I heard no more, for I fell asleep.
Next morning when we were approaching Sevastopol, it was damp, unpleasant weather; the ship rocked. Shamohin sat on deck with me, brooding and silent. When the bell rang for tea, men with their coat-collars turned up and ladies with pale, sleepy faces began going below; a young and very beautiful lady, the one who had been so angry with the Customs officers at Volotchisk, stopped before Shamohin and said with the expression of a naughty, fretful child:
"Jean, your birdie's been sea-sick."
Afterwards when I was at Yalta I saw the same beautiful lady dashing about on horseback with a couple of officers hardly able to keep up with her. And one morning I saw her in an overall and a Phrygian cap, sketching on the sea-front with a great crowd admiring her a little way off. I too was introduced to her. She pressed my hand with great warmth, and looking at me ecstatically, thanked me in honeyed cadences for the pleasure I had given her by my writings.
"Don't you believe her," Shamohin whispered to me, "she has never read a word of them."
When I was walking on the sea-front in the early evening Shamohin met me with his arms full of big parcels of fruits and dainties.
"Prince Maktuev is here!" he said joyfully. "He came yesterday with her brother, the spiritualist! Now I understand what she was writing to him about! Oh, Lord!" he went on, gazing up to heaven, and pressing his parcels to his bosom. "If she hits it off with the prince, it means freedom, then I can go back to the country with my father!"
And he ran on.
"I begin to believe in spirits," he called to me, looking back. "The spirit of grandfather Ilarion seems to have prophesied the truth! Oh, if only it is so!"
----
The day after this meeting I left Yalta and how Shamohin's story ended I don't know.
NOTES
Max Nordau: Max Simon Nordau (1848-1923) was a Hungarian philosopher
Raphael's Madonna: Raphael (1483-1520) painted many madonnas
novel of Weltmann's: A. F. Weltmann (1800-1870) was a minor Russian novelist
reddish agarics: mushrooms
homeopathy: a pseudoscience that treats disease by administering minute doses of drugs that in massive amounts produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to the disease itself
Cæsar's wife: Julius Cæsar (c. 102 B. C. - 44 B. C.); the wife of a dictator is very powerful
char-à-banc: bus (horse-drawn)
kvass: a Russian beer made from rye or barley
dépendance: an outbuilding
comme il faut: proper, decent
guldens: Austrian coins worth at the time of the story about 1 ruble
café complet: coffee with rolls, butter, and jam
enter into the position: she won't understand my position
twenty degrees of frost: 13 below zero F.
three candles in a row: Russians place three candles next to a coffin, so three candles are a sign of a death in the family
Boleslav Markevitch: Boleslav M. Markevitch (1822-1884) was a minor novelist who was also extremely conservative politically
Turgenev: Ivan S. Turgenev (1818-1883), the great Russian novelist
Non habeo: I have none
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Mon, Aug 13th, 2012, via SendToReader