance attendance upon the General, instead of having left him and his family
long ago?” Every now and then I would glance at Polina Alexandrovna, but she
paid me no attention; until eventually I became so irritated that I decided to play
the boor.
First of all I suddenly, and for no reason whatever, plunged loudly and
gratuitously into the general conversation. Above everything I wanted to pick a
quarrel with the Frenchman; and, with that end in view I turned to the General,
and exclaimed in an overbearing sort of way—indeed, I think that I actually
interrupted him—that that summer it had been almost impossible for a Russian
to dine anywhere at tables d’hôte. The General bent upon me a glance of
astonishment.
“If one is a man of self-respect,” I went on, “one risks abuse by so doing, and
is forced to put up with insults of every kind. Both at Paris and on the Rhine, and
even in Switzerland—there are so many Poles, with their sympathisers, the
French, at these tables d’hôte that one cannot get a word in edgeways if one
happens only to be a Russian.”
This I said in French. The General eyed me doubtfully, for he did not know
whether to be angry or merely to feel surprised that I should so far forget myself.
 “Of course, one always learns something everywhere,” said the Frenchman in
a careless, contemptuous sort of tone.
“In Paris, too, I had a dispute with a Pole,” I continued, “and then with a
French officer who supported him. After that a section of the Frenchmen present
took my part. They did so as soon as I told them the story of how once I
threatened to spit into Monsignor’s coffee.”
“To spit into it?” the General inquired with grave disapproval in his tone, and
a stare, of astonishment, while the Frenchman looked at me unbelievingly.
“Just so,” I replied. “You must know that, on one occasion, when, for two
days, I had felt certain that at any moment I might have to depart for Rome on
business, I repaired to the Embassy of the Holy See in Paris, to have my passport
visaed. There I encountered a sacristan of about fifty, and a man dry and cold of
mien. After listening politely, but with great reserve, to my account of myself,
this sacristan asked me to wait a little. I was in a great hurry to depart, but of
course I sat down, pulled out a copy of L’Opinion Nationale, and fell to reading
an extraordinary piece of invective against Russia which it happened to contain.
As I was thus engaged I heard some one enter an adjoining room and ask for
Monsignor; after which I saw the sacristan make a low bow to the visitor, and
then another bow as the visitor took his leave. I ventured to remind the good man
of my own business also; whereupon, with an expression of, if anything,
increased dryness, he again asked me to wait. Soon a third visitor arrived who,
like myself, had come on business (he was an Austrian of some sort); and as
soon as ever he had stated his errand he was conducted upstairs! This made me
very angry. I rose, approached the sacristan, and told him that, since Monsignor
was receiving callers, his lordship might just as well finish off my affair as well.
Upon this the sacristan shrunk back in astonishment. It simply passed his
understanding that any insignificant Russian should dare to compare himself
with other visitors of Monsignor’s! In a tone of the utmost effrontery, as though
he were delighted to have a chance of insulting me, he looked me up and down,
and then said: “Do you suppose that Monsignor is going to put aside his coffee
for you?” But I only cried the louder: “Let me tell you that I am going to spit
into that coffee! Yes, and if you do not get me my passport visaed this very
minute, I shall take it to Monsignor myself.”
“What? While he is engaged with a Cardinal?” screeched the sacristan, again
shrinking back in horror. Then, rushing to the door, he spread out his arms as
though he would rather die than let me enter.
Thereupon I declared that I was a heretic and a barbarian—“Je suis hérétique
et barbare,” I said, “and that these archbishops and cardinals and monsignors,
and the rest of them, meant nothing at all to me. In a word, I showed him that I
was not going to give way. He looked at me with an air of infinite resentment.
Then he snatched up my passport, and departed with it upstairs. A minute later
the passport had been visaed! Here it is now, if you care to see it,”—and I pulled
out the document, and exhibited the Roman visa.
“But—” the General began.
“What really saved you was the fact that you proclaimed yourself a heretic
and a barbarian,” remarked the Frenchman with a smile. “Cela n’était pas si
bête.”
“But is that how Russian subjects ought to be treated? Why, when they settle
here they dare not utter even a word—they are ready even to deny the fact that
they are Russians! At all events, at my hotel in Paris I received far more
attention from the company after I had told them about the fracas with the
sacristan. A fat Polish nobleman, who had been the most offensive of all who
were present at the table d’hôte, at once went upstairs, while some of the
Frenchmen were simply disgusted when I told them that two years ago I had
encountered a man at whom, in 1812, a French ‘hero’ fired for the mere fun of
discharging his musket. That man was then a boy of ten and his family are still
residing in Moscow.”
“Impossible!” the Frenchman spluttered. “No French soldier would fire at a
child!”
“Nevertheless the incident was as I say,” I replied. “A very respected ex-
captain told me the story, and I myself could see the scar left on his cheek.”
The Frenchman then began chattering volubly, and the General supported him;
but I recommended the former to read, for example, extracts from the memoirs
of General Perovski, who, in 1812, was a prisoner in the hands of the French.
Finally Maria Philipovna said something to interrupt the conversation. The
General was furious with me for having started the altercation with the
Frenchman. On the other hand, Mr. Astley seemed to take great pleasure in my
brush with Monsieur, and, rising from the table, proposed that we should go and
have a drink together. The same afternoon, at four o’clock, I went to have my
customary talk with Polina Alexandrovna; and, the talk soon extended to a stroll.
We entered the Park, and approached the Casino, where Polina seated herself
upon a bench near the fountain, and sent Nadia away to a little distance to play
with some other children. Mischa also I dispatched to play by the fountain, and
in this fashion we—that is to say, Polina and myself—contrived to find ourselves
alone.
 Of course, we began by talking on business matters. Polina seemed furious
when I handed her only 700 gülden, for she had thought to receive from Paris, as
the proceeds of the pledging of her diamonds, at least 2000 gülden, or even
more.
“Come what may, I must have money,” she said. “And get it somehow I will—
otherwise I shall be ruined.”
I asked her what had happened during my absence.
“Nothing; except that two pieces of news have reached us from St. Petersburg.
In the first place, my grandmother is very ill, and unlikely to last another couple
of days. We had this from Timothy Petrovitch himself, and he is a reliable
person. Every moment we are expecting to receive news of the end.”
“All of you are on the tiptoe of expectation?” I queried.
“Of course—all of us, and every minute of the day. For a year-and-a-half now
we have been looking for this.”
“Looking for it?”
“Yes, looking for it. I am not her blood relation, you know—I am merely the
General’s step-daughter. Yet I am certain that the old lady has remembered me in
her will.”
“Yes, I believe that you will come in for a good deal,” I said with some
assurance.
“Yes, for she is fond of me. But how come you to think so?”
I answered this question with another one. “That Marquis of yours,” I said,
“—is he also familiar with your family secrets?”
“And why are you yourself so interested in them?” was her retort as she eyed
me with dry grimness.
“Never mind. If I am not mistaken, the General has succeeded in borrowing
money of the Marquis.”
“It may be so.”
“Is it likely that the Marquis would have lent the money if he had not known
something or other about your grandmother? Did you notice, too, that three
times during luncheon, when speaking of her, he called her ‘La Baboulenka’?[1].
What loving, friendly behaviour, to be sure!”
[1] Dear little Grandmother.

“Yes, that is true. As soon as ever he learnt that I was likely to inherit
something from her he began to pay me his addresses. I thought you ought to
know that.”
“Then he has only just begun his courting? Why, I thought he had been doing
so a long while!”
“You know he has not,” retorted Polina angrily. “But where on earth did you
pick up this Englishman?” She said this after a pause.
“I knew you would ask about him!” Whereupon I told her of my previous
encounters with Astley while travelling.
“He is very shy,” I said, “and susceptible. Also, he is in love with you.”
“Yes, he is in love with me,” she replied.
“And he is ten times richer than the Frenchman. In fact, what does the
Frenchman possess? To me it seems at least doubtful that he possesses anything
at all.”
“Oh, no, there is no doubt about it. He does possess some château or other.
Last night the General told me that for certain. Now are you satisfied?”
“Nevertheless, in your place I should marry the Englishman.”
“And why?” asked Polina.
“Because, though the Frenchman is the handsomer of the two, he is also the
baser; whereas the Englishman is not only a man of honour, but ten times the
wealthier of the pair.”
“Yes? But then the Frenchman is a marquis, and the cleverer of the two,”
remarked Polina imperturbably.
“Is that so?” I repeated.
“Yes; absolutely.”
Polina was not at all pleased at my questions; I could see that she was doing
her best to irritate me with the brusquerie of her answers. But I took no notice of
this.
“It amuses me to see you grow angry,” she continued. “However, inasmuch as
I allow you to indulge in these questions and conjectures, you ought to pay me
something for the privilege.”
“I consider that I have a perfect right to put these questions to you,” was my
calm retort; “for the reason that I am ready to pay for them, and also care little
what becomes of me.”
Polina giggled.
“Last time you told me—when on the Shlangenberg—that at a word from me
you would be ready to jump down a thousand feet into the abyss. Some day I
may remind you of that saying, in order to see if you will be as good as your
word. Yes, you may depend upon it that I shall do so. I hate you because I have
allowed you to go to such lengths, and I also hate you and still more—because
you are so necessary to me. For the time being I want you, so I must keep you.”
Then she made a movement to rise. Her tone had sounded very angry. Indeed,
of late her talks with me had invariably ended on a note of temper and irritation
—yes, of real temper.
“May I ask you who is this Mlle. Blanche?” I inquired (since I did not wish
Polina to depart without an explanation).
“You know who she is—just Mlle. Blanche. Nothing further has transpired.
Probably she will soon be Madame General—that is to say, if the rumours that
Grandmamma is nearing her end should prove true. Mlle. Blanche, with her
mother and her cousin, the Marquis, know very well that, as things now stand,
we are ruined.”
“And is the General at last in love?”
“That has nothing to do with it. Listen to me. Take these 700 florins, and go
and play roulette with them. Win as much for me as you can, for I am badly in
need of money.”
So saying, she called Nadia back to her side, and entered the Casino, where
she joined the rest of our party. For myself, I took, in musing astonishment, the
first path to the left. Something had seemed to strike my brain when she told me
to go and play roulette. Strangely enough, that something had also seemed to
make me hesitate, and to set me analysing my feelings with regard to her. In fact,
during the two weeks of my absence I had felt far more at my ease than I did
now, on the day of my return; although, while travelling, I had moped like an
imbecile, rushed about like a man in a fever, and actually beheld her in my
dreams. Indeed, on one occasion (this happened in Switzerland, when I was
asleep in the train) I had spoken aloud to her, and set all my fellow-travellers
laughing. Again, therefore, I put to myself the question: “Do I, or do I not love
her?” and again I could return myself no answer or, rather, for the hundredth
time I told myself that I detested her. Yes, I detested her; there were moments
(more especially at the close of our talks together) when I would gladly have
given half my life to have strangled her! I swear that, had there, at such
moments, been a sharp knife ready to my hand, I would have seized that knife
with pleasure, and plunged it into her breast. Yet I also swear that if, on the
Shlangenberg, she had really said to me, “Leap into that abyss,” I should have
leapt into it, and with equal pleasure. Yes, this I knew well. One way or the
other, the thing must soon be ended. She, too, knew it in some curious way; the
thought that I was fully conscious of her inaccessibility, and of the impossibility
of my ever realising my dreams, afforded her, I am certain, the keenest possible
pleasure. Otherwise, is it likely that she, the cautious and clever woman that she
was, would have indulged in this familiarity and openness with me? Hitherto (I
concluded) she had looked upon me in the same light that the old Empress did
upon her servant—the Empress who hesitated not to unrobe herself before her
slave, since she did not account a slave a man. Yes, often Polina must have taken
me for something less than a man!”
Still, she had charged me with a commission—to win what I could at roulette.
Yet all the time I could not help wondering why it was so necessary for her to
win something, and what new schemes could have sprung to birth in her ever-
fertile brain. A host of new and unknown factors seemed to have arisen during
the last two weeks. Well, it behoved me to divine them, and to probe them, and
that as soon as possible. Yet not now: at the present moment I must repair to the
roulette-table.
 II

I confess I did not like it. Although I had made up my mind to play, I felt
averse to doing so on behalf of some one else. In fact, it almost upset my
balance, and I entered the gaming rooms with an angry feeling at my heart. At
first glance the scene irritated me. Never at any time have I been able to bear the
flunkeyishness which one meets in the Press of the world at large, but more
especially in that of Russia, where, almost every evening, journalists write on
two subjects in particular—namely, on the splendour and luxury of the casinos to
be found in the Rhenish towns, and on the heaps of gold which are daily to be
seen lying on their tables. Those journalists are not paid for doing so: they write
thus merely out of a spirit of disinterested complaisance. For there is nothing
splendid about the establishments in question; and, not only are there no heaps of
gold to be seen lying on their tables, but also there is very little money to be seen
at all. Of course, during the season, some madman or another may make his
appearance—generally an Englishman, or an Asiatic, or a Turk—and (as had
happened during the summer of which I write) win or lose a great deal; but, as
regards the rest of the crowd, it plays only for petty gülden, and seldom does
much wealth figure on the board.
When, on the present occasion, I entered the gaming-rooms (for the first time
in my life), it was several moments before I could even make up my mind to
play. For one thing, the crowd oppressed me. Had I been playing for myself, I
think I should have left at once, and never have embarked upon gambling at all,
for I could feel my heart beginning to beat, and my heart was anything but cold-
blooded. Also, I knew, I had long ago made up my mind, that never should I
depart from Roulettenberg until some radical, some final, change had taken place
in my fortunes. Thus, it must and would be. However ridiculous it may seem to
you that I was expecting to win at roulette, I look upon the generally accepted
opinion concerning the folly and the grossness of hoping to win at gambling as a
thing even more absurd. For why is gambling a whit worse than any other
method of acquiring money? How, for instance, is it worse than trade? True, out
of a hundred persons, only one can win; yet what business is that of yours or of
mine?
 At all events, I confined myself at first simply to looking on, and decided to
attempt nothing serious. Indeed, I felt that, if I began to do anything at all, I
should do it in an absent-minded, haphazard sort of way—of that I felt certain.
Also, it behoved me to learn the game itself; since, despite a thousand
descriptions of roulette which I had read with ceaseless avidity, I knew nothing
of its rules, and had never even seen it played.
In the first place, everything about it seemed to me so foul—so morally mean
and foul. Yet I am not speaking of the hungry, restless folk who, by scores nay,
even by hundreds—could be seen crowded around the gaming-tables. For in a
desire to win quickly and to win much I can see nothing sordid; I have always
applauded the opinion of a certain dead and gone, but cocksure, moralist who
replied to the excuse that “one may always gamble moderately”, by saying that
to do so makes things worse, since, in that case, the profits too will always be
moderate.
Insignificant profits and sumptuous profits do not stand on the same footing.
No, it is all a matter of proportion. What may seem a small sum to a Rothschild
may seem a large sum to me, and it is not the fault of stakes or of winnings that
everywhere men can be found winning, can be found depriving their fellows of
something, just as they do at roulette. As to the question whether stakes and
winnings are, in themselves, immoral is another question altogether, and I wish
to express no opinion upon it. Yet the very fact that I was full of a strong desire
to win caused this gambling for gain, in spite of its attendant squalor, to contain,
if you will, something intimate, something sympathetic, to my eyes: for it is
always pleasant to see men dispensing with ceremony, and acting naturally, and
in an unbuttoned mood....
Yet why should I so deceive myself? I could see that the whole thing was a
vain and unreasoning pursuit; and what, at the first glance, seemed to me the
ugliest feature in this mob of roulette players was their respect for their
occupation—the seriousness, and even the humility, with which they stood
around the gaming tables. Moreover, I had always drawn sharp distinctions
between a game which is de mauvais genre and a game which is permissible to a
decent man. In fact, there are two sorts of gaming—namely, the game of the
gentleman and the game of the plebs—the game for gain, and the game of the
herd. Herein, as said, I draw sharp distinctions. Yet how essentially base are the
distinctions! For instance, a gentleman may stake, say, five or ten louis d’or—
seldom more, unless he is a very rich man, when he may stake, say, a thousand
francs; but, he must do this simply for the love of the game itself—simply for
sport, simply in order to observe the process of winning or of losing, and, above
all things, as a man who remains quite uninterested in the possibility of his
issuing a winner. If he wins, he will be at liberty, perhaps, to give vent to a laugh,
or to pass a remark on the circumstance to a bystander, or to stake again, or to
double his stake; but, even this he must do solely out of curiosity, and for the
pleasure of watching the play of chances and of calculations, and not because of
any vulgar desire to win. In a word, he must look upon the gaming-table, upon
roulette, and upon trente et quarante, as mere relaxations which have been
arranged solely for his amusement. Of the existence of the lures and gains upon
which the bank is founded and maintained he must profess to have not an
inkling. Best of all, he ought to imagine his fellow-gamblers and the rest of the
mob which stands trembling over a coin to be equally rich and gentlemanly with
himself, and playing solely for recreation and pleasure. This complete ignorance
of the realities, this innocent view of mankind, is what, in my opinion,
constitutes the truly aristocratic. For instance, I have seen even fond mothers so
far indulge their guileless, elegant daughters—misses of fifteen or sixteen—as to
give them a few gold coins and teach them how to play; and though the young
ladies may have won or have lost, they have invariably laughed, and departed as
though they were well pleased. In the same way, I saw our General once
approach the table in a stolid, important manner. A lacquey darted to offer him a
chair, but the General did not even notice him. Slowly he took out his money
bags, and slowly extracted 300 francs in gold, which he staked on the black, and
won. Yet he did not take up his winnings—he left them there on the table. Again
the black turned up, and again he did not gather in what he had won; and when,
in the third round, the red turned up he lost, at a stroke, 1200 francs. Yet even
then he rose with a smile, and thus preserved his reputation; yet I knew that his
money bags must be chafing his heart, as well as that, had the stake been twice
or thrice as much again, he would still have restrained himself from venting his
disappointment.
On the other hand, I saw a Frenchman first win, and then lose, 30,000 francs
cheerfully, and without a murmur. Yes; even if a gentleman should lose his
whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so
subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought. Of course, the supremely
aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting;
but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even
to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one
were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which had been
organised specially for a gentleman’s diversion. Though one may be squeezed by
the crowd, one must look as though one were fully assured of being the observer
—of having neither part nor lot with the observed. At the same time, to stare
fixedly about one is unbecoming; for that, again, is ungentlemanly, seeing that
no spectacle is worth an open stare—are no spectacles in the world which merit
from a gentleman too pronounced an inspection.
However, to me personally the scene did seem to be worth undisguised
contemplation—more especially in view of the fact that I had come there not
only to look at, but also to number myself sincerely and wholeheartedly with, the
mob. As for my secret moral views, I had no room for them amongst my actual,
practical opinions. Let that stand as written: I am writing only to relieve my
conscience. Yet let me say also this: that from the first I have been consistent in
having an intense aversion to any trial of my acts and thoughts by a moral
standard. Another standard altogether has directed my life....
As a matter of fact, the mob was playing in exceedingly foul fashion. Indeed, I
have an idea that sheer robbery was going on around that gaming-table. The
croupiers who sat at the two ends of it had not only to watch the stakes, but also
to calculate the game—an immense amount of work for two men! As for the
crowd itself—well, it consisted mostly of Frenchmen. Yet I was not then taking
notes merely in order to be able to give you a description of roulette, but in order
to get my bearings as to my behaviour when I myself should begin to play. For
example, I noticed that nothing was more common than for another’s hand to
stretch out and grab one’s winnings whenever one had won. Then there would
arise a dispute, and frequently an uproar; and it would be a case of “I beg of you
to prove, and to produce witnesses to the fact, that the stake is yours.”
At first the proceedings were pure Greek to me. I could only divine and
distinguish that stakes were hazarded on numbers, on “odd” or “even,” and on
colours. Polina’s money I decided to risk, that evening, only to the amount of
100 gülden. The thought that I was not going to play for myself quite unnerved
me. It was an unpleasant sensation, and I tried hard to banish it. I had a feeling
that, once I had begun to play for Polina, I should wreck my own fortunes. Also,
I wonder if any one has ever approached a gaming-table without falling an
immediate prey to superstition? I began by pulling out fifty gülden, and staking
them on “even.” The wheel spun and stopped at 13. I had lost! With a feeling
like a sick qualm, as though I would like to make my way out of the crowd and
go home, I staked another fifty gülden—this time on the red. The red turned up.
Next time I staked the 100 gülden just where they lay—and again the red turned
up. Again I staked the whole sum, and again the red turned up. Clutching my
400 gülden, I placed 200 of them on twelve figures, to see what would come of
it. The result was that the croupier paid me out three times my total stake! Thus
from 100 gülden my store had grown to 800! Upon that such a curious, such an
inexplicable, unwonted feeling overcame me that I decided to depart. Always the
thought kept recurring to me that if I had been playing for myself alone I should
never have had such luck. Once more I staked the whole 800 gülden on the
“even.” The wheel stopped at 4. I was paid out another 800 gülden, and,
snatching up my pile of 1600, departed in search of Polina Alexandrovna.
I found the whole party walking in the park, and was able to get an interview
with her only after supper. This time the Frenchman was absent from the meal,
and the General seemed to be in a more expansive vein. Among other things, he
thought it necessary to remind me that he would be sorry to see me playing at the
gaming-tables. In his opinion, such conduct would greatly compromise him—
especially if I were to lose much. “And even if you were to win much I should be
compromised,” he added in a meaning sort of way. “Of course I have no right to
order your actions, but you yourself will agree that...” As usual, he did not finish
his sentence. I answered drily that I had very little money in my possession, and
that, consequently, I was hardly in a position to indulge in any conspicuous play,
even if I did gamble. At last, when ascending to my own room, I succeeded in
handing Polina her winnings, and told her that, next time, I should not play for
her.
“Why not?” she asked excitedly.
“Because I wish to play for myself,” I replied with a feigned glance of
astonishment. “That is my sole reason.”
“Then are you so certain that your roulette-playing will get us out of our
difficulties?” she inquired with a quizzical smile.
I said very seriously, “Yes,” and then added: “Possibly my certainty about
winning may seem to you ridiculous; yet, pray leave me in peace.”
Nonetheless she insisted that I ought to go halves with her in the day’s
winnings, and offered me 800 gülden on condition that henceforth, I gambled
only on those terms; but I refused to do so, once and for all—stating, as my
reason, that I found myself unable to play on behalf of any one else, “I am not
unwilling so to do,” I added, “but in all probability I should lose.”
“Well, absurd though it be, I place great hopes on your playing of roulette,”
she remarked musingly; “wherefore, you ought to play as my partner and on
equal shares; wherefore, of course, you will do as I wish.”
Then she left me without listening to any further protests on my part.
 III

On the morrow she said not a word to me about gambling. In fact, she
purposely avoided me, although her old manner to me had not changed: the same
serene coolness was hers on meeting me—a coolness that was mingled even
with a spice of contempt and dislike. In short, she was at no pains to conceal her
aversion to me. That I could see plainly. Also, she did not trouble to conceal
from me the fact that I was necessary to her, and that she was keeping me for
some end which she had in view. Consequently there became established
between us relations which, to a large extent, were incomprehensible to me,
considering her general pride and aloofness. For example, although she knew
that I was madly in love with her, she allowed me to speak to her of my passion
(though she could not well have showed her contempt for me more than by
permitting me, unhindered and unrebuked, to mention to her my love).
“You see,” her attitude expressed, “how little I regard your feelings, as well as
how little I care for what you say to me, or for what you feel for me.” Likewise,
though she spoke as before concerning her affairs, it was never with complete
frankness. In her contempt for me there were refinements. Although she knew
well that I was aware of a certain circumstance in her life of something which
might one day cause her trouble, she would speak to me about her affairs
(whenever she had need of me for a given end) as though I were a slave or a
passing acquaintance—yet tell them me only in so far as one would need to
know them if one were going to be made temporary use of. Had I not known the
whole chain of events, or had she not seen how much I was pained and disturbed
by her teasing insistency, she would never have thought it worthwhile to soothe
me with this frankness—even though, since she not infrequently used me to
execute commissions that were not only troublesome, but risky, she ought, in my
opinion, to have been frank in any case. But, forsooth, it was not worth her while
to trouble about my feelings—about the fact that I was uneasy, and, perhaps,
thrice as put about by her cares and misfortunes as she was herself!
For three weeks I had known of her intention to take to roulette. She had even
warned me that she would like me to play on her behalf, since it was
unbecoming for her to play in person; and, from the tone of her words I had
gathered that there was something on her mind besides a mere desire to win
money. As if money could matter to her! No, she had some end in view, and
there were circumstances at which I could guess, but which I did not know for
certain. True, the slavery and abasement in which she held me might have given
me (such things often do so) the power to question her with abrupt directness
(seeing that, inasmuch as I figured in her eyes as a mere slave and nonentity, she
could not very well have taken offence at any rude curiosity); but the fact was
that, though she let me question her, she never returned me a single answer, and
at times did not so much as notice me. That is how matters stood.
Next day there was a good deal of talk about a telegram which, four days ago,
had been sent to St. Petersburg, but to which there had come no answer. The
General was visibly disturbed and moody, for the matter concerned his mother.
The Frenchman, too, was excited, and after dinner the whole party talked long
and seriously together—the Frenchman’s tone being extraordinarily
presumptuous and offhand to everybody. It almost reminded one of the proverb,
“Invite a man to your table, and soon he will place his feet upon it.” Even to
Polina he was brusque almost to the point of rudeness. Yet still he seemed glad
to join us in our walks in the Casino, or in our rides and drives about the town. I
had long been aware of certain circumstances which bound the General to him; I
had long been aware that in Russia they had hatched some scheme together
although I did not know whether the plot had come to anything, or whether it
was still only in the stage of being talked of. Likewise I was aware, in part, of a
family secret—namely, that, last year, the Frenchman had bailed the General out
of debt, and given him 30,000 roubles wherewith to pay his Treasury dues on
retiring from the service. And now, of course, the General was in a vice—
although the chief part in the affair was being played by Mlle. Blanche. Yes, of
this last I had no doubt.
But who was this Mlle. Blanche? It was said of her that she was a
Frenchwoman of good birth who, living with her mother, possessed a colossal
fortune. It was also said that she was some relation to the Marquis, but only a
distant one a cousin, or cousin-german, or something of the sort. Likewise I
knew that, up to the time of my journey to Paris, she and the Frenchman had
been more ceremonious towards our party—they had stood on a much more
precise and delicate footing with them; but that now their acquaintanceship—
their friendship, their intimacy—had taken on a much more off-hand and rough-
and-ready air. Perhaps they thought that our means were too modest for them,
and, therefore, unworthy of politeness or reticence. Also, for the last three days I
had noticed certain looks which Astley had kept throwing at Mlle. Blanche and
her mother; and it had occurred to me that he must have had some previous
acquaintance with the pair. I had even surmised that the Frenchman too must
have met Mr. Astley before. Astley was a man so shy, reserved, and taciturn in
his manner that one might have looked for anything from him. At all events the
Frenchman accorded him only the slightest of greetings, and scarcely even
looked at him. Certainly he did not seem to be afraid of him; which was
intelligible enough. But why did Mlle. Blanche also never look at the
Englishman?—particularly since, à propos of something or another, the Marquis
had declared the Englishman to be immensely and indubitably rich? Was not that
a sufficient reason to make Mlle. Blanche look at the Englishman? Anyway the
General seemed extremely uneasy; and, one could well understand what a
telegram to announce the death of his mother would mean for him!
Although I thought it probable that Polina was avoiding me for a definite
reason, I adopted a cold and indifferent air; for I felt pretty certain that it would
not be long before she herself approached me. For two days, therefore, I devoted
my attention to Mlle. Blanche. The poor General was in despair! To fall in love
at fifty-five, and with such vehemence, is indeed a misfortune! And add to that
his widowerhood, his children, his ruined property, his debts, and the woman
with whom he had fallen in love! Though Mlle. Blanche was extremely good-
looking, I may or may not be understood when I say that she had one of those
faces which one is afraid of. At all events, I myself have always feared such
women. Apparently about twenty-five years of age, she was tall and broad-
shouldered, with shoulders that sloped; yet though her neck and bosom were
ample in their proportions, her skin was dull yellow in colour, while her hair
(which was extremely abundant—sufficient to make two coiffures) was as black
as Indian ink. Add to that a pair of black eyes with yellowish whites, a proud
glance, gleaming teeth, and lips which were perennially pomaded and redolent
of musk. As for her dress, it was invariably rich, effective, and chic, yet in good
taste. Lastly, her feet and hands were astonishing, and her voice a deep contralto.
Sometimes, when she laughed, she displayed her teeth, but at ordinary times her
air was taciturn and haughty—especially in the presence of Polina and Maria
Philipovna. Yet she seemed to me almost destitute of education, and even of
wits, though cunning and suspicious. This, apparently, was not because her life
had been lacking in incident. Perhaps, if all were known, the Marquis was not
her kinsman at all, nor her mother, her mother; but there was evidence that, in
Berlin, where we had first come across the pair, they had possessed
acquaintances of good standing. As for the Marquis himself, I doubt to this day
if he was a Marquis—although about the fact that he had formerly belonged to
high society (for instance, in Moscow and Germany) there could be no doubt
whatever. What he had formerly been in France I had not a notion. All I knew
was that he was said to possess a château. During the last two weeks I had
looked for much to transpire, but am still ignorant whether at that time anything
decisive ever passed between Mademoiselle and the General. Everything seemed
to depend upon our means—upon whether the General would be able to flourish
sufficient money in her face. If ever the news should arrive that the grandmother
was not dead, Mlle. Blanche, I felt sure, would disappear in a twinkling. Indeed,
it surprised and amused me to observe what a passion for intrigue I was
developing. But how I loathed it all! With what pleasure would I have given
everybody and everything the go-by! Only—I could not leave Polina. How, then,
could I show contempt for those who surrounded her? Espionage is a base thing,
but—what have I to do with that?
Mr. Astley, too, I found a curious person. I was only sure that he had fallen in
love with Polina. A remarkable and diverting circumstance is the amount which
may lie in the mien of a shy and painfully modest man who has been touched
with the divine passion—especially when he would rather sink into the earth
than betray himself by a single word or look. Though Mr. Astley frequently met
us when we were out walking, he would merely take off his hat and pass us by,
though I knew he was dying to join us. Even when invited to do so, he would
refuse. Again, in places of amusement—in the Casino, at concerts, or near the
fountain—he was never far from the spot where we were sitting. In fact,
wherever we were in the Park, in the forest, or on the Shlangenberg—one needed
but to raise one’s eyes and glance around to catch sight of at least a portion of
Mr. Astley’s frame sticking out—whether on an adjacent path or behind a bush.
Yet never did he lose any chance of speaking to myself; and, one morning when
we had met, and exchanged a couple of words, he burst out in his usual abrupt
way, without saying “Good-morning.”
“That Mlle. Blanche,” he said. “Well, I have seen a good many women like
her.”
After that he was silent as he looked me meaningly in the face. What he meant
I did not know, but to my glance of inquiry he returned only a dry nod, and a
reiterated “It is so.” Presently, however, he resumed:
“Does Mlle. Polina like flowers?”
“I really cannot say,” was my reply.
“What? You cannot say?” he cried in great astonishment.
 “No; I have never noticed whether she does so or not,” I repeated with a
smile.
“Hm! Then I have an idea in my mind,” he concluded. Lastly, with a nod, he
walked away with a pleased expression on his face. The conversation had been
carried on in execrable French.
 IV

