duly dreading the barbs that envy's always spreading, Eugene's a pedant in his dress, in fact a thorough fop, no less. Three whole hours, at the least accounting, he'll spend before the looking-glass, then from his cabinet he'll pass giddy as Venus when she's mounting a masculine disguise to aid her progress at the masquerade. XXVI Your curiosity is burning to hear what latest modes require, and so, before the world of learning, I could describe here his attire; and though to do so would be daring, it's my profession; he was wearing -- but
pantaloons, waistcoat,
and
frock,
these words are not of Russian stock: I know (and seek your exculpation) that even so my wretched style already tends too much to smile on words of foreign derivation, though years ago I used to look at the Academic Diction-book. {46} XXVII That isn't our immediate worry: we'd better hasten to the ball, where, in a cab, and furious hurry, Onegin has outrun us all. Along the fronts of darkened houses, along the street where slumber drowses, twin lamps of serried coupés throw a cheerful glimmer on the snow and radiate a rainbow: blazing with lampions studded all about the sumptuous palais shines out; shadows that flit behind the glazing project in silhouette the tops of ladies and of freakish fops. XXVIII Up to the porch our hero's driven: in, past concierge, up marble stair flown like an arrow, then he's given a deft arrangement to his hair, and entered. Ballroom overflowing... and band already tired of blowing, while a mazurka holds the crowd; and everything is cramped and loud; spurs of Chevalier Gardes are clinking, dear ladies' feet fly past like hail, and on their captivating trail incendiary looks are slinking, while roar of violins contrives to drown the hiss of modish wives. {47} XXIX In days of carefree aspirations, the ballroom drove me off my head: the safest place for declarations, and where most surely notes are sped. You husbands, deeply I respect you! I'm at your service to protect you; now pay attention, I beseech, and take due warning from my speech. You too, mamas, I pray attend it, and watch your daughters closer yet, yes, focus on them your lorgnette, or else... or else, may God forfend it! I only write like this, you know, since I stopped sinning years ago. XXX Alas, on pleasure's wild variety I've wasted too much life away! But, did they not corrupt society, I'd still like dances to this day: the atmosphere of youth and madness, the crush, the glitter and the gladness, the ladies' calculated dress; I love their feet -- though I confess that all of Russia can't contribute three pairs of handsome ones -- yet there exists for me one special pair! one pair! I pay them memory's tribute though cold I am and sad; in sleep the heartache that they bring lies deep. {48} XXXI Oh, when, and to what desert banished, madman, can you forget their print? my little feet, where have you vanished, what flowers of spring display your dint? Nursed in the orient's languid weakness, across our snows of northern bleakness you left no steps that could be tracked: you loved the opulent contact of rugs, and carpets' rich refinement. Was it for you that I became long since unstirred by praise and fame and fatherland and grim confinement? The happiness of youth is dead, just like, on turf, your fleeting tread. XXXII Diana's breast, the cheeks of Flora, all these are charming! but to put it frankly, I'm a firm adorer of the Terpsichorean foot. It fascinates by its assurance of recompense beyond endurance, and fastens, like a term of art, the wilful fancies of the heart. My love for it is just as tender, under the table's linen shield, on springtime grasses of the field, in winter, on the cast-iron fender, on ballroom's looking-glass parquet or on the granite of the bay. {49} XXXIII On the seashore, with storm impending, how envious was I of the waves each in tumultuous turn descending to lie down at her feet like slaves! I longed, like every breaker hissing, to smother her dear feet with kissing. No, never in the hottest fire of boiling youth did I desire with any torture so exquisite to kiss Armida's lips, or seek the flaming roses of a cheek, or languid bosoms; and no visit of raging passion's surge and roll ever so roughly rocked my soul! XXXIV Another page of recollection: sometimes, in reverie's sacred land, I grasp a stirrup with affection, I feel a small foot in my hand; fancies once more are hotly bubbling, once more that touch is fiercely troubling the blood within my withered heart, once more the love, once more the smart... But, now I've praised the queens of fashion, enough of my loquacious lyre: they don't deserve what they inspire in terms of poetry or passion -- their looks and language in deceit are just as nimble as their feet. {50} XXXV And Eugene? half-awake, half-drowsing, from ball to bed behold him come; while Petersburg's already rousing, untirable, at sound of drum: the merchant's up, the cabman's walking towards his stall, the pedlar's hawking; see with their jugs the