Yakov, as we have already related, had held aloof
from his fellow-students; with one of them he had,
however, become fairly intimate, and saw him frequently,
even after the fellow-student had left the university
and entered the service, in a position involving little
responsibility. He had, in his own words, got
on to the building of the Church of our Saviour, though,
of course, he knew nothing whatever of architecture.
Strange to say, this one solitary friend of Aratov’s,
by name Kupfer, a German, so far Russianised that
he did not know one word of German, and even fell foul
of ‘the Germans,’ this friend had apparently
nothing in common with him. He was a black-haired,
red-cheeked young man, very jovial, talkative, and
devoted to the feminine society Aratov so assiduously
avoided. It is true Kupfer both lunched and dined
with him pretty often, and even, being a man of small
means, used to borrow trifling sums of him; but this
was not what induced the free and easy German to frequent
the humble little house in Shabolovka so diligently.
The spiritual purity, the idealism of Yakov pleased
him, possibly as a contrast to what he was seeing and
meeting every day; or possibly this very attachment
to the youthful idealist betrayed him of German blood
after all. Yakov liked Kupfer’s simple-hearted
frankness; and besides that, his accounts of the theatres,
concerts, and balls, where he was always in attendance—of
the unknown world altogether, into which Yakov could
not make up his mind to enter—secretly interested
and even excited the young hermit, without, however,
arousing any desire to learn all this by his own experience.
And Platosha made Kupfer welcome; it is true she thought
him at times excessively unceremonious, but instinctively
perceiving and realising that he was sincerely attached
to her precious Yasha, she not only put up with the
noisy guest, but felt kindly towards him.
II
At the time with which our story is concerned, there
was in Moscow a certain widow, a Georgian princess,
a person of somewhat dubious, almost suspicious character.
She was close upon forty; in her youth she had probably
bloomed with that peculiar Oriental beauty, which fades
so quickly; now she powdered, rouged, and dyed her
hair yellow. Various reports, not altogether
favourable, nor altogether definite, were in circulation
about her; her husband no one had known, and she had
never stayed long in any one town. She had no
children, and no property, yet she kept open house,
in debt or otherwise; she had a salon, as it is called,
and received a rather mixed society, for the most part
young men. Everything in her house from her own
dress, furniture, and table, down to her carriage
and her servants, bore the stamp of something shoddy,
artificial, temporary,...
but the princess herself,
as well as her guests, apparently desired nothing
better. The princess was reputed a devotee of
music and literature, a patroness of artists and men
Copyrights
Dream Tales and Prose Poems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