Today has been a day of folly, stupidity, and ineptness. The time is now eleven
o’clock in the evening, and I am sitting in my room and thinking. It all began,
this morning, with my being forced to go and play roulette for Polina
Alexandrovna. When she handed me over her store of six hundred gülden I
exacted two conditions—namely, that I should not go halves with her in her
winnings, if any (that is to say, I should not take anything for myself), and that
she should explain to me, that same evening, why it was so necessary for her to
win, and how much was the sum which she needed. For, I could not suppose that
she was doing all this merely for the sake of money. Yet clearly she did need
some money, and that as soon as possible, and for a special purpose. Well, she
promised to explain matters, and I departed. There was a tremendous crowd in
the gaming-rooms. What an arrogant, greedy crowd it was! I pressed forward
towards the middle of the room until I had secured a seat at a croupier’s elbow.
Then I began to play in timid fashion, venturing only twenty or thirty gülden at a
time. Meanwhile, I observed and took notes. It seemed to me that calculation
was superfluous, and by no means possessed of the importance which certain
other players attached to it, even though they sat with ruled papers in their hands,
whereon they set down the coups, calculated the chances, reckoned, staked, and
—lost exactly as we more simple mortals did who played without any reckoning
at all.
However, I deduced from the scene one conclusion which seemed to me
reliable—namely, that in the flow of fortuitous chances there is, if not a system,
at all events a sort of order. This, of course, is a very strange thing. For instance,
after a dozen middle figures there would always occur a dozen or so outer ones.
Suppose the ball stopped twice at a dozen outer figures; it would then pass to a
dozen of the first ones, and then, again, to a dozen of the middle ciphers, and fall
upon them three or four times, and then revert to a dozen outers; whence, after
another couple of rounds, the ball would again pass to the first figures, strike
upon them once, and then return thrice to the middle series—continuing thus for
an hour and a half, or two hours. One, three, two: one, three, two. It was all very
curious. Again, for the whole of a day or a morning the red would alternate with
the black, but almost without any order, and from moment to moment, so that
scarcely two consecutive rounds would end upon either the one or the other. Yet,
next day, or, perhaps, the next evening, the red alone would turn up, and attain a
run of over two score, and continue so for quite a length of time—say, for a
whole day. Of these circumstances the majority were pointed out to me by Mr.
Astley, who stood by the gaming-table the whole morning, yet never once staked
in person.
For myself, I lost all that I had on me, and with great speed. To begin with, I
staked two hundred gülden on “even,” and won. Then I staked the same amount
again, and won: and so on some two or three times. At one moment I must have
had in my hands—gathered there within a space of five minutes—about 4000
gülden. That, of course, was the proper moment for me to have departed, but
there arose in me a strange sensation as of a challenge to Fate—as of a wish to
deal her a blow on the cheek, and to put out my tongue at her. Accordingly I set
down the largest stake allowed by the rules—namely, 4000 gülden—and lost.
Fired by this mishap, I pulled out all the money left to me, staked it all on the
same venture, and—again lost! Then I rose from the table, feeling as though I
were stupefied. What had happened to me I did not know; but, before luncheon I
told Polina of my losses—until which time I walked about the Park.
At luncheon I was as excited as I had been at the meal three days ago. Mlle.
Blanche and the Frenchman were lunching with us, and it appeared that the
former had been to the Casino that morning, and had seen my exploits there. So
now she showed me more attention when talking to me; while, for his part, the
Frenchman approached me, and asked outright if it had been my own money that
I had lost. He appeared to be suspicious as to something being on foot between
Polina and myself, but I merely fired up, and replied that the money had been all
my own.
At this the General seemed extremely surprised, and asked me whence I had
procured it; whereupon I replied that, though I had begun only with 100 gülden,
six or seven rounds had increased my capital to 5000 or 6000 gülden, and that
subsequently I had lost the whole in two rounds.
All this, of course, was plausible enough. During my recital I glanced at
Polina, but nothing was to be discerned on her face. However, she had allowed
me to fire up without correcting me, and from that I concluded that it was my
cue to fire up, and to conceal the fact that I had been playing on her behalf. “At
all events,” I thought to myself, “she, in her turn, has promised to give me an
explanation to-night, and to reveal to me something or another.”
Although the General appeared to be taking stock of me, he said nothing. Yet I
could see uneasiness and annoyance in his face. Perhaps his straitened
circumstances made it hard for him to have to hear of piles of gold passing
through the hands of an irresponsible fool like myself within the space of a
quarter of an hour. Now, I have an idea that, last night, he and the Frenchman
had a sharp encounter with one another. At all events they closeted themselves
together, and then had a long and vehement discussion; after which the
Frenchman departed in what appeared to be a passion, but returned, early this
morning, to renew the combat. On hearing of my losses, however, he only
remarked with a sharp, and even a malicious, air that “a man ought to go more
carefully.” Next, for some reason or another, he added that, “though a great
many Russians go in for gambling, they are no good at the game.”
“I think that roulette was devised specially for Russians,” I retorted; and when
the Frenchman smiled contemptuously at my reply I further remarked that I was
sure I was right; also that, speaking of Russians in the capacity of gamblers, I
had far more blame for them than praise—of that he could be quite sure.
“Upon what do you base your opinion?” he inquired.
“Upon the fact that to the virtues and merits of the civilised Westerner there
has become historically added—though this is not his chief point—a capacity for
acquiring capital; whereas, not only is the Russian incapable of acquiring capital,
but also he exhausts it wantonly and of sheer folly. None the less we Russians
often need money; wherefore, we are glad of, and greatly devoted to, a method
of acquisition like roulette—whereby, in a couple of hours, one may grow rich
without doing any work. This method, I repeat, has a great attraction for us, but
since we play in wanton fashion, and without taking any trouble, we almost
invariably lose.”
“To a certain extent that is true,” assented the Frenchman with a self-satisfied
air.
“Oh no, it is not true,” put in the General sternly. “And you,” he added to me,
“you ought to be ashamed of yourself for traducing your own country!”
“I beg pardon,” I said. “Yet it would be difficult to say which is the worst of
the two—Russian ineptitude or the German method of growing rich through
honest toil.”
“What an extraordinary idea,” cried the General.
“And what a Russian idea!” added the Frenchman.
I smiled, for I was rather glad to have a quarrel with them.
“I would rather live a wandering life in tents,” I cried, “than bow the knee to a
German idol!”
“To what idol?” exclaimed the General, now seriously angry.
“To the German method of heaping up riches. I have not been here very long,
but I can tell you that what I have seen and verified makes my Tartar blood boil.
Good Lord! I wish for no virtues of that kind. Yesterday I went for a walk of
about ten versts; and, everywhere I found that things were even as we read of
them in good German picture-books—that every house has its ‘Vater,’ who is
horribly beneficent and extraordinarily honourable. So honourable is he that it is
dreadful to have anything to do with him; and I cannot bear people of that sort.
Each such ‘Vater’ has his family, and in the evenings they read improving books
aloud. Over their roof-trees there murmur elms and chestnuts; the sun has sunk
to his rest; a stork is roosting on the gable; and all is beautifully poetic and
touching. Do not be angry, General. Let me tell you something that is even more
touching than that. I can remember how, of an evening, my own father, now
dead, used to sit under the lime trees in his little garden, and to read books aloud
to myself and my mother. Yes, I know how things ought to be done. Yet every
German family is bound to slavery and to submission to its ‘Vater.’ They work
like oxen, and amass wealth like Jews. Suppose the ‘Vater’ has put by a certain
number of gülden which he hands over to his eldest son, in order that the said
son may acquire a trade or a small plot of land. Well, one result is to deprive the
daughter of a dowry, and so leave her among the unwedded. For the same
reason, the parents will have to sell the younger son into bondage or the ranks of
the army, in order that he may earn more towards the family capital. Yes, such
things ARE done, for I have been making inquiries on the subject. It is all done
out of sheer rectitude—out of a rectitude which is magnified to the point of the
younger son believing that he has been rightly sold, and that it is simply idyllic
for the victim to rejoice when he is made over into pledge. What more have I to
tell? Well, this—that matters bear just as hardly upon the eldest son. Perhaps he
has his Gretchen to whom his heart is bound; but he cannot marry her, for the
reason that he has not yet amassed sufficient gülden. So, the pair wait on in a
mood of sincere and virtuous expectation, and smilingly deposit themselves in
pawn the while. Gretchen’s cheeks grow sunken, and she begins to wither; until
at last, after some twenty years, their substance has multiplied, and sufficient
gülden have been honourably and virtuously accumulated. Then the ‘Vater’
blesses his forty-year-old heir and the thirty-five-year-old Gretchen with the
sunken bosom and the scarlet nose; after which he bursts, into tears, reads the
pair a lesson on morality, and dies. In turn the eldest son becomes a virtuous
‘Vater,’ and the old story begins again. In fifty or sixty years’ time the grandson
of the original ‘Vater’ will have amassed a considerable sum; and that sum he
will hand over to, his son, and the latter to his son, and so on for several
generations; until at length there will issue a Baron Rothschild, or a ‘Hoppe and
Company,’ or the devil knows what! Is it not a beautiful spectacle—the spectacle
of a century or two of inherited labour, patience, intellect, rectitude, character,
perseverance, and calculation, with a stork sitting on the roof above it all? What
is more; they think there can never be anything better than this; wherefore, from
their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all
who are at fault—that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves. Yes, there
you have it in a nutshell. For my own part, I would rather grow fat after the
Russian manner, or squander my whole substance at roulette. I have no wish to
be ‘Hoppe and Company’ at the end of five generations. I want the money for
myself, for in no way do I look upon my personality as necessary to, or meet to
be given over to, capital. I may be wrong, but there you have it. Those are my
views.”
“How far you may be right in what you have said I do not know,” remarked
the General moodily; “but I do know that you are becoming an insufferable
farçeur whenever you are given the least chance.”
As usual, he left his sentence unfinished. Indeed, whenever he embarked upon
anything that in the least exceeded the limits of daily small-talk, he left
unfinished what he was saying. The Frenchman had listened to me
contemptuously, with a slight protruding of his eyes; but, he could not have
understood very much of my harangue. As for Polina, she had looked on with
serene indifference. She seemed to have heard neither my voice nor any other
during the progress of the meal.
 V

Yes, she had been extraordinarily meditative. Yet, on leaving the table, she
immediately ordered me to accompany her for a walk. We took the children with
us, and set out for the fountain in the Park.
I was in such an irritated frame of mind that in rude and abrupt fashion I
blurted out a question as to “why our Marquis de Griers had ceased to
accompany her for strolls, or to speak to her for days together.”
“Because he is a brute,” she replied in rather a curious way. It was the first
time that I had heard her speak so of De Griers: consequently, I was momentarily
awed into silence by this expression of resentment.
“Have you noticed, too, that today he is by no means on good terms with the
General?” I went on.
“Yes—and I suppose you want to know why,” she replied with dry
captiousness. “You are aware, are you not, that the General is mortgaged to the
Marquis, with all his property? Consequently, if the General’s mother does not
die, the Frenchman will become the absolute possessor of everything which he
now holds only in pledge.”
“Then it is really the case that everything is mortgaged? I have heard rumours
to that effect, but was unaware how far they might be true.”
“Yes, they are true. What then?”
“Why, it will be a case of ‘Farewell, Mlle. Blanche,’” I remarked; “for in such
an event she would never become Madame General. Do you know, I believe the
old man is so much in love with her that he will shoot himself if she should
throw him over. At his age it is a dangerous thing to fall in love.”
“Yes, something, I believe, will happen to him,” assented Polina thoughtfully.
“And what a fine thing it all is!” I continued. “Could anything be more
abominable than the way in which she has agreed to marry for money alone? Not
one of the decencies has been observed; the whole affair has taken place without
the least ceremony. And as for the grandmother, what could be more comical, yet
more dastardly, than the sending of telegram after telegram to know if she is
dead? What do you think of it, Polina Alexandrovna?”
“Yes, it is very horrible,” she interrupted with a shudder. “Consequently, I am
the more surprised that you should be so cheerful. What are you so pleased
about? About the fact that you have gone and lost my money?”
“What? The money that you gave me to lose? I told you I should never win
for other people—least of all for you. I obeyed you simply because you ordered
me to; but you must not blame me for the result. I warned you that no good
would ever come of it. You seem much depressed at having lost your money.
Why do you need it so greatly?”
“Why do you ask me these questions?”
“Because you promised to explain matters to me. Listen. I am certain that, as
soon as ever I ‘begin to play for myself’ (and I still have 120 gülden left), I shall
win. You can then take of me what you require.”
She made a contemptuous grimace.
“You must not be angry with me,” I continued, “for making such a proposal. I
am so conscious of being only a nonentity in your eyes that you need not mind
accepting money from me. A gift from me could not possibly offend you.
Moreover, it was I who lost your gülden.”
She glanced at me, but, seeing that I was in an irritable, sarcastic mood,
changed the subject.
“My affairs cannot possibly interest you,” she said. “Still, if you do wish to
know, I am in debt. I borrowed some money, and must pay it back again. I have a
curious, senseless idea that I am bound to win at the gaming-tables. Why I think
so I cannot tell, but I do think so, and with some assurance. Perhaps it is because
of that assurance that I now find myself without any other resource.”
“Or perhaps it is because it is so necessary for you to win. It is like a
drowning man catching at a straw. You yourself will agree that, unless he were
drowning he would not mistake a straw for the trunk of a tree.”
Polina looked surprised.
“What?” she said. “Do not you also hope something from it? Did you not tell
me again and again, two weeks ago, that you were certain of winning at roulette
if you played here? And did you not ask me not to consider you a fool for doing
so? Were you joking? You cannot have been, for I remember that you spoke with
a gravity which forbade the idea of your jesting.”
“True,” I replied gloomily. “I always felt certain that I should win. Indeed,
what you say makes me ask myself—Why have my absurd, senseless losses of
today raised a doubt in my mind? Yet I am still positive that, so soon as ever I
begin to play for myself, I shall infallibly win.”
“And why are you so certain?”
“To tell the truth, I do not know. I only know that I must win—that it is the
one resource I have left. Yes, why do I feel so assured on the point?”
“Perhaps because one cannot help winning if one is fanatically certain of
doing so.”
“Yet I dare wager that you do not think me capable of serious feeling in the
matter?”
“I do not care whether you are so or not,” answered Polina with calm
indifference. “Well, since you ask me, I do doubt your ability to take anything
seriously. You are capable of worrying, but not deeply. You are too ill-regulated
and unsettled a person for that. But why do you want money? Not a single one of
the reasons which you have given can be looked upon as serious.”
“By the way,” I interrupted, “you say you want to pay off a debt. It must be a
large one. Is it to the Frenchman?”
“What do you mean by asking all these questions? You are very clever today.
Surely you are not drunk?”
“You know that you and I stand on no ceremony, and that sometimes I put to
you very plain questions. I repeat that I am your slave—and slaves cannot be
shamed or offended.”
“You talk like a child. It is always possible to comport oneself with dignity. If
one has a quarrel it ought to elevate rather than to degrade one.”
“A maxim straight from the copybook! Suppose I cannot comport myself with
dignity. By that I mean that, though I am a man of self-respect, I am unable to
carry off a situation properly. Do you know the reason? It is because we
Russians are too richly and multifariously gifted to be able at once to find the
proper mode of expression. It is all a question of mode. Most of us are so
bounteously endowed with intellect as to require also a spice of genius to choose
the right form of behaviour. And genius is lacking in us for the reason that so
little genius at all exists. It belongs only to the French—though a few other
Europeans have elaborated their forms so well as to be able to figure with
extreme dignity, and yet be wholly undignified persons. That is why, with us, the
mode is so all-important. The Frenchman may receive an insult—a real, a
venomous insult: yet, he will not so much as frown. But a tweaking of the nose
he cannot bear, for the reason that such an act is an infringement of the accepted,
of the time-hallowed order of decorum. That is why our good ladies are so fond
of Frenchmen—the Frenchman’s manners, they say, are perfect! But in my
opinion there is no such thing as a Frenchman’s manners. The Frenchman is only
a bird—the coq gaulois. At the same time, as I am not a woman, I do not
properly understand the question. Cocks may be excellent birds. If I am wrong
you must stop me. You ought to stop and correct me more often when I am
speaking to you, for I am too apt to say everything that is in my head.
“You see, I have lost my manners. I agree that I have none, nor yet any
dignity. I will tell you why. I set no store upon such things. Everything in me has
undergone a cheek. You know the reason. I have not a single human thought in
my head. For a long while I have been ignorant of what is going on in the world
—here or in Russia. I have been to Dresden, yet am completely in the dark as to
what Dresden is like. You know the cause of my obsession. I have no hope now,
and am a mere cipher in your eyes; wherefore, I tell you outright that wherever I
go I see only you—all the rest is a matter of indifference.
“Why or how I have come to love you I do not know. It may be that you are
not altogether fair to look upon. Do you know, I am ignorant even as to what
your face is like. In all probability, too, your heart is not comely, and it is
possible that your mind is wholly ignoble.”
“And because you do not believe in my nobility of soul you think to purchase
me with money?” she said.
“When have I thought to do so?” was my reply.
“You are losing the thread of the argument. If you do not wish to purchase me,
at all events you wish to purchase my respect.”
“Not at all. I have told you that I find it difficult to explain myself. You are
hard upon me. Do not be angry at my chattering. You know why you ought not
to be angry with me—that I am simply an imbecile. However, I do not mind if
you are angry. Sitting in my room, I need but to think of you, to imagine to
myself the rustle of your dress, and at once I fall almost to biting my hands. Why
should you be angry with me? Because I call myself your slave? Revel, I pray
you, in my slavery—revel in it. Do you know that sometimes I could kill you?—
not because I do not love you, or am jealous of you, but, because I feel as though
I could simply devour you... You are laughing!”
“No, I am not,” she retorted. “But I order you, nevertheless, to be silent.”
She stopped, well nigh breathless with anger. God knows, she may not have
been a beautiful woman, yet I loved to see her come to a halt like this, and was
therefore, the more fond of arousing her temper. Perhaps she divined this, and
for that very reason gave way to rage. I said as much to her.
“What rubbish!” she cried with a shudder.
“I do not care,” I continued. “Also, do you know that it is not safe for us to
take walks together? Often I have a feeling that I should like to strike you, to
disfigure you, to strangle you. Are you certain that it will never come to that?
You are driving me to frenzy. Am I afraid of a scandal, or of your anger? Why
should I fear your anger? I love without hope, and know that hereafter I shall
love you a thousand times more. If ever I should kill you I should have to kill
myself too. But I shall put off doing so as long as possible, for I wish to continue
enjoying the unbearable pain which your coldness gives me. Do you know a
very strange thing? It is that, with every day, my love for you increases—though
that would seem to be almost an impossibility. Why should I not become a
fatalist? Remember how, on the third day that we ascended the Shlangenberg, I
was moved to whisper in your ear: ‘Say but the word, and I will leap into the
abyss.’ Had you said it, I should have leapt. Do you not believe me?”
“What stupid rubbish!” she cried.
“I care not whether it be wise or stupid,” I cried in return. “I only know that in
your presence I must speak, speak, speak. Therefore, I am speaking. I lose all
conceit when I am with you, and everything ceases to matter.”
“Why should I have wanted you to leap from the Shlangenberg?” she said
drily, and (I think) with wilful offensiveness. “That would have been of no use to
me.”
“Splendid!” I shouted. “I know well that you must have used the words ‘of no
use’ in order to crush me. I can see through you. ‘Of no use,’ did you say? Why,
to give pleasure is always of use; and, as for barbarous, unlimited power—even
if it be only over a fly—why, it is a kind of luxury. Man is a despot by nature,
and loves to torture. You, in particular, love to do so.”
I remember that at this moment she looked at me in a peculiar way. The fact is
that my face must have been expressing all the maze of senseless, gross
sensations which were seething within me. To this day I can remember, word for
word, the conversation as I have written it down. My eyes were suffused with
blood, and the foam had caked itself on my lips. Also, on my honour I swear
that, had she bidden me cast myself from the summit of the Shlangenberg, I
should have done it. Yes, had she bidden me in jest, or only in contempt and with
a spit in my face, I should have cast myself down.
“Oh no! Why so? I believe you,” she said, but in such a manner—in the
manner of which, at times, she was a mistress—and with such a note of disdain
and viperish arrogance in her tone, that God knows I could have killed her.
Yes, at that moment she stood in peril. I had not lied to her about that.
“Surely you are not a coward?” suddenly she asked me.
“I do not know,” I replied. “Perhaps I am, but I do not know. I have long given
up thinking about such things.”
“If I said to you, ‘Kill that man,’ would you kill him?”
“Whom?”
“Whomsoever I wish?”
“The Frenchman?”
“Do not ask me questions; return me answers. I repeat, whomsoever I wish? I
desire to see if you were speaking seriously just now.”
She awaited my reply with such gravity and impatience that I found the
situation unpleasant.
“Do you, rather, tell me,” I said, “what is going on here? Why do you seem
half-afraid of me? I can see for myself what is wrong. You are the step-daughter
of a ruined and insensate man who is smitten with love for this devil of a
Blanche. And there is this Frenchman, too, with his mysterious influence over
you. Yet, you actually ask me such a question! If you do not tell me how things
stand, I shall have to put in my oar and do something. Are you ashamed to be
frank with me? Are you shy of me?”
“I am not going to talk to you on that subject. I have asked you a question, and
am waiting for an answer.”
“Well, then—I will kill whomsoever you wish,” I said. “But are you really
going to bid me do such deeds?”
“Why should you think that I am going to let you off? I shall bid you do it, or
else renounce me. Could you ever do the latter? No, you know that you couldn’t.
You would first kill whom I had bidden you, and then kill me for having dared to
send you away!”
Something seemed to strike upon my brain as I heard these words. Of course,
at the time I took them half in jest and half as a challenge; yet, she had spoken
them with great seriousness. I felt thunderstruck that she should so express
herself, that she should assert such a right over me, that she should assume such
authority and say outright: “Either you kill whom I bid you, or I will have
nothing more to do with you.” Indeed, in what she had said there was something
so cynical and unveiled as to pass all bounds. For how could she ever regard me
as the same after the killing was done? This was more than slavery and
abasement; it was sufficient to bring a man back to his right senses. Yet, despite
the outrageous improbability of our conversation, my heart shook within me.
Suddenly, she burst out laughing. We were seated on a bench near the spot
where the children were playing—just opposite the point in the alley-way before
the Casino where the carriages drew up in order to set down their occupants.
“Do you see that fat Baroness?” she cried. “It is the Baroness Burmergelm.
She arrived three days ago. Just look at her husband—that tall, wizened Prussian
there, with the stick in his hand. Do you remember how he stared at us the other
day? Well, go to the Baroness, take off your hat to her, and say something in
French.”
“Why?”
“Because you have sworn that you would leap from the Shlangenberg for my
sake, and that you would kill any one whom I might bid you kill. Well, instead of
such murders and tragedies, I wish only for a good laugh. Go without answering
me, and let me see the Baron give you a sound thrashing with his stick.”
“Then you throw me out a challenge?—you think that I will not do it?”
“Yes, I do challenge you. Go, for such is my will.”
“Then I will go, however mad be your fancy. Only, look here: shall you not be
doing the General a great disservice, as well as, through him, a great disservice
to yourself? It is not about myself I am worrying—it is about you and the
General. Why, for a mere fancy, should I go and insult a woman?”
“Ah! Then I can see that you are only a trifler,” she said contemptuously.
“Your eyes are swimming with blood—but only because you have drunk a little
too much at luncheon. Do I not know that what I have asked you to do is foolish
and wrong, and that the General will be angry about it? But I want to have a
good laugh, all the same. I want that, and nothing else. Why should you insult a
woman, indeed? Well, you will be given a sound thrashing for so doing.”
I turned away, and went silently to do her bidding. Of course the thing was
folly, but I could not get out of it. I remember that, as I approached the Baroness,
I felt as excited as a schoolboy. I was in a frenzy, as though I were drunk.
 VI

Two days have passed since that day of lunacy. What a noise and a fuss and a
chattering and an uproar there was! And what a welter of unseemliness and
disorder and stupidity and bad manners! And I the cause of it all! Yet part of the
scene was also ridiculous—at all events to myself it was so. I am not quite sure
what was the matter with me—whether I was merely stupefied or whether I
purposely broke loose and ran amok. At times my mind seems all confused;
while at other times I seem almost to be back in my childhood, at the school
desk, and to have done the deed simply out of mischief.
It all came of Polina—yes, of Polina. But for her, there might never have been
a fracas. Or perhaps I did the deed in a fit of despair (though it may be foolish of
me to think so)? What there is so attractive about her I cannot think. Yet there is
something attractive about her—something passing fair, it would seem. Others
besides myself she has driven to distraction. She is tall and straight, and very
slim. Her body looks as though it could be tied into a knot, or bent double, like a
cord. The imprint of her foot is long and narrow. It is, a maddening imprint—
yes, simply a maddening one! And her hair has a reddish tint about it, and her
eyes are like cat’s eyes—though able also to glance with proud, disdainful mien.
On the evening of my first arrival, four months ago, I remember that she was
sitting and holding an animated conversation with De Griers in the salon. And
the way in which she looked at him was such that later, when I retired to my own
room upstairs, I kept fancying that she had smitten him in the face—that she had
smitten him right on the cheek, so peculiar had been her look as she stood
confronting him. Ever since that evening I have loved her.
But to my tale.
I stepped from the path into the carriage-way, and took my stand in the middle
of it. There I awaited the Baron and the Baroness. When they were but a few
paces distant from me I took off my hat, and bowed.
I remember that the Baroness was clad in a voluminous silk dress, pale grey in
colour, and adorned with flounces and a crinoline and train. Also, she was short
and inordinately stout, while her gross, flabby chin completely concealed her
neck. Her face was purple, and the little eyes in it had an impudent, malicious
expression. Yet she walked as though she were conferring a favour upon
everybody by so doing. As for the Baron, he was tall, wizened, bony-faced after
the German fashion, spectacled, and, apparently, about forty-five years of age.
Also, he had legs which seemed to begin almost at his chest—or, rather, at his
chin! Yet, for all his air of peacock-like conceit, his clothes sagged a little, and
his face wore a sheepish air which might have passed for profundity.
These details I noted within a space of a few seconds.
At first my bow and the fact that I had my hat in my hand barely caught their
attention. The Baron only scowled a little, and the Baroness swept straight on.
“Madame la Baronne,” said I, loudly and distinctly—embroidering each word,
as it were—“j’ai l’honneur d’être votre esclave.”
Then I bowed again, put on my hat, and walked past the Baron with a rude
smile on my face.
Polina had ordered me merely to take off my hat: the bow and the general
effrontery were of my own invention. God knows what instigated me to
perpetrate the outrage! In my frenzy I felt as though I were walking on air.
“Hein!” ejaculated—or, rather, growled—the Baron as he turned towards me
in angry surprise.
I too turned round, and stood waiting in pseudo-courteous expectation. Yet
still I wore on my face an impudent smile as I gazed at him. He seemed to
hesitate, and his brows contracted to their utmost limits. Every moment his
visage was growing darker. The Baroness also turned in my direction, and gazed
at me in wrathful perplexity, while some of the passers-by also began to stare at
us, and others of them halted outright.
“Hein!” the Baron vociferated again, with a redoubled growl and a note of
growing wrath in his voice.
“Ja wohl!” I replied, still looking him in the eyes.
“Sind Sie rasend?” he exclaimed, brandishing his stick, and, apparently,
beginning to feel nervous. Perhaps it was my costume which intimidated him,
for I was well and fashionably dressed, after the manner of a man who belongs
to indisputably good society.
“Ja wo-o-ohl!” cried I again with all my might with a longdrawn rolling of the
“ohl” sound after the fashion of the Berliners (who constantly use the phrase “Ja
wohl!” in conversation, and more or less prolong the syllable “ohl” according as
they desire to express different shades of meaning or of mood).
 At this the Baron and the Baroness faced sharply about, and almost fled in
their alarm. Some of the bystanders gave vent to excited exclamations, and
others remained staring at me in astonishment. But I do not remember the details
very well.
Wheeling quietly about, I returned in the direction of Polina Alexandrovna.
But, when I had got within a hundred paces of her seat, I saw her rise and set out
with the children towards the hotel.
At the portico I caught up to her.
“I have perpetrated the—the piece of idiocy,” I said as I came level with her.
“Have you? Then you can take the consequences,” she replied without so
much as looking at me. Then she moved towards the staircase.
I spent the rest of the evening walking in the park. Thence I passed into the
forest, and walked on until I found myself in a neighbouring principality. At a
wayside restaurant I partook of an omelette and some wine, and was charged for
the idyllic repast a thaler and a half.
Not until eleven o’clock did I return home—to find a summons awaiting me
from the General.
Our party occupied two suites in the hotel; each of which contained two
rooms. The first (the larger suite) comprised a salon and a smoking-room, with,
adjoining the latter, the General’s study. It was here that he was awaiting me as
he stood posed in a majestic attitude beside his writing-table. Lolling on a divan
close by was De Griers.
“My good sir,” the General began, “may I ask you what this is that you have
gone and done?”
“I should be glad,” I replied, “if we could come straight to the point. Probably
you are referring to my encounter of today with a German?”
“With a German? Why, the German was the Baron Burmergelm—a most
important personage! I hear that you have been rude both to him and to the
Baroness?”
“No, I have not.”
“But I understand that you simply terrified them, my good sir?” shouted the
General.
“Not in the least,” I replied. “You must know that when I was in Berlin I
frequently used to hear the Berliners repeat, and repellently prolong, a certain
phrase—namely, ‘Ja wohl!’; and, happening to meet this couple in the carriage-
drive, I found, for some reason or another, that this phrase suddenly recurred to
my memory, and exercised a rousing effect upon my spirits. Moreover, on the
three previous occasions that I have met the Baroness she has walked towards
me as though I were a worm which could easily be crushed with the foot. Not
unnaturally, I too possess a measure of self-respect; wherefore, on this occasion I
took off my hat, and said politely (yes, I assure you it was said politely):
‘Madame, j’ai l’honneur d’être votre esclave.’ Then the Baron turned round, and
said ‘Hein!’; whereupon I felt moved to ejaculate in answer ‘Ja wohl!’ Twice I
shouted it at him—the first time in an ordinary tone, and the second time with
the greatest prolonging of the words of which I was capable. That is all.”
I must confess that this puerile explanation gave me great pleasure. I felt a
strong desire to overlay the incident with an even added measure of grossness;
so, the further I proceeded, the more did the gusto of my proceeding increase.
“You are only making fun of me!” vociferated the General as, turning to the
Frenchman, he declared that my bringing about of the incident had been
gratuitous. De Griers smiled contemptuously, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Do not think that,” I put in. “It was not so at all. I grant you that my
behaviour was bad—I fully confess that it was so, and make no secret of the fact.
I would even go so far as to grant you that my behaviour might well be called
stupid and indecent tomfoolery; but, more than that it was not. Also, let me tell
you that I am very sorry for my conduct. Yet there is one circumstance which, in
my eyes, almost absolves me from regret in the matter. Of late—that is to say,
for the last two or three weeks—I have been feeling not at all well. That is to say,
I have been in a sick, nervous, irritable, fanciful condition, so that I have
periodically lost control over myself. For instance, on more than one occasion I
have tried to pick a quarrel even with Monsieur le Marquise here; and, under the
circumstances, he had no choice but to answer me. In short, I have recently been
showing signs of ill-health. Whether the Baroness Burmergelm will take this
circumstance into consideration when I come to beg her pardon (for I do intend
to make her amends) I do not know; but I doubt if she will, and the less so since,
so far as I know, the circumstance is one which, of late, has begun to be abused
in the legal world, in that advocates in criminal cases have taken to justifying
their clients on the ground that, at the moment of the crime, they (the clients)
were unconscious of what they were doing—that, in short, they were out of
health. ‘My client committed the murder—that is true; but he has no recollection
of having committed it.’ And doctors actually support these advocates by
affirming that there really is such a malady—that there really can arise
temporary delusions which make a man remember nothing of a given deed, or
only a half or a quarter of it! But the Baron and Baroness are members of an
older generation, as well as Prussian Junkers and landowners. To them such a
process in the medico-judicial world will be unknown, and therefore, they are
the more unlikely to accept any such explanation. What is your opinion about it,
General?”
“Enough, sir!” he thundered with barely restrained fury. “Enough, I say! Once
and for all I must endeavour to rid myself of you and your impertinence. To
justify yourself in the eyes of the Baron and Baroness will be impossible. Any
intercourse with you, even though it be confined to a begging of their pardons,
they would look upon as a degradation. I may tell you that, on learning that you
formed part of my household, the Baron approached me in the Casino, and
demanded of me additional satisfaction. Do you understand, then, what it is that
you have entailed upon me—upon me, my good sir? You have entailed upon me
the fact of my being forced to sue humbly to the Baron, and to give him my
word of honour that this very day you shall cease to belong to my
establishment!”
“Excuse me, General,” I interrupted, “but did he make an express point of it
that I should ‘cease to belong to your establishment,’ as you call it?”
“No; I, of my own initiative, thought that I ought to afford him that
satisfaction; and, with it he was satisfied. So we must part, good sir. It is my duty
to hand over to you forty gülden, three florins, as per the accompanying
statement. Here is the money, and here the account, which you are at liberty to
verify. Farewell. From henceforth we are strangers. From you I have never had
anything but trouble and unpleasantness. I am about to call the landlord, and
explain to him that from tomorrow onwards I shall no longer be responsible for
your hotel expenses. Also I have the honour to remain your obedient servant.”
I took the money and the account (which was indicted in pencil), and, bowing
low to the General, said to him very gravely:
“The matter cannot end here. I regret very much that you should have been
put to unpleasantness at the Baron’s hands; but, the fault (pardon me) is your
own. How came you to answer for me to the Baron? And what did you mean by
saying that I formed part of your household? I am merely your family tutor—not
a son of yours, nor yet your ward, nor a person of any kind for whose acts you
need be responsible. I am a judicially competent person, a man of twenty-five
years of age, a university graduate, a gentleman, and, until I met yourself, a
complete stranger to you. Only my boundless respect for your merits restrains
me from demanding satisfaction at your hands, as well as a further explanation
as to the reasons which have led you to take it upon yourself to answer for my
conduct.”
 So struck was he with my words that, spreading out his hands, he turned to the
Frenchman, and interpreted to him that I had challenged himself (the General) to
a duel. The Frenchman laughed aloud.
“Nor do I intend to let the Baron off,” I continued calmly, but with not a little
discomfiture at De Griers’ merriment. “And since you, General, have today been
so good as to listen to the Baron’s complaints, and to enter into his concerns—
since you have made yourself a participator in the affair—I have the honour to
inform you that, tomorrow morning at the latest, I shall, in my own name,
demand of the said Baron a formal explanation as to the reasons which have led
him to disregard the fact that the matter lies between him and myself alone, and
to put a slight upon me by referring it to another person, as though I were
unworthy to answer for my own conduct.”
Then there happened what I had foreseen. The General on hearing of this
further intended outrage, showed the white feather.
“What?” he cried. “Do you intend to go on with this damned nonsense? Do
you not realise the harm that it is doing me? I beg of you not to laugh at me, sir
—not to laugh at me, for we have police authorities here who, out of respect for
my rank, and for that of the Baron... In short, sir, I swear to you that I will have
you arrested, and marched out of the place, to prevent any further brawling on
your part. Do you understand what I say?” He was almost breathless with anger,
as well as in a terrible fright.
“General,” I replied with that calmness which he never could abide, “one
cannot arrest a man for brawling until he has brawled. I have not so much as
begun my explanations to the Baron, and you are altogether ignorant as to the
form and time which my intended procedure is likely to assume. I wish but to
disabuse the Baron of what is, to me, a shameful supposition—namely, that I am
under the guardianship of a person who is qualified to exercise control over my
free will. It is vain for you to disturb and alarm yourself.”
“For God’s sake, Alexis Ivanovitch, do put an end to this senseless scheme of
yours!” he muttered, but with a sudden change from a truculent tone to one of
entreaty as he caught me by the hand. “Do you know what is likely to come of
it? Merely further unpleasantness. You will agree with me, I am sure, that at
present I ought to move with especial care—yes, with very especial care. You
cannot be fully aware of how I am situated. When we leave this place I shall be
ready to receive you back into my household; but, for the time being I— Well, I
cannot tell you all my reasons.” With that he wound up in a despairing voice: “O
Alexis Ivanovitch, Alexis Ivanovitch!”
 I moved towards the door—begging him to be calm, and promising that
everything should be done decently and in order; whereafter I departed.
Russians, when abroad, are over-apt to play the poltroon, to watch all their
words, and to wonder what people are thinking of their conduct, or whether such
and such a thing is comme il faut. In short, they are over-apt to cosset
themselves, and to lay claim to great importance. Always they prefer the form of
behaviour which has once and for all become accepted and established. This
they will follow slavishly whether in hotels, on promenades, at meetings, or
when on a journey. But the General had avowed to me that, over and above such
considerations as these, there were circumstances which compelled him to
“move with especial care at present”, and that the fact had actually made him
poor-spirited and a coward—it had made him altogether change his tone towards
me. This fact I took into my calculations, and duly noted it, for, of course, he
might apply to the authorities tomorrow, and it behoved me to go carefully.
Yet it was not the General but Polina that I wanted to anger. She had treated
me with such cruelty, and had got me into such a hole, that I felt a longing to
force her to beseech me to stop. Of course, my tomfoolery might compromise
her; yet certain other feelings and desires had begun to form themselves in my
brain. If I was never to rank in her eyes as anything but a nonentity, it would not
greatly matter if I figured as a draggle-tailed cockerel, and the Baron were to
give me a good thrashing; but, the fact was that I desired to have the laugh of
them all, and to come out myself unscathed. Let people see what they would see.
Let Polina, for once, have a good fright, and be forced to whistle me to heel
again. But, however much she might whistle, she should see that I was at least
no draggle-tailed cockerel!