milk-girls go and crisply crunch the morning snow. The city's early sounds awake her; shutters are opened and the soft blue smoke of chimneys goes aloft, and more than once the German baker, punctilious in his cotton cap, has opened up his serving-trap. XXXVI Exhausted by the ballroom's clamour, converting morning to midnight, he sleeps, away from glare and glamour, this child of luxury and delight. Then, after midday he'll be waking; his life till dawn's already making, always monotonously gay, tomorrow just like yesterday. But was it happy, his employment, his freedom, in his youth's first flower, with brilliant conquests by the shower, and every day its own enjoyment? Was it to no effect that he, at feasts, was strong and fancy-free? {51} XXXVII No, early on his heart was cooling and he was bored with social noise; no, not for long were belles the ruling objective of his thoughts and joys: soon, infidelity proved cloying, and friends and friendship, soul-destroying; not every day could he wash down his beefsteak with champagne, or drown his Strasbourg pie, or point a moral, full of his usual pith and wit, with cranium aching fit to split; and though he liked a fiery quarrel -- yet he fell out of love at last with sabre's slash, and bullet's blast. XXXVIII The illness with which he'd been smitten should have been analysed when caught, something like
spleen,
that scourge of Britain, or Russia's
chondria,
for short; it mastered him in slow gradation; thank God, he had no inclination to blow his brains out, but in stead to life grew colder than the dead. So, like Childe Harold, glum, unpleasing, he stalked the drawing-rooms, remote from Boston's cloth or gossip's quote; no glance so sweet, no sigh so teasing, no, nothing caused his heart to stir, and nothing pierced his senses' blur. {52} (XXXIX, XL, XLI,) XLII Capricious belles of grand Society! you were the first ones he forswore; for in our time, beyond dubiety, the highest circles are a bore. It's true, I'll not misrepresent them, some ladies preach from Say and Bentham, but by and large their talk's a hash of the most harmless, hopeless trash. And what's more, they're so supercilious, so pure, so spotless through and through, so pious, and so clever too, so circumspect, and so punctilious, so virtuous that, no sooner seen, at once they give a man the spleen. XLIII You too, prime beauties in your flower who late at night are whirled away by drozhkies jaunting at full power over the Petersburg
pavé
-- he ended even your employment; and in retreat from all enjoyment locked himself up inside his den and with a yawn took up his pen, and tried to write, but a hard session of work made him feel sick, and still no word came flowing from his quill; he failed to join that sharp profession which I myself won't praise or blame since I'm a member of the same. {53} XLIV Idle again by dedication, oppressed by emptiness of soul, he strove to achieve the appropriation of other's thought -- a splendid goal; with shelves of books deployed for action, he read, and read -- no satisfaction: here's boredom, madness or pretence, here there's no conscience, here no sense; they're all chained up in different fetters, the ancients have gone stiff and cold, the moderns rage against the old. He'd given up girls -- now gave up letters, and hid the bookshelf's dusty stack in taffeta of mourning black. XLV Escaped from social rhyme and reason, retired, as he, from fashion's stream, I was Onegin's friend that season. I liked his quality, the dream which held him silently subjected, his strangeness, wholly unaffected, his mind, so cold and so precise. The bitterness was mine -- the ice was his; we'd both drunk passion's chalice: our lives were flat, and what had fired both hearts to blaze had now expired; there waited for us both the malice of blind Fortuna and of men in lives that were just dawning then. {54} XLVI He who has lived and thought is certain to scorn the men with whom he deals; days that are lost behind the curtain, ghostlike, must trouble him who feels -- for him all sham has found rejection, he's gnawed by serpent Recollection, and by Repentance. All this lends, on most occasions between friends, a great attraction to conversing. At first Onegin's tongue produced a haze in me, but I grew used to his disputing and his cursing; his virulence that made you smile, his epigrams topped up with bile. XLVII How often, when the sky was glowing, by Neva, on a summer night, and when its waters were not showing, in their gay glass, the borrowed light of Dian's visage, in our fancies recalling earlier time's romances, recalling earlier loves, did we, now sensitive, and now carefree, drink in the midnight benediction, the silence when our talk had ceased! Like convicts in a dream released from gaol to greenwood, by such fiction we were swept off, in reverie's haze, to the beginning of our days. {55} XLVIII Evgeny stood, with soul regretful, and leant upon the granite shelf; he stood there, pensive and forgetful, just as the Poet