"No, I will not talk in Russian, it is very
rude.--If you are not completely _sage_ at dinner we shall not go on.--
I am serious! Well, good-bye,"--and with a laugh the Princess put the
receiver down.
"He says nothing would shock you--he is sure you understand the world!
Well, we must amuse ourselves, and try and restrain him if he grows
too wild."
"He is often wild, then?" Tamara said.
The Princess rose and stood by the window looking out on the thickly
falling snow.
"I am afraid--a little--yes, though never in the wrong situation; above
all things Gritzko is a gentleman; but sometimes I wish he would take
life less as a game. One cannot help speculating how it can end."
"Has he no family?" Tamara asked.
"No, everyone is dead. His mother worshipped him, but she died when he
was scarcely eighteen, and his father before that. His mother is his
adored memory. In all the mad scenes which he and his companions, I am
afraid, have enacted in the Fontonka house, there is one set of rooms
no one has dared to enter--her rooms--and he keeps flowers there, and
an ever-burning lamp. There is a strange touch of sentiment and
melancholy in Gritzko, and of religion too. Sometimes I think he is
unhappy, and then he goes off to his castle in the Caucasus or to
Milasl?v, and no one sees him for weeks. Last year we hoped he would
marry a charming Polish girl--he quite paid her attention for several
nights; but he said she laughed one day when he felt sad, and answered
seriously when he was gay, and made crunching noises with her teeth
when she eat biscuits!--and her mother was fat and she might grow so
too! And for these serious reasons he could not face her at breakfast
for the rest of his life! Thus that came to an end.
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