I have just received a surprising piece of news. I have just met our
chambermaid on the stairs, and been informed by her that Maria Philipovna
departed today, by the night train, to stay with a cousin at Carlsbad. What can
that mean? The maid declares that Madame packed her trunks early in the day.
Yet how is it that no one else seems to have been aware of the circumstance? Or
is it that I have been the only person to be unaware of it? Also, the maid has just
told me that, three days ago, Maria Philipovna had some high words with the
General. I understand, then! Probably the words were concerning Mlle. Blanche.
Certainly something decisive is approaching.
 VII

In the morning I sent for the maître d’hôtel, and explained to him that, in
future, my bill was to be rendered to me personally. As a matter of fact, my
expenses had never been so large as to alarm me, nor to lead me to quit the hotel;
while, moreover, I still had 160 gülden left to me, and—in them—yes, in them,
perhaps, riches awaited me. It was a curious fact, that, though I had not yet won
anything at play, I nevertheless acted, thought, and felt as though I were sure,
before long, to become wealthy—since I could not imagine myself otherwise.
Next, I bethought me, despite the earliness of the hour, of going to see Mr.
Astley, who was staying at the Hôtel de l’Angleterre (a hostelry at no great
distance from our own). But suddenly De Griers entered my room. This had
never before happened, for of late that gentleman and I had stood on the most
strained and distant of terms—he attempting no concealment of his contempt for
me (he even made an express point of showing it), and I having no reason to
desire his company. In short, I detested him. Consequently, his entry at the
present moment the more astounded me. At once I divined that something out of
the way was on the carpet.
He entered with marked affability, and began by complimenting me on my
room. Then, perceiving that I had my hat in my hands, he inquired whither I was
going so early; and, no sooner did he hear that I was bound for Mr. Astley’s than
he stopped, looked grave, and seemed plunged in thought.
He was a true Frenchman insofar as that, though he could be lively and
engaging when it suited him, he became insufferably dull and wearisome as soon
as ever the need for being lively and engaging had passed. Seldom is a
Frenchman naturally civil: he is civil only as though to order and of set purpose.
Also, if he thinks it incumbent upon him to be fanciful, original, and out of the
way, his fancy always assumes a foolish, unnatural vein, for the reason that it is
compounded of trite, hackneyed forms. In short, the natural Frenchman is a
conglomeration of commonplace, petty, everyday positiveness, so that he is the
most tedious person in the world. Indeed, I believe that none but greenhorns and
excessively Russian people feel an attraction towards the French; for, to any man
of sensibility, such a compendium of outworn forms—a compendium which is
built up of drawing-room manners, expansiveness, and gaiety—becomes at once
over-noticeable and unbearable.
“I have come to see you on business,” De Griers began in a very off-hand, yet
polite, tone; “nor will I seek to conceal from you the fact that I have come in the
capacity of an emissary, of an intermediary, from the General. Having small
knowledge of the Russian tongue, I lost most of what was said last night; but, the
General has now explained matters, and I must confess that—”
“See here, Monsieur de Griers,” I interrupted. “I understand that you have
undertaken to act in this affair as an intermediary. Of course I am only ‘un
utchitel,’ a tutor, and have never claimed to be an intimate of this household, nor
to stand on at all familiar terms with it. Consequently, I do not know the whole
of its circumstances. Yet pray explain to me this: have you yourself become one
of its members, seeing that you are beginning to take such a part in everything,
and are now present as an intermediary?”
The Frenchman seemed not over-pleased at my question. It was one which
was too outspoken for his taste—and he had no mind to be frank with me.
“I am connected with the General,” he said drily, “partly through business
affairs, and partly through special circumstances. My principal has sent me
merely to ask you to forego your intentions of last evening. What you
contemplate is, I have no doubt, very clever; yet he has charged me to represent
to you that you have not the slightest chance of succeeding in your end, since not
only will the Baron refuse to receive you, but also he (the Baron) has at his
disposal every possible means for obviating further unpleasantness from you.
Surely you can see that yourself? What, then, would be the good of going on
with it all? On the other hand, the General promises that at the first favourable
opportunity he will receive you back into his household, and, in the meantime,
will credit you with your salary—with ‘vos appointements.’ Surely that will suit
you, will it not?”
Very quietly I replied that he (the Frenchman) was labouring under a delusion;
that perhaps, after all, I should not be expelled from the Baron’s presence, but,
on the contrary, be listened to; finally, that I should be glad if Monsieur de Griers
would confess that he was now visiting me merely in order to see how far I
intended to go in the affair.
“Good heavens!” cried de Griers. “Seeing that the General takes such an
interest in the matter, is there anything very unnatural in his desiring also to
know your plans?”
 Again I began my explanations, but the Frenchman only fidgeted and rolled
his head about as he listened with an expression of manifest and unconcealed
irony on his face. In short, he adopted a supercilious attitude. For my own part, I
endeavoured to pretend that I took the affair very seriously. I declared that, since
the Baron had gone and complained of me to the General, as though I were a
mere servant of the General’s, he had, in the first place, lost me my post, and, in
the second place, treated me like a person to whom, as to one not qualified to
answer for himself, it was not even worth while to speak. Naturally, I said, I felt
insulted at this. Yet, comprehending as I did, differences of years, of social
status, and so forth (here I could scarcely help smiling), I was not anxious to
bring about further scenes by going personally to demand or to request
satisfaction of the Baron. All that I felt was that I had a right to go in person and
beg the Baron’s and the Baroness’s pardon—the more so since, of late, I had
been feeling unwell and unstrung, and had been in a fanciful condition. And so
forth, and so forth. Yet (I continued) the Baron’s offensive behaviour to me of
yesterday (that is to say, the fact of his referring the matter to the General) as
well as his insistence that the General should deprive me of my post, had placed
me in such a position that I could not well express my regret to him (the Baron)
and to his good lady, for the reason that in all probability both he and the
Baroness, with the world at large, would imagine that I was doing so merely
because I hoped, by my action, to recover my post. Hence, I found myself forced
to request the Baron to express to me his own regrets, as well as to express them
in the most unqualified manner—to say, in fact, that he had never had any wish
to insult me. After the Baron had done that, I should, for my part, at once feel
free to express to him, whole-heartedly and without reserve, my own regrets. “In
short,” I declared in conclusion, “my one desire is that the Baron may make it
possible for me to adopt the latter course.”
“Oh fie! What refinements and subtleties!” exclaimed De Griers. “Besides,
what have you to express regret for? Confess, Monsieur, Monsieur—pardon me,
but I have forgotten your name—confess, I say, that all this is merely a plan to
annoy the General? Or perhaps, you have some other and special end in view?
Eh?”
“In return you must pardon me, mon cher Marquis, and tell me what you have
to do with it.”
“The General—”
“But what of the General? Last night he said that, for some reason or another,
it behoved him to ‘move with especial care at present;’ wherefore, he was feeling
nervous. But I did not understand the reference.”
 “Yes, there do exist special reasons for his doing so,” assented De Griers in a
conciliatory tone, yet with rising anger. “You are acquainted with Mlle. de
Cominges, are you not?”
“Mlle. Blanche, you mean?”
“Yes, Mlle. Blanche de Cominges. Doubtless you know also that the General
is in love with this young lady, and may even be about to marry her before he
leaves here? Imagine, therefore, what any scene or scandal would entail upon
him!”
“I cannot see that the marriage scheme need, be affected by scenes or
scandals.”
“Mais le Baron est si irascible—un caractère prussien, vous savez! Enfin il
fera une querelle d’Allemand.”
“I do not care,” I replied, “seeing that I no longer belong to his household” (of
set purpose I was trying to talk as senselessly as possible). “But is it quite settled
that Mlle. is to marry the General? What are they waiting for? Why should they
conceal such a matter—at all events from ourselves, the General’s own party?”
“I cannot tell you. The marriage is not yet a settled affair, for they are awaiting
news from Russia. The General has business transactions to arrange.”
“Ah! Connected, doubtless, with madame his mother?”
De Griers shot at me a glance of hatred.
“To cut things short,” he interrupted, “I have complete confidence in your
native politeness, as well as in your tact and good sense. I feel sure that you will
do what I suggest, even if it is only for the sake of this family which has received
you as a kinsman into its bosom and has always loved and respected you.”
“Be so good as to observe,” I remarked, “that the same family has just
expelled me from its bosom. All that you are saying you are saying but for show;
but, when people have just said to you, ‘Of course we do not wish to turn you
out, yet, for the sake of appearance’s, you must permit yourself to be turned out,’
nothing can matter very much.”
“Very well, then,” he said, in a sterner and more arrogant tone. “Seeing that
my solicitations have had no effect upon you, it is my duty to mention that other
measures will be taken. There exist here police, you must remember, and this
very day they shall send you packing. Que diable! To think of a blanc bec like
yourself challenging a person like the Baron to a duel! Do you suppose that you
will be allowed to do such things? Just try doing them, and see if any one will be
afraid of you! The reason why I have asked you to desist is that I can see that
your conduct is causing the General annoyance. Do you believe that the Baron
could not tell his lacquey simply to put you out of doors?”
“Nevertheless I should not GO out of doors,” I retorted with absolute calm.
“You are labouring under a delusion, Monsieur de Griers. The thing will be done
in far better trim than you imagine. I was just about to start for Mr. Astley’s, to
ask him to be my intermediary—in other words, my second. He has a strong
liking for me, and I do not think that he will refuse. He will go and see the Baron
on MY behalf, and the Baron will certainly not decline to receive him. Although
I am only a tutor—a kind of subaltern, Mr. Astley is known to all men as the
nephew of a real English lord, the Lord Piebroch, as well as a lord in his own
right. Yes, you may be pretty sure that the Baron will be civil to Mr. Astley, and
listen to him. Or, should he decline to do so, Mr. Astley will take the refusal as a
personal affront to himself (for you know how persistent the English are?) and
thereupon introduce to the Baron a friend of his own (and he has many friends in
a good position). That being so, picture to yourself the issue of the affair—an
affair which will not quite end as you think it will.”
This caused the Frenchman to bethink him of playing the coward. “Really
things may be as this fellow says,” he evidently thought. “Really he might be
able to engineer another scene.”
“Once more I beg of you to let the matter drop,” he continued in a tone that
was now entirely conciliatory. “One would think that it actually pleased you to
have scenes! Indeed, it is a brawl rather than genuine satisfaction that you are
seeking. I have said that the affair may prove to be diverting, and even clever,
and that possibly you may attain something by it; yet none the less I tell you” (he
said this only because he saw me rise and reach for my hat) “that I have come
hither also to hand you these few words from a certain person. Read them,
please, for I must take her back an answer.”
So saying, he took from his pocket a small, compact, wafer-sealed note, and
handed it to me. In Polina’s handwriting I read:

“I hear that you are thinking of going on with this affair. You
have lost your temper now, and are beginning to play the fool!
Certain circumstances, however, I may explain to you later. Pray
cease from your folly, and put a check upon yourself. For folly it
all is. I have need of you, and, moreover, you have promised to
obey me. Remember the Shlangenberg. I ask you to be obedient.
If necessary, I shall even bid you be obedient.—Your own
 POLINA.

“P.S.—If so be that you still bear a grudge against me for what

happened last night, pray forgive me.”

Everything, to my eyes, seemed to change as I read these words. My lips grew

pale, and I began to tremble. Meanwhile, the cursed Frenchman was eyeing me
discreetly and askance, as though he wished to avoid witnessing my confusion. It
would have been better if he had laughed outright.
“Very well,” I said, “you can tell Mlle. not to disturb herself. But,” I added
sharply, “I would also ask you why you have been so long in handing me this
note? Instead of chattering about trifles, you ought to have delivered me the
missive at once—if you have really come commissioned as you say.”
“Well, pardon some natural haste on my part, for the situation is so strange. I
wished first to gain some personal knowledge of your intentions; and, moreover,
I did not know the contents of the note, and thought that it could be given you at
any time.”
“I understand,” I replied. “So you were ordered to hand me the note only in
the last resort, and if you could not otherwise appease me? Is it not so? Speak
out, Monsieur de Griers.”
“Perhaps,” said he, assuming a look of great forbearance, but gazing at me in
a meaning way.
I reached for my hat; whereupon he nodded, and went out. Yet on his lips I
fancied that I could see a mocking smile. How could it have been otherwise?
“You and I are to have a reckoning later, Master Frenchman,” I muttered as I
descended the stairs. “Yes, we will measure our strength together.” Yet my
thoughts were all in confusion, for again something seemed to have struck me
dizzy. Presently the air revived me a little, and, a couple of minutes later, my
brain had sufficiently cleared to enable two ideas in particular to stand out in it.
Firstly, I asked myself, which of the absurd, boyish, and extravagant threats
which I had uttered at random last night had made everybody so alarmed?
Secondly, what was the influence which this Frenchman appeared to exercise
over Polina? He had but to give the word, and at once she did as he desired—at
once she wrote me a note to beg of me to forbear! Of course, the relations
between the pair had, from the first, been a riddle to me—they had been so ever
since I had first made their acquaintance. But of late I had remarked in her a
strong aversion for, even a contempt for—him, while, for his part, he had
scarcely even looked at her, but had behaved towards her always in the most
churlish fashion. Yes, I had noted that. Also, Polina herself had mentioned to me
her dislike for him, and delivered herself of some remarkable confessions on the
subject. Hence, he must have got her into his power somehow—somehow he
must be holding her as in a vice.
 VIII

All at once, on the Promenade, as it was called—that is to say, in the Chestnut

Avenue—I came face to face with my Englishman.
“I was just coming to see you,” he said; “and you appear to be out on a similar
errand. So you have parted with your employers?”
“How do you know that?” I asked in astonishment. “Is every one aware of the
fact?”
“By no means. Not every one would consider such a fact to be of moment.
Indeed, I have never heard any one speak of it.”
“Then how come you to know it?”
“Because I have had occasion to do so. Whither are you bound? I like you,
and was therefore coming to pay you a visit.”
“What a splendid fellow you are, Mr. Astley!” I cried, though still wondering
how he had come by his knowledge. “And since I have not yet had my coffee,
and you have, in all probability, scarcely tasted yours, let us adjourn to the
Casino Café, where we can sit and smoke and have a talk.”
The café in question was only a hundred paces away; so, when coffee had
been brought, we seated ourselves, and I lit a cigarette. Astley was no smoker,
but, taking a seat by my side, he prepared himself to listen.
“I do not intend to go away,” was my first remark. “I intend, on the contrary,
to remain here.”
“That I never doubted,” he answered good-humouredly.
It is a curious fact that, on my way to see him, I had never even thought of
telling him of my love for Polina. In fact, I had purposely meant to avoid any
mention of the subject. Nor, during our stay in the place, had I ever made aught
but the scantiest reference to it. You see, not only was Astley a man of great
reserve, but also from the first I had perceived that Polina had made a great
impression upon him, although he never spoke of her. But now, strangely
enough, he had no sooner seated himself and bent his steely gaze upon me, than,
for some reason or another, I felt moved to tell him everything—to speak to him
of my love in all its phases. For an hour and a half did I discourse on the subject,
and found it a pleasure to do so, even though this was the first occasion on which
I had referred to the matter. Indeed, when, at certain moments, I perceived that
my more ardent passages confused him, I purposely increased my ardour of
narration. Yet one thing I regret: and that is that I made references to the
Frenchman which were a little over-personal.
Mr. Astley sat without moving as he listened to me. Not a word nor a sound of
any kind did he utter as he stared into my eyes. Suddenly, however, on my
mentioning the Frenchman, he interrupted me, and inquired sternly whether I did
right to speak of an extraneous matter (he had always been a strange man in his
mode of propounding questions).
“No, I fear not,” I replied.
“And concerning this Marquis and Mlle. Polina you know nothing beyond
surmise?”
Again I was surprised that such a categorical question should come from such
a reserved individual.
“No, I know nothing for certain about them” was my reply. “No—nothing.”
“Then you have done very wrong to speak of them to me, or even to imagine
things about them.”
“Quite so, quite so,” I interrupted in some astonishment. “I admit that. Yet that
is not the question.” Whereupon I related to him in detail the incident of two
days ago. I spoke of Polina’s outburst, of my encounter with the Baron, of my
dismissal, of the General’s extraordinary pusillanimity, and of the call which De
Griers had that morning paid me. In conclusion, I showed Astley the note which
I had lately received.
“What do you make of it?” I asked. “When I met you I was just coming to ask
you your opinion. For myself, I could have killed this Frenchman, and am not
sure that I shall not do so even yet.”
“I feel the same about it,” said Mr. Astley. “As for Mlle. Polina—well, you
yourself know that, if necessity drives, one enters into relation with people
whom one simply detests. Even between this couple there may be something
which, though unknown to you, depends upon extraneous circumstances. For,
my own part, I think that you may reassure yourself—or at all events partially.
And as for Mlle. Polina’s proceedings of two days ago, they were, of course,
strange; not because she can have meant to get rid of you, or to earn for you a
thrashing from the Baron’s cudgel (which for some curious reason, he did not
use, although he had it ready in his hands), but because such proceedings on the
part of such—well, of such a refined lady as Mlle. Polina are, to say the least of
it, unbecoming. But she cannot have guessed that you would carry out her
absurd wish to the letter?”
“Do you know what?” suddenly I cried as I fixed Mr. Astley with my gaze. “I
believe that you have already heard the story from some one—very possibly
from Mlle. Polina herself?”
In return he gave me an astonished stare.
“Your eyes look very fiery,” he said with a return of his former calm, “and in
them I can read suspicion. Now, you have no right whatever to be suspicious. It
is not a right which I can for a moment recognise, and I absolutely refuse to
answer your questions.”
“Enough! You need say no more,” I cried with a strange emotion at my heart,
yet not altogether understanding what had aroused that emotion in my breast.
Indeed, when, where, and how could Polina have chosen Astley to be one of her
confidants? Of late I had come rather to overlook him in this connection, even
though Polina had always been a riddle to me—so much so that now, when I had
just permitted myself to tell my friend of my infatuation in all its aspects, I had
found myself struck, during the very telling, with the fact that in my relations
with her I could specify nothing that was explicit, nothing that was positive. On
the contrary, my relations had been purely fantastic, strange, and unreal; they had
been unlike anything else that I could think of.
“Very well, very well,” I replied with a warmth equal to Astley’s own. “Then I
stand confounded, and have no further opinions to offer. But you are a good
fellow, and I am glad to know what you think about it all, even though I do not
need your advice.”
Then, after a pause, I resumed:
“For instance, what reason should you assign for the General taking fright in
this way? Why should my stupid clowning have led the world to elevate it into a
serious incident? Even De Griers has found it necessary to put in his oar (and he
only interferes on the most important occasions), and to visit me, and to address
to me the most earnest supplications. Yes, he, De Griers, has actually been
playing the suppliant to me! And, mark you, although he came to me as early as
nine o’clock, he had ready-prepared in his hand Mlle. Polina’s note. When, I
would ask, was that note written? Mlle. Polina must have been aroused from
sleep for the express purpose of writing it. At all events the circumstance shows
that she is an absolute slave to the Frenchman, since she actually begs my
pardon in the note—actually begs my pardon! Yet what is her personal concern
in the matter? Why is she interested in it at all? Why, too, is the whole party so
afraid of this precious Baron? And what sort of a business do you call it for the
General to be going to marry Mlle. Blanche de Cominges? He told me last night
that, because of the circumstance, he must ‘move with especial care at present.’
What is your opinion of it all? Your look convinces me that you know more
about it than I do.”
Mr. Astley smiled and nodded.
“Yes, I think I do know more about it than you do,” he assented. “The affair
centres around this Mlle. Blanche. Of that I feel certain.”
“And what of Mlle. Blanche?” I cried impatiently (for in me there had dawned
a sudden hope that this would enable me to discover something about Polina).
“Well, my belief is that at the present moment Mlle. Blanche has, in very
truth, a special reason for wishing to avoid any trouble with the Baron and the
Baroness. It might lead not only to some unpleasantness, but even to a scandal.”
“Oh, oh!”
“Also I may tell you that Mlle. Blanche has been in Roulettenberg before, for
she was staying here three seasons ago. I myself was in the place at the time, and
in those days Mlle. Blanche was not known as Mlle. de Cominges, nor was her
mother, the Widow de Cominges, even in existence. In any case no one ever
mentioned the latter. De Griers, too, had not materialised, and I am convinced
that not only do the parties stand in no relation to one another, but also they have
not long enjoyed one another’s acquaintance. Likewise, the Marquisate de Griers
is of recent creation. Of that I have reason to be sure, owing to a certain
circumstance. Even the name De Griers itself may be taken to be a new
invention, seeing that I have a friend who once met the said ‘Marquis’ under a
different name altogether.”
“Yet he possesses a good circle of friends?”
“Possibly. Mlle. Blanche also may possess that. Yet it is not three years since
she received from the local police, at the instance of the Baroness, an invitation
to leave the town. And she left it.”
“But why?”
“Well, I must tell you that she first appeared here in company with an Italian
—a prince of some sort, a man who bore an historic name (Barberini or
something of the kind). The fellow was simply a mass of rings and diamonds—
real diamonds, too—and the couple used to drive out in a marvellous carriage.
At first Mlle. Blanche played ‘trente et quarante’ with fair success, but, later, her
luck took a marked change for the worse. I distinctly remember that in a single
evening she lost an enormous sum. But worse was to ensue, for one fine morning
her prince disappeared—horses, carriage, and all. Also, the hotel bill which he
left unpaid was enormous. Upon this Mlle. Zelma (the name which she assumed
after figuring as Madame Barberini) was in despair. She shrieked and howled all
over the hotel, and even tore her clothes in her frenzy. In the hotel there was
staying also a Polish count (you must know that ALL travelling Poles are
counts!), and the spectacle of Mlle. Zelma tearing her clothes and, catlike,
scratching her face with her beautiful, scented nails produced upon him a strong
impression. So the pair had a talk together, and, by luncheon time, she was
consoled. Indeed, that evening the couple entered the Casino arm-in-arm—Mlle.
Zelma laughing loudly, according to her custom, and showing even more
expansiveness in her manners than she had before shown. For instance, she
thrust her way into the file of women roulette-players in the exact fashion of
those ladies who, to clear a space for themselves at the tables, push their fellow-
players roughly aside. Doubtless you have noticed them?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Well, they are not worth noticing. To the annoyance of the decent public they
are allowed to remain here—at all events such of them as daily change 4000
franc notes at the tables (though, as soon as ever these women cease to do so,
they receive an invitation to depart). However, Mlle. Zelma continued to change
notes of this kind, but her play grew more and more unsuccessful, despite the
fact that such ladies’ luck is frequently good, for they have a surprising amount
of cash at their disposal. Suddenly, the Count too disappeared, even as the Prince
had done, and that same evening Mlle. Zelma was forced to appear in the Casino
alone. On this occasion no one offered her a greeting. Two days later she had
come to the end of her resources; whereupon, after staking and losing her last
louis d’or she chanced to look around her, and saw standing by her side the
Baron Burmergelm, who had been eyeing her with fixed disapproval. To his
distaste, however, Mlle. paid no attention, but, turning to him with her well-
known smile, requested him to stake, on her behalf, ten louis on the red. Later
that evening a complaint from the Baroness led the authorities to request Mlle.
not to re-enter the Casino. If you feel in any way surprised that I should know
these petty and unedifying details, the reason is that I had them from a relative of
mine who, later that evening, drove Mlle. Zelma in his carriage from
Roulettenberg to Spa. Now, mark you, Mlle. wants to become Madame General,
in order that, in future, she may be spared the receipt of such invitations from
Casino authorities as she received three years ago. At present she is not playing;
but that is only because, according to the signs, she is lending money to other
players. Yes, that is a much more paying game. I even suspect that the
unfortunate General is himself in her debt, as well as, perhaps, also De Griers.
Or, it may be that the latter has entered into a partnership with her. Consequently
you yourself will see that, until the marriage shall have been consummated,
Mlle. would scarcely like to have the attention of the Baron and the Baroness
drawn to herself. In short, to any one in her position, a scandal would be most
detrimental. You form a member of the ménage of these people; wherefore, any
act of yours might cause such a scandal—and the more so since daily she
appears in public arm in arm with the General or with Mlle. Polina. Now do you
understand?”
“No, I do not!” I shouted as I banged my fist down upon the table—banged it
with such violence that a frightened waiter came running towards us. “Tell me,
Mr. Astley, why, if you knew this history all along, and, consequently, always
knew who this Mlle. Blanche is, you never warned either myself or the General,
nor, most of all, Mlle. Polina” (who is accustomed to appear in the Casino—in
public everywhere with Mlle. Blanche). “How could you do it?”
“It would have done no good to warn you,” he replied quietly, “for the reason
that you could have effected nothing. Against what was I to warn you? As likely
as not, the General knows more about Mlle. Blanche even than I do; yet the
unhappy man still walks about with her and Mlle. Polina. Only yesterday I saw
this Frenchwoman riding, splendidly mounted, with De Griers, while the
General was careering in their wake on a roan horse. He had said, that morning,
that his legs were hurting him, yet his riding-seat was easy enough. As he passed
I looked at him, and the thought occurred to me that he was a man lost for ever.
However, it is no affair of mine, for I have only recently had the happiness to
make Mlle. Polina’s acquaintance. Also”—he added this as an afterthought—“I
have already told you that I do not recognise your right to ask me certain
questions, however sincere be my liking for you.”
“Enough,” I said, rising. “To me it is as clear as day that Mlle. Polina knows
all about this Mlle. Blanche, but cannot bring herself to part with her
Frenchman; wherefore, she consents also to be seen in public with Mlle.
Blanche. You may be sure that nothing else would ever have induced her either
to walk about with this Frenchwoman or to send me a note not to touch the
Baron. Yes, it is there that the influence lies before which everything in the
world must bow! Yet she herself it was who launched me at the Baron! The devil
take it, but I was left no choice in the matter.”
“You forget, in the first place, that this Mlle. de Cominges is the General’s
inamorata, and, in the second place, that Mlle. Polina, the General’s step-
daughter, has a younger brother and sister who, though they are the General’s
own children, are completely neglected by this madman, and robbed as well.”
“Yes, yes; that is so. For me to go and desert the children now would mean
their total abandonment; whereas, if I remain, I should be able to defend their
interests, and, perhaps, to save a moiety of their property. Yes, yes; that is quite
true. And yet, and yet—Oh, I can well understand why they are all so interested
in the General’s mother!”
“In whom?” asked Mr. Astley.
“In the old woman of Moscow who declines to die, yet concerning whom they
are for ever expecting telegrams to notify the fact of her death.”
“Ah, then of course their interests centre around her. It is a question of
succession. Let that but be settled, and the General will marry, Mlle. Polina will
be set free, and De Griers—”
“Yes, and De Griers?”
“Will be repaid his money, which is what he is now waiting for.”
“What? You think that he is waiting for that?”
“I know of nothing else,” asserted Mr. Astley doggedly.
“But, I do, I do!” I shouted in my fury. “He is waiting also for the old
woman’s will, for the reason that it awards Mlle. Polina a dowry. As soon as ever
the money is received, she will throw herself upon the Frenchman’s neck. All
women are like that. Even the proudest of them become abject slaves where
marriage is concerned. What Polina is good for is to fall head over ears in love.
That is my opinion. Look at her—especially when she is sitting alone, and
plunged in thought. All this was pre-ordained and foretold, and is accursed.
Polina could perpetrate any mad act. She—she—But who called me by name?” I
broke off. “Who is shouting for me? I heard some one calling in Russian, ‘Alexis
Ivanovitch!’ It was a woman’s voice. Listen!”
At the moment, we were approaching my hotel. We had left the café long ago,
without even noticing that we had done so.
“Yes, I did hear a woman’s voice calling, but whose I do not know. The
someone was calling you in Russian. Ah! NOW I can see whence the cries
come. They come from that lady there—the one who is sitting on the settee, the
one who has just been escorted to the verandah by a crowd of lacqueys. Behind
her see that pile of luggage! She must have arrived by train.”
“But why should she be calling me? Hear her calling again! See! She is
beckoning to us!”
“Yes, so she is,” assented Mr. Astley.
“Alexis Ivanovitch, Alexis Ivanovitch! Good heavens, what a stupid fellow!”
came in a despairing wail from the verandah.
We had almost reached the portico, and I was just setting foot upon the space
before it, when my hands fell to my sides in limp astonishment, and my feet
glued themselves to the pavement!
 IX

