“The old eccentric appeared at once and found her in terrible distress. She described her husband’s barbarity in the blackest colors, and said finally that all her hope now rested on his friendship and amiability.
“Saint-Germain reflected.
“ ‘I could oblige you with this sum,’ he said, ‘but I know you will not be at peace until you have repaid it, and I do not wish to bring new troubles upon you. There is another way: you can win it back.’
“ ‘But, my gentle comte,’ grandmother replied, ‘I tell you we have no money at all.’
“ ‘Money’s not needed here,’ Saint-Germain rejoined. ‘Kindly listen to me.’ Here he revealed to her a secret for which any of us would give a great deal…”
The young gamblers redoubled their attention. Tomsky lit his pipe, puffed on it, and went on.
“That same evening grandmother appeared at Versailles, au jeu de la Reine.*1 The duc d’Orléans kept the bank; grandmother lightly apologized for not having brought her debt, concocting a little story as an excuse, and began to punt against him. She chose three cards, played them one after the other: all three won straight off and grandmother recovered all her losses.”
“Pure chance!” said one of the guests.
“A fairy tale!” observed Hermann.
“Marked cards, maybe?” chimed in a third.
“I don’t think so,” Tomsky replied imposingly.
“What!” said Narumov. “You have a grandmother who can guess three cards in a row, and you still haven’t taken over her cabbalistics from her?”
“The devil she’d tell me!” Tomsky replied. “She had four sons, including my father, all four of them desperate gamblers, and she didn’t reveal her secret to a one of them; though it wouldn’t have been a bad thing for them, or for me either. But here is what my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, told me, and he assured me of it on his honor. The late Chaplitsky, the one who died a pauper after squandering millions, in his youth once lost—to Zorich, as I recall—around three hundred thousand. He was in despair. Grandmother, who was always severe towards young people’s follies, somehow took pity on Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards, which he was to play one after the other, and made him swear on his honor that he would never gamble afterwards. Chaplitsky appeared before his vanquisher: they sat down to play. Chaplitsky staked fifty thousand on the first card and won straight off; bent down a paroli, a double paroli—recovered everything and wound up winning even more…
“But it’s time for bed; it’s a quarter to six.”
Indeed, dawn was breaking. The young men finished their glasses and went their ways.
II
—Il paraît que monsieur est décidément pour les suivantes.
—Que voulez-vous, madame? Elles sont plus fraîches.*2
SOCIETY CONVERSATION5
The old countess * * * was sitting in her dressing room before the mirror. Three maids surrounded her. One held a jar of rouge, another a box of hairpins, the third a tall bonnet with flame-colored ribbons. The countess had not the slightest pretension to a beauty faded long ago, but she preserved all the habits of her youth, held strictly to the fashion of the seventies, and dressed just as slowly and just as painstakingly as sixty years ago. By the window a young lady, her ward, sat over her embroidery.
“Greetings, grand’maman,” said a young officer, coming in. “Bonjour, mademoiselle Lise. Grand’maman, I’ve come to you with a request.”
“What is it, Paul?”
“Allow me to introduce one of my friends to you and to bring him to your ball on Friday.”
“Bring him straight to the ball and introduce him to me there. Were you at * * *’s last night?”
“What else! It was very merry. We danced till five in the morning. How pretty Eletskaya was!”
“Come, my dear! What’s so pretty about her? Is she anything like her grandmother, Princess Darya Petrovna?…By the way, I fancy she’s aged a lot, Princess Darya Petrovna?”
“Aged, you say?” Tomsky replied distractedly. “She died seven years ago.”
The young lady raised her head and made a sign to the young man. He remembered that they were to conceal from the old countess the deaths of women her age, and he bit his tongue. But the countess heard the news, which was new to her, with great indifference.
“Died!” she said. “And I didn’t know! We were made ladies-in-waiting together, and when we were presented, the empress…”
And for the hundredth time the countess told her grandson the story.
“Well, Paul,” she said afterwards, “now help me up. Lizanka, where’s my snuffbox?”
And the countess went behind the screen with her maids to finish her toilette. Tomsky remained with the young lady.
“Who is it you want to introduce?” Lizaveta Ivanovna asked softly.
“Narumov. Do you know him?”
“No! Is he military or civilian?”
“Military.”
“An engineer?”
“No, a cavalryman. What made you think he was an engineer?”
The young lady laughed and made no reply.
“Paul!” the countess called out from behind the screen. “Send me some new novel, only, please, not like they write nowadays.”
“How do you mean, grand’maman?”
“I mean the kind of novel where the hero doesn’t strangle his father or mother, and where there are no drowned bodies. I’m terribly afraid of drowned bodies!”
“There are no such novels nowadays. Or maybe you’d like a Russian one?”
“You mean there are Russian novels?…Send me one, old boy, please do send me one!”
“Excuse me, grand’maman, I’m in a hurry…Excuse me, Lizaveta Ivanovna! What made you think Narumov was an engineer?”
And Tomsky left the dressing room.
Lizaveta Ivanovna remained alone: she abandoned her work and started looking out the window. Soon a young officer appeared from around the corner of a house on the other side of the street. A flush came to her cheeks: she picked up her work again and bent her head over the canvas. Just then the countess came out, fully dressed.
“Order the carriage, Lizanka,” she said, “and we’ll go for a ride.”
Lizanka got up from her embroidery and started putting her work away.
“What is it, old girl? Are you deaf or something?” the countess cried. “Tell them to hurry up with the carriage.”
“At once!” the young lady replied quietly and ran to the front hall.
A servant came in and handed the countess some books from Count Pavel Alexandrovich.
“Very good! Thank him,” said the countess. “Lizanka, Lizanka! Where are you running to?”
“To get dressed.”
“There’s no rush, old girl. Sit here. Open the first volume; read aloud…”
The young lady took the book and read out a few lines.
“Louder!” said the countess. “What’s wrong with you, old girl? Lost your voice, or something?…Wait: move that footstool towards me…closer…really!”
Lizaveta Ivanovna read two more pages. The countess yawned.
“Enough of this book,” she said. “What nonsense! Send it back to Prince Pavel and tell them to thank him…Well, what about the carriage?”
“The carriage is ready,” Lizaveta Ivanovna said, looking outside.