However, there’s no point expanding on it; all this could make up a special story, with a special coloring, which I don’t want to put into this story. The thing is that I wished with all my might that it would all be over soon. But our hundred thousand francs lasted, as I’ve already said, for almost a month—at which I was genuinely surprised: at least eighty thousand of this money Blanche spent buying things for herself, and we lived on no more than twenty thousand francs, and even so it was enough. Blanche, who towards the end was even almost candid with me (at least in certain things she didn’t lie to me), confessed that at least the debts she had had to incur wouldn’t fall on me. “I didn’t give you any bills or promissory notes to sign,” she said to me, “because I felt sorry for you; another woman would certainly have done that and packed you off to prison. You see, you see how I’ve loved you and how kind I am! This damned wedding alone is going to cost me quite a bit!”
We did indeed have a wedding. It took place at the very end of our month, and I suppose the last dregs of my hundred thousand francs went on it; with that the affair ended, that is, with that our month ended, after which I was formally dismissed.
It happened like this: a week after we installed ourselves in Paris, the general came. He came straight to Blanche and from the very first visit all but stayed with us. True, he had his own little apartment somewhere. Blanche greeted him joyfully, with shrieks and loud laughter, and even rushed to embrace him; as things turned out, she herself wouldn’t let him go, and he had to follow her everywhere: to the boulevards, and for carriage rides, and to the theater, and to see acquaintances. The general was still fit for this employment; he was rather stately and respectable—almost tall, with dyed side-whiskers and enormous mustaches (he served formerly in the cuirassiers), with a distinguished though somewhat flabby face. His manners were excellent, he wore a tailcoat very smartly. In Paris he started wearing his decorations. With such a man, to stroll down the boulevard was not only possible, but, if one may put it so, even recommandable. The kind and muddle-headed general was terribly pleased with it all; he had by no means counted on that when he appeared before us on his arrival in Paris. He appeared then all but trembling with fear; he thought Blanche would start shouting and order him thrown out; and therefore, seeing such a turn of affairs, he went into raptures and spent the whole month in some sort of senselessly rapturous state; and in such a state I left him. I was already here when I learned in detail how, after our sudden departure then from Roulettenburg, that same morning something like a fit came over him. He fell unconscious, and then for a whole week was almost like a crazy man and talked nonsense. He was treated, but he suddenly dropped everything, got on the train, and showed up in Paris. Naturally, Blanche’s reception of him proved the best medicine; but some signs of illness remained long afterwards, despite his joyful and rapturous state. He was completely unable to reason or even merely conduct any sort of slightly serious conversation; on such occasions he merely added a “Hm!” to every word spoken and nodded his head—and he got off with that. He often laughed, but it was some sort of nervous, morbid laughter, as if he was going into a fit; other times he would sit for whole hours as gloomy as night, knitting his bushy eyebrows. Many things he even didn’t remember at all; he became outrageously absentminded and adopted the habit of talking to himself. Only Blanche could revive him; and the fits of a gloomy, sullen state, when he hid in the corner, meant only that he hadn’t seen Blanche for a long time, or that Blanche had gone somewhere and hadn’t taken him with her, or hadn’t been nice to him as she was leaving. Yet he himself couldn’t say what he wanted and didn’t know he was gloomy and sad. Having sat for an hour or two (I noticed it twice when Blanche left for the whole day, probably to see Albert), he would suddenly start looking around, fussing, glancing over his shoulder, recalling, and seemed as if he wanted to find someone; but seeing no one and just not recalling what he wanted to ask, he would again lapse into oblivion, until Blanche suddenly appeared, gay, frolicsome, dressed up, with her loud, ringing laughter. She would run to him, start pulling at him, and even kiss him—a favor, however, that she rarely bestowed on him. Once the general was so glad to see her that he even burst into tears—I even marveled at him.
As soon as he appeared at our place, Blanche at once began acting as his advocate before me. She even waxed eloquent. She reminded me that she had been unfaithful to the general because of me, that she had almost been his fiancée, had given him her word; that because of her he had abandoned his family, and that, finally, I worked for him and should be sensible of that, and—shame on me…I kept silent, and she rattled on terribly. Finally, I burst out laughing, and the matter ended there, that is, at first she thought I was a fool, but towards the end she arrived at the notion that I was a very good and agreeable man. In short, I had the luck, towards the end, decidedly to earn the full good favor of this worthy girl. (However, Blanche was in fact a most kind girl—only in her own way, of course; I didn’t appreciate her at first.) “You’re an intelligent and kind man,” she used to say to me towards the end, “and…and…it’s too bad you’re such a fool! You’ll never, never be rich!”
“Un vrai russe, un calmouk”[81] {18} —several times she sent me out to walk the general, just like a lackey with her greyhound. However, I also took him to the theater, and to the Bal Mabille,{19} and to restaurants. For this Blanche even supplied money, though the general had his own, and he liked very much to take out his wallet in front of people. Once I was almost obliged to use force to keep him from paying seven hundred francs for a brooch he had become enamored of in the Palais Royal{20} and wanted at all costs to give to Blanche. Well, what did she need a seven-hundred-franc brooch for? The general had no more than a thousand francs in all. I could never find out where he got it from. I suppose it was from Mr. Astley, the more so as he had paid their hotel bill. As for the way the general looked at me all the while, it seems to me that he never even suspected my relations with Blanche. Though he had heard somehow vaguely that I had won a fortune, he probably supposed I was some sort of private secretary to Blanche, or maybe even a servant. At any rate he always spoke to me condescendingly, as before, like a superior, and occasionally even began to upbraid me. Once he made Blanche and me laugh terribly, at our place, over morning coffee. He was not at all quick to take offense; but here he suddenly took offense at me—for what, I still don’t understand. But, of course, he didn’t understand himself. In short, he started talking without beginning or end, à batons rompus,[82] shouted that I was a mere boy, that he would teach me…that he would make me understand…and so on, and so forth. But no one could understand anything. Blanche rocked with laughter; finally we somehow managed to calm him down and took him for a walk. I noticed many times, however, that he felt sad, was sorry for someone or something, missed someone, even despite Blanche’s presence. In those moments, he started talking with me himself a couple of times, but never could explain anything sensibly, recalled his service, his late wife, his management, his estate. He would latch on to some word—and rejoice, and repeat it a hundred times a day, though it didn’t express his feelings or his thoughts at all. I tried to speak with him about his children; but he would get off with his former patter and quickly pass on to another subject: “Yes, yes! the children, the children, you’re right, the children!” Only once did he wax emotional—he and I were going to the theater: “They’re unfortunate children,” he suddenly began, “yes, sir, yes, they’re un-for-tunate children!” And several times later that evening he repeated the words: “Unfortunate children!” When I began talking once about Polina, he even flew into a rage. “She’s an ungrateful woman,” he exclaimed, “she’s wicked and ungrateful! She has disgraced our family! If we had laws here, I’d have tied her in knots! Yes, sir, yes, sir!” As far as des Grieux was concerned, he couldn’t even hear his name. “He has ruined me,” he said, “he has robbed me, he has killed me! He was my nightmare for two whole years! For whole months in a row I saw him in my dreams! He…he…Oh, never speak to me of him!”