For on the topmost tier of the hotel verandah, after being carried up the steps
in an armchair amid a bevy of footmen, maid-servants, and other menials of the
hotel, headed by the landlord (that functionary had actually run out to meet a
visitor who arrived with so much stir and din, attended by her own retinue, and
accompanied by so great a pile of trunks and portmanteaux)—on the topmost tier
of the verandah, I say, there was sitting—the grandmother! Yes, it was she—
rich, and imposing, and seventy-five years of age—Antonida Vassilievna
Tarassevitcha, landowner and grande dame of Moscow—the “La Baboulenka”
who had caused so many telegrams to be sent off and received—who had been
dying, yet not dying—who had, in her own person, descended upon us even as
snow might fall from the clouds! Though unable to walk, she had arrived borne
aloft in an armchair (her mode of conveyance for the last five years), as brisk,
aggressive, self-satisfied, bolt-upright, loudly imperious, and generally abusive
as ever. In fact, she looked exactly as she had on the only two occasions when I
had seen her since my appointment to the General’s household. Naturally
enough, I stood petrified with astonishment. She had sighted me a hundred paces
off! Even while she was being carried along in her chair she had recognised me,
and called me by name and surname (which, as usual, after hearing once, she
had remembered ever afterwards).
“And this is the woman whom they had thought to see in her grave after
making her will!” I thought to myself. “Yet she will outlive us, and every one
else in the hotel. Good Lord! what is going to become of us now? What on earth
is to happen to the General? She will turn the place upside down!”
“My good sir,” the old woman continued in a stentorian voice, “what are you
standing there for, with your eyes almost falling out of your head? Cannot you
come and say how-do-you-do? Are you too proud to shake hands? Or do you not
recognise me? Here, Potapitch!” she cried to an old servant who, dressed in a
frock coat and white waistcoat, had a bald, red head (he was the chamberlain
who always accompanied her on her journeys). “Just think! Alexis Ivanovitch
does not recognise me! They have buried me for good and all! Yes, and after
sending hosts of telegrams to know if I were dead or not! Yes, yes, I have heard
the whole story. I am very much alive, though, as you may see.”
“Pardon me, Antonida Vassilievna,” I replied good humouredly as I recovered
my presence of mind. “I have no reason to wish you ill. I am merely rather
astonished to see you. Why should I not be so, seeing how unexpected—”
“Why should you be astonished? I just got into my chair, and came. Things are
quiet enough in the train, for there is no one there to chatter. Have you been out
for a walk?”
“Yes. I have just been to the Casino.”
“Oh? Well, it is quite nice here,” she went on as she looked about her. “The
place seems comfortable, and all the trees are out. I like it very well. Are your
people at home? Is the General, for instance, indoors?”
“Yes; and probably all of them.”
“Do they observe the convenances, and keep up appearances? Such things
always give one tone. I have heard that they are keeping a carriage, even as
Russian gentlefolks ought to do. When abroad, our Russian people always cut a
dash. Is Prascovia here too?”
“Yes. Polina Alexandrovna is here.”
“And the Frenchwoman? However, I will go and look for them myself. Tell
me the nearest way to their rooms. Do you like being here?”
“Yes, I thank you, Antonida Vassilievna.”
“And you, Potapitch, you go and tell that fool of a landlord to reserve me a
suitable suite of rooms. They must be handsomely decorated, and not too high
up. Have my luggage taken up to them. But what are you tumbling over
yourselves for? Why are you all tearing about? What scullions these fellows are!
—Who is that with you?” she added to myself.
“A Mr. Astley,” I replied.
“And who is Mr. Astley?”
“A fellow-traveller, and my very good friend, as well as an acquaintance of
the General’s.”
“Oh, an Englishman? Then that is why he stared at me without even opening
his lips. However, I like Englishmen. Now, take me upstairs, direct to their
rooms. Where are they lodging?”
Madame was lifted up in her chair by the lacqueys, and I preceded her up the
grand staircase. Our progress was exceedingly effective, for everyone whom we
met stopped to stare at the cortège. It happened that the hotel had the reputation
of being the best, the most expensive, and the most aristocratic in all the spa, and
at every turn on the staircase or in the corridors we encountered fine ladies and
important-looking Englishmen—more than one of whom hastened downstairs to
inquire of the awestruck landlord who the newcomer was. To all such questions
he returned the same answer—namely, that the old lady was an influential
foreigner, a Russian, a Countess, and a grande dame, and that she had taken the
suite which, during the previous week, had been tenanted by the Grande
Duchesse de N.
Meanwhile the cause of the sensation—the Grandmother—was being borne
aloft in her armchair. Every person whom she met she scanned with an
inquisitive eye, after first of all interrogating me about him or her at the top of
her voice. She was stout of figure, and, though she could not leave her chair, one
felt, the moment that one first looked at her, that she was also tall of stature. Her
back was as straight as a board, and never did she lean back in her seat. Also, her
large grey head, with its keen, rugged features, remained always erect as she
glanced about her in an imperious, challenging sort of way, with looks and
gestures that clearly were unstudied. Though she had reached her seventy-sixth
year, her face was still fresh, and her teeth had not decayed. Lastly, she was
dressed in a black silk gown and white mobcap.
“She interests me tremendously,” whispered Mr. Astley as, still smoking, he
walked by my side. Meanwhile I was reflecting that probably the old lady knew
all about the telegrams, and even about De Griers, though little or nothing about
Mlle. Blanche. I said as much to Mr. Astley.
But what a frail creature is man! No sooner was my first surprise abated than I
found myself rejoicing in the shock which we were about to administer to the
General. So much did the thought inspire me that I marched ahead in the gayest
of fashions.
Our party was lodging on the third floor. Without knocking at the door, or in
any way announcing our presence, I threw open the portals, and the
Grandmother was borne through them in triumph. As though of set purpose, the
whole party chanced at that moment to be assembled in the General’s study. The
time was eleven o’clock, and it seemed that an outing of some sort (at which a
portion of the party were to drive in carriages, and others to ride on horseback,
accompanied by one or two extraneous acquaintances) was being planned. The
General was present, and also Polina, the children, the latter’s nurses, De Griers,
Mlle. Blanche (attired in a riding-habit), her mother, the young Prince, and a
learned German whom I beheld for the first time. Into the midst of this assembly
the lacqueys conveyed Madame in her chair, and set her down within three paces
of the General!
Good heavens! Never shall I forget the spectacle which ensued! Just before
our entry, the General had been holding forth to the company, with De Griers in
support of him. I may also mention that, for the last two or three days, Mlle.
Blanche and De Griers had been making a great deal of the young Prince, under
the very nose of the poor General. In short, the company, though decorous and
conventional, was in a gay, familiar mood. But no sooner did the Grandmother
appear than the General stopped dead in the middle of a word, and, with jaw
dropping, stared hard at the old lady—his eyes almost starting out of his head,
and his expression as spellbound as though he had just seen a basilisk. In return,
the Grandmother stared at him silently and without moving—though with a look
of mingled challenge, triumph, and ridicule in her eyes. For ten seconds did the
pair remain thus eyeing one another, amid the profound silence of the company;
and even De Griers sat petrified—an extraordinary look of uneasiness dawning
on his face. As for Mlle. Blanche, she too stared wildly at the Grandmother, with
eyebrows raised and her lips parted—while the Prince and the German savant
contemplated the tableau in profound amazement. Only Polina looked anything
but perplexed or surprised. Presently, however, she too turned as white as a
sheet, and then reddened to her temples. Truly the Grandmother’s arrival seemed
to be a catastrophe for everybody! For my own part, I stood looking from the
Grandmother to the company, and back again, while Mr. Astley, as usual,
remained in the background, and gazed calmly and decorously at the scene.
“Well, here I am—and instead of a telegram, too!” the Grandmother at last
ejaculated, to dissipate the silence. “What? You were not expecting me?”
“Antonida Vassilievna! O my dearest mother! But how on earth did you, did
you—?” The mutterings of the unhappy General died away.
I verily believe that if the Grandmother had held her tongue a few seconds
longer she would have had a stroke.
“How on earth did I what?” she exclaimed. “Why, I just got into the train and
came here. What else is the railway meant for? But you thought that I had turned
up my toes and left my property to the lot of you. Oh, I know all about the
telegrams which you have been dispatching. They must have cost you a pretty
sum, I should think, for telegrams are not sent from abroad for nothing. Well, I
picked up my heels, and came here. Who is this Frenchman? Monsieur de
Griers, I suppose?”
“Oui, madame,” assented De Griers. “Et, croyez, je suis si enchanté! Votre
santé—c’est un miracle vous voir ici. Une surprise charmante!”
“Just so. ‘Charmante!’ I happen to know you as a mountebank, and therefore
trust you no more than this.” She indicated her little finger. “And who is that?”
she went on, turning towards Mlle. Blanche. Evidently the Frenchwoman looked
so becoming in her riding-habit, with her whip in her hand, that she had made an
impression upon the old lady. “Who is that woman there?”
“Mlle. de Cominges,” I said. “And this is her mother, Madame de Cominges.
They also are staying in the hotel.”
“Is the daughter married?” asked the old lady, without the least semblance of
ceremony.
“No,” I replied as respectfully as possible, but under my breath.
“Is she good company?”
I failed to understand the question.
“I mean, is she or is she not a bore? Can she speak Russian? When this De
Griers was in Moscow he soon learnt to make himself understood.”
I explained to the old lady that Mlle. Blanche had never visited Russia.
“Bonjour, then,” said Madame, with sudden brusquerie.
“Bonjour, madame,” replied Mlle. Blanche with an elegant, ceremonious bow
as, under cover of an unwonted modesty, she endeavoured to express, both in
face and figure, her extreme surprise at such strange behaviour on the part of the
Grandmother.
“How the woman sticks out her eyes at me! How she mows and minces!” was
the Grandmother’s comment. Then she turned suddenly to the General, and
continued: “I have taken up my abode here, so am going to be your next-door
neighbour. Are you glad to hear that, or are you not?”
“My dear mother, believe me when I say that I am sincerely delighted,”
returned the General, who had now, to a certain extent, recovered his senses; and
inasmuch as, when occasion arose, he could speak with fluency, gravity, and a
certain effect, he set himself to be expansive in his remarks, and went on: “We
have been so dismayed and upset by the news of your indisposition! We had
received such hopeless telegrams about you! Then suddenly—”
“Fibs, fibs!” interrupted the Grandmother.
“How on earth, too, did you come to decide upon the journey?” continued the
General, with raised voice as he hurried to overlook the old lady’s last remark.
“Surely, at your age, and in your present state of health, the thing is so
unexpected that our surprise is at least intelligible. However, I am glad to see
you (as indeed, are we all”—he said this with a dignified, yet conciliatory,
smile), “and will use my best endeavours to render your stay here as pleasant as
possible.”
“Enough! All this is empty chatter. You are talking the usual nonsense. I shall
know quite well how to spend my time. How did I come to undertake the
journey, you ask? Well, is there anything so very surprising about it? It was done
quite simply. What is every one going into ecstasies about?—How do you do,
Prascovia? What are you doing here?”
“And how are you, Grandmother?” replied Polina, as she approached the old
lady. “Were you long on the journey?”
“The most sensible question that I have yet been asked! Well, you shall hear
for yourself how it all happened. I lay and lay, and was doctored and doctored,
until at last I drove the physicians from me, and called in an apothecary from
Nicolai who had cured an old woman of a malady similar to my own—cured her
merely with a little hayseed. Well, he did me a great deal of good, for on the
third day I broke into a sweat, and was able to leave my bed. Then my German
doctors held another consultation, put on their spectacles, and told me that if I
would go abroad, and take a course of the waters, the indisposition would finally
pass away. ‘Why should it not?’ I thought to myself. So I had got things ready,
and on the following day, a Friday, set out for here. I occupied a special
compartment in the train, and where ever I had to change I found at the station
bearers who were ready to carry me for a few coppers. You have nice quarters
here,” she went on as she glanced around the room. “But where on earth did you
get the money for them, my good sir? I thought that everything of yours had
been mortgaged? This Frenchman alone must be your creditor for a good deal.
Oh, I know all about it, all about it.”
“I-I am surprised at you, my dearest mother,” said the General in some
confusion. “I-I am greatly surprised. But I do not need any extraneous control of
my finances. Moreover, my expenses do not exceed my income, and we—”
“They do not exceed it? Fie! Why, you are robbing your children of their last
kopeck—you, their guardian!”
“After this,” said the General, completely taken aback, “—after what you have
just said, I do not know whether—”
“You do not know what? By heavens, are you never going to drop that
roulette of yours? Are you going to whistle all your property away?”
This made such an impression upon the General that he almost choked with
fury.
 “Roulette, indeed? I play roulette? Really, in view of my position—Recollect
what you are saying, my dearest mother. You must still be unwell.”
“Rubbish, rubbish!” she retorted. “The truth is that you cannot be got away
from that roulette. You are simply telling lies. This very day I mean to go and see
for myself what roulette is like. Prascovia, tell me what there is to be seen here;
and do you, Alexis Ivanovitch, show me everything; and do you, Potapitch,
make me a list of excursions. What is there to be seen?” again she inquired of
Polina.
“There is a ruined castle, and the Shlangenberg.”
“The Shlangenberg? What is it? A forest?”
“No, a mountain on the summit of which there is a place fenced off. From it
you can get a most beautiful view.”
“Could a chair be carried up that mountain of yours?”
“Doubtless we could find bearers for the purpose,” I interposed.
At this moment Theodosia, the nursemaid, approached the old lady with the
General’s children.
“No, I don’t want to see them,” said the Grandmother. “I hate kissing children,
for their noses are always wet. How are you getting on, Theodosia?”
“I am very well, thank you, Madame,” replied the nursemaid. “And how is
your ladyship? We have been feeling so anxious about you!”
“Yes, I know, you simple soul—But who are those other guests?” the old lady
continued, turning again to Polina. “For instance, who is that old rascal in the
spectacles?”
“Prince Nilski, Grandmamma,” whispered Polina.
“Oh, a Russian? Why, I had no idea that he could understand me! Surely he
did not hear what I said? As for Mr. Astley, I have seen him already, and I see
that he is here again. How do you do?” she added to the gentleman in question.
Mr. Astley bowed in silence.
“Have you nothing to say to me?” the old lady went on. “Say something, for
goodness’ sake! Translate to him, Polina.”
Polina did so.
“I have only to say,” replied Mr. Astley gravely, but also with alacrity, “that I
am indeed glad to see you in such good health.” This was interpreted to the
Grandmother, and she seemed much gratified.
“How well English people know how to answer one!” she remarked. “That is
why I like them so much better than French. Come here,” she added to Mr.
Astley. “I will try not to bore you too much. Polina, translate to him that I am
staying in rooms on a lower floor. Yes, on a lower floor,” she repeated to Astley,
pointing downwards with her finger.
Astley looked pleased at receiving the invitation.
Next, the old lady scanned Polina, from head to foot with minute attention.
“I could almost have liked you, Prascovia,” suddenly she remarked, “for you
are a nice girl—the best of the lot. You have some character about you. I too
have character. Turn round. Surely that is not false hair that you are wearing?”
“No, Grandmamma. It is my own.”
“Well, well. I do not like the stupid fashions of today. You are very good
looking. I should have fallen in love with you if I had been a man. Why do you
not get married? It is time now that I was going. I want to walk, yet I always
have to ride. Are you still in a bad temper?” she added to the General.
“No, indeed,” rejoined the now mollified General.
“I quite understand that at your time of life—”
“Cette vieille est tombée en enfance,” De Griers whispered to me.
“But I want to look round a little,” the old lady added to the General. Will you
lend me Alexis Ivanovitch for the purpose?
“As much as you like. But I myself—yes, and Polina and Monsieur de Griers
too—we all of us hope to have the pleasure of escorting you.”
“Mais, madame, cela sera un plaisir,” De Griers commented with a bewitching
smile.
“‘Plaisir’ indeed! Why, I look upon you as a perfect fool, monsieur.” Then she
remarked to the General: “I am not going to let you have any of my money. I
must be off to my rooms now, to see what they are like. Afterwards we will look
round a little. Lift me up.”
Again the Grandmother was borne aloft and carried down the staircase amid a
perfect bevy of followers—the General walking as though he had been hit over
the head with a cudgel, and De Griers seeming to be plunged in thought.
Endeavouring to be left behind, Mlle. Blanche next thought better of it, and
followed the rest, with the Prince in her wake. Only the German savant and
Madame de Cominges did not leave the General’s apartments.
 X

At spas—and, probably, all over Europe—hotel landlords and managers are

guided in their allotment of rooms to visitors, not so much by the wishes and
requirements of those visitors, as by their personal estimate of the same. It may
also be said that these landlords and managers seldom make a mistake. To the
Grandmother, however, our landlord, for some reason or another, allotted such a
sumptuous suite that he fairly overreached himself; for he assigned her a suite
consisting of four magnificently appointed rooms, with bathroom, servants’
quarters, a separate room for her maid, and so on. In fact, during the previous
week the suite had been occupied by no less a personage than a Grand Duchess:
which circumstance was duly explained to the new occupant, as an excuse for
raising the price of these apartments. The Grandmother had herself carried—or,
rather, wheeled—through each room in turn, in order that she might subject the
whole to a close and attentive scrutiny; while the landlord—an elderly, bald-
headed man—walked respectfully by her side.
What every one took the Grandmother to be I do not know, but it appeared, at
least, that she was accounted a person not only of great importance, but also, and
still more, of great wealth; and without delay they entered her in the hotel
register as “Madame la générale, Princesse de Tarassevitcheva,” although she
had never been a princess in her life. Her retinue, her reserved compartment in
the train, her pile of unnecessary trunks, portmanteaux, and strong-boxes, all
helped to increase her prestige; while her wheeled chair, her sharp tone and
voice, her eccentric questions (put with an air of the most overbearing and
unbridled imperiousness), her whole figure—upright, rugged, and commanding
as it was—completed the general awe in which she was held. As she inspected
her new abode she ordered her chair to be stopped at intervals in order that, with
finger extended towards some article of furniture, she might ply the respectfully
smiling, yet secretly apprehensive, landlord with unexpected questions. She
addressed them to him in French, although her pronunciation of the language
was so bad that sometimes I had to translate them. For the most part, the
landlord’s answers were unsatisfactory, and failed to please her; nor were the
questions themselves of a practical nature, but related, generally, to God knows
what.
For instance, on one occasion she halted before a picture which, a poor copy
of a well-known original, had a mythological subject.
“Of whom is this a portrait?” she inquired.
The landlord explained that it was probably that of a countess.
“But how know you that?” the old lady retorted.
“You live here, yet you cannot say for certain! And why is the picture there at
all? And why do its eyes look so crooked?”
To all these questions the landlord could return no satisfactory reply, despite
his floundering endeavours.
“The blockhead!” exclaimed the Grandmother in Russian.
Then she proceeded on her way—only to repeat the same story in front of a
Saxon statuette which she had sighted from afar, and had commanded, for some
reason or another, to be brought to her. Finally, she inquired of the landlord what
was the value of the carpet in her bedroom, as well as where the said carpet had
been manufactured; but, the landlord could do no more than promise to make
inquiries.
“What donkeys these people are!” she commented. Next, she turned her
attention to the bed.
“What a huge counterpane!” she exclaimed. “Turn it back, please.” The
lacqueys did so.
“Further yet, further yet,” the old lady cried. “Turn it right back. Also, take off
those pillows and bolsters, and lift up the feather bed.”
The bed was opened for her inspection.
“Mercifully it contains no bugs,” she remarked.
“Pull off the whole thing, and then put on my own pillows and sheets. The
place is too luxurious for an old woman like myself. It is too large for any one
person. Alexis Ivanovitch, come and see me whenever you are not teaching your
pupils.”
“After tomorrow I shall no longer be in the General’s service,” I replied, “but
merely living in the hotel on my own account.”
“Why so?”
“Because, the other day, there arrived from Berlin a German and his wife—
persons of some importance; and, it chanced that, when taking a walk, I spoke to
them in German without having properly compassed the Berlin accent.”
 “Indeed?”
“Yes: and this action on my part the Baron held to be an insult, and
complained about it to the General, who yesterday dismissed me from his
employ.”
“But I suppose you must have threatened that precious Baron, or something of
the kind? However, even if you did so, it was a matter of no moment.”
“No, I did not. The Baron was the aggressor by raising his stick at me.”
Upon that the Grandmother turned sharply to the General.
“What? You permitted yourself to treat your tutor thus, you nincompoop, and
to dismiss him from his post? You are a blockhead—an utter blockhead! I can
see that clearly.”
“Do not alarm yourself, my dear mother,” the General replied with a lofty air
—an air in which there was also a tinge of familiarity. “I am quite capable of
managing my own affairs. Moreover, Alexis Ivanovitch has not given you a true
account of the matter.”
“What did you do next?” The old lady inquired of me.
“I wanted to challenge the Baron to a duel,” I replied as modestly as possible;
“but the General protested against my doing so.”
“And why did you so protest?” she inquired of the General. Then she turned to
the landlord, and questioned him as to whether he would not have fought a duel,
if challenged. “For,” she added, “I can see no difference between you and the
Baron; nor can I bear that German visage of yours.” Upon this the landlord
bowed and departed, though he could not have understood the Grandmother’s
compliment.
“Pardon me, Madame,” the General continued with a sneer, “but are duels
really feasible?”
“Why not? All men are crowing cocks, and that is why they quarrel. You,
though, I perceive, are a blockhead—a man who does not even know how to
carry his breeding. Lift me up. Potapitch, see to it that you always have two
bearers ready. Go and arrange for their hire. But we shall not require more than
two, for I shall need only to be carried upstairs. On the level or in the street I can
be wheeled along. Go and tell them that, and pay them in advance, so that they
may show me some respect. You too, Potapitch, are always to come with me,
and you, Alexis Ivanovitch, are to point out to me this Baron as we go along, in
order that I may get a squint at the precious ‘Von.’ And where is that roulette
played?”
 I explained to her that the game was carried on in the salons of the Casino;
whereupon there ensued a string of questions as to whether there were many
such salons, whether many people played in them, whether those people played a
whole day at a time, and whether the game was managed according to fixed
rules. At length, I thought it best to say that the most advisable course would be
for her to go and see it for herself, since a mere description of it would be a
difficult matter.
“Then take me straight there,” she said, “and do you walk on in front of me,
Alexis Ivanovitch.”
“What, mother? Before you have so much as rested from your journey?” the
General inquired with some solicitude. Also, for some reason which I could not
divine, he seemed to be growing nervous; and, indeed, the whole party was
evincing signs of confusion, and exchanging glances with one another. Probably
they were thinking that it would be a ticklish—even an embarrassing—business
to accompany the Grandmother to the Casino, where, very likely, she would
perpetrate further eccentricities, and in public too! Yet on their own initiative
they had offered to escort her!
“Why should I rest?” she retorted. “I am not tired, for I have been sitting still
these past five days. Let us see what your medicinal springs and waters are like,
and where they are situated. What, too, about that, that—what did you call it,
Prascovia?—oh, about that mountain top?”
“Yes, we are going to see it, Grandmamma.”
“Very well. Is there anything else for me to see here?”
“Yes! Quite a number of things,” Polina forced herself to say.
“Martha, you must come with me as well,” went on the old lady to her maid.
“No, no, mother!” ejaculated the General. “Really she cannot come. They
would not admit even Potapitch to the Casino.”
“Rubbish! Because she is my servant, is that a reason for turning her out?
Why, she is only a human being like the rest of us; and as she has been travelling
for a week she might like to look about her. With whom else could she go out but
myself? She would never dare to show her nose in the street alone.”
“But, mother—”
“Are you ashamed to be seen with me? Stop at home, then, and you will be
asked no questions. A pretty General you are, to be sure! I am a general’s widow
myself. But, after all, why should I drag the whole party with me? I will go and
see the sights with only Alexis Ivanovitch as my escort.”
 De Griers strongly insisted that every one ought to accompany her. Indeed, he
launched out into a perfect shower of charming phrases concerning the pleasure
of acting as her cicerone, and so forth. Every one was touched with his words.
“Mais elle est tombée en enfance,” he added aside to the General. “Seule, elle
fera des bêtises.” More than this I could not overhear, but he seemed to have got
some plan in his mind, or even to be feeling a slight return of his hopes.
The distance to the Casino was about half a verst, and our route led us through
the Chestnut Avenue until we reached the square directly fronting the building.
The General, I could see, was a trifle reassured by the fact that, though our
progress was distinctly eccentric in its nature, it was, at least, correct and orderly.
As a matter of fact, the spectacle of a person who is unable to walk is not
anything to excite surprise at a spa. Yet it was clear that the General had a great
fear of the Casino itself: for why should a person who had lost the use of her
limbs—more especially an old woman—be going to rooms which were set apart
only for roulette? On either side of the wheeled chair walked Polina and Mlle.
Blanche—the latter smiling, modestly jesting, and, in short, making herself so
agreeable to the Grandmother that in the end the old lady relented towards her.
On the other side of the chair Polina had to answer an endless flow of petty
questions—such as “Who was it passed just now?” “Who is that coming along?”
“Is the town a large one?” “Are the public gardens extensive?” “What sort of
trees are those?” “What is the name of those hills?” “Do I see eagles flying
yonder?” “What is that absurd-looking building?” and so forth. Meanwhile
Astley whispered to me, as he walked by my side, that he looked for much to
happen that morning. Behind the old lady’s chair marched Potapitch and Martha
—Potapitch in his frockcoat and white waistcoat, with a cloak over all, and the
forty-year-old and rosy, but slightly grey-headed, Martha in a mobcap, cotton
dress, and squeaking shoes. Frequently the old lady would twist herself round to
converse with these servants. As for De Griers, he spoke as though he had made
up his mind to do something (though it is also possible that he spoke in this
manner merely in order to hearten the General, with whom he appeared to have
held a conference). But, alas, the Grandmother had uttered the fatal words, “I am
not going to give you any of my money;” and though De Griers might regard
these words lightly, the General knew his mother better. Also, I noticed that De
Griers and Mlle. Blanche were still exchanging looks; while of the Prince and
the German savant I lost sight at the end of the Avenue, where they had turned
back and left us.
Into the Casino we marched in triumph. At once, both in the person of the
commissionaire and in the persons of the footmen, there sprang to life the same
reverence as had arisen in the lacqueys of the hotel. Yet it was not without some
curiosity that they eyed us.
Without loss of time, the Grandmother gave orders that she should be wheeled
through every room in the establishment; of which apartments she praised a few,
while to others she remained indifferent. Concerning everything, however, she
asked questions. Finally we reached the gaming-salons, where a lacquey who
was, acting as guard over the doors, flung them open as though he were a man
possessed.
The Grandmother’s entry into the roulette-salon produced a profound
impression upon the public. Around the tables, and at the further end of the room
where the trente-et-quarante table was set out, there may have been gathered
from 150 to 200 gamblers, ranged in several rows. Those who had succeeded in
pushing their way to the tables were standing with their feet firmly planted, in
order to avoid having to give up their places until they should have finished their
game (since merely to stand looking on—thus occupying a gambler’s place for
nothing—was not permitted). True, chairs were provided around the tables, but
few players made use of them—more especially if there was a large attendance
of the general public; since to stand allowed of a closer approach; and, therefore,
of greater facilities for calculation and staking. Behind the foremost row were
herded a second and a third row of people awaiting their turn; but sometimes
their impatience led these people to stretch a hand through the first row, in order
to deposit their stakes. Even third-row individuals would dart forward to stake;
whence seldom did more than five or ten minutes pass without a scene over
disputed money arising at one or another end of the table. On the other hand, the
police of the Casino were an able body of men; and though to escape the crush
was an impossibility, however much one might wish it, the eight croupiers
apportioned to each table kept an eye upon the stakes, performed the necessary
reckoning, and decided disputes as they arose.
In the last resort they always called in the Casino police, and the disputes
would immediately come to an end. Policemen were stationed about the Casino
in ordinary costume, and mingled with the spectators so as to make it impossible
to recognise them. In particular they kept a lookout for pickpockets and
swindlers, who simply swanned in the roulette salons, and reaped a rich harvest.
Indeed, in every direction money was being filched from pockets or purses—
though, of course, if the attempt miscarried, a great uproar ensued. One had only
to approach a roulette table, begin to play, and then openly grab some one else’s
winnings, for a din to be raised, and the thief to start vociferating that the stake
was his; and, if the coup had been carried out with sufficient skill, and the
witnesses wavered at all in their testimony, the thief would as likely as not
succeed in getting away with the money, provided that the sum was not a large
one—not large enough to have attracted the attention of the croupiers or some
fellow-player. Moreover, if it were a stake of insignificant size, its true owner
would sometimes decline to continue the dispute, rather than become involved in
a scandal. Conversely, if the thief was detected, he was ignominiously expelled
the building.
Upon all this the Grandmother gazed with open-eyed curiosity; and, on some
thieves happening to be turned out of the place, she was delighted. Trente-et-
quarante interested her but little; she preferred roulette, with its ever-revolving
wheel. At length she expressed a wish to view the game closer; whereupon in
some mysterious manner, the lacqueys and other officious agents (especially one
or two ruined Poles of the kind who keep offering their services to successful
gamblers and foreigners in general) at once found and cleared a space for the old
lady among the crush, at the very centre of one of the tables, and next to the
chief croupier; after which they wheeled her chair thither. Upon this a number of
visitors who were not playing, but only looking on (particularly some
Englishmen with their families), pressed closer forward towards the table, in
order to watch the old lady from among the ranks of the gamblers. Many a
lorgnette I saw turned in her direction, and the croupiers’ hopes rose high that
such an eccentric player was about to provide them with something out of the
common. An old lady of seventy-five years who, though unable to walk, desired
to play was not an everyday phenomenon. I too pressed forward towards the
table, and ranged myself by the Grandmother’s side; while Martha and Potapitch
remained somewhere in the background among the crowd, and the General,
Polina, and De Griers, with Mlle. Blanche, also remained hidden among the
spectators.
At first the old lady did no more than watch the gamblers, and ply me, in a
half-whisper, with sharp-broken questions as to who was so-and-so. Especially
did her favour light upon a very young man who was plunging heavily, and had
won (so it was whispered) as much as 40,000 francs, which were lying before
him on the table in a heap of gold and bank-notes. His eyes kept flashing, and his
hands shaking; yet all the while he staked without any sort of calculation—just
what came to his hand, as he kept winning and winning, and raking and raking in
his gains. Around him lacqueys fussed—placing chairs just behind where he was
standing—and clearing the spectators from his vicinity, so that he should have
more room, and not be crowded—the whole done, of course, in expectation of a
generous largesse. From time to time other gamblers would hand him part of
their winnings—being glad to let him stake for them as much as his hand could
grasp; while beside him stood a Pole in a state of violent, but respectful,
agitation, who, also in expectation of a generous largesse, kept whispering to
him at intervals (probably telling him what to stake, and advising and directing
his play). Yet never once did the player throw him a glance as he staked and
staked, and raked in his winnings. Evidently, the player in question was dead to
all besides.
For a few minutes the Grandmother watched him.
“Go and tell him,” suddenly she exclaimed with a nudge at my elbow, “—go
and tell him to stop, and to take his money with him, and go home. Presently he
will be losing—yes, losing everything that he has now won.” She seemed almost
breathless with excitement.
“Where is Potapitch?” she continued. “Send Potapitch to speak to him. No,
you must tell him, you must tell him,”—here she nudged me again—“for I have
not the least notion where Potapitch is. Sortez, sortez,” she shouted to the young
man, until I leant over in her direction and whispered in her ear that no shouting
was allowed, nor even loud speaking, since to do so disturbed the calculations of
the players, and might lead to our being ejected.
“How provoking!” she retorted. “Then the young man is done for! I suppose
he wishes to be ruined. Yet I could not bear to see him have to return it all. What
a fool the fellow is!” and the old lady turned sharply away.
On the left, among the players at the other half of the table, a young lady was
playing, with, beside her, a dwarf. Who the dwarf may have been—whether a
relative or a person whom she took with her to act as a foil—I do not know; but I
had noticed her there on previous occasions, since, everyday, she entered the
Casino at one o’clock precisely, and departed at two—thus playing for exactly
one hour. Being well-known to the attendants, she always had a seat provided for
her; and, taking some gold and a few thousand-franc notes out of her pocket—
would begin quietly, coldly, and after much calculation, to stake, and mark down
the figures in pencil on a paper, as though striving to work out a system
according to which, at given moments, the odds might group themselves.
Always she staked large coins, and either lost or won one, two, or three thousand
francs a day, but not more; after which she would depart. The Grandmother took
a long look at her.
“That woman is not losing,” she said. “To whom does she belong? Do you
know her? Who is she?”
“She is, I believe, a Frenchwoman,” I replied.
 “Ah! A bird of passage, evidently. Besides, I can see that she has her shoes
polished. Now, explain to me the meaning of each round in the game, and the
way in which one ought to stake.”
Upon this I set myself to explain the meaning of all the combinations—of
“rouge et noir,” of “pair et impair,” of “manque et passe,” with, lastly, the
different values in the system of numbers. The Grandmother listened attentively,
took notes, put questions in various forms, and laid the whole thing to heart.
Indeed, since an example of each system of stakes kept constantly occurring, a
great deal of information could be assimilated with ease and celerity. The
Grandmother was vastly pleased.
“But what is zero?” she inquired. “Just now I heard the flaxen-haired croupier
call out ‘zero!’ And why does he keep raking in all the money that is on the
table? To think that he should grab the whole pile for himself! What does zero
mean?”
“Zero is what the bank takes for itself. If the wheel stops at that figure,
everything lying on the table becomes the absolute property of the bank. Also,
whenever the wheel has begun to turn, the bank ceases to pay out anything.”
“Then I should receive nothing if I were staking?”
“No; unless by any chance you had purposely staked on zero; in which case
you would receive thirty-five times the value of your stake.”
“Why thirty-five times, when zero so often turns up? And if so, why do not
more of these fools stake upon it?”
“Because the number of chances against its occurrence is thirty-six.”
“Rubbish! Potapitch, Potapitch! Come here, and I will give you some money.”
The old lady took out of her pocket a tightly-clasped purse, and extracted from
its depths a ten-gülden piece. “Go at once, and stake that upon zero.”
“But, Madame, zero has only this moment turned up,” I remonstrated;
“wherefore, it may not do so again for ever so long. Wait a little, and you may
then have a better chance.”
“Rubbish! Stake, please.”
“Pardon me, but zero might not turn up again until, say, tonight, even though
you had staked thousands upon it. It often happens so.”
“Rubbish, rubbish! Who fears the wolf should never enter the forest. What?
We have lost? Then stake again.”
A second ten-gülden piece did we lose, and then I put down a third. The
Grandmother could scarcely remain seated in her chair, so intent was she upon
the little ball as it leapt through the notches of the ever-revolving wheel.
However, the third ten-gülden piece followed the first two. Upon this the
Grandmother went perfectly crazy. She could no longer sit still, and actually
struck the table with her fist when the croupier cried out, “Trente-six,” instead of
the desiderated zero.
“To listen to him!” fumed the old lady. “When will that accursed zero ever
turn up? I cannot breathe until I see it. I believe that that infernal croupier is
purposely keeping it from turning up. Alexis Ivanovitch, stake TWO golden
pieces this time. The moment we cease to stake, that cursed zero will come
turning up, and we shall get nothing.”
“My good Madame—”
“Stake, stake! It is not your money.”
Accordingly I staked two ten-gülden pieces. The ball went hopping round the
wheel until it began to settle through the notches. Meanwhile the Grandmother
sat as though petrified, with my hand convulsively clutched in hers.
“Zero!” called the croupier.
“There! You see, you see!” cried the old lady, as she turned and faced me,
wreathed in smiles. “I told you so! It was the Lord God himself who suggested
to me to stake those two coins. Now, how much ought I to receive? Why do they
not pay it out to me? Potapitch! Martha! Where are they? What has become of
our party? Potapitch, Potapitch!”
“Presently, Madame,” I whispered. “Potapitch is outside, and they would
decline to admit him to these rooms. See! You are being paid out your money.
Pray take it.” The croupiers were making up a heavy packet of coins, sealed in
blue paper, and containing fifty ten gülden pieces, together with an unsealed
packet containing another twenty. I handed the whole to the old lady in a money-
shovel.
“Faites le jeu, messieurs! Faites le jeu, messieurs! Rien ne va plus,”
proclaimed the croupier as once more he invited the company to stake, and
prepared to turn the wheel.
“We shall be too late! He is going to spin again! Stake, stake!” The
Grandmother was in a perfect fever. “Do not hang back! Be quick!” She seemed
almost beside herself, and nudged me as hard as she could.
“Upon what shall I stake, Madame?”
“Upon zero, upon zero! Again upon zero! Stake as much as ever you can.
How much have we got? Seventy ten-gülden pieces? We shall not miss them, so
stake twenty pieces at a time.”
“Think a moment, Madame. Sometimes zero does not turn up for two hundred
rounds in succession. I assure you that you may lose all your capital.”
“You are wrong—utterly wrong. Stake, I tell you! What a chattering tongue
you have! I know perfectly well what I am doing.” The old lady was shaking
with excitement.
“But the rules do not allow of more than 120 gülden being staked upon zero at
a time.”
“How ‘do not allow’? Surely you are wrong? Monsieur, monsieur—” here she
nudged the croupier who was sitting on her left, and preparing to spin
—“combien zero? Douze? Douze?”
I hastened to translate.
“Oui, Madame,” was the croupier’s polite reply. “No single stake must exceed
four thousand florins. That is the regulation.”
“Then there is nothing else for it. We must risk in gülden.”
“Le jeu est fait!” the croupier called. The wheel revolved, and stopped at
thirty. We had lost!
“Again, again, again! Stake again!” shouted the old lady. Without attempting
to oppose her further, but merely shrugging my shoulders, I placed twelve more
ten-gülden pieces upon the table. The wheel whirled around and around, with the
Grandmother simply quaking as she watched its revolutions.
“Does she again think that zero is going to be the winning coup?” thought I, as
I stared at her in astonishment. Yet an absolute assurance of winning was shining
on her face; she looked perfectly convinced that zero was about to be called
again. At length the ball dropped off into one of the notches.
“Zero!” cried the croupier.
“Ah!!!” screamed the old lady as she turned to me in a whirl of triumph.
I myself was at heart a gambler. At that moment I became acutely conscious
both of that fact and of the fact that my hands and knees were shaking, and that
the blood was beating in my brain. Of course this was a rare occasion—an
occasion on which zero had turned up no less than three times within a dozen
rounds; yet in such an event there was nothing so very surprising, seeing that,
only three days ago, I myself had been a witness to zero turning up three times in
succession, so that one of the players who was recording the coups on paper was
moved to remark that for several days past zero had never turned up at all!
With the Grandmother, as with any one who has won a very large sum, the
management settled up with great attention and respect, since she was fortunate
to have to receive no less than 4200 gülden. Of these gülden the odd 200 were
paid her in gold, and the remainder in bank notes.
This time the old lady did not call for Potapitch; for that she was too
preoccupied. Though not outwardly shaken by the event (indeed, she seemed
perfectly calm), she was trembling inwardly from head to foot. At length,
completely absorbed in the game, she burst out:
“Alexis Ivanovitch, did not the croupier just say that 4000 florins were the
most that could be staked at any one time? Well, take these 4000, and stake them
upon the red.”
To oppose her was useless. Once more the wheel revolved.
“Rouge!” proclaimed the croupier.
Again 4000 florins—in all 8000!
“Give me them,” commanded the Grandmother, “and stake the other 4000
upon the red again.”
I did so.
“Rouge!” proclaimed the croupier.
“Twelve thousand!” cried the old lady. “Hand me the whole lot. Put the gold
into this purse here, and count the bank notes. Enough! Let us go home. Wheel
my chair away.”
 XI

