The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Very well,” says the prince, “I give you my word that I will do everything you ask, only don’t ask the impossible.”

The supervisor replies:

“I will not ask the impossible, but I wish more than anything in the world that you would show me this favor—to come to my rooms downstairs and sit at the table with us, and eat something, or even just simply sit for a while, because tonight I am celebrating my silver wedding anniversary, it being twenty-five years since, by your grace, I married Amalia Ivanovna. It will be at eleven o’clock tonight; and at midnight, once it cools off, you may be well pleased to go.”

The prince agreed and gave his word, but all the same he was again simply unable to recall what this man was and where from, and why it was that twenty-five years ago, by his grace, he had married Amalia Ivanovna.

“It will even be a pleasure for me to have supper with this odd fellow,” said the prince, “because he intrigues me very much; and, to tell the truth, I do remember something either about him or about Amalia Ivanovna, but precisely what—I can’t recall. Let us wait for the voice of nature!”

V

By evening the field marshal had quite recovered and even went for a walk with Faddeev, to see the town and admire the sunset, and when he came back to the house at ten o’clock, the host was already waiting for him and invited him to the table.

The prince said:

“Very gladly, I’ll come at once.”

Faddeev said jokingly that it was even opportune, because he had a good appetite after their walk and wanted very much to eat whatever Amalia Ivanovna had cooked up for them.

Baryatinsky was only afraid that the host would seat him in the place of honor and start pouring a lot of champagne and regaling him. But these fears were all quite unfounded: the supervisor showed as much pleasant tact at the table as in all the previous hours the prince had spent in his house.

The table was laid elegantly but simply in a spacious room, with a neat but modest service, and two black cast-iron candlesticks of excellent French workmanship, each with seven candles. And the wines were of good sorts, but all local—and among them were some fat-bellied little bottles with handwritten labels.

These were liqueurs and cordials, and of excellent taste—raspberry, cherry, gooseberry.

The supervisor started seating the guests and here also showed his adroitness: he did not lead the prince to the head of the table, to the host’s place, but seated him where the prince himself wanted, between his adjutant and a very pretty little lady, so that the field marshal would have someone to exchange a few words with and could amuse himself paying compliments to the fair sex. The prince at once fell to talking with the little lady: he was interested in where she came from, and where she had been educated, and what she did for diversion in such a remote provincial town.

She answered all his questions quite boldly and without any mincing, and revealed to him that she was, it seems, mainly occupied with reading books.

The prince asked what books she read.

She replied: the novels of Paul de Kock.³

The prince laughed.

“That,” he said, “is a merry writer,” and he asked: “What precisely have you read? Which novels?”

She replied:

“The Confectioner, Moustache, Sister Anne, and others.”

“And you don’t read our Russian writers?”

“No,” she says, “I don’t.”

“And why not?”

“There’s too little high society in them.”

“And you like high society?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

“Because we know all about our own life, and those things are more interesting.”

And here she said that she had a brother who was writing a novel about society life.

“That’s interesting!” said the prince. “I don’t suppose I could see a little something he’s written?”

“You may,” the lady replied, and she left the table for a moment and came back with a small notebook, in which Baryatinsky glanced only at the first page, became all merry, and, handing it to Faddeev, said:

“How’s that for a pert beginning!”

Faddeev looked at the first lines of the society novel and also became merry.

The novel began with the words: “I, as a man of society, get up at noon and do not take my morning tea at home, but go around the restaurants.”

“Wonderful, eh?” asked Baryatinsky.

“Very good,” replied Faddeev.

By then everyone had grown merry, and the host stood up, raised a glass of sparkling Tsimlyanskoe, and said:

“Your Excellency, I beg your permission, for the general good pleasure and for my own, on this day so precious for me, to be allowed to explain who I am, and where I am from, and to whom I am indebted for all the prosperity I have. But I cannot explain it in the cold words of the human voice, because I was educated on very little money, and so allow me by the whole law of my being to emit in all solemnity the voice of nature.”

Here it came time for the field marshal himself to be abashed, and he was so confused that he bent down as if to pick up his napkin, and whispered: