In my opinion the Countess looked even better in her white house-coat and cap than she had done in her ball gown. Reclining with her feet upon the double bed and leaning her elbows on the pillow, she gazed into the pale light of the lamp. A half-sad smile still lingered on her lovely little mouth.
‘Liza, may I come in?’ asked the Count’s voice from the other side of the door.
‘Please do,’ she answered without changing her position.
‘Did you enjoy yourself this evening, my dear?’ enquired the Count, kissing her.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then why are you looking so sad, Liza – you aren’t angry with me, are you?’
The Countess remained silent and her lips started to tremble, like the lips of a child about to cry.
‘I’m sure you are in fact angry with me – on account of my gambling. Well, you can set your mind at rest, my dearest: tonight I have just won back everything, and I shall not play again …
‘What is the matter?’ he asked again, gently kissing her hands: <for he had noticed the tears which had suddenly started to her eyes.>
The Countess made no reply but the tears trickled from her eyes. However much the Count caressed her and questioned her, she would not tell him why she was weeping; but she cried more and more bitterly.
Let her alone, you man without heart, without conscience. She is weeping precisely because you are caressing her and because you have the right to do so; and because the comforting fancies which filled her imagination have been dissipated like vapour by the touch of reality – the reality to which she was so indifferent until this evening, but which now has become repulsive and frightful to her from the moment when she realized the possibility of genuine love, and happiness.
VIII
We meet a universally respected nobleman
‘What, are you bored, my dear boy?’ said Prince Kornakov to Seriozha, who was wandering from room to room with a strange expression of indifference and agitation, taking no part in the dancing or the conversations.
‘Yes,’ he replied with a smile, ‘I would like to leave.’
‘Let us go to my house then – nous causerons.’15
‘I trust you are not staying here for supper, Kornakov?’ asked a man passing by. He was a tall, stout man of about forty with a puffy, decidedly unattractive yet pleasingly impudent face, who passed through the crowd with a firm and confident step and now paused in the doorway, his hat in his hand.
‘Have you finished your card game already?’
‘I managed to get that over before suppertime, thank God, and now I am fleeing from a deadly mayonnaise with Russian truffles, a tainted sturgeon, and other suchlike attractions,’ he shouted to practically the whole ballroom.
‘Where are you going for supper?’
‘Either to Trakhmanov’s, if he’s not asleep yet, or to the Novotroitsky inn. Why don’t you come with us? Atalov here is going too.’
‘Well, shall we go, Ivin?’ said Prince Kornakov. ‘By the way, are you acquainted?’ he added, addressing the stout man.
Seriozha shook his head.
‘This is Sergei Ivin, Marya Ivanovna’s son,’ said the Prince.
‘Delighted,’ said the stout gentleman without looking at him and proffering a podgy hand as he continued to make for the exit.
‘Come along quickly now.’
I presume that no one requires a detailed description of the type of this stout gentleman, who was in fact called N. N. Dolgov. Every one of my readers, even if he does not know him, has probably seen him or heard of N.N.: it should therefore be enough to supply a few essential features, for this person to spring to life in the reader’s imagination in all the fullness of his base and worthless nature. So, at least, it seems to me. Wealth, aristocratic birth, social sophistication, great and varied talents – all vitiated or disfigured by idleness and vice. A cynical mind which questions everything without limits, and resolves every question to the advantage of the lowest passions. A complete lack of conscience, shame, and any notion of morality in one’s pleasures. The blatant egoism of vice. A gift for coarse and harsh language. Sensuality, gluttony and drunkenness; contempt for everyone, himself excepted. A view of things from two aspects only – the satisfaction they can give him, and their defects. And two principal traits: a useless, aimless, thoroughly idle life, and the most vile depravity, which he not only does not bother to conceal, but flaunts openly with great satisfaction. People say that he is a wicked man; but always and everywhere he is respected, and people are proud to be linked with him; he is aware of this, and laughs, and despises them all the more. And how could he fail also to despise what is known as virtue, when all his life he has trampled on it, yet for all that is happy after his fashion – that is to say, his passions are gratified and people respect him.
Seriozha was in an exceptionally good humour. The presence of Prince Kornakov, whom he liked very much and who for some reason had a strong influence on him, gave him great satisfaction. And making the acquaintance of someone as notable as the stout gentleman tickled his vanity most pleasantly. At first the stout gentleman paid little attention to Seriozha, but when the Cossack waiter he had summoned on arriving at the Novotroitsky brought the pasties and wine he had ordered he grew more cordial, and noticing the young man’s relaxed mood he began chatting to him (there is nothing men of Dolgov’s stamp dislike more than shyness), patting him on the shoulder, and clinking glasses with him.
The thoughts and feelings of a young man in love are so powerfully focused on a single object that he has no time to observe and analyse the people he encounters; and of course nothing so much inhibits growing freedom and familiarity in social relations as the tendency, particularly in young men, not to accept people for what they seem to be, but to try to discover their inner, secret thoughts and motives. That evening Seriozha was in fact conscious of a powerful desire to be witty and amiable, and of the ability to be so without the slightest effort on his part.
Getting to know the retired General, a boon companion of Dolgov’s, which had at one time been a fantasy of his vanity, now ceased to give him any great satisfaction. On the contrary, he had the impression that he himself was bestowing honour and satisfaction on this General by speaking to him at all, since instead of speaking to the General he could have been speaking to her, or at least thinking about her. Until now he had never ventured to call Kornakov ‘thou’, although Kornakov frequently addressed him in the second person singular, but this evening he took the plunge, and using this intimate form of address gave him extraordinary pleasure. The Countess’s caressing look and her smile had given him a greater feeling of self-reliance than intelligence, academic distinction, good looks or constant praise could ever have done: in a single hour they had transformed him from boy to man. He suddenly felt within himself all those manly qualities which he had been only too well aware that he lacked: firmness, decision, courage, and a proud conviction of his own worth. An attentive observer might even have detected a change in his outward appearance that evening. His step had become more confident and freer, his body looked more upright, his arms no longer gave the impression that he was unsure what to do with them, his head was held higher, the childish softness and vagueness of his features was gone, the muscles of his brow and cheeks were more distinct, and his smile was bolder and firmer.