The chair, with the old lady beaming in it, was wheeled away towards the
doors at the further end of the salon, while our party hastened to crowd around
her, and to offer her their congratulations. In fact, eccentric as was her conduct, it
was also overshadowed by her triumph; with the result that the General no
longer feared to be publicly compromised by being seen with such a strange
woman, but, smiling in a condescending, cheerfully familiar way, as though he
were soothing a child, he offered his greetings to the old lady. At the same time,
both he and the rest of the spectators were visibly impressed. Everywhere people
kept pointing to the Grandmother, and talking about her. Many people even
walked beside her chair, in order to view her the better while, at a little distance,
Astley was carrying on a conversation on the subject with two English
acquaintances of his. De Griers was simply overflowing with smiles and
compliments, and a number of fine ladies were staring at the Grandmother as
though she had been something curious.
“Quelle victoire!” exclaimed De Griers.
“Mais, Madame, c’était du feu!” added Mlle. Blanche with an elusive smile.
“Yes, I have won twelve thousand florins,” replied the old lady. “And then
there is all this gold. With it the total ought to come to nearly thirteen thousand.
How much is that in Russian money? Six thousand roubles, I think?”
However, I calculated that the sum would exceed seven thousand roubles—or,
at the present rate of exchange, even eight thousand.
“Eight thousand roubles! What a splendid thing! And to think of you
simpletons sitting there and doing nothing! Potapitch! Martha! See what I have
won!”
“How did you do it, Madame?” Martha exclaimed ecstatically. “Eight
thousand roubles!”
“And I am going to give you fifty gülden apiece. There they are.”
Potapitch and Martha rushed towards her to kiss her hand.
“And to each bearer also I will give a ten-gülden piece. Let them have it out of
the gold, Alexis Ivanovitch. But why is this footman bowing to me, and that
other man as well? Are they congratulating me? Well, let them have ten gülden
apiece.”
“Madame la princesse—Un pauvre expatrié—Malheur continuel—Les princes
russes sont si généreux!” said a man who for some time past had been hanging
around the old lady’s chair—a personage who, dressed in a shabby frockcoat and
coloured waistcoat, kept taking off his cap, and smiling pathetically.
“Give him ten gülden,” said the Grandmother. “No, give him twenty. Now,
enough of that, or I shall never get done with you all. Take a moment’s rest, and
then carry me away. Prascovia, I mean to buy a new dress for you tomorrow.
Yes, and for you too, Mlle. Blanche. Please translate, Prascovia.”
“Merci, Madame,” replied Mlle. Blanche gratefully as she twisted her face
into the mocking smile which usually she kept only for the benefit of De Griers
and the General. The latter looked confused, and seemed greatly relieved when
we reached the Avenue.
“How surprised Theodosia too will be!” went on the Grandmother (thinking
of the General’s nursemaid). “She, like yourselves, shall have the price of a new
gown. Here, Alexis Ivanovitch! Give that beggar something” (a crooked-backed
ragamuffin had approached to stare at us).
“But perhaps he is not a beggar—only a rascal,” I replied.
“Never mind, never mind. Give him a gülden.”
I approached the beggar in question, and handed him the coin. Looking at me
in great astonishment, he silently accepted the gülden, while from his person
there proceeded a strong smell of liquor.
“Have you never tried your luck, Alexis Ivanovitch?”
“No, Madame.”
“Yet just now I could see that you were burning to do so?”
“I do mean to try my luck presently.”
“Then stake everything upon zero. You have seen how it ought to be done?
How much capital do you possess?”
“Two hundred gülden, Madame.”
“Not very much. See here; I will lend you five hundred if you wish. Take this
purse of mine.” With that she added sharply to the General: “But you need not
expect to receive any.”
This seemed to upset him, but he said nothing, and De Griers contented
himself by scowling.
“Que diable!” he whispered to the General. “C’est une terrible vieille.”
“Look! Another beggar, another beggar!” exclaimed the grandmother. “Alexis
Ivanovitch, go and give him a gülden.”
As she spoke I saw approaching us a grey-headed old man with a wooden leg
—a man who was dressed in a blue frockcoat and carrying a staff. He looked
like an old soldier. As soon as I tendered him the coin he fell back a step or two,
and eyed me threateningly.
“Was ist der Teufel!” he cried, and appended thereto a round dozen of oaths.
“The man is a perfect fool!” exclaimed the Grandmother, waving her hand.
“Move on now, for I am simply famished. When we have lunched we will return
to that place.”
“What?” cried I. “You are going to play again?”
“What else do you suppose?” she retorted. “Are you going only to sit here,
and grow sour, and let me look at you?”
“Madame,” said De Griers confidentially, “les chances peuvent tourner. Une
seule mauvaise chance, et vous perdrez tout—surtout avec votre jeu. C’était
terrible!”
“Oui; vous perdrez absolument,” put in Mlle. Blanche.
“What has that got to do with you?” retorted the old lady. “It is not your
money that I am going to lose; it is my own. And where is that Mr. Astley of
yours?” she added to myself.
“He stayed behind in the Casino.”
“What a pity! He is such a nice sort of man!”
Arriving home, and meeting the landlord on the staircase, the Grandmother
called him to her side, and boasted to him of her winnings—thereafter doing the
same to Theodosia, and conferring upon her thirty gülden; after which she bid
her serve luncheon. The meal over, Theodosia and Martha broke into a joint
flood of ecstasy.
“I was watching you all the time, Madame,” quavered Martha, “and I asked
Potapitch what mistress was trying to do. And, my word! the heaps and heaps of
money that were lying upon the table! Never in my life have I seen so much
money. And there were gentlefolk around it, and other gentlefolk sitting down.
So, I asked Potapitch where all these gentry had come from; for, thought I,
maybe the Holy Mother of God will help our mistress among them. Yes, I prayed
for you, Madame, and my heart died within me, so that I kept trembling and
trembling. The Lord be with her, I thought to myself; and in answer to my prayer
He has now sent you what He has done! Even yet I tremble—I tremble to think
of it all.”
“Alexis Ivanovitch,” said the old lady, “after luncheon,—that is to say, about
four o’clock—get ready to go out with me again. But in the meanwhile, good-
bye. Do not forget to call a doctor, for I must take the waters. Now go and get
rested a little.”
I left the Grandmother’s presence in a state of bewilderment.
Vainly I endeavoured to imagine what would become of our party, or what
turn the affair would next take. I could perceive that none of the party had yet
recovered their presence of mind—least of all the General. The factor of the
Grandmother’s appearance in place of the hourly expected telegram to announce
her death (with, of course, resultant legacies) had so upset the whole scheme of
intentions and projects that it was with a decided feeling of apprehension and
growing paralysis that the conspirators viewed any future performances of the
old lady at roulette. Yet this second factor was not quite so important as the first,
since, though the Grandmother had twice declared that she did not intend to give
the General any money, that declaration was not a complete ground for the
abandonment of hope. Certainly De Griers, who, with the General, was up to the
neck in the affair, had not wholly lost courage; and I felt sure that Mlle. Blanche
also—Mlle. Blanche who was not only as deeply involved as the other two, but
also expectant of becoming Madame General and an important legatee—would
not lightly surrender the position, but would use her every resource of coquetry
upon the old lady, in order to afford a contrast to the impetuous Polina, who was
difficult to understand, and lacked the art of pleasing.
Yet now, when the Grandmother had just performed an astonishing feat at
roulette; now, when the old lady’s personality had been so clearly and typically
revealed as that of a rugged, arrogant woman who was “tombée en enfance”;
now, when everything appeared to be lost,—why, now the Grandmother was as
merry as a child which plays with thistle-down. “Good Lord!” I thought with,
may God forgive me, a most malicious smile, “every ten-gülden piece which the
Grandmother staked must have raised a blister on the General’s heart, and
maddened De Griers, and driven Mlle. de Cominges almost to frenzy with the
sight of this spoon dangling before her lips.” Another factor is the circumstance
that even when, overjoyed at winning, the Grandmother was distributing alms
right and left, and taking every one to be a beggar, she again snapped out to the
General that he was not going to be allowed any of her money—which meant
that the old lady had quite made up her mind on the point, and was sure of it.
Yes, danger loomed ahead.
All these thoughts passed through my mind during the few moments that,
having left the old lady’s rooms, I was ascending to my own room on the top
storey. What most struck me was the fact that, though I had divined the chief, the
stoutest, threads which united the various actors in the drama, I had, until now,
been ignorant of the methods and secrets of the game. For Polina had never been
completely open with me. Although, on occasions, it had happened that
involuntarily, as it were, she had revealed to me something of her heart, I had
noticed that in most cases—in fact, nearly always—she had either laughed away
these revelations, or grown confused, or purposely imparted to them a false
guise. Yes, she must have concealed a great deal from me. But, I had a
presentiment that now the end of this strained and mysterious situation was
approaching. Another stroke, and all would be finished and exposed. Of my own
fortunes, interested though I was in the affair, I took no account. I was in the
strange position of possessing but two hundred gülden, of being at a loose end,
of lacking both a post, the means of subsistence, a shred of hope, and any plans
for the future, yet of caring nothing for these things. Had not my mind been so
full of Polina, I should have given myself up to the comical piquancy of the
impending denouement, and laughed my fill at it. But the thought of Polina was
torture to me. That her fate was settled I already had an inkling; yet that was not
the thought which was giving me so much uneasiness. What I really wished for
was to penetrate her secrets. I wanted her to come to me and say, “I love you,”
and, if she would not so come, or if to hope that she would ever do so was an
unthinkable absurdity—why, then there was nothing else for me to want. Even
now I do not know what I am wanting. I feel like a man who has lost his way. I
yearn but to be in her presence, and within the circle of her light and splendour
—to be there now, and forever, and for the whole of my life. More I do not
know. How can I ever bring myself to leave her?
On reaching the third storey of the hotel I experienced a shock. I was just
passing the General’s suite when something caused me to look round. Out of a
door about twenty paces away there was coming Polina! She hesitated for a
moment on seeing me, and then beckoned me to her.
“Polina Alexandrovna!”
“Hush! Not so loud.”
“Something startled me just now,” I whispered, “and I looked round, and saw
you. Some electrical influence seems to emanate from your form.”
“Take this letter,” she went on with a frown (probably she had not even heard
my words, she was so preoccupied), “and hand it personally to Mr. Astley. Go as
quickly as ever you can, please. No answer will be required. He himself—” She
did not finish her sentence.
“To Mr. Astley?” I asked, in some astonishment.
But she had vanished again.
Aha! So the two were carrying on a correspondence! However, I set off to
search for Astley—first at his hotel, and then at the Casino, where I went the
round of the salons in vain. At length, vexed, and almost in despair, I was on my
way home when I ran across him among a troop of English ladies and gentlemen
who had been out for a ride. Beckoning to him to stop, I handed him the letter.
We had barely time even to look at one another, but I suspected that it was of set
purpose that he restarted his horse so quickly.
Was jealousy, then, gnawing at me? At all events, I felt exceedingly
depressed, despite the fact that I had no desire to ascertain what the
correspondence was about. To think that he should be her confidant! “My friend,
mine own familiar friend!” passed through my mind. Yet was there any love in
the matter? “Of course not,” reason whispered to me. But reason goes for little
on such occasions. I felt that the matter must be cleared up, for it was becoming
unpleasantly complex.
I had scarcely set foot in the hotel when the commissionaire and the landlord
(the latter issuing from his room for the purpose) alike informed me that I was
being searched for high and low—that three separate messages to ascertain my
whereabouts had come down from the General. When I entered his study I was
feeling anything but kindly disposed. I found there the General himself, De
Griers, and Mlle. Blanche, but not Mlle.’s mother, who was a person whom her
reputed daughter used only for show purposes, since in all matters of business
the daughter fended for herself, and it is unlikely that the mother knew anything
about them.
Some very heated discussion was in progress, and meanwhile the door of the
study was open—an unprecedented circumstance. As I approached the portals I
could hear loud voices raised, for mingled with the pert, venomous accents of De
Griers were Mlle. Blanche’s excited, impudently abusive tongue and the
General’s plaintive wail as, apparently, he sought to justify himself in something.
But on my appearance every one stopped speaking, and tried to put a better face
upon matters. De Griers smoothed his hair, and twisted his angry face into a
smile—into the mean, studiedly polite French smile which I so detested; while
the downcast, perplexed General assumed an air of dignity—though only in a
mechanical way. On the other hand, Mlle. Blanche did not trouble to conceal the
wrath that was sparkling in her countenance, but bent her gaze upon me with an
air of impatient expectancy. I may remark that hitherto she had treated me with
absolute superciliousness, and, so far from answering my salutations, had always
ignored them.
“Alexis Ivanovitch,” began the General in a tone of affectionate upbraiding,
“may I say to you that I find it strange, exceedingly strange, that—In short, your
conduct towards myself and my family— In a word, your—er—extremely—”
“Eh! Ce n’est pas ça,” interrupted De Griers in a tone of impatience and
contempt (evidently he was the ruling spirit of the conclave). “Mon cher
monsieur, notre général se trompe. What he means to say is that he warns you—
he begs of you most earnestly—not to ruin him. I use the expression because—”
“Why? Why?” I interjected.
“Because you have taken upon yourself to act as guide to this, to this—how
shall I express it?—to this old lady, à cette pauvre terrible vieille. But she will
only gamble away all that she has—gamble it away like thistledown. You
yourself have seen her play. Once she has acquired the taste for gambling, she
will never leave the roulette-table, but, of sheer perversity and temper, will stake
her all, and lose it. In cases such as hers a gambler can never be torn away from
the game; and then—and then—”
“And then,” asseverated the General, “you will have ruined my whole family.
I and my family are her heirs, for she has no nearer relatives than ourselves. I tell
you frankly that my affairs are in great—very great disorder; how much they are
so you yourself are partially aware. If she should lose a large sum, or, maybe, her
whole fortune, what will become of us—of my children” (here the General
exchanged a glance with De Griers) “or of me?” (here he looked at Mlle.
Blanche, who turned her head contemptuously away). “Alexis Ivanovitch, I beg
of you to save us.”
“Tell me, General, how am I to do so? On what footing do I stand here?”
“Refuse to take her about. Simply leave her alone.”
“But she would soon find some one else to take my place?”
“Ce n’est pas ça, ce n’est pas ça,” again interrupted De Griers. “Que diable!
Do not leave her alone so much as advise her, persuade her, draw her away. In
any case do not let her gamble; find her some counter-attraction.”
“And how am I to do that? If only you would undertake the task, Monsieur de
Griers!” I said this last as innocently as possible, but at once saw a rapid glance
of excited interrogation pass from Mlle. Blanche to De Griers, while in the face
of the latter also there gleamed something which he could not repress.
“Well, at the present moment she would refuse to accept my services,” said he
with a gesture. “But if, later—”
Here he gave Mlle. Blanche another glance which was full of meaning;
whereupon she advanced towards me with a bewitching smile, and seized and
pressed my hands. Devil take it, but how that devilish visage of hers could
change! At the present moment it was a visage full of supplication, and as gentle
in its expression as that of a smiling, roguish infant. Stealthily, she drew me apart
from the rest as though the more completely to separate me from them; and,
though no harm came of her doing so—for it was merely a stupid manoeuvre,
and no more—I found the situation very unpleasant.
The General hastened to lend her his support.
“Alexis Ivanovitch,” he began, “pray pardon me for having said what I did
just now—for having said more than I meant to do. I beg and beseech you, I kiss
the hem of your garment, as our Russian saying has it, for you, and only you, can
save us. I and Mlle. de Cominges, we all of us beg of you—But you understand,
do you not? Surely you understand?” and with his eyes he indicated Mlle.
Blanche. Truly he was cutting a pitiful figure!
At this moment three low, respectful knocks sounded at the door; which, on
being opened, revealed a chambermaid, with Potapitch behind her—come from
the Grandmother to request that I should attend her in her rooms. “She is in a
bad humour,” added Potapitch.
The time was half-past three.
“My mistress was unable to sleep,” explained Potapitch; “so, after tossing
about for a while, she suddenly rose, called for her chair, and sent me to look for
you. She is now in the verandah.”
“Quelle mégère!” exclaimed De Griers.
True enough, I found Madame in the hotel verandah—much put about at my
delay, for she had been unable to contain herself until four o’clock.
“Lift me up,” she cried to the bearers, and once more we set out for the
roulette-salons.
 XII

The Grandmother was in an impatient, irritable frame of mind. Without doubt

the roulette had turned her head, for she appeared to be indifferent to everything
else, and, in general, seemed much distraught. For instance, she asked me no
questions about objects en route, except that, when a sumptuous barouche passed
us and raised a cloud of dust, she lifted her hand for a moment, and inquired,
“What was that?” Yet even then she did not appear to hear my reply, although at
times her abstraction was interrupted by sallies and fits of sharp, impatient
fidgeting. Again, when I pointed out to her the Baron and Baroness Burmergelm
walking to the Casino, she merely looked at them in an absent-minded sort of
way, and said with complete indifference, “Ah!” Then, turning sharply to
Potapitch and Martha, who were walking behind us, she rapped out:
“Why have you attached yourselves to the party? We are not going to take you
with us every time. Go home at once.” Then, when the servants had pulled hasty
bows and departed, she added to me: “You are all the escort I need.”
At the Casino the Grandmother seemed to be expected, for no time was lost in
procuring her former place beside the croupier. It is my opinion that though
croupiers seem such ordinary, humdrum officials—men who care nothing
whether the bank wins or loses—they are, in reality, anything but indifferent to
the bank’s losing, and are given instructions to attract players, and to keep a
watch over the bank’s interests; as also, that for such services, these officials are
awarded prizes and premiums. At all events, the croupiers of Roulettenberg
seemed to look upon the Grandmother as their lawful prey—whereafter there
befell what our party had foretold.
It happened thus:
As soon as ever we arrived the Grandmother ordered me to stake twelve ten-
gülden pieces in succession upon zero. Once, twice, and thrice I did so, yet zero
never turned up.
“Stake again,” said the old lady with an impatient nudge of my elbow, and I
obeyed.
“How many times have we lost?” she inquired—actually grinding her teeth in
her excitement.
“We have lost 144 ten-gülden pieces,” I replied. “I tell you, Madame, that zero
may not turn up until nightfall.”
“Never mind,” she interrupted. “Keep on staking upon zero, and also stake a
thousand gülden upon rouge. Here is a banknote with which to do so.”
The red turned up, but zero missed again, and we only got our thousand
gülden back.
“But you see, you see,” whispered the old lady. “We have now recovered
almost all that we staked. Try zero again. Let us do so another ten times, and
then leave off.”
By the fifth round, however, the Grandmother was weary of the scheme.
“To the devil with that zero!” she exclaimed. “Stake four thousand gülden
upon the red.”
“But, Madame, that will be so much to venture!” I remonstrated. “Suppose the
red should not turn up?” The Grandmother almost struck me in her excitement.
Her agitation was rapidly making her quarrelsome. Consequently, there was
nothing for it but to stake the whole four thousand gülden as she had directed.
The wheel revolved while the Grandmother sat as bolt upright, and with as
proud and quiet a mien, as though she had not the least doubt of winning.
“Zero!” cried the croupier.
At first the old lady failed to understand the situation; but, as soon as she saw
the croupier raking in her four thousand gülden, together with everything else
that happened to be lying on the table, and recognised that the zero which had
been so long turning up, and on which we had lost nearly two hundred ten-
gülden pieces, had at length, as though of set purpose, made a sudden
reappearance—why, the poor old lady fell to cursing it, and to throwing herself
about, and wailing and gesticulating at the company at large. Indeed, some
people in our vicinity actually burst out laughing.
“To think that that accursed zero should have turned up now!” she sobbed.
“The accursed, accursed thing! And, it is all your fault,” she added, rounding
upon me in a frenzy. “It was you who persuaded me to cease staking upon it.”
“But, Madame, I only explained the game to you. How am I to answer for
every mischance which may occur in it?”
“You and your mischances!” she whispered threateningly. “Go! Away at
once!”
“Farewell, then, Madame.” And I turned to depart.
 “No—stay,” she put in hastily. “Where are you going to? Why should you
leave me? You fool! No, no... stay here. It is I who was the fool. Tell me what I
ought to do.”
“I cannot take it upon myself to advise you, for you will only blame me if I do
so. Play at your own discretion. Say exactly what you wish staked, and I will
stake it.”
“Very well. Stake another four thousand gülden upon the red. Take this
banknote to do it with. I have still got twenty thousand roubles in actual cash.”
“But,” I whispered, “such a quantity of money—”
“Never mind. I cannot rest until I have won back my losses. Stake!”
I staked, and we lost.
“Stake again, stake again—eight thousand at a stroke!”
“I cannot, Madame. The largest stake allowed is four thousand gülden.”
“Well, then; stake four thousand.”
This time we won, and the Grandmother recovered herself a little.
“You see, you see!” she exclaimed as she nudged me. “Stake another four
thousand.”
I did so, and lost. Again, and yet again, we lost. “Madame, your twelve
thousand gülden are now gone,” at length I reported.
“I see they are,” she replied with, as it were, the calmness of despair. “I see
they are,” she muttered again as she gazed straight in front of her, like a person
lost in thought. “Ah well, I do not mean to rest until I have staked another four
thousand.”
“But you have no money with which to do it, Madame. In this satchel I can
see only a few five percent bonds and some transfers—no actual cash.”
“And in the purse?”
“A mere trifle.”
“But there is a money-changer’s office here, is there not? They told me I
should be able to get any sort of paper security changed!”
“Quite so; to any amount you please. But you will lose on the transaction what
would frighten even a Jew.”
“Rubbish! I am determined to retrieve my losses. Take me away, and call
those fools of bearers.”
I wheeled the chair out of the throng, and, the bearers making their
appearance, we left the Casino.
 “Hurry, hurry!” commanded the Grandmother. “Show me the nearest way to
the money-changer’s. Is it far?”
“A couple of steps, Madame.”
At the turning from the square into the Avenue we came face to face with the
whole of our party—the General, De Griers, Mlle. Blanche, and her mother.
Only Polina and Mr. Astley were absent.
“Well, well, well!” exclaimed the Grandmother. “But we have no time to stop.
What do you want? I can’t talk to you here.”
I dropped behind a little, and immediately was pounced upon by De Griers.
“She has lost this morning’s winnings,” I whispered, “and also twelve
thousand gülden of her original money. At the present moment we are going to
get some bonds changed.”
De Griers stamped his foot with vexation, and hastened to communicate the
tidings to the General. Meanwhile we continued to wheel the old lady along.
“Stop her, stop her,” whispered the General in consternation.
“You had better try and stop her yourself,” I returned—also in a whisper.
“My good mother,” he said as he approached her, “—my good mother, pray
let, let—” (his voice was beginning to tremble and sink) “—let us hire a carriage,
and go for a drive. Near here there is an enchanting view to be obtained. We-we-
we were just coming to invite you to go and see it.”
“Begone with you and your views!” said the Grandmother angrily as she
waved him away.
“And there are trees there, and we could have tea under them,” continued the
General—now in utter despair.
“Nous boirons du lait, sur l’herbe fraiche,” added De Griers with the snarl
almost of a wild beast.
“Du lait, de l’herbe fraiche”—the idyll, the ideal of the Parisian bourgeois—
his whole outlook upon “la nature et la verité”!
“Have done with you and your milk!” cried the old lady. “Go and stuff
yourself as much as you like, but my stomach simply recoils from the idea. What
are you stopping for? I have nothing to say to you.”
“Here we are, Madame,” I announced. “Here is the moneychanger’s office.”
I entered to get the securities changed, while the Grandmother remained
outside in the porch, and the rest waited at a little distance, in doubt as to their
best course of action. At length the old lady turned such an angry stare upon
them that they departed along the road towards the Casino.
The process of changing involved complicated calculations which soon
necessitated my return to the Grandmother for instructions.
“The thieves!” she exclaimed as she clapped her hands together. “Never mind,
though. Get the documents cashed—No; send the banker out to me,” she added
as an afterthought.
“Would one of the clerks do, Madame?”
“Yes, one of the clerks. The thieves!”
The clerk consented to come out when he perceived that he was being asked
for by an old lady who was too infirm to walk; after which the Grandmother
began to upbraid him at length, and with great vehemence, for his alleged
usuriousness, and to bargain with him in a mixture of Russian, French, and
German—I acting as interpreter. Meanwhile, the grave-faced official eyed us
both, and silently nodded his head. At the Grandmother, in particular, he gazed
with a curiosity which almost bordered upon rudeness. At length, too, he smiled.
“Pray recollect yourself!” cried the old lady. “And may my money choke you!
Alexis Ivanovitch, tell him that we can easily repair to someone else.”
“The clerk says that others will give you even less than he.”
Of what the ultimate calculations consisted I do not exactly remember, but at
all events they were alarming. Receiving twelve thousand florins in gold, I took
also the statement of accounts, and carried it out to the Grandmother.
“Well, well,” she said, “I am no accountant. Let us hurry away, hurry away.”
And she waved the paper aside.
“Neither upon that accursed zero, however, nor upon that equally accursed red
do I mean to stake a cent,” I muttered to myself as I entered the Casino.
This time I did all I could to persuade the old lady to stake as little as possible
—saying that a turn would come in the chances when she would be at liberty to
stake more. But she was so impatient that, though at first she agreed to do as I
suggested, nothing could stop her when once she had begun. By way of prelude
she won stakes of a hundred and two hundred gülden.
“There you are!” she said as she nudged me. “See what we have won! Surely
it would be worth our while to stake four thousand instead of a hundred, for we
might win another four thousand, and then—! Oh, it was YOUR fault before—
all your fault!”
I felt greatly put out as I watched her play, but I decided to hold my tongue,
and to give her no more advice.
 Suddenly De Griers appeared on the scene. It seemed that all this while he and
his companions had been standing beside us—though I noticed that Mlle.
Blanche had withdrawn a little from the rest, and was engaged in flirting with
the Prince. Clearly the General was greatly put out at this. Indeed, he was in a
perfect agony of vexation. But Mlle. was careful never to look his way, though
he did his best to attract her notice. Poor General! By turns his face blanched and
reddened, and he was trembling to such an extent that he could scarcely follow
the old lady’s play. At length Mlle. and the Prince took their departure, and the
General followed them.
“Madame, Madame,” sounded the honeyed accents of De Griers as he leant
over to whisper in the Grandmother’s ear. “That stake will never win. No, no, it
is impossible,” he added in Russian with a writhe. “No, no!”
“But why not?” asked the Grandmother, turning round. “Show me what I
ought to do.”
Instantly De Griers burst into a babble of French as he advised, jumped about,
declared that such and such chances ought to be waited for, and started to make
calculations of figures. All this he addressed to me in my capacity as translator—
tapping the table the while with his finger, and pointing hither and thither. At
length he seized a pencil, and began to reckon sums on paper until he had
exhausted the Grandmother’s patience.
“Away with you!” she interrupted. “You talk sheer nonsense, for, though you
keep on saying ‘Madame, Madame,’ you haven’t the least notion what ought to
be done. Away with you, I say!”
“Mais, Madame,” cooed De Griers—and straightway started afresh with his
fussy instructions.
“Stake just once, as he advises,” the Grandmother said to me, “and then we
shall see what we shall see. Of course, his stake might win.”
As a matter of fact, De Grier’s one object was to distract the old lady from
staking large sums; wherefore, he now suggested to her that she should stake
upon certain numbers, singly and in groups. Consequently, in accordance with
his instructions, I staked a ten-gülden piece upon several odd numbers in the first
twenty, and five ten-gülden pieces upon certain groups of numbers-groups of
from twelve to eighteen, and from eighteen to twenty-four. The total staked
amounted to 160 gülden.
The wheel revolved. “Zero!” cried the croupier.
We had lost it all!
 “The fool!” cried the old lady as she turned upon De Griers. “You infernal
Frenchman, to think that you should advise! Away with you! Though you fuss
and fuss, you don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Deeply offended, De Griers shrugged his shoulders, favoured the
Grandmother with a look of contempt, and departed. For some time past he had
been feeling ashamed of being seen in such company, and this had proved the
last straw.
An hour later we had lost everything in hand.
“Home!” cried the Grandmother.
Not until we had turned into the Avenue did she utter a word; but from that
point onwards, until we arrived at the hotel, she kept venting exclamations of
“What a fool I am! What a silly old fool I am, to be sure!”
Arrived at the hotel, she called for tea, and then gave orders for her luggage to
be packed.
“We are off again,” she announced.
“But whither, Madame?” inquired Martha.
“What business is that of yours? Let the cricket stick to its hearth.[2] Potapitch,
have everything packed, for we are returning to Moscow at once. I have fooled
away fifteen thousand roubles.”
[2] The Russian form of “Mind your own business.”

