Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

solitude, you may call Dey a garçon and order as many truffles as you please. The room with the Frenchwoman, however, exists for the select, golden Moscow youth, and it is not so easy to find your way among the select as you imagine.

On returning to this room, M. Chevalier told his wife that the gentleman from Siberia was dull, but that his son and daughter were fine people, such as could be raised only in Siberia.

“You ought just to see the daughter! She is a little rosebush!”

“Oh, this old man is fond of fresh-looking women,” said one of the guests, who was smoking a cigar. (The conversation, of course, was carried on in French, but I render it in Russian, as I shall continue to do in this story.)

“Oh, I am very fond of them!” replied M. Chevalier. “Women are my passion. Do you not believe me?”

“Do you hear, Madame Chevalier?” shouted a stout officer of Cossacks, who owed a big bill in the institution and was fond of chatting with the landlord.

“He shares my taste,” said M. Chevalier, patting the stout man on his epaulet.

“And is this Siberian young lady really pretty?”

M. Chevalier folded his fingers and kissed them.

After that the conversation between the guests became confidential and very jolly. They were talking about the stout officer; he smiled as he listened to what they were saying about him.

“How can one have such perverted taste!” cried one, through the laughter. “Mlle. Clarisse! You know, Strúgov prefers such of the women as have chicken calves.”

Though Mlle. Clarisse did not understand the salt of that remark, she behind her counter burst out into a laughter as silvery as her bad teeth and advanced years permitted.

“Has the Siberian lady turned him to such thoughts?” and she laughed more heartily still. M. Chevalier himself roared with laughter, as he said:

“Ce vieux coquin,” patting the officer of Cossacks on his head and shoulders.

“But who are they, those Siberians? Mining proprietors or merchants?” one of the gentlemen asked, during a pause in the laughter.

“Nikíta, ask ze passport from ze chentleman zat as come,” said M. Chevalier.

“We, Alexander, ze Autocrat⁠—” M. Chevalier began to read the passport, which had been brought in the meantime, but the officer of Cossacks tore it out of his hands, and his face expressed surprise.

“Guess who it is,” he said, “for you all know him by reputation.”

“How can we guess? Show it to us! Well, Abdel Kader, ha, ha, ha! Well, Cagliostro⁠—Well, Peter III⁠—ha, ha, ha, ha!”

“Well, read it!”

The officer of Cossacks unfolded the paper and read the name of him who once had been Prince Peter Ivánovich, and the family name which everybody knows and pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure, when speaking of a person bearing that name, as of a near and familiar person. We shall call him Labázov. The officer of Cossacks had a dim recollection that this Peter Labázov had been something important in the year ’25, and that he had been sent to hard labour⁠—but what he had been famous for, he did not exactly know. But of the others not one knew anything about him, and they replied:

“Oh, yes, the famous prince,” just as they would have said, “Of course, he is famous!” about Shakespeare, who had written the Aeneid. But they recognized him from the explanations of the stout officer, who told them that he was a brother of Prince Iván, an uncle of the Chíkins, of Countess Prut, in short, the well-known⁠—

“He must be very rich, if he is a brother of Prince Iván,” remarked one of the young men, “if the fortune has been returned to him. It has been returned to some.”

“What a lot of exiles are returning nowadays!” remarked another. “Really, fewer seem to have been sent away, than are returning now. Zhikínski, tell us that story of the 18th!” he turned to an officer of sharpshooters, who had the reputation of being a good storyteller.

“Do tell it!”

“In the first place, it is a true story, and happened here, at Chevalier’s, in the large hall. Three Decembrists came to have their dinner. They were sitting at one table, eating, drinking, talking. Opposite them sat down a gentleman of respectable mien, of about the same age, and he listened to their talking about Siberia. He asked them something, they exchanged a few words, began to converse, and it turned out that he, too, was from Siberia.

“ ‘And do you know Nerchínsk?’

“ ‘Indeed I do, I lived there.’

“ ‘And do you know Tatyána Ivánovna?’

“ ‘Of course I do!’

“ ‘Permit me to ask you⁠—were you, too, exiled?’

“ ‘Yes, I had the misfortune to suffer, and you?’

“ ‘We are all exiles of the 14th of December. It is strange that we should not know you, if you, too, were exiled for the 14th. Permit me to know your name!’

“ ‘Fédorov.’

“ ‘Also for the 14th?’

“ ‘No, for the 18th.’

“ ‘For the 18th?’

“ ‘For the 18th of September, for a gold watch. I was falsely accused of having stolen it, and I suffered, though innocent.’ ”

All of them rolled in laughter, except the storyteller, who with a most serious face looked at the outstretched hearers and swore that it was a true story.

Soon after the story one of the young men got up and went to the club. He passed through the halls which were filled with tables at which old men were playing whist; turned into the “infernal region,” where the famous “Puchin” had begun his game against the “company;” stood for awhile near one of the billiard-tables, where, holding on to the cushion, a distinguished old man was fumbling around and with difficulty striking a ball; looked into the library, where a general, holding a newspaper a distance away from him, was reading it slowly above his glasses, and a registered young man turned the leaves of one periodical after another, trying to make no noise; and finally seated himself on a divan in the billiard-room, near some young people who were playing pyramids, and who were as much gilded as he was.

It was a day of dinners, and