Its sole inhabitants are myself, a widow from Lemberg, and Madame
Tartakovska, who runs the house, a little old woman, who grows older
and smaller each day. There are also an old dog that limps on one
leg, and a young cat that continually plays with a ball of yarn. This
ball of yarn, I believe, belongs to the widow.
She is said to be really beautiful, this widow, still very young,
twenty-four at the most, and very rich. She dwells in the first
story, and I on the ground floor. She always keeps the green blinds
drawn, and has a balcony entirely overgrown with green climbing-
plants. I for my part down below have a comfortable, intimate arbor
of honeysuckle, in which I read and write and paint and sing like a
bird among the twigs. I can look up on the balcony. Sometimes I
actually do so, and then from time to time a white gown gleams
between the dense green network.
Really the beautiful woman up there doesn't interest me very much,
for I am in love with someone else, and terribly unhappy at that; far
more unhappy than the Knight of Toggenburg or the Chevalier in Manon
l'Escault, because the object of my adoration is of stone.
In the garden, in the tiny wilderness, there is a graceful little
meadow on which a couple of deer graze peacefully. On this meadow is
a stone statue of Venus, the original of which, I believe, is in
Florence. This Venus is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in
all my life.
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