“Fifteen thousand roubles, good mistress? My God!” And Potapitch spat upon
his hands—probably to show that he was ready to serve her in any way he could.
“Now then, you fool! At once you begin with your weeping and wailing! Be
quiet, and pack. Also, run downstairs, and get my hotel bill.”
“The next train leaves at 9:30, Madame,” I interposed, with a view to
checking her agitation.
“And what is the time now?”
“Half-past eight.”
“How vexing! But, never mind. Alexis Ivanovitch, I have not a kopeck left; I
have but these two bank notes. Please run to the office and get them changed.
Otherwise I shall have nothing to travel with.”
Departing on her errand, I returned half an hour later to find the whole party
gathered in her rooms. It appeared that the news of her impending departure for
Moscow had thrown the conspirators into consternation even greater than her
losses had done. For, said they, even if her departure should save her fortune,
what will become of the General later? And who is to repay De Griers? Clearly
Mlle. Blanche would never consent to wait until the Grandmother was dead, but
would at once elope with the Prince or someone else. So they had all gathered
together—endeavouring to calm and dissuade the Grandmother. Only Polina was
absent. For her part the Grandmother had nothing for the party but abuse.
“Away with you, you rascals!” she was shouting. “What have my affairs to do
with you? Why, in particular, do you”—here she indicated De Griers—“come
sneaking here with your goat’s beard? And what do you”—here she turned to
Mlle. Blanche “want of me? What are you finicking for?”
“Diantre!” muttered Mlle. under her breath, but her eyes were flashing. Then
all at once she burst into a laugh and left the room—crying to the General as she
did so: “Elle vivra cent ans!”
“So you have been counting upon my death, have you?” fumed the old lady.
“Away with you! Clear them out of the room, Alexis Ivanovitch. What business
is it of theirs? It is not their money that I have been squandering, but my own.”
The General shrugged his shoulders, bowed, and withdrew, with De Griers
behind him.
“Call Prascovia,” commanded the Grandmother, and in five minutes Martha
reappeared with Polina, who had been sitting with the children in her own room
(having purposely determined not to leave it that day). Her face looked grave
and careworn.
“Prascovia,” began the Grandmother, “is what I have just heard through a side
wind true—namely, that this fool of a stepfather of yours is going to marry that
silly whirligig of a Frenchwoman—that actress, or something worse? Tell me, is
it true?”
“I do not know for certain, Grandmamma,” replied Polina; “but from Mlle.
Blanche’s account (for she does not appear to think it necessary to conceal
anything) I conclude that—”
“You need not say any more,” interrupted the Grandmother energetically. “I
understand the situation. I always thought we should get something like this
from him, for I always looked upon him as a futile, frivolous fellow who gave
himself unconscionable airs on the fact of his being a general (though he only
became one because he retired as a colonel). Yes, I know all about the sending of
the telegrams to inquire whether ‘the old woman is likely to turn up her toes
soon.’ Ah, they were looking for the legacies! Without money that wretched
woman (what is her name?—Oh, De Cominges) would never dream of accepting
the General and his false teeth—no, not even for him to be her lacquey—since
she herself, they say, possesses a pile of money, and lends it on interest, and
makes a good thing out of it. However, it is not you, Prascovia, that I am
blaming; it was not you who sent those telegrams. Nor, for that matter, do I wish
to recall old scores. True, I know that you are a vixen by nature—that you are a
wasp which will sting one if one touches it—yet, my heart is sore for you, for I
loved your mother, Katerina. Now, will you leave everything here, and come
away with me? Otherwise, I do not know what is to become of you, and it is not
right that you should continue living with these people. Nay,” she interposed, the
moment that Polina attempted to speak, “I have not yet finished. I ask of you
nothing in return. My house in Moscow is, as you know, large enough for a
palace, and you could occupy a whole floor of it if you liked, and keep away
from me for weeks together. Will you come with me or will you not?”
“First of all, let me ask of you,” replied Polina, “whether you are intending to
depart at once?”
“What? You suppose me to be jesting? I have said that I am going, and I am
going. Today I have squandered fifteen thousand roubles at that accursed roulette
of yours, and though, five years ago, I promised the people of a certain suburb of
Moscow to build them a stone church in place of a wooden one, I have been
fooling away my money here! However, I am going back now to build my
church.”
“But what about the waters, Grandmamma? Surely you came here to take the
waters?”
“You and your waters! Do not anger me, Prascovia. Surely you are trying to?
Say, then: will you, or will you not, come with me?”
“Grandmamma,” Polina replied with deep feeling, “I am very, very grateful to
you for the shelter which you have so kindly offered me. Also, to a certain extent
you have guessed my position aright, and I am beholden to you to such an extent
that it may be that I will come and live with you, and that very soon; yet there
are important reasons why—why I cannot make up my mind just yet. If you
would let me have, say, a couple of weeks to decide in—?”
“You mean that you are not coming?”
“I mean only that I cannot come just yet. At all events, I could not well leave
my little brother and sister here, since, since—if I were to leave them—they
would be abandoned altogether. But if, Grandmamma, you would take the little
ones and myself, then, of course, I could come with you, and would do all I
could to serve you” (this she said with great earnestness). “Only, without the
little ones I cannot come.”
 “Do not make a fuss” (as a matter of fact Polina never at any time either
fussed or wept). “The Great Foster-Father[3] can find for all his chicks a place.
You are not coming without the children? But see here, Prascovia. I wish you
well, and nothing but well: yet I have divined the reason why you will not come.
Yes, I know all, Prascovia. That Frenchman will never bring you good of any
sort.”
[3] Translated literally—The Great Poulterer.

Polina coloured hotly, and even I started. “For,” thought I to myself, “every
one seems to know about that affair. Or perhaps I am the only one who does not
know about it?”
“Now, now! Do not frown,” continued the Grandmother. “But I do not intend
to slur things over. You will take care that no harm befalls you, will you not? For
you are a girl of sense, and I am sorry for you—I regard you in a different light
to the rest of them. And now, please, leave me. Good-bye.”
“But let me stay with you a little longer,” said Polina.
“No,” replied the other; “you need not. Do not bother me, for you and all of
them have tired me out.”
Yet when Polina tried to kiss the Grandmother’s hand, the old lady withdrew
it, and herself kissed the girl on the cheek. As she passed me, Polina gave me a
momentary glance, and then as swiftly averted her eyes.
“And good-bye to you, also, Alexis Ivanovitch. The train starts in an hour’s
time, and I think that you must be weary of me. Take these five hundred gülden
for yourself.”
“I thank you humbly, Madame, but I am ashamed to—”
“Come, come!” cried the Grandmother so energetically, and with such an air
of menace, that I did not dare refuse the money further.
“If, when in Moscow, you have no place where you can lay your head,” she
added, “come and see me, and I will give you a recommendation. Now,
Potapitch, get things ready.”
I ascended to my room, and lay down upon the bed. A whole hour I must have
lain thus, with my head resting upon my hand. So the crisis had come! I needed
time for its consideration. To-morrow I would have a talk with Polina. Ah! The
Frenchman! So, it was true? But how could it be so? Polina and De Griers! What
a combination!
No, it was too improbable. Suddenly I leapt up with the idea of seeking Astley
and forcing him to speak. There could be no doubt that he knew more than I did.
Astley? Well, he was another problem for me to solve.
Suddenly there came a knock at the door, and I opened it to find Potapitch
awaiting me.
“Sir,” he said, “my mistress is asking for you.”
“Indeed? But she is just departing, is she not? The train leaves in ten minutes’
time.”
“She is uneasy, sir; she cannot rest. Come quickly, sir; do not delay.”
I ran downstairs at once. The Grandmother was just being carried out of her
rooms into the corridor. In her hands she held a roll of bank-notes.
“Alexis Ivanovitch,” she cried, “walk on ahead, and we will set out again.”
“But whither, Madame?”
“I cannot rest until I have retrieved my losses. March on ahead, and ask me no
questions. Play continues until midnight, does it not?”
For a moment I stood stupefied—stood deep in thought; but it was not long
before I had made up my mind.
“With your leave, Madame,” I said, “I will not go with you.”
“And why not? What do you mean? Is every one here a stupid good-for-
nothing?”
“Pardon me, but I have nothing to reproach myself with. I merely will not go.
I merely intend neither to witness nor to join in your play. I also beg to return
you your five hundred gülden. Farewell.”
Laying the money upon a little table which the Grandmother’s chair happened
to be passing, I bowed and withdrew.
“What folly!” the Grandmother shouted after me. “Very well, then. Do not
come, and I will find my way alone. Potapitch, you must come with me. Lift up
the chair, and carry me along.”
I failed to find Mr. Astley, and returned home. It was now growing late—it
was past midnight, but I subsequently learnt from Potapitch how the
Grandmother’s day had ended. She had lost all the money which, earlier in the
day, I had got for her paper securities—a sum amounting to about ten thousand
roubles. This she did under the direction of the Pole whom, that afternoon, she
had dowered with two ten-gülden pieces. But before his arrival on the scene, she
had commanded Potapitch to stake for her; until at length she had told him also
to go about his business. Upon that the Pole had leapt into the breach. Not only
did it happen that he knew the Russian language, but also he could speak a
mixture of three different dialects, so that the pair were able to understand one
another. Yet the old lady never ceased to abuse him, despite his deferential
manner, and to compare him unfavourably with myself (so, at all events,
Potapitch declared). “You,” the old chamberlain said to me, “treated her as a
gentleman should, but he—he robbed her right and left, as I could see with my
own eyes. Twice she caught him at it, and rated him soundly. On one occasion
she even pulled his hair, so that the bystanders burst out laughing. Yet she lost
everything, sir—that is to say, she lost all that you had changed for her. Then we
brought her home, and, after asking for some water and saying her prayers, she
went to bed. So worn out was she that she fell asleep at once. May God send her
dreams of angels! And this is all that foreign travel has done for us! Oh, my own
Moscow! For what have we not at home there, in Moscow? Such a garden and
flowers as you could never see here, and fresh air and apple-trees coming into
blossom,—and a beautiful view to look upon. Ah, but what must she do but go
travelling abroad? Alack, alack!”
 XIII

Almost a month has passed since I last touched these notes—notes which I
began under the influence of impressions at once poignant and disordered. The
crisis which I then felt to be approaching has now arrived, but in a form a
hundred times more extensive and unexpected than I had looked for. To me it all
seems strange, uncouth, and tragic. Certain occurrences have befallen me which
border upon the marvellous. At all events, that is how I view them. I view them
so in one regard at least. I refer to the whirlpool of events in which, at the time, I
was revolving. But the most curious feature of all is my relation to those events,
for hitherto I had never clearly understood myself. Yet now the actual crisis has
passed away like a dream. Even my passion for Polina is dead. Was it ever so
strong and genuine as I thought? If so, what has become of it now? At times I
fancy that I must be mad; that somewhere I am sitting in a madhouse; that these
events have merely seemed to happen; that still they merely seem to be
happening.
I have been arranging and re-perusing my notes (perhaps for the purpose of
convincing myself that I am not in a madhouse). At present I am lonely and
alone. Autumn is coming—already it is mellowing the leaves; and, as I sit
brooding in this melancholy little town (and how melancholy the little towns of
Germany can be!), I find myself taking no thought for the future, but living
under the influence of passing moods, and of my recollections of the tempest
which recently drew me into its vortex, and then cast me out again. At times I
seem still to be caught within that vortex. At times, the tempest seems once more
to be gathering, and, as it passes overhead, to be wrapping me in its folds, until I
have lost my sense of order and reality, and continue whirling and whirling and
whirling around.
Yet, it may be that I shall be able to stop myself from revolving if once I can
succeed in rendering myself an exact account of what has happened within the
month just past. Somehow I feel drawn towards the pen; on many and many an
evening I have had nothing else in the world to do. But, curiously enough, of late
I have taken to amusing myself with the works of M. Paul de Kock, which I read
in German translations obtained from a wretched local library. These works I
cannot abide, yet I read them, and find myself marvelling that I should be doing
so. Somehow I seem to be afraid of any serious book—afraid of permitting any
serious preoccupation to break the spell of the passing moment. So dear to me is
the formless dream of which I have spoken, so dear to me are the impressions
which it has left behind it, that I fear to touch the vision with anything new, lest
it should dissolve in smoke. But is it so dear to me? Yes, it is dear to me, and will
ever be fresh in my recollections—even forty years hence....
So let me write of it, but only partially, and in a more abridged form than my
full impressions might warrant.
First of all, let me conclude the history of the Grandmother. Next day she lost
every gülden that she possessed. Things were bound to happen so, for persons of
her type who have once entered upon that road descend it with ever-increasing
rapidity, even as a sledge descends a toboggan-slide. All day until eight o’clock
that evening did she play; and, though I personally did not witness her exploits, I
learnt of them later through report.
All that day Potapitch remained in attendance upon her; but the Poles who
directed her play she changed more than once. As a beginning she dismissed her
Pole of the previous day—the Pole whose hair she had pulled—and took to
herself another one; but the latter proved worse even than the former, and
incurred dismissal in favour of the first Pole, who, during the time of his
unemployment, had nevertheless hovered around the Grandmother’s chair, and
from time to time obtruded his head over her shoulder. At length the old lady
became desperate, for the second Pole, when dismissed, imitated his predecessor
by declining to go away; with the result that one Pole remained standing on the
right of the victim, and the other on her left; from which vantage points the pair
quarrelled, abused each other concerning the stakes and rounds, and exchanged
the epithet “laidak”[4] and other Polish terms of endearment. Finally, they
effected a mutual reconciliation, and, tossing the money about anyhow, played
simply at random. Once more quarrelling, each of them staked money on his
own side of the Grandmother’s chair (for instance, the one Pole staked upon the
red, and the other one upon the black), until they had so confused and
browbeaten the old lady that, nearly weeping, she was forced to appeal to the
head croupier for protection, and to have the two Poles expelled. No time was
lost in this being done, despite the rascals’ cries and protestations that the old
lady was in their debt, that she had cheated them, and that her general behaviour
had been mean and dishonourable. The same evening the unfortunate Potapitch
related the story to me with tears complaining that the two men had filled their
pockets with money (he himself had seen them do it) which had been
shamelessly pilfered from his mistress. For instance, one Pole demanded of the
Grandmother fifty gülden for his trouble, and then staked the money by the side
of her stake. She happened to win; whereupon he cried out that the winning
stake was his, and hers the loser. As soon as the two Poles had been expelled,
Potapitch left the room, and reported to the authorities that the men’s pockets
were full of gold; and, on the Grandmother also requesting the head croupier to
look into the affair, the police made their appearance, and, despite the protests of
the Poles (who, indeed, had been caught redhanded), their pockets were turned
inside out, and the contents handed over to the Grandmother. In fact, in, view of
the circumstance that she lost all day, the croupiers and other authorities of the
Casino showed her every attention; and on her fame spreading through the town,
visitors of every nationality—even the most knowing of them, the most
distinguished—crowded to get a glimpse of “la vieille comtesse russe, tombée en
enfance,” who had lost “so many millions.”
[4] Rascal

Yet with the money which the authorities restored to her from the pockets of
the Poles the Grandmother effected very, very little, for there soon arrived to
take his countrymen’s place, a third Pole—a man who could speak Russian
fluently, was dressed like a gentleman (albeit in lacqueyish fashion), and sported
a huge moustache. Though polite enough to the old lady, he took a high hand
with the bystanders. In short, he offered himself less as a servant than as an
entertainer. After each round he would turn to the old lady, and swear terrible
oaths to the effect that he was a “Polish gentleman of honour” who would scorn
to take a kopeck of her money; and, though he repeated these oaths so often that
at length she grew alarmed, he had her play in hand, and began to win on her
behalf; wherefore, she felt that she could not well get rid of him. An hour later
the two Poles who, earlier in the day, had been expelled from the Casino, made a
reappearance behind the old lady’s chair, and renewed their offers of service—
even if it were only to be sent on messages; but from Potapitch I subsequently
had it that between these rascals and the said “gentleman of honour” there
passed a wink, as well as that the latter put something into their hands. Next,
since the Grandmother had not yet lunched—she had scarcely for a moment left
her chair—one of the two Poles ran to the restaurant of the Casino, and brought
her thence a cup of soup, and afterwards some tea. In fact, both the Poles
hastened to perform this office. Finally, towards the close of the day, when it was
clear that the Grandmother was about to play her last bank-note, there could be
seen standing behind her chair no fewer than six natives of Poland—persons
who, as yet, had been neither audible nor visible; and as soon as ever the old
lady played the note in question, they took no further notice of her, but pushed
their way past her chair to the table; seized the money, and staked it—shouting
and disputing the while, and arguing with the “gentleman of honour” (who also
had forgotten the Grandmother’s existence), as though he were their equal. Even
when the Grandmother had lost her all, and was returning (about eight o’clock)
to the hotel, some three or four Poles could not bring themselves to leave her, but
went on running beside her chair and volubly protesting that the Grandmother
had cheated them, and that she ought to be made to surrender what was not her
own. Thus the party arrived at the hotel; whence, presently, the gang of rascals
was ejected neck and crop.
According to Potapitch’s calculations, the Grandmother lost, that day, a total
of ninety thousand roubles, in addition to the money which she had lost the day
before. Every paper security which she had brought with her—five percent
bonds, internal loan scrip, and what not—she had changed into cash. Also, I
could not but marvel at the way in which, for seven or eight hours at a stretch,
she sat in that chair of hers, almost never leaving the table. Again, Potapitch told
me that there were three occasions on which she really began to win; but that,
led on by false hopes, she was unable to tear herself away at the right moment.
Every gambler knows how a person may sit a day and a night at cards without
ever casting a glance to right or to left.
Meanwhile, that day some other very important events were passing in our
hotel. As early as eleven o’clock—that is to say, before the Grandmother had
quitted her rooms—the General and De Griers decided upon their last stroke. In
other words, on learning that the old lady had changed her mind about departing,
and was bent on setting out for the Casino again, the whole of our gang (Polina
only excepted) proceeded en masse to her rooms, for the purpose of finally and
frankly treating with her. But the General, quaking and greatly apprehensive as
to his possible future, overdid things. After half an hour’s prayers and entreaties,
coupled with a full confession of his debts, and even of his passion for Mlle.
Blanche (yes, he had quite lost his head), he suddenly adopted a tone of menace,
and started to rage at the old lady—exclaiming that she was sullying the family
honour, that she was making a public scandal of herself, and that she was
smirching the fair name of Russia. The upshot was that the Grandmother turned
him out of the room with her stick (it was a real stick, too!). Later in the morning
he held several consultations with De Griers—the question which occupied him
being: Is it in any way possible to make use of the police—to tell them that “this
respected, but unfortunate, old lady has gone out of her mind, and is squandering
her last kopeck,” or something of the kind? In short, is it in any way possible to
engineer a species of supervision over, or of restraint upon, the old lady? De
Griers, however, shrugged his shoulders at this, and laughed in the General’s
face, while the old warrior went on chattering volubly, and running up and down
his study. Finally De Griers waved his hand, and disappeared from view; and by
evening it became known that he had left the hotel, after holding a very secret
and important conference with Mlle. Blanche. As for the latter, from early
morning she had taken decisive measures, by completely excluding the General
from her presence, and bestowing upon him not a glance. Indeed, even when the
General pursued her to the Casino, and met her walking arm in arm with the
Prince, he (the General) received from her and her mother not the slightest
recognition. Nor did the Prince himself bow. The rest of the day Mlle. spent in
probing the Prince, and trying to make him declare himself; but in this she made
a woeful mistake. The little incident occurred in the evening. Suddenly Mlle.
Blanche realised that the Prince had not even a copper to his name, but, on the
contrary, was minded to borrow of her money wherewith to play at roulette. In
high displeasure she drove him from her presence, and shut herself up in her
room.
The same morning I went to see—or, rather, to look for—Mr. Astley, but was
unsuccessful in my quest. Neither in his rooms nor in the Casino nor in the Park
was he to be found; nor did he, that day, lunch at his hotel as usual. However, at
about five o’clock I caught sight of him walking from the railway station to the
Hôtel d’Angleterre. He seemed to be in a great hurry and much preoccupied,
though in his face I could discern no actual traces of worry or perturbation. He
held out to me a friendly hand, with his usual ejaculation of “Ah!” but did not
check his stride. I turned and walked beside him, but found, somehow, that his
answers forbade any putting of definite questions. Moreover, I felt reluctant to
speak to him of Polina; nor, for his part, did he ask me any questions concerning
her, although, on my telling him of the Grandmother’s exploits, he listened
attentively and gravely, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“She is gambling away everything that she has,” I remarked.
“Indeed? She arrived at the Casino even before I had taken my departure by
train, so I knew she had been playing. If I should have time I will go to the
Casino to-night, and take a look at her. The thing interests me.”
“Where have you been today?” I asked—surprised at myself for having, as
yet, omitted to put to him that question.
“To Frankfort.”
 “On business?”
“On business.”
What more was there to be asked after that? I accompanied him until, as we
drew level with the Hotel des Quatre Saisons, he suddenly nodded to me and
disappeared. For myself, I returned home, and came to the conclusion that, even
had I met him at two o’clock in the afternoon, I should have learnt no more from
him than I had done at five o’clock, for the reason that I had no definite question
to ask. It was bound to have been so. For me to formulate the query which I
really wished to put was a simple impossibility.
Polina spent the whole of that day either in walking about the park with the
nurse and children or in sitting in her own room. For a long while past she had
avoided the General and had scarcely had a word to say to him (scarcely a word,
I mean, on any serious topic). Yes, that I had noticed. Still, even though I was
aware of the position in which the General was placed, it had never occurred to
me that he would have any reason to avoid her, or to trouble her with family
explanations. Indeed, when I was returning to the hotel after my conversation
with Astley, and chanced to meet Polina and the children, I could see that her
face was as calm as though the family disturbances had never touched her. To
my salute she responded with a slight bow, and I retired to my room in a very
bad humour.
Of course, since the affair with the Burmergelms I had exchanged not a word
with Polina, nor had with her any kind of intercourse. Yet I had been at my wits’
end, for, as time went on, there was arising in me an ever-seething
dissatisfaction. Even if she did not love me she ought not to have trampled upon
my feelings, nor to have accepted my confessions with such contempt, seeing
that she must have been aware that I loved her (of her own accord she had
allowed me to tell her as much). Of course the situation between us had arisen in
a curious manner. About two months ago, I had noticed that she had a desire to
make me her friend, her confidant—that she was making trial of me for the
purpose; but, for some reason or another, the desired result had never come
about, and we had fallen into the present strange relations, which had led me to
address her as I had done. At the same time, if my love was distasteful to her,
why had she not forbidden me to speak of it to her?
But she had not so forbidden me. On the contrary, there had been occasions
when she had even invited me to speak. Of course, this might have been done
out of sheer wantonness, for I well knew—I had remarked it only too often—
that, after listening to what I had to say, and angering me almost beyond
endurance, she loved suddenly to torture me with some fresh outburst of
contempt and aloofness! Yet she must have known that I could not live without
her. Three days had elapsed since the affair with the Baron, and I could bear the
severance no longer. When, that afternoon, I met her near the Casino, my heart
almost made me faint, it beat so violently. She too could not live without me, for
had she not said that she had need of me? Or had that too been spoken in jest?
That she had a secret of some kind there could be no doubt. What she had said
to the Grandmother had stabbed me to the heart. On a thousand occasions I had
challenged her to be open with me, nor could she have been ignorant that I was
ready to give my very life for her. Yet always she had kept me at a distance with
that contemptuous air of hers; or else she had demanded of me, in lieu of the life
which I offered to lay at her feet, such escapades as I had perpetrated with the
Baron. Ah, was it not torture to me, all this? For could it be that her whole world
was bound up with the Frenchman? What, too, about Mr. Astley? The affair was
inexplicable throughout. My God, what distress it caused me!
Arrived home, I, in a fit of frenzy, indited the following:
“Polina Alexandrovna, I can see that there is approaching us an exposure
which will involve you too. For the last time I ask of you—have you, or have
you not, any need of my life? If you have, then make such dispositions as you
wish, and I shall always be discoverable in my room if required. If you have
need of my life, write or send for me.”
I sealed the letter, and dispatched it by the hand of a corridor lacquey, with
orders to hand it to the addressee in person. Though I expected no answer,
scarcely three minutes had elapsed before the lacquey returned with “the
compliments of a certain person.”
Next, about seven o’clock, I was sent for by the General. I found him in his
study, apparently preparing to go out again, for his hat and stick were lying on
the sofa. When I entered he was standing in the middle of the room—his feet
wide apart, and his head bent down. Also, he appeared to be talking to himself.
But as soon as ever he saw me at the door he came towards me in such a curious
manner that involuntarily I retreated a step, and was for leaving the room;
whereupon he seized me by both hands, and, drawing me towards the sofa, and
seating himself thereon, he forced me to sit down on a chair opposite him. Then,
without letting go of my hands, he exclaimed with quivering lips and a sparkle
of tears on his eyelashes:
“Oh, Alexis Ivanovitch! Save me, save me! Have some mercy upon me!”
For a long time I could not make out what he meant, although he kept talking
and talking, and constantly repeating to himself, “Have mercy, mercy!” At
length, however, I divined that he was expecting me to give him something in
the nature of advice—or, rather, that, deserted by every one, and overwhelmed
with grief and apprehension, he had bethought himself of my existence, and sent
for me to relieve his feelings by talking and talking and talking.
In fact, he was in such a confused and despondent state of mind that, clasping
his hands together, he actually went down upon his knees and begged me to go
to Mlle. Blanche, and beseech and advise her to return to him, and to accept him
in marriage.
“But, General,” I exclaimed, “possibly Mlle. Blanche has scarcely even
remarked my existence? What could I do with her?”
It was in vain that I protested, for he could understand nothing that was said to
him, Next he started talking about the Grandmother, but always in a
disconnected sort of fashion—his one thought being to send for the police.
“In Russia,” said he, suddenly boiling over with indignation, “or in any well-
ordered State where there exists a government, old women like my mother are
placed under proper guardianship. Yes, my good sir,” he went on, relapsing into
a scolding tone as he leapt to his feet and started to pace the room, “do you not
know this” (he seemed to be addressing some imaginary auditor in the corner)
“—do you not know this, that in Russia old women like her are subjected to
restraint, the devil take them?” Again he threw himself down upon the sofa.
A minute later, though sobbing and almost breathless, he managed to gasp out
that Mlle. Blanche had refused to marry him, for the reason that the
Grandmother had turned up in place of a telegram, and it was therefore clear that
he had no inheritance to look for. Evidently, he supposed that I had hitherto been
in entire ignorance of all this. Again, when I referred to De Griers, the General
made a gesture of despair. “He has gone away,” he said, “and everything which I
possess is mortgaged to him. I stand stripped to my skin. Even of the money
which you brought me from Paris, I know not if seven hundred francs be left. Of
course that sum will do to go on with, but, as regards the future, I know nothing,
I know nothing.”
“Then how will you pay your hotel bill?” I cried in consternation. “And what
shall you do afterwards?”
He looked at me vaguely, but it was clear that he had not understood—perhaps
had not even heard—my questions. Then I tried to get him to speak of Polina
and the children, but he only returned brief answers of “Yes, yes,” and again
started to maunder about the Prince, and the likelihood of the latter marrying
Mlle. Blanche. “What on earth am I to do?” he concluded. “What on earth am I
to do? Is this not ingratitude? Is it not sheer ingratitude?” And he burst into tears.
Nothing could be done with such a man. Yet to leave him alone was
dangerous, for something might happen to him. I withdrew from his rooms for a
little while, but warned the nursemaid to keep an eye upon him, as well as
exchanged a word with the corridor lacquey (a very talkative fellow), who
likewise promised to remain on the look-out.
Hardly had I left the General, when Potapitch approached me with a summons
from the Grandmother. It was now eight o’clock, and she had returned from the
Casino after finally losing all that she possessed. I found her sitting in her chair
—much distressed and evidently fatigued. Presently Martha brought her up a cup
of tea and forced her to drink it; yet, even then I could detect in the old lady’s
tone and manner a great change.
“Good evening, Alexis Ivanovitch,” she said slowly, with her head drooping.
“Pardon me for disturbing you again. Yes, you must pardon an old, old woman
like myself, for I have left behind me all that I possess—nearly a hundred
thousand roubles! You did quite right in declining to come with me this evening.
Now I am without money—without a single groat. But I must not delay a
moment; I must leave by the 9:30 train. I have sent for that English friend of
yours, and am going to beg of him three thousand francs for a week. Please try
and persuade him to think nothing of it, nor yet to refuse me, for I am still a rich
woman who possesses three villages and a couple of mansions. Yes, the money
shall be found, for I have not yet squandered everything. I tell you this in order
that he may have no doubts about—Ah, but here he is! Clearly he is a good
fellow.”
True enough, Astley had come hot-foot on receiving the Grandmother’s
appeal. Scarcely stopping even to reflect, and with scarcely a word, he counted
out the three thousand francs under a note of hand which she duly signed. Then,
his business done, he bowed, and lost no time in taking his departure.
“You too leave me, Alexis Ivanovitch,” said the Grandmother. “All my bones
are aching, and I still have an hour in which to rest. Do not be hard upon me, old
fool that I am. Never again shall I blame young people for being frivolous. I
should think it wrong even to blame that unhappy General of yours.
Nevertheless, I do not mean to let him have any of my money (which is all that
he desires), for the reason that I look upon him as a perfect blockhead, and
consider myself, simpleton though I be, at least wiser than he is. How surely
does God visit old age, and punish it for its presumption! Well, good-bye.
Martha, come and lift me up.”
 However, I had a mind to see the old lady off; and, moreover, I was in an
expectant frame of mind—somehow I kept thinking that something was going to
happen; wherefore, I could not rest quietly in my room, but stepped out into the
corridor, and then into the Chestnut Avenue for a few minutes’ stroll. My letter
to Polina had been clear and firm, and in the present crisis, I felt sure, would
prove final. I had heard of De Griers’ departure, and, however much Polina
might reject me as a friend, she might not reject me altogether as a servant. She
would need me to fetch and carry for her, and I was ready to do so. How could it
have been otherwise?
Towards the hour of the train’s departure I hastened to the station, and put the
Grandmother into her compartment—she and her party occupying a reserved
family saloon.
“Thanks for your disinterested assistance,” she said at parting. “Oh, and please
remind Prascovia of what I said to her last night. I expect soon to see her.”
Then I returned home. As I was passing the door of the General’s suite, I met
the nursemaid, and inquired after her master. “There is nothing new to report,
sir,” she replied quietly. Nevertheless I decided to enter, and was just doing so
when I halted thunderstruck on the threshold. For before me I beheld the General
and Mlle. Blanche—laughing gaily at one another!—while beside them, on the
sofa, there was seated her mother. Clearly the General was almost out of his
mind with joy, for he was talking all sorts of nonsense, and bubbling over with a
long-drawn, nervous laugh—a laugh which twisted his face into innumerable
wrinkles, and caused his eyes almost to disappear.
Afterwards I learnt from Mlle. Blanche herself that, after dismissing the
Prince and hearing of the General’s tears, she bethought her of going to comfort
the old man, and had just arrived for the purpose when I entered. Fortunately, the
poor General did not know that his fate had been decided—that Mlle. had long
ago packed her trunks in readiness for the first morning train to Paris!
Hesitating a moment on the threshold I changed my mind as to entering, and
departed unnoticed. Ascending to my own room, and opening the door, I
perceived in the semi-darkness a figure seated on a chair in the corner by the
window. The figure did not rise when I entered, so I approached it swiftly,
peered at it closely, and felt my heart almost stop beating. The figure was Polina!
 XIV

The shock made me utter an exclamation.

“What is the matter? What is the matter?” she asked in a strange voice. She
was looking pale, and her eyes were dim.
“What is the matter?” I re-echoed. “Why, the fact that you are here!”
“If I am here, I have come with all that I have to bring,” she said. “Such has
always been my way, as you shall presently see. Please light a candle.”
I did so; whereupon she rose, approached the table, and laid upon it an open
letter.
“Read it,” she added.
“It is De Griers’ handwriting!” I cried as I seized the document. My hands
were so tremulous that the lines on the pages danced before my eyes. Although,
at this distance of time, I have forgotten the exact phraseology of the missive, I
append, if not the precise words, at all events the general sense.
“Mademoiselle,” the document ran, “certain untoward circumstances compel
me to depart in haste. Of course, you have of yourself remarked that hitherto I
have always refrained from having any final explanation with you, for the reason
that I could not well state the whole circumstances; and now to my difficulties
the advent of the aged Grandmother, coupled with her subsequent proceedings,
has put the final touch. Also, the involved state of my affairs forbids me to write
with any finality concerning those hopes of ultimate bliss upon which, for a long
while past, I have permitted myself to feed. I regret the past, but at the same time
hope that in my conduct you have never been able to detect anything that was
unworthy of a gentleman and a man of honour. Having lost, however, almost the
whole of my money in debts incurred by your stepfather, I find myself driven to
the necessity of saving the remainder; wherefore, I have instructed certain
friends of mine in St. Petersburg to arrange for the sale of all the property which
has been mortgaged to myself. At the same time, knowing that, in addition, your
frivolous stepfather has squandered money which is exclusively yours, I have
decided to absolve him from a certain moiety of the mortgages on his property,
in order that you may be in a position to recover of him what you have lost, by
suing him in legal fashion. I trust, therefore, that, as matters now stand, this
action of mine may bring you some advantage. I trust also that this same action
leaves me in the position of having fulfilled every obligation which is incumbent
upon a man of honour and refinement. Rest assured that your memory will for
ever remain graven in my heart.”
“All this is clear enough,” I commented. “Surely you did not expect aught else
from him?” Somehow I was feeling annoyed.
“I expected nothing at all from him,” she replied—quietly enough, to all
outward seeming, yet with a note of irritation in her tone. “Long ago I made up
my mind on the subject, for I could read his thoughts, and knew what he was
thinking. He thought that possibly I should sue him—that one day I might
become a nuisance.” Here Polina halted for a moment, and stood biting her lips.
“So of set purpose I redoubled my contemptuous treatment of him, and waited to
see what he would do. If a telegram to say that we had become legatees had
arrived from, St. Petersburg, I should have flung at him a quittance for my
foolish stepfather’s debts, and then dismissed him. For a long time I have hated
him. Even in earlier days he was not a man; and now!—Oh, how gladly I could
throw those fifty thousand roubles in his face, and spit in it, and then rub the
spittle in!”
“But the document returning the fifty-thousand rouble mortgage—has the
General got it? If so, possess yourself of it, and send it to De Griers.”
“No, no; the General has not got it.”
“Just as I expected! Well, what is the General going to do?” Then an idea
suddenly occurred to me. “What about the Grandmother?” I asked.
Polina looked at me with impatience and bewilderment.
“What makes you speak of her?” was her irritable inquiry. “I cannot go and
live with her. Nor,” she added hotly, “will I go down upon my knees to any one.”
“Why should you?” I cried. “Yet to think that you should have loved De
Griers! The villain, the villain! But I will kill him in a duel. Where is he now?”
“In Frankfort, where he will be staying for the next three days.”
“Well, bid me do so, and I will go to him by the first train tomorrow,” I
exclaimed with enthusiasm.
She smiled.
“If you were to do that,” she said, “he would merely tell you to be so good as
first to return him the fifty thousand francs. What, then, would be the use of
having a quarrel with him? You talk sheer nonsense.”
I ground my teeth.
“The question,” I went on, “is how to raise the fifty thousand francs. We
cannot expect to find them lying about on the floor. Listen. What of Mr. Astley?”
Even as I spoke a new and strange idea formed itself in my brain.
Her eyes flashed fire.
“What? you yourself wish me to leave you for him?” she cried with a scornful
look and a proud smile. Never before had she addressed me thus.
Then her head must have turned dizzy with emotion, for suddenly she seated
herself upon the sofa, as though she were powerless any longer to stand.
A flash of lightning seemed to strike me as I stood there. I could scarcely
believe my eyes or my ears. She did love me, then! It was to me, and not to Mr.
Astley, that she had turned! Although she, an unprotected girl, had come to me in
my room—in an hotel room—and had probably compromised herself thereby, I
had not understood!
Then a second mad idea flashed into my brain.
“Polina,” I said, “give me but an hour. Wait here just one hour until I return.
Yes, you MUST do so. Do you not see what I mean? Just stay here for that
time.”
And I rushed from the room without so much as answering her look of
inquiry. She called something after me, but I did not return.
Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible
conception, will become so fixed in one’s head that at length one believes the
thought or the conception to be reality. Moreover, if with the thought or the
conception there is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to
look upon the said thought or conception as something fated, inevitable, and
foreordained—something bound to happen. Whether by this there is connoted
something in the nature of a combination of presentiments, or a great effort of
will, or a self-annulment of one’s true expectations, and so on, I do not know;
but, at all events that night saw happen to me (a night which I shall never forget)
something in the nature of the miraculous. Although the occurrence can easily be
explained by arithmetic, I still believe it to have been a miracle. Yet why did this
conviction take such a hold upon me at the time, and remain with me ever since?
Previously, I had thought of the idea, not as an occurrence which was ever likely
to come about, but as something which never could come about.
The time was a quarter past eleven o’clock when I entered the Casino in such
a state of hope (though, at the same time, of agitation) as I had never before
experienced. In the gaming-rooms there were still a large number of people, but
not half as many as had been present in the morning.
At eleven o’clock there usually remained behind only the real, the desperate
gamblers—persons for whom, at spas, there existed nothing beyond roulette, and
who went thither for that alone. These gamesters took little note of what was
going on around them, and were interested in none of the appurtenances of the
season, but played from morning till night, and would have been ready to play
through the night until dawn had that been possible. As it was, they used to
disperse unwillingly when, at midnight, roulette came to an end. Likewise, as
soon as ever roulette was drawing to a close and the head croupier had called
“Les trois derniers coups,” most of them were ready to stake on the last three
rounds all that they had in their pockets—and, for the most part, lost it. For my
own part I proceeded towards the table at which the Grandmother had lately sat;
and, since the crowd around it was not very large, I soon obtained standing room
among the ring of gamblers, while directly in front of me, on the green cloth, I
saw marked the word “Passe.”
“Passe” was a row of numbers from 19 to 36 inclusive; while a row of
numbers from 1 to 18 inclusive was known as “Manque.” But what had that to
do with me? I had not noticed—I had not so much as heard the numbers upon
which the previous coup had fallen, and so took no bearings when I began to
play, as, in my place, any systematic gambler would have done. No, I merely
extended my stock of twenty ten-gülden pieces, and threw them down upon the
space “Passe” which happened to be confronting me.
“Vingt-deux!” called the croupier.
I had won! I staked upon the same again—both my original stake and my
winnings.
“Trente-et-un!” called the croupier.
Again I had won, and was now in possession of eighty ten-gülden pieces.
Next, I moved the whole eighty on to twelve middle numbers (a stake which, if
successful, would bring me in a triple profit, but also involved a risk of two
chances to one). The wheel revolved, and stopped at twenty-four. Upon this I
was paid out notes and gold until I had by my side a total sum of two thousand
gülden.
It was as in a fever that I moved the pile, en bloc, on to the red. Then suddenly
I came to myself (though that was the only time during the evening’s play when
fear cast its cold spell over me, and showed itself in a trembling of the hands and
knees). For with horror I had realised that I must win, and that upon that stake
there depended all my life.
“Rouge!” called the croupier. I drew a long breath, and hot shivers went
coursing over my body. I was paid out my winnings in bank-notes—amounting,
of course, to a total of four thousand florins, eight hundred gülden (I could still
calculate the amounts).
After that, I remember, I again staked two thousand florins upon twelve
middle numbers, and lost. Again I staked the whole of my gold, with eight
hundred gülden, in notes, and lost. Then madness seemed to come upon me, and
seizing my last two thousand florins, I staked them upon twelve of the first
numbers—wholly by chance, and at random, and without any sort of reckoning.
Upon my doing so there followed a moment of suspense only comparable to that
which Madame Blanchard must have experienced when, in Paris, she was
descending earthwards from a balloon.
“Quatre!” called the croupier.
Once more, with the addition of my original stake, I was in possession of six
thousand florins! Once more I looked around me like a conqueror—once more I
feared nothing as I threw down four thousand of these florins upon the black.
The croupiers glanced around them, and exchanged a few words; the bystanders
murmured expectantly.
The black turned up. After that I do not exactly remember either my
calculations or the order of my stakings. I only remember that, as in a dream, I
won in one round sixteen thousand florins; that in the three following rounds, I
lost twelve thousand; that I moved the remainder (four thousand) on to “Passe”
(though quite unconscious of what I was doing—I was merely waiting, as it
were, mechanically, and without reflection, for something) and won; and that,
finally, four times in succession I lost. Yes, I can remember raking in money by
thousands—but most frequently on the twelve, middle numbers, to which I
constantly adhered, and which kept appearing in a sort of regular order—first,
three or four times running, and then, after an interval of a couple of rounds, in
another break of three or four appearances. Sometimes, this astonishing
regularity manifested itself in patches; a thing to upset all the calculations of
note—taking gamblers who play with a pencil and a memorandum-book in their
hands Fortune perpetrates some terrible jests at roulette!
Since my entry not more than half an hour could have elapsed. Suddenly a
croupier informed me that I had, won thirty thousand florins, as well as that,
since the latter was the limit for which, at any one time, the bank could make
itself responsible, roulette at that table must close for the night. Accordingly, I
caught up my pile of gold, stuffed it into my pocket, and, grasping my sheaf of
bank-notes, moved to the table in an adjoining salon where a second game of
roulette was in progress. The crowd followed me in a body, and cleared a place
for me at the table; after which, I proceeded to stake as before—that is to say, at
random and without calculating. What saved me from ruin I do not know.
Of course there were times when fragmentary reckonings did come flashing
into my brain. For instance, there were times when I attached myself for a while
to certain figures and coups—though always leaving them, again before long,
without knowing what I was doing.
In fact, I cannot have been in possession of all my faculties, for I can
remember the croupiers correcting my play more than once, owing to my having
made mistakes of the gravest order. My brows were damp with sweat, and my
hands were shaking. Also, Poles came around me to proffer their services, but I
heeded none of them. Nor did my luck fail me now. Suddenly, there arose around
me a loud din of talking and laughter. “Bravo, bravo!” was the general shout,
and some people even clapped their hands. I had raked in thirty thousand florins,
and again the bank had had to close for the night!
“Go away now, go away now,” a voice whispered to me on my right. The
person who had spoken to me was a certain Jew of Frankfurt—a man who had
been standing beside me the whole while, and occasionally helping me in my
play.
“Yes, for God’s sake go,” whispered a second voice in my left ear. Glancing
around, I perceived that the second voice had come from a modestly, plainly
dressed lady of rather less than thirty—a woman whose face, though pale and
sickly-looking, bore also very evident traces of former beauty. At the moment, I
was stuffing the crumpled bank-notes into my pockets and collecting all the gold
that was left on the table. Seizing up my last note for five hundred gülden, I
contrived to insinuate it, unperceived, into the hand of the pale lady. An
overpowering impulse had made me do so, and I remember how her thin little
fingers pressed mine in token of her lively gratitude. The whole affair was the
work of a moment.
Then, collecting my belongings, I crossed to where trente et quarante was
being played—a game which could boast of a more aristocratic public, and was
played with cards instead of with a wheel. At this diversion the bank made itself
responsible for a hundred thousand thalers as the limit, but the highest stake
allowable was, as in roulette, four thousand florins. Although I knew nothing of
the game—and I scarcely knew the stakes, except those on black and red—I
joined the ring of players, while the rest of the crowd massed itself around me.
At this distance of time I cannot remember whether I ever gave a thought to
Polina; I seemed only to be conscious of a vague pleasure in seizing and raking
in the bank-notes which kept massing themselves in a pile before me.
But, as ever, fortune seemed to be at my back. As though of set purpose, there
came to my aid a circumstance which not infrequently repeats itself in gaming.
The circumstance is that not infrequently luck attaches itself to, say, the red, and
does not leave it for a space of say, ten, or even fifteen, rounds in succession.
Three days ago I had heard that, during the previous week there had been a run
of twenty-two coups on the red—an occurrence never before known at roulette
—so that men spoke of it with astonishment. Naturally enough, many deserted
the red after a dozen rounds, and practically no one could now be found to stake
upon it. Yet upon the black also—the antithesis of the red—no experienced
gambler would stake anything, for the reason that every practised player knows
the meaning of “capricious fortune.” That is to say, after the sixteenth (or so)
success of the red, one would think that the seventeenth coup would inevitably
fall upon the black; wherefore, novices would be apt to back the latter in the
seventeenth round, and even to double or treble their stakes upon it—only, in the
end, to lose.
Yet some whim or other led me, on remarking that the red had come up
consecutively for seven times, to attach myself to that colour. Probably this was
mostly due to self-conceit, for I wanted to astonish the bystanders with the
riskiness of my play. Also, I remember that—oh, strange sensation!—I suddenly,
and without any challenge from my own presumption, became obsessed with a
desire to take risks. If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations,
possibly it can no longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and
demands more sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls
exhausted. Certainly, if the rules of the game had permitted even of my staking
fifty thousand florins at a time, I should have staked them. All of a sudden I
heard exclamations arising that the whole thing was a marvel, since the red was
turning up for the fourteenth time!
“Monsieur a gagné cent mille florins,” a voice exclaimed beside me.
I awoke to my senses. What? I had won a hundred thousand florins? If so,
what more did I need to win? I grasped the banknotes, stuffed them into my
pockets, raked in the gold without counting it, and started to leave the Casino.
As I passed through the salons people smiled to see my bulging pockets and
unsteady gait, for the weight which I was carrying must have amounted to half a
pood! Several hands I saw stretched out in my direction, and as I passed I filled
them with all the money that I could grasp in my own. At length two Jews
stopped me near the exit.
“You are a bold young fellow,” one said, “but mind you depart early tomorrow
—as early as you can—for if you do not you will lose everything that you have
won.”
But I did not heed them. The Avenue was so dark that it was barely possible to
distinguish one’s hand before one’s face, while the distance to the hotel was half
a verst or so; but I feared neither pickpockets nor highwaymen. Indeed, never
since my boyhood have I done that. Also, I cannot remember what I thought
about on the way. I only felt a sort of fearful pleasure—the pleasure of success,
of conquest, of power (how can I best express it?). Likewise, before me there
flitted the image of Polina; and I kept remembering, and reminding myself, that
it was to her I was going, that it was in her presence I should soon be standing,
that it was she to whom I should soon be able to relate and show everything.
Scarcely once did I recall what she had lately said to me, or the reason why I had
left her, or all those varied sensations which I had been experiencing a bare hour
and a half ago. No, those sensations seemed to be things of the past, to be things
which had righted themselves and grown old, to be things concerning which we
needed to trouble ourselves no longer, since, for us, life was about to begin anew.
Yet I had just reached the end of the Avenue when there did come upon me a fear
of being robbed or murdered. With each step the fear increased until, in my
terror, I almost started to run. Suddenly, as I issued from the Avenue, there burst
upon me the lights of the hotel, sparkling with a myriad lamps! Yes, thanks be to
God, I had reached home!
Running up to my room, I flung open the door of it. Polina was still on the
sofa, with a lighted candle in front of her, and her hands clasped. As I entered
she stared at me in astonishment (for, at the moment, I must have presented a
strange spectacle). All I did, however, was to halt before her, and fling upon the
table my burden of wealth.
 XV

I remember, too, how, without moving from her place, or changing her
attitude, she gazed into my face.
“I have won two hundred thousand francs!” cried I as I pulled out my last
sheaf of bank-notes. The pile of paper currency occupied the whole table. I could
not withdraw my eyes from it. Consequently, for a moment or two Polina
escaped my mind. Then I set myself to arrange the pile in order, and to sort the
notes, and to mass the gold in a separate heap. That done, I left everything where
it lay, and proceeded to pace the room with rapid strides as I lost myself in
thought. Then I darted to the table once more, and began to recount the money;
until all of a sudden, as though I had remembered something, I rushed to the
door, and closed and double-locked it. Finally I came to a meditative halt before
my little trunk.
“Shall I put the money there until tomorrow?” I asked, turning sharply round
to Polina as the recollection of her returned to me.
She was still in her old place—still making not a sound. Yet her eyes had
followed every one of my movements. Somehow in her face there was a strange
expression—an expression which I did not like. I think that I shall not be wrong
if I say that it indicated sheer hatred.
Impulsively I approached her.
“Polina,” I said, “here are twenty-five thousand florins—fifty thousand francs,
or more. Take them, and tomorrow throw them in De Griers’ face.”
She returned no answer.
“Or, if you should prefer,” I continued, “let me take them to him myself
tomorrow—yes, early tomorrow morning. Shall I?”
Then all at once she burst out laughing, and laughed for a long while. With
astonishment and a feeling of offence I gazed at her. Her laughter was too like
the derisive merriment which she had so often indulged in of late—merriment
which had broken forth always at the time of my most passionate explanations.
At length she ceased, and frowned at me from under her eyebrows.
 “I am not going to take your money,” she said contemptuously.
“Why not?” I cried. “Why not, Polina?”
“Because I am not in the habit of receiving money for nothing.”
“But I am offering it to you as a friend. In the same way I would offer you my
very life.”
Upon this she threw me a long, questioning glance, as though she were
seeking to probe me to the depths.
“You are giving too much for me,” she remarked with a smile. “The beloved
of De Griers is not worth fifty thousand francs.”
“Oh Polina, how can you speak so?” I exclaimed reproachfully. “Am I De
Griers?”
“You?” she cried with her eyes suddenly flashing. “Why, I hate you! Yes, yes,
I hate you! I love you no more than I do De Griers.”
Then she buried her face in her hands, and relapsed into hysterics. I darted to
her side. Somehow I had an intuition of something having happened to her
which had nothing to do with myself. She was like a person temporarily insane.
“Buy me, would you, would you? Would you buy me for fifty thousand francs
as De Griers did?” she gasped between her convulsive sobs.
I clasped her in my arms, kissed her hands and feet, and fell upon my knees
before her.
Presently the hysterical fit passed away, and, laying her hands upon my
shoulders, she gazed for a while into my face, as though trying to read it—
something I said to her, but it was clear that she did not hear it. Her face looked
so dark and despondent that I began to fear for her reason. At length she drew
me towards herself—a trustful smile playing over her features; and then, as
suddenly, she pushed me away again as she eyed me dimly.
Finally she threw herself upon me in an embrace.
“You love me?” she said. “Do you?—you who were willing even to quarrel
with the Baron at my bidding?”
Then she laughed—laughed as though something dear, but laughable, had
recurred to her memory. Yes, she laughed and wept at the same time. What was I
to do? I was like a man in a fever. I remember that she began to say something to
me—though what I do not know, since she spoke with a feverish lisp, as though
she were trying to tell me something very quickly. At intervals, too, she would
break off into the smile which I was beginning to dread. “No, no!” she kept
repeating. “You are my dear one; you are the man I trust.” Again she laid her
hands upon my shoulders, and again she gazed at me as she reiterated: “You love
me, you love me? Will you always love me?” I could not take my eyes off her.
Never before had I seen her in this mood of humility and affection. True, the
mood was the outcome of hysteria; but—! All of a sudden she noticed my ardent
gaze, and smiled slightly. The next moment, for no apparent reason, she began to
talk of Astley.
She continued talking and talking about him, but I could not make out all she
said—more particularly when she was endeavouring to tell me of something or
other which had happened recently. On the whole, she appeared to be laughing at
Astley, for she kept repeating that he was waiting for her, and did I know
whether, even at that moment, he was not standing beneath the window? “Yes,
yes, he is there,” she said. “Open the window, and see if he is not.” She pushed
me in that direction; yet, no sooner did I make a movement to obey her behest
than she burst into laughter, and I remained beside her, and she embraced me.
“Shall we go away tomorrow?” presently she asked, as though some
disturbing thought had recurred to her recollection. “How would it be if we were
to try and overtake Grandmamma? I think we should do so at Berlin. And what
think you she would have to say to us when we caught her up, and her eyes first
lit upon us? What, too, about Mr. Astley? He would not leap from the
Shlangenberg for my sake! No! Of that I am very sure!”—and she laughed. “Do
you know where he is going next year? He says he intends to go to the North
Pole for scientific investigations, and has invited me to go with him! Ha, ha, ha!
He also says that we Russians know nothing, can do nothing, without European
help. But he is a good fellow all the same. For instance, he does not blame the
General in the matter, but declares that Mlle. Blanche—that love—But no; I do
not know, I do not know.” She stopped suddenly, as though she had said her say,
and was feeling bewildered. “What poor creatures these people are. How sorry I
am for them, and for Grandmamma! But when are you going to kill De Griers?
Surely you do not intend actually to murder him? You fool! Do you suppose that
I should allow you to fight De Griers? Nor shall you kill the Baron.” Here she
burst out laughing. “How absurd you looked when you were talking to the
Burmergelms! I was watching you all the time—watching you from where I was
sitting. And how unwilling you were to go when I sent you! Oh, how I laughed
and laughed!”
Then she kissed and embraced me again; again she pressed her face to mine
with tender passion. Yet I neither saw nor heard her, for my head was in a
whirl....
It must have been about seven o’clock in the morning when I awoke. Daylight
had come, and Polina was sitting by my side—a strange expression on her face,
as though she had seen a vision and was unable to collect her thoughts. She too
had just awoken, and was now staring at the money on the table. My head ached;
it felt heavy. I attempted to take Polina’s hand, but she pushed me from her, and
leapt from the sofa. The dawn was full of mist, for rain had fallen, yet she moved
to the window, opened it, and, leaning her elbows upon the window-sill, thrust
out her head and shoulders to take the air. In this position did she remain for
several minutes, without ever looking round at me, or listening to what I was
saying. Into my head there came the uneasy thought: What is to happen now?
How is it all to end? Suddenly Polina rose from the window, approached the
table, and, looking at me with an expression of infinite aversion, said with lips
which quivered with anger:
“Well? Are you going to hand me over my fifty thousand francs?”
“Polina, you say that again, again?” I exclaimed.
“You have changed your mind, then? Ha, ha, ha! You are sorry you ever
promised them?”
On the table where, the previous night, I had counted the money there still was
lying the packet of twenty five thousand florins. I handed it to her.
“The francs are mine, then, are they? They are mine?” she inquired viciously
as she balanced the money in her hands.
“Yes; they have always been yours,” I said.
“Then take your fifty thousand francs!” and she hurled them full in my face.
The packet burst as she did so, and the floor became strewed with bank-notes.
The instant that the deed was done she rushed from the room.
At that moment she cannot have been in her right mind; yet, what was the
cause of her temporary aberration I cannot say. For a month past she had been
unwell. Yet what had brought about this present condition of mind, above all
things, this outburst? Had it come of wounded pride? Had it come of despair
over her decision to come to me? Had it come of the fact that, presuming too
much on my good fortune, I had seemed to be intending to desert her (even as
De Griers had done) when once I had given her the fifty thousand francs? But,
on my honour, I had never cherished any such intention. What was at fault, I
think, was her own pride, which kept urging her not to trust me, but, rather, to
insult me—even though she had not realised the fact. In her eyes I corresponded
to De Griers, and therefore had been condemned for a fault not wholly my own.
Her mood of late had been a sort of delirium, a sort of light-headedness—that I
knew full well; yet, never had I sufficiently taken it into consideration. Perhaps
she would not pardon me now? Ah, but this was the present. What about the
future? Her delirium and sickness were not likely to make her forget what she
had done in bringing me De Griers’ letter. No, she must have known what she
was doing when she brought it.
Somehow I contrived to stuff the pile of notes and gold under the bed, to
cover them over, and then to leave the room some ten minutes after Polina. I felt
sure that she had returned to her own room; wherefore, I intended quietly to
follow her, and to ask the nursemaid aid who opened the door how her mistress
was. Judge, therefore, of my surprise when, meeting the domestic on the stairs,
she informed me that Polina had not yet returned, and that she (the domestic)
was at that moment on her way to my room in quest of her!
“Mlle. left me but ten minutes ago,” I said. “What can have become of her?”
The nursemaid looked at me reproachfully.
Already sundry rumours were flying about the hotel. Both in the office of the
commissionaire and in that of the landlord it was whispered that, at seven
o’clock that morning, the Fräulein had left the hotel, and set off, despite the rain,
in the direction of the Hôtel d’Angleterre. From words and hints let fall I could
see that the fact of Polina having spent the night in my room was now public
property. Also, sundry rumours were circulating concerning the General’s family
affairs. It was known that last night he had gone out of his mind, and paraded the
hotel in tears; also, that the old lady who had arrived was his mother, and that
she had come from Russia on purpose to forbid her son’s marriage with Mlle. de
Cominges, as well as to cut him out of her will if he should disobey her; also
that, because he had disobeyed her, she had squandered all her money at roulette,
in order to have nothing more to leave to him. “Oh, these Russians!” exclaimed
the landlord, with an angry toss of the head, while the bystanders laughed and
the clerk betook himself to his accounts. Also, every one had learnt about my
winnings; Karl, the corridor lacquey, was the first to congratulate me. But with
these folk I had nothing to do. My business was to set off at full speed to the
Hôtel d’Angleterre.
As yet it was early for Mr. Astley to receive visitors; but, as soon as he learnt
that it was I who had arrived, he came out into the corridor to meet me, and
stood looking at me in silence with his steel-grey eyes as he waited to hear what
I had to say. I inquired after Polina.
“She is ill,” he replied, still looking at me with his direct, unwavering glance.
“And she is in your rooms.”
“Yes, she is in my rooms.”
 “Then you are minded to keep her there?”
“Yes, I am minded to keep her there.”
“But, Mr. Astley, that will raise a scandal. It ought not to be allowed. Besides,
she is very ill. Perhaps you had not remarked that?”
“Yes, I have. It was I who told you about it. Had she not been ill, she would
not have gone and spent the night with you.”
“Then you know all about it?”
“Yes; for last night she was to have accompanied me to the house of a relative
of mine. Unfortunately, being ill, she made a mistake, and went to your rooms
instead.”
“Indeed? Then I wish you joy, Mr. Astley. Apropos, you have reminded me of
something. Were you beneath my window last night? Every moment Mlle.
Polina kept telling me to open the window and see if you were there; after which
she always smiled.”
“Indeed? No, I was not there; but I was waiting in the corridor, and walking
about the hotel.”
“She ought to see a doctor, you know, Mr. Astley.”
“Yes, she ought. I have sent for one, and, if she dies, I shall hold you
responsible.”
This surprised me.
“Pardon me,” I replied, “but what do you mean?”
“Never mind. Tell me if it is true that, last night, you won two hundred
thousand thalers?”
“No; I won a hundred thousand florins.”
“Good heavens! Then I suppose you will be off to Paris this morning?”
“Why?”
“Because all Russians who have grown rich go to Paris,” explained Astley, as
though he had read the fact in a book.
“But what could I do in Paris in summer time?—I love her, Mr. Astley! Surely
you know that?”
“Indeed? I am sure that you do not. Moreover, if you were to stay here, you
would lose everything that you possess, and have nothing left with which to pay
your expenses in Paris. Well, good-bye now. I feel sure that today will see you
gone from here.”
“Good-bye. But I am not going to Paris. Likewise—pardon me—what is to
become of this family? I mean that the affair of the General and Mlle. Polina will
soon be all over the town.”
“I daresay; yet, I hardly suppose that that will break the General’s heart.
Moreover, Mlle. Polina has a perfect right to live where she chooses. In short, we
may say that, as a family, this family has ceased to exist.”
I departed, and found myself smiling at the Englishman’s strange assurance
that I should soon be leaving for Paris. “I suppose he means to shoot me in a
duel, should Polina die. Yes, that is what he intends to do.” Now, although I was
honestly sorry for Polina, it is a fact that, from the moment when, the previous
night, I had approached the gaming-table, and begun to rake in the packets of
bank-notes, my love for her had entered upon a new plane. Yes, I can say that
now; although, at the time, I was barely conscious of it. Was I, then, at heart a
gambler? Did I, after all, love Polina not so very much? No, no! As God is my
witness, I loved her! Even when I was returning home from Mr. Astley’s my
suffering was genuine, and my self-reproach sincere. But presently I was to go
through an exceedingly strange and ugly experience.
I was proceeding to the General’s rooms when I heard a door near me open,
and a voice call me by name. It was Mlle.’s mother, the Widow de Cominges
who was inviting me, in her daughter’s name, to enter.
I did so; whereupon, I heard a laugh and a little cry proceed from the bedroom
(the pair occupied a suite of two apartments), where Mlle. Blanche was just
arising.
“Ah, c’est lui! Viens, donc, bête! Is it true that you have won a mountain of
gold and silver? J’aimerais mieux l’or.”
“Yes,” I replied with a smile.
“How much?”
“A hundred thousand florins.”
“Bibi, comme tu es bête! Come in here, for I can’t hear you where you are
now. Nous ferons bombance, n’est-ce pas?”
Entering her room, I found her lolling under a pink satin coverlet, and
revealing a pair of swarthy, wonderfully healthy shoulders—shoulders such as
one sees in dreams—shoulders covered over with a white cambric nightgown
which, trimmed with lace, stood out, in striking relief, against the darkness of
her skin.
“Mon fils, as-tu du cœur?” she cried when she saw me, and then giggled. Her
laugh had always been a very cheerful one, and at times it even sounded sincere.
 “Tout autre—” I began, paraphrasing Corneille.
“See here,” she prattled on. “Please search for my stockings, and help me to
dress. Aussi, si tu n’es pas trop bête je te prends à Paris. I am just off, let me tell
you.”
“This moment?”
“In half an hour.”
True enough, everything stood ready-packed—trunks, portmanteaux, and all.
Coffee had long been served.
“Eh bien, tu verras Paris. Dis donc, qu’est-ce que c’est qu’un ‘utchitel’? Tu
étais bien bête quand tu étais ‘utchitel.’ Where are my stockings? Please help me
to dress.”
And she lifted up a really ravishing foot—small, swarthy, and not misshapen
like the majority of feet which look dainty only in bottines. I laughed, and started
to draw on to the foot a silk stocking, while Mlle. Blanche sat on the edge of the
bed and chattered.
“Eh bien, que feras-tu si je te prends avec moi? First of all I must have fifty
thousand francs, and you shall give them to me at Frankfurt. Then we will go on
to Paris, where we will live together, et je te ferai voir des étoiles en plein jour.
Yes, you shall see such women as your eyes have never lit upon.”
“Stop a moment. If I were to give you those fifty thousand francs, what should
I have left for myself?”
“Another hundred thousand francs, please to remember. Besides, I could live
with you in your rooms for a month, or even for two; or even for longer. But it
would not take us more than two months to get through fifty thousand francs;
for, look you, je suis bonne enfante, et tu verras des étoiles, you may be sure.”
“What? You mean to say that we should spend the whole in two months?”
“Certainly. Does that surprise you very much? Ah, vil esclave! Why, one
month of that life would be better than all your previous existence. One month—
et après, le déluge! Mais tu ne peux comprendre. Va! Away, away! You are not
worth it.—Ah, que fais-tu?”
For, while drawing on the other stocking, I had felt constrained to kiss her.
Immediately she shrunk back, kicked me in the face with her toes, and turned me
neck and crop out of the room.
“Eh bien, mon ‘utchitel’,” she called after me, “je t’attends, si tu veux. I start
in a quarter of an hour’s time.”
I returned to my own room with my head in a whirl. It was not my fault that
Polina had thrown a packet in my face, and preferred Mr. Astley to myself. A
few bank-notes were still fluttering about the floor, and I picked them up. At that
moment the door opened, and the landlord appeared—a person who, until now,
had never bestowed upon me so much as a glance. He had come to know if I
would prefer to move to a lower floor—to a suite which had just been tenanted
by Count V.
For a moment I reflected.
“No!” I shouted. “My account, please, for in ten minutes I shall be gone.”
“To Paris, to Paris!” I added to myself. “Every man of birth must make her
acquaintance.”
Within a quarter of an hour all three of us were seated in a family
compartment—Mlle. Blanche, the Widow de Cominges, and myself. Mlle. kept
laughing hysterically as she looked at me, and Madame re-echoed her; but I did
not feel so cheerful. My life had broken in two, and yesterday had infected me
with a habit of staking my all upon a card. Although it might be that I had failed
to win my stake, that I had lost my senses, that I desired nothing better, I felt that
the scene was to be changed only for a time. “Within a month from now,” I kept
thinking to myself, “I shall be back again in Roulettenberg; and then I mean to
have it out with you, Mr. Astley!” Yes, as now I look back at things, I remember
that I felt greatly depressed, despite the absurd gigglings of the egregious
Blanche.
“What is the matter with you? How dull you are!” she cried at length as she
interrupted her laughter to take me seriously to task.
“Come, come! We are going to spend your two hundred thousand francs for
you, et tu seras heureux comme un petit roi. I myself will tie your tie for you,
and introduce you to Hortense. And when we have spent your money you shall
return here, and break the bank again. What did those two Jews tell you?—that
the thing most needed is daring, and that you possess it? Consequently, this is
not the first time that you will be hurrying to Paris with money in your pocket.
Quant à moi, je veux cinquante mille francs de rente, et alors——”
“But what about the General?” I interrupted.
“The General? You know well enough that at about this hour every day he
goes to buy me a bouquet. On this occasion, I took care to tell him that he must
hunt for the choicest of flowers; and when he returns home, the poor fellow will
find the bird flown. Possibly he may take wing in pursuit—ha, ha, ha! And if so,
I shall not be sorry, for he could be useful to me in Paris, and Mr. Astley will pay
his debts here.”
In this manner did I depart for the Gay City.
 XVI

Of Paris what am I to say? The whole proceeding was a delirium, a madness. I

spent a little over three weeks there, and, during that time, saw my hundred
thousand francs come to an end. I speak only of the one hundred thousand
francs, for the other hundred thousand I gave to Mlle. Blanche in pure cash. That
is to say, I handed her fifty thousand francs at Frankfurt, and, three days later (in
Paris), advanced her another fifty thousand on note of hand. Nevertheless, a
week had not elapsed ere she came to me for more money. “Et les cent mille
francs qui nous restent,” she added, “tu les mangeras avec moi, mon utchitel.”
Yes, she always called me her “utchitel.” A person more economical, grasping,
and mean than Mlle. Blanche one could not imagine. But this was only as
regards her own money. My hundred thousand francs (as she explained to me
later) she needed to set up her establishment in Paris, “so that once and for all I
may be on a decent footing, and proof against any stones which may be thrown
at me—at all events for a long time to come.” Nevertheless, I saw nothing of
those hundred thousand francs, for my own purse (which she inspected daily)
never managed to amass in it more than a hundred francs at a time; and,
generally the sum did not reach even that figure.
“What do you want with money?” she would say to me with air of absolute
simplicity; and I never disputed the point. Nevertheless, though she fitted out her
flat very badly with the money, the fact did not prevent her from saying when,
later, she was showing me over the rooms of her new abode: “See what care and
taste can do with the most wretched of means!” However, her “wretchedness”
had cost fifty thousand francs, while with the remaining fifty thousand she
purchased a carriage and horses.
Also, we gave a couple of balls—evening parties attended by Hortense and
Lisette and Cléopatre, who were women remarkable both for the number of their
liaisons and (though only in some cases) for their good looks. At these reunions I
had to play the part of host—to meet and entertain fat mercantile parvenus who
were impossible by reason of their rudeness and braggadocio, colonels of
various kinds, hungry authors, and journalistic hacks—all of whom disported
themselves in fashionable tailcoats and pale yellow gloves, and displayed such
an aggregate of conceit and gasconade as would be unthinkable even in St.
Petersburg—which is saying a great deal! They used to try to make fun of me,
but I would console myself by drinking champagne and then lolling in a retiring-
room. Nevertheless, I found it deadly work. “C’est un utchitel,” Blanche would
say of me, “qui a gagné deux cent mille francs, and but for me, would have had
not a notion how to spend them. Presently he will have to return to his tutoring.
Does any one know of a vacant post? You know, one must do something for
him.”
I had the more frequent recourse to champagne in that I constantly felt
depressed and bored, owing to the fact that I was living in the most bourgeois
commercial milieu imaginable—a milieu wherein every sou was counted and
grudged. Indeed, two weeks had not elapsed before I perceived that Blanche had
no real affection for me, even though she dressed me in elegant clothes, and
herself tied my tie each day. In short, she utterly despised me. But that caused
me no concern. Blasé and inert, I spent my evenings generally at the Château des
Fleurs, where I would get fuddled and then dance the cancan (which, in that
establishment, was a very indecent performance) with éclat. At length, the time
came when Blanche had drained my purse dry. She had conceived an idea that,
during the term of our residence together, it would be well if I were always to
walk behind her with a paper and pencil, in order to jot down exactly what she
spent, what she had saved, what she was paying out, and what she was laying by.
Well, of course I could not fail to be aware that this would entail a battle over
every ten francs; so, although for every possible objection that I might make she
had prepared a suitable answer, she soon saw that I made no objections, and
therefore, had to start disputes herself. That is to say, she would burst out into
tirades which were met only with silence as I lolled on a sofa and stared fixedly
at the ceiling. This greatly surprised her. At first she imagined that it was due
merely to the fact that I was a fool, “un utchitel”; wherefore she would break off
her harangue in the belief that, being too stupid to understand, I was a hopeless
case. Then she would leave the room, but return ten minutes later to resume the
contest. This continued throughout her squandering of my money—a
squandering altogether out of proportion to our means. An example is the way in
which she changed her first pair of horses for a pair which cost sixteen thousand
francs.
“Bibi,” she said on the latter occasion as she approached me, “surely you are
not angry?”
“No-o-o: I am merely tired,” was my reply as I pushed her from me. This
seemed to her so curious that straightway she seated herself by my side.
“You see,” she went on, “I decided to spend so much upon these horses only
because I can easily sell them again. They would go at any time for twenty
thousand francs.”
“Yes, yes. They are splendid horses, and you have got a splendid turn-out. I
am quite content. Let me hear no more of the matter.”
“Then you are not angry?”
“No. Why should I be? You are wise to provide yourself with what you need,
for it will all come in handy in the future. Yes, I quite see the necessity of your
establishing yourself on a good basis, for without it you will never earn your
million. My hundred thousand francs I look upon merely as a beginning—as a
mere drop in the bucket.”
Blanche, who had by no means expected such declarations from me, but,
rather, an uproar and protests, was rather taken aback.
“Well, well, what a man you are!” she exclaimed. “Mais tu as l’esprit pour
comprendre. Sais-tu, mon garçon, although you are a tutor, you ought to have
been born a prince. Are you not sorry that your money should be going so
quickly?”
“No. The quicker it goes the better.”
“Mais—sais-tu—mais dis donc, are you really rich? Mais sais-tu, you have
too much contempt for money. Qu’est-ce que tu feras après, dis donc?”
“Après I shall go to Homburg, and win another hundred thousand francs.”
“Oui, oui, c’est ça, c’est magnifique! Ah, I know you will win them, and bring
them to me when you have done so. Dis donc—you will end by making me love
you. Since you are what you are, I mean to love you all the time, and never to be
unfaithful to you. You see, I have not loved you before parce que je croyais que
tu n’es qu’un utchitel (quelque chose comme un lacquais, n’est-ce pas?) Yet all
the time I have been true to you, parce que je suis bonne fille.”
“You lie!” I interrupted. “Did I not see you, the other day, with Albert—with
that black-jowled officer?”
“Oh, oh! Mais tu es—”
“Yes, you are lying right enough. But what makes you suppose that I should
be angry? Rubbish! Il faut que jeunesse se passe. Even if that officer were here
now, I should refrain from putting him out of the room if I thought you really
cared for him. Only, mind you, do not give him any of my money. You hear?”
“You say, do you, that you would not be angry? Mais tu es un vrai philosophe,
sais-tu? Oui, un vrai philosophe! Eh bien, je t’aimerai, je t’aimerai. Tu verras-tu
seras content.”
True enough, from that time onward she seemed to attach herself only to me,
and in this manner we spent our last ten days together. The promised “étoiles” I
did not see, but in other respects she, to a certain extent, kept her word.
Moreover, she introduced me to Hortense, who was a remarkable woman in her
way, and known among us as Thérèse Philosophe.
But I need not enlarge further, for to do so would require a story to itself, and
entail a colouring which I am loth to impart to the present narrative. The point is
that with all my faculties I desired the episode to come to an end as speedily as
possible. Unfortunately, our hundred thousand francs lasted us, as I have said,
for very nearly a month—which greatly surprised me. At all events, Blanche
bought herself articles to the tune of eighty thousand francs, and the rest sufficed
just to meet our expenses of living. Towards the close of the affair, Blanche grew
almost frank with me (at least, she scarcely lied to me at all)—declaring,
amongst other things, that none of the debts which she had been obliged to incur
were going to fall upon my head. “I have purposely refrained from making you
responsible for my bills or borrowings,” she said, “for the reason that I am sorry
for you. Any other woman in my place would have done so, and have let you go
to prison. See, then, how much I love you, and how good-hearted I am! Think,
too, what this accursed marriage with the General is going to cost me!”
True enough, the marriage took place. It did so at the close of our month
together, and I am bound to suppose that it was upon the ceremony that the last
remnants of my money were spent. With it the episode—that is to say, my
sojourn with the Frenchwoman—came to an end, and I formally retired from the
scene.
It happened thus: A week after we had taken up our abode in Paris there
arrived thither the General. He came straight to see us, and thenceforward lived
with us practically as our guest, though he had a flat of his own as well. Blanche
met him with merry badinage and laughter, and even threw her arms around him.
In fact, she managed it so that he had to follow everywhere in her train—
whether when promenading on the Boulevards, or when driving, or when going
to the theatre, or when paying calls; and this use which she made of him quite
satisfied the General. Still of imposing appearance and presence, as well as of
fair height, he had a dyed moustache and whiskers (he had formerly been in the
cuirassiers), and a handsome, though a somewhat wrinkled, face. Also, his
manners were excellent, and he could carry a frockcoat well—the more so since,
in Paris, he took to wearing his orders. To promenade the Boulevards with such a
man was not only a thing possible, but also, so to speak, a thing advisable, and
with this programme the good but foolish General had not a fault to find. The
truth is that he had never counted upon this programme when he came to Paris to
seek us out. On that occasion he had made his appearance nearly shaking with
terror, for he had supposed that Blanche would at once raise an outcry, and have
him put from the door; wherefore, he was the more enraptured at the turn that
things had taken, and spent the month in a state of senseless ecstasy. Already I
had learnt that, after our unexpected departure from Roulettenberg, he had had a
sort of a fit—that he had fallen into a swoon, and spent a week in a species of
garrulous delirium. Doctors had been summoned to him, but he had broken away
from them, and suddenly taken a train to Paris. Of course Blanche’s reception of
him had acted as the best of all possible cures, but for long enough he carried the
marks of his affliction, despite his present condition of rapture and delight. To
think clearly, or even to engage in any serious conversation, had now become
impossible for him; he could only ejaculate after each word “Hm!” and then nod
his head in confirmation. Sometimes, also, he would laugh, but only in a
nervous, hysterical sort of a fashion; while at other times he would sit for hours
looking as black as night, with his heavy eyebrows knitted. Of much that went
on he remained wholly oblivious, for he grew extremely absent-minded, and
took to talking to himself. Only Blanche could awake him to any semblance of
life. His fits of depression and moodiness in corners always meant either that he
had not seen her for some while, or that she had gone out without taking him
with her, or that she had omitted to caress him before departing. When in this
condition, he would refuse to say what he wanted—nor had he the least idea that
he was thus sulking and moping. Next, after remaining in this condition for an
hour or two (this I remarked on two occasions when Blanche had gone out for
the day—probably to see Albert), he would begin to look about him, and to grow
uneasy, and to hurry about with an air as though he had suddenly remembered
something, and must try and find it; after which, not perceiving the object of his
search, nor succeeding in recalling what that object had been, he would as
suddenly relapse into oblivion, and continue so until the reappearance of
Blanche—merry, wanton, half-dressed, and laughing her strident laugh as she
approached to pet him, and even to kiss him (though the latter reward he seldom
received). Once, he was so overjoyed at her doing so that he burst into tears.
Even I myself was surprised.
From the first moment of his arrival in Paris, Blanche set herself to plead with
me on his behalf; and at such times she even rose to heights of eloquence—
saying that it was for me she had abandoned him, though she had almost become
his betrothed and promised to become so; that it was for her sake he had
deserted his family; that, having been in his service, I ought to remember the
fact, and to feel ashamed. To all this I would say nothing, however much she
chattered on; until at length I would burst out laughing, and the incident would
come to an end (at first, as I have said, she had thought me a fool, but since she
had come to deem me a man of sense and sensibility). In short, I had the
happiness of calling her better nature into play; for though, at first, I had not
deemed her so, she was, in reality, a kind-hearted woman after her own fashion.
“You are good and clever,” she said to me towards the finish, “and my one regret
is that you are also so wrong-headed. You will her be a rich man!”
“Un vrai Russe—un Kalmuk” she usually called me.
Several times she sent me to give the General an airing in the streets, even as
she might have done with a lacquey and her spaniel; but, I preferred to take him
to the theatre, to the Bal Mabille, and to restaurants. For this purpose she usually
allowed me some money, though the General had a little of his own, and enjoyed
taking out his purse before strangers. Once I had to use actual force to prevent
him from buying a phaeton at a price of seven hundred francs, after a vehicle had
caught his fancy in the Palais Royal as seeming to be a desirable present for
Blanche. What could she have done with a seven-hundred-franc phaeton?—and
the General possessed in the world but a thousand francs! The origin even of
those francs I could never determine, but imagined them to have emanated from
Mr. Astley—the more so since the latter had paid the family’s hotel bill. As for
what view the General took of myself, I think that he never divined the footing
on which I stood with Blanche. True, he had heard, in a dim sort of way, that I
had won a good deal of money; but more probably he supposed me to be acting
as secretary—or even as a kind of servant—to his inamorata. At all events, he
continued to address me, in his old haughty style, as my superior. At times he
even took it upon himself to scold me. One morning in particular, he started to
sneer at me over our matutinal coffee. Though not a man prone to take offence,
he suddenly, and for some reason of which to this day I am ignorant, fell out
with me. Of course even he himself did not know the reason. To put things
shortly, he began a speech which had neither beginning nor ending, and cried
out, à bâtons rompus, that I was a boy whom he would soon put to rights—and
so forth, and so forth. Yet no one could understand what he was saying, and at
length Blanche exploded in a burst of laughter. Finally something appeased him,
and he was taken out for his walk. More than once, however, I noticed that his
depression was growing upon him; that he seemed to be feeling the want of
somebody or something; that, despite Blanche’s presence, he was missing some
person in particular. Twice, on these occasions, did he plunge into a conversation
with me, though he could not make himself intelligible, and only went on
rambling about the service, his late wife, his home, and his property. Every now
and then, also, some particular word would please him; whereupon he would
repeat it a hundred times in the day—even though the word happened to express
neither his thoughts nor his feelings. Again, I would try to get him to talk about
his children, but always he cut me short in his old snappish way, and passed to
another subject. “Yes, yes—my children,” was all that I could extract from him.
“Yes, you are right in what you have said about them.” Only once did he disclose
his real feelings. That was when we were taking him to the theatre, and suddenly
he exclaimed: “My unfortunate children! Yes, sir, they are unfortunate children.”
Once, too, when I chanced to mention Polina, he grew quite bitter against her.
“She is an ungrateful woman!” he exclaimed. “She is a bad and ungrateful
woman! She has broken up a family. If there were laws here, I would have her
impaled. Yes, I would.” As for De Griers, the General would not have his name
mentioned. “He has ruined me,” he would say. “He has robbed me, and cut my
throat. For two years he was a perfect nightmare to me. For months at a time he
never left me in my dreams. Do not speak of him again.”
It was now clear to me that Blanche and he were on the point of coming to
terms; yet, true to my usual custom, I said nothing. At length, Blanche took the
initiative in explaining matters. She did so a week before we parted.
“Il a de la chance,” she prattled, “for the Grandmother is now really ill, and
therefore, bound to die. Mr. Astley has just sent a telegram to say so, and you
will agree with me that the General is likely to be her heir. Even if he should not
be so, he will not come amiss, since, in the first place, he has his pension, and, in
the second place, he will be content to live in a back room; whereas I shall be
Madame General, and get into a good circle of society” (she was always thinking
of this) “and become a Russian châtelaine. Yes, I shall have a mansion of my
own, and peasants, and a million of money at my back.”
“But, suppose he should prove jealous? He might demand all sorts of things,
you know. Do you follow me?”
“Oh, dear no! How ridiculous that would be of him! Besides, I have taken
measures to prevent it. You need not be alarmed. That is to say, I have induced
him to sign notes of hand in Albert’s name. Consequently, at any time I could get
him punished. Isn’t he ridiculous?”
“Very well, then. Marry him.”
And, in truth, she did so—though the marriage was a family one only, and
involved no pomp or ceremony. In fact, she invited to the nuptials none but
Albert and a few other friends. Hortense, Cléopatre, and the rest she kept firmly
at a distance. As for the bridegroom, he took a great interest in his new position.
Blanche herself tied his tie, and Blanche herself pomaded him—with the result
that, in his frockcoat and white waistcoat, he looked quite comme il faut.
“Il est, pourtant, très comme il faut,” Blanche remarked when she issued from
his room, as though the idea that he was “très comme il faut” had impressed
even her. For myself, I had so little knowledge of the minor details of the affair,
and took part in it so much as a supine spectator, that I have forgotten most of
what passed on this occasion. I only remember that Blanche and the Widow
figured at it, not as “de Cominges,” but as “du Placet.” Why they had hitherto
been “de Cominges” I do not know—I only know that this entirely satisfied the
General, that he liked the name “du Placet” even better than he had liked the
name “de Cominges.” On the morning of the wedding, he paced the salon in his
gala attire and kept repeating to himself with an air of great gravity and
importance: “Mlle. Blanche du Placet! Mlle. Blanche du Placet, du Placet!” He
beamed with satisfaction as he did so. Both in the church and at the wedding
breakfast he remained not only pleased and contented, but even proud. She too
underwent a change, for now she assumed an air of added dignity.
“I must behave altogether differently,” she confided to me with a serious air.
“Yet, mark you, there is a tiresome circumstance of which I had never before
thought—which is, how best to pronounce my new family name. Zagorianski,
Zagozianski, Madame la Générale de Sago, Madame la Générale de Fourteen
Consonants—oh these infernal Russian names! The last of them would be the
best to use, don’t you think?”
At length the time had come for us to part, and Blanche, the egregious
Blanche, shed real tears as she took her leave of me. “Tu étais bon enfant” she
said with a sob. “Je te croyais bête et tu en avais l’air, but it suited you.” Then,
having given me a final handshake, she exclaimed, “Attends!”; whereafter,
running into her boudoir, she brought me thence two thousand-franc notes. I
could scarcely believe my eyes! “They may come in handy for you,” she
explained, “for, though you are a very learned tutor, you are a very stupid man.
More than two thousand francs, however, I am not going to give you, for the
reason that, if I did so, you would gamble them all away. Now good-bye. Nous
serons toujours bons amis, and if you win again, do not fail to come to me, et tu
seras heureux.”
I myself had still five hundred francs left, as well as a watch worth a thousand
francs, a few diamond studs, and so on. Consequently, I could subsist for quite a
length of time without particularly bestirring myself. Purposely I have taken up
my abode where I am now partly to pull myself together, and partly to wait for
Mr. Astley, who, I have learnt, will soon be here for a day or so on business. Yes,
I know that, and then—and then I shall go to Homburg. But to Roulettenberg I
shall not go until next year, for they say it is bad to try one’s luck twice in
succession at a table. Moreover, Homburg is where the best play is carried on.
 XVII

It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes of mine. I do so
now only because, being overwhelmed with depression, I wish to distract my
mind by reading them through at random. I left them off at the point where I was
just going to Homburg. My God, with what a light heart (comparatively
speaking) did I write the concluding lines!—though it may be not so much with
a light heart, as with a measure of self-confidence and unquenchable hope. At
that time had I any doubts of myself? Yet behold me now. Scarcely a year and a
half have passed, yet I am in a worse position than the meanest beggar. But what
is a beggar? A fig for beggary! I have ruined myself—that is all. Nor is there
anything with which I can compare myself; there is no moral which it would be
of any use for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well be
more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons who, in your
unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your maxims—if only you knew how
fully I myself comprehend the sordidness of my present state, you would not
trouble to wag your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not
already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the fact that by a single
turn of a roulette wheel everything for me, has become changed. Yet, had things
befallen otherwise, these moralists would have been among the first (yes, I feel
persuaded of it) to approach me with friendly jests and congratulations. Yes, they
would never have turned from me as they are doing now! A fig for all of them!
What am I? I am zero—nothing. What shall I be tomorrow? I may be risen from
the dead, and have begun life anew. For still, I may discover the man in myself,
if only my manhood has not become utterly shattered.
I went, I say, to Homburg, but afterwards went also to Roulettenberg, as well
as to Spa and Baden; in which latter place, for a time, I acted as valet to a certain
rascal of a Privy Councillor, by name Heintze, who until lately was also my
master here. Yes, for five months I lived my life with lacqueys! That was just
after I had come out of Roulettenberg prison, where I had lain for a small debt
which I owed. Out of that prison I was bailed by—by whom? By Mr. Astley? By
Polina? I do not know. At all events, the debt was paid to the tune of two
hundred thalers, and I sallied forth a free man. But what was I to do with myself?
In my dilemma I had recourse to this Heintze, who was a young scapegrace, and
the sort of man who could speak and write three languages. At first I acted as his
secretary, at a salary of thirty gülden a month, but afterwards I became his
lacquey, for the reason that he could not afford to keep a secretary—only an
unpaid servant. I had nothing else to turn to, so I remained with him, and
allowed myself to become his flunkey. But by stinting myself in meat and drink I
saved, during my five months of service, some seventy gülden; and one evening,
when we were at Baden, I told him that I wished to resign my post, and then
hastened to betake myself to roulette.
Oh, how my heart beat as I did so! No, it was not the money that I valued—
what I wanted was to make all this mob of Heintzes, hotel proprietors, and fine
ladies of Baden talk about me, recount my story, wonder at me, extol my doings,
and worship my winnings. True, these were childish fancies and aspirations, but
who knows but that I might meet Polina, and be able to tell her everything, and
see her look of surprise at the fact that I had overcome so many adverse strokes
of fortune. No, I had no desire for money for its own sake, for I was perfectly
well aware that I should only squander it upon some new Blanche, and spend
another three weeks in Paris after buying a pair of horses which had cost sixteen
thousand francs. No, I never believed myself to be a hoarder; in fact, I knew only
too well that I was a spendthrift. And already, with a sort of fear, a sort of
sinking in my heart, I could hear the cries of the croupiers—“Trente et un, rouge,
impair et passe,” “Quarte, noir, pair et manque.” How greedily I gazed upon the
gaming-table, with its scattered louis d’or, ten-gülden pieces, and thalers; upon
the streams of gold as they issued from the croupier’s hands, and piled
themselves up into heaps of gold scintillating as fire; upon the ell—long rolls of
silver lying around the croupier. Even at a distance of two rooms I could hear the
chink of that money—so much so that I nearly fell into convulsions.
Ah, the evening when I took those seventy gülden to the gaming table was a
memorable one for me. I began by staking ten gülden upon passe. For passe I
had always had a sort of predilection, yet I lost my stake upon it. This left me
with sixty gülden in silver. After a moment’s thought I selected zero—beginning
by staking five gülden at a time. Twice I lost, but the third round suddenly
brought up the desired coup. I could almost have died with joy as I received my
one hundred and seventy-five gülden. Indeed, I have been less pleased when, in
former times, I have won a hundred thousand gülden. Losing no time, I staked
another hundred gülden upon the red, and won; two hundred upon the red, and
won; four hundred upon the black, and won; eight hundred upon manque, and
won. Thus, with the addition of the remainder of my original capital, I found
myself possessed, within five minutes, of seventeen hundred gülden. Ah, at such
moments one forgets both oneself and one’s former failures! This I had gained
by risking my very life. I had dared so to risk, and behold, again I was a member
of mankind!
I went and hired a room, I shut myself up in it, and sat counting my money
until three o’clock in the morning. To think that when I awoke on the morrow, I
was no lacquey! I decided to leave at once for Homburg. There I should neither
have to serve as a footman nor to lie in prison. Half an hour before starting, I
went and ventured a couple of stakes—no more; with the result that, in all, I lost
fifteen hundred florins. Nevertheless, I proceeded to Homburg, and have now
been there for a month.
Of course, I am living in constant trepidation, playing for the smallest of
stakes, and always looking out for something—calculating, standing whole days
by the gaming-tables to watch the play—even seeing that play in my dreams—
yet seeming, the while, to be in some way stiffening, to be growing caked, as it
were, in mire. But I must conclude my notes, which I finish under the impression
of a recent encounter with Mr. Astley. I had not seen him since we parted at
Roulettenberg, and now we met quite by accident. At the time I was walking in
the public gardens, and meditating upon the fact that not only had I still some
fifty gülden in my possession, but also I had fully paid up my hotel bill three
days ago. Consequently, I was in a position to try my luck again at roulette; and
if I won anything I should be able to continue my play, whereas, if I lost what I
now possessed, I should once more have to accept a lacquey’s place, provided
that, in the alternative, I failed to discover a Russian family which stood in need
of a tutor. Plunged in these reflections, I started on my daily walk through the
Park and forest towards a neighbouring principality. Sometimes, on such
occasions, I spent four hours on the way, and would return to Homburg tired and
hungry; but, on this particular occasion, I had scarcely left the gardens for the
Park when I caught sight of Astley seated on a bench. As soon as he perceived
me, he called me by name, and I went and sat down beside him; but, on noticing
that he seemed a little stiff in his manner, I hastened to moderate the expression
of joy which the sight of him had called forth.
“You here?” he said. “Well, I had an idea that I should meet you. Do not
trouble to tell me anything, for I know all—yes, all. In fact, your whole life
during the past twenty months lies within my knowledge.”
“How closely you watch the doings of your old friends!” I replied. “That does
you infinite credit. But stop a moment. You have reminded me of something.
Was it you who bailed me out of Roulettenberg prison when I was lying there for
a debt of two hundred gülden? someone did so.”
“Oh dear no!—though I knew all the time that you were lying there.”
“Perhaps you could tell me who did bail me out?”
“No; I am afraid I could not.”
“What a strange thing! For I know no Russians at all here, so it cannot have
been a Russian who befriended me. In Russia we Orthodox folk do go bail for
one another, but in this case I thought it must have been done by some English
stranger who was not conversant with the ways of the country.”
Mr. Astley seemed to listen to me with a sort of surprise. Evidently he had
expected to see me looking more crushed and broken than I was.
“Well,” he said—not very pleasantly, “I am none the less glad to find that you
retain your old independence of spirit, as well as your buoyancy.”
“Which means that you are vexed at not having found me more abased and
humiliated than I am?” I retorted with a smile.
Astley was not quick to understand this, but presently did so and laughed.
“Your remarks please me as they always did,” he continued. “In those words I
see the clever, triumphant, and, above all things, cynical friend of former days.
Only Russians have the faculty of combining within themselves so many
opposite qualities. Yes, most men love to see their best friend in abasement; for
generally it is on such abasement that friendship is founded. All thinking persons
know that ancient truth. Yet, on the present occasion, I assure you, I am sincerely
glad to see that you are not cast down. Tell me, are you never going to give up
gambling?”
“Damn the gambling! Yes, I should certainly have given it up, were it not that
—”
“That you are losing? I thought so. You need not tell me any more. I know
how things stand, for you have said that last in despair, and therefore, truthfully.
Have you no other employment than gambling?”
“No; none whatever.”
Astley gave me a searching glance. At that time it was ages since I had last
looked at a paper or turned the pages of a book.
“You are growing blasé,” he said. “You have not only renounced life, with its
interests and social ties, but the duties of a citizen and a man; you have not only
renounced the friends whom I know you to have had, and every aim in life but
that of winning money; but you have also renounced your memory. Though I can
remember you in the strong, ardent period of your life, I feel persuaded that you
have now forgotten every better feeling of that period—that your present dreams
and aspirations of subsistence do not rise above pair, impair rouge, noir, the
twelve middle numbers, and so forth.”
“Enough, Mr. Astley!” I cried with some irritation—almost in anger. “Kindly
do not recall to me any more recollections, for I can remember things for myself.
Only for a time have I put them out of my head. Only until I shall have
rehabilitated myself, am I keeping my memory dulled. When that hour shall
come, you will see me arise from the dead.”
“Then you will have to be here another ten years,” he replied. “Should I then
be alive, I will remind you—here, on this very bench—of what I have just said.
In fact, I will bet you a wager that I shall do so.”
“Say no more,” I interrupted impatiently. “And to show you that I have not
wholly forgotten the past, may I enquire where Mlle. Polina is? If it was not you
who bailed me out of prison, it must have been she. Yet never have I heard a
word concerning her.”
“No, I do not think it was she. At the present moment she is in Switzerland,
and you will do me a favour by ceasing to ask me these questions about her.”
Astley said this with a firm, and even an angry, air.
“Which means that she has dealt you a serious wound?” I burst out with an
involuntary sneer.
“Mlle. Polina,” he continued, “Is the best of all possible living beings; but, I
repeat, that I shall thank you to cease questioning me about her. You never really
knew her, and her name on your lips is an offence to my moral feeling.”
“Indeed? On what subject, then, have I a better right to speak to you than on
this? With it are bound up all your recollections and mine. However, do not be
alarmed: I have no wish to probe too far into your private, your secret affairs.
My interest in Mlle. Polina does not extend beyond her outward circumstances
and surroundings. About them you could tell me in two words.”
“Well, on condition that the matter shall end there, I will tell you that for a
long time Mlle. Polina was ill, and still is so. My mother and sister entertained
her for a while at their home in the north of England, and thereafter Mlle.
Polina’s grandmother (you remember the mad old woman?) died, and left Mlle.
Polina a personal legacy of seven thousand pounds sterling. That was about six
months ago, and now Mlle. is travelling with my sister’s family—my sister
having since married. Mlle.’s little brother and sister also benefited by the
Grandmother’s will, and are now being educated in London. As for the General,
he died in Paris last month, of a stroke. Mlle. Blanche did well by him, for she
succeeded in having transferred to herself all that he received from the
Grandmother. That, I think, concludes all that I have to tell.”
“And De Griers? Is he too travelling in Switzerland?”
“No; nor do I know where he is. Also I warn you once more that you had
better avoid such hints and ignoble suppositions; otherwise you will assuredly
have to reckon with me.”
“What? In spite of our old friendship?”
“Yes, in spite of our old friendship.”
“Then I beg your pardon a thousand times, Mr. Astley. I meant nothing
offensive to Mlle. Polina, for I have nothing of which to accuse her. Moreover,
the question of there being anything between this Frenchman and this Russian
lady is not one which you and I need discuss, nor even attempt to understand.”
“If,” replied Astley, “you do not care to hear their names coupled together,
may I ask you what you mean by the expressions ‘this Frenchman,’ ‘this Russian
lady,’ and ‘there being anything between them’? Why do you call them so
particularly a ‘Frenchman’ and a ‘Russian lady’?”
“Ah, I see you are interested, Mr. Astley. But it is a long, long story, and calls
for a lengthy preface. At the same time, the question is an important one,
however ridiculous it may seem at the first glance. A Frenchman, Mr. Astley, is
merely a fine figure of a man. With this you, as a Britisher, may not agree. With
it I also, as a Russian, may not agree—out of envy. Yet possibly our good ladies
are of another opinion. For instance, one may look upon Racine as a broken-
down, hobbledehoy, perfumed individual—one may even be unable to read him;
and I too may think him the same, as well as, in some respects, a subject for
ridicule. Yet about him, Mr. Astley, there is a certain charm, and, above all
things, he is a great poet—though one might like to deny it. Yes, the Frenchman,
the Parisian, as a national figure, was in process of developing into a figure of
elegance before we Russians had even ceased to be bears. The Revolution
bequeathed to the French nobility its heritage, and now every whipper-snapper
of a Parisian may possess manners, methods of expression, and even thoughts
that are above reproach in form, while all the time he himself may share in that
form neither in initiative nor in intellect nor in soul—his manners, and the rest,
having come to him through inheritance. Yes, taken by himself, the Frenchman
is frequently a fool of fools and a villain of villains. Per contra, there is no one in
the world more worthy of confidence and respect than this young Russian lady.
De Griers might so mask his face and play a part as easily to overcome her heart,
for he has an imposing figure, Mr. Astley, and this young lady might easily take
that figure for his real self—for the natural form of his heart and soul—instead
of the mere cloak with which heredity has dowered him. And even though it may
offend you, I feel bound to say that the majority also of English people are
uncouth and unrefined, whereas we Russian folk can recognise beauty wherever
we see it, and are always eager to cultivate the same. But to distinguish beauty of
soul and personal originality there is needed far more independence and freedom
than is possessed by our women, especially by our younger ladies. At all events,
they need more experience. For instance, this Mlle. Polina—pardon me, but the
name has passed my lips, and I cannot well recall it—is taking a very long time
to make up her mind to prefer you to Monsieur de Griers. She may respect you,
she may become your friend, she may open out her heart to you; yet over that
heart there will be reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De
Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love—to the fact that De Griers
once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of a marquis, of a disenchanted
and ruined liberal who was doing his best to help her family and the frivolous
old General; and, although these transactions of his have since been exposed,
you will find that the exposure has made no impression upon her mind. Only
give her the De Griers of former days, and she will ask of you no more. The
more she may detest the present De Griers, the more will she lament the De
Griers of the past—even though the latter never existed but in her own
imagination. You are a sugar refiner, Mr. Astley, are you not?”
“Yes, I belong to the well-known firm of Lovell and Co.”
“Then see here. On the one hand, you are a sugar refiner, while, on the other
hand, you are an Apollo Belvedere. But the two characters do not mix with one
another. I, again, am not even a sugar refiner; I am a mere roulette gambler who
has also served as a lacquey. Of this fact Mlle. Polina is probably well aware,
since she appears to have an excellent force of police at her disposal.”
“You are saying this because you are feeling bitter,” said Astley with cold
indifference. “Yet there is not the least originality in your words.”
“I agree. But therein lies the horror of it all—that, how trepidation, playing
ever mean and farcical my accusations may be, they are none the less true. But I
am only wasting words.”
“Yes, you are, for you are only talking nonsense!” exclaimed my companion
—his voice now trembling and his eyes flashing fire. “Are you aware,” he
continued, “that wretched, ignoble, petty, unfortunate man though you are, it was
at her request I came to Homburg, in order to see you, and to have a long,
serious talk with you, and to report to her your feelings and thoughts and hopes
—yes, and your recollections of her, too?”
 “Indeed? Is that really so?” I cried—the tears beginning to well from my eyes.
Never before had this happened.
“Yes, poor unfortunate,” continued Astley. “She did love you; and I may tell
you this now for the reason that now you are utterly lost. Even if I were also to
tell you that she still loves you, you would none the less have to remain where
you are. Yes, you have ruined yourself beyond redemption. Once upon a time
you had a certain amount of talent, and you were of a lively disposition, and
your good looks were not to be despised. You might even have been useful to
your country, which needs men like you. Yet you remained here, and your life is
now over. I am not blaming you for this—in my view all Russians resemble you,
or are inclined to do so. If it is not roulette, then it is something else. The
exceptions are very rare. Nor are you the first to learn what a taskmaster is
yours. For roulette is not exclusively a Russian game. Hitherto, you have
honourably preferred to serve as a lacquey rather than to act as a thief; but what
the future may have in store for you I tremble to think. Now good-bye. You are
in want of money, I suppose? Then take these ten louis d’or. More I shall not
give you, for you would only gamble it away. Take care of these coins, and
farewell. Once more, take care of them.”
“No, Mr. Astley. After all that has been said I—”
“Take care of them!” repeated my friend. “I am certain you are still a
gentleman, and therefore I give you the money as one gentleman may give
money to another. Also, if I could be certain that you would leave both Homburg
and the gaming-tables, and return to your own country, I would give you a
thousand pounds down to start life afresh; but, I give you ten louis d’or instead
of a thousand pounds for the reason that at the present time a thousand pounds
and ten louis d’or will be all the same to you—you will lose the one as readily as
you will the other. Take the money, therefore, and good-bye.”
“Yes, I will take it if at the same time you will embrace me.”
“With pleasure.”
So we parted—on terms of sincere affection.

But he was wrong. If I was hard and undiscerning as regards Polina and De
Griers, he was hard and undiscerning as regards Russian people generally. Of
myself I say nothing. Yet—yet words are only words. I need to act. Above all
things I need to think of Switzerland. Tomorrow, tomorrow—Ah, but if only I
could set things right tomorrow, and be born again, and rise again from the dead!
But no—I cannot. Yet I must show her what I can do. Even if she should do no
more than learn that I can still play the man, it would be worth it. Today it is too
late, but tomorrow. Yet I have a presentiment that things can never be otherwise.
I have got fifteen louis d’or in my possession, although I began with fifteen
gülden. If I were to play carefully at the start—But no, no! Surely I am not such
a fool as that? Yet why should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first
but to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I should require but
to put a check upon my nature for one hour, and my fortunes would be changed
entirely. Yes, my nature is my weak point. I have only to remember what
happened to me some months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin. What a
notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the occasion in
question I had lost everything—everything; yet, just as I was leaving the Casino,
I heard another gülden give a rattle in my pocket! “Perhaps I shall need it for a
meal,” I thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed my mind,
and returned. That gülden I staked upon manque—and there is something in the
feeling that, though one is alone, and in a foreign land, and far from one’s own
home and friends, and ignorant of whence one’s next meal is to come, one is
nevertheless staking one’s very last coin! Well, I won the stake, and in twenty
minutes had left the Casino with a hundred and seventy gülden in my pocket!
That is a fact, and it shows what a last remaining gülden can do.... But what if
my heart had failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind? ...
No; tomorrow all shall be ended!

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