The Gambler

that summer, and that he would like very much to go to the Nizhny Novgorod fair. I don’t know how he became acquainted with the general; I believe he’s boundlessly in love with Polina. When she came in, he flushed a flaming crimson. He was very glad that I sat down beside him at the table, and it seems he considers me a bosom friend.

At table the Frenchman set the tone extraordinarily; he was careless and pompous with everyone. And in Moscow, I remember, he just blew soap bubbles. He talked terribly much about finance and Russian politics. The general sometimes ventured to contradict—but modestly, only enough so as not to definitively damage his own importance.

I was in a strange state of mind. Of course, before dinner was half-through, I managed to ask myself my customary and habitual question: “How come I hang around with this general and didn’t leave them long, long ago?” Now and then I glanced at Polina Alexandrovna; she ignored me completely. It ended with me getting angry and deciding to be rude.

It began with me suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, interfering in their conversation, loudly and without being asked. Above all, I wanted to quarrel with the little Frenchman. I turned to the general and suddenly, quite loudly and distinctly, and, it seems, interrupting him, observed that in hotels this summer it was almost impossible for Russians to dine at the table d’hote. The general shot me an astonished glance.

“If you’re a self-respecting man,” I let myself go on, “you will unavoidably invite abuse and will have to put up with being exceedingly slighted. In Paris, on the Rhine, even in Switzerland, there are so many little Poles and sympathizing little Frenchmen at the table d’hote that it’s impossible to utter a word, if you happen to be a Russian.”

I said it in French. The general looked at me in perplexity, not knowing whether he should get angry or merely be astonished that I had forgotten myself so.

“That means that somebody somewhere has taught you a lesson,” the little Frenchman said carelessly and contemptuously.

“In Paris I began by quarreling with a Pole,” I replied, “then with a French officer who supported the Pole. And then some of the Frenchmen took my side, when I told them how I wanted to spit in the monseigneur’s coffee.”

“Spit?” the general asked with pompous perplexity, and even looked around. The little Frenchman studied me mistrustfully.

“Just so, sir,” I replied. “Since I was convinced for a whole two days that I might have to go to Rome briefly to take care of our business, I went to the office of the Holy Father’s embassy in Paris to get a visa in my passport.^{2} There I was met by a little abbe, about fifty years old, dry and with frost in his physiognomy, who, having heard me out politely, but extremely dryly, asked me to wait. Though I was in a hurry, I did sit down, of course, took out L’Opinion nationale,^{3} and began reading some terrible abuse of Russia. Meanwhile, I heard someone go through the next room to see monseigneur; I saw my abbe bow to him. I addressed him with my former request; again, still more dryly, he asked me to wait. A little later another stranger came, but on business— some Austrian. He was listened to and at once taken upstairs. Then I became extremely vexed. I stood up, went over to the abbe, and told him resolutely that since monseigneur was receiving, he could finish with me as well. The abbe suddenly drew back from me in extraordinary surprise. It was simply incomprehensible to him how a Russian nonentity dared to put himself on a par with monseigneur’s visitors. In the most insolent tone, as if glad that he could insult me, he looked me up and down and cried: ‘Can you possibly think that Monseigneur would interrupt his coffee for you?’ Then I, too, cried, but still louder than he: ‘Let it be known to you that I spit on your monseigneur’s coffee! If you do not finish with my passport this very minute, I’ll go to him myself.’

“ ‘What! Just when the cardinal is sitting with him!’ the abbe cried, recoiling from me in horror, rushed to the door, and spread his arms crosswise, showing that he would sooner die than let me pass.

“Then I answered him that I was a heretic and a barbarian, ‘que je suis heretique et barbare,’ and that to me all these archbishops, cardinals, monseigneurs, etc., etc.—were all the same. In short, I showed him that I would not leave off. The abbe gave me a look of boundless spite, then snatched my passport and took it upstairs. A minute later it had a visa in it. Here, sirs, would you care to have a look?” I took out the passport and showed the Roman visa.

“Really, though,” the general began…

“What saved you was calling yourself a barbarian and a heretic,” the little Frenchman observed, grinning. “Cela n’etait pas si bete.”[4]

“What, should I look to our Russians? They sit here, don’t dare peep, and are ready, perhaps, to renounce the fact that they’re Russians. At any rate in my hotel in Paris they began to treat me with much greater attention when I told everybody about my fight with the abbe. The fat Polish pan,[5] the man most hostile to me at the table d’hote, faded into the background. The Frenchmen even put up with it when I told them that about two years ago I saw a man whom a French chasseur had shot in the year twelve^{4} —simply so as to fire off his gun. The man was a ten-year-old child then, and his family hadn’t managed to leave Moscow.”

“That cannot be,” the little Frenchman seethed, “a French soldier would not shoot a child!”

“Yet so it was,” I replied. “It was told to me by a respectable retired captain, and I myself saw the scar from the bullet on his cheek.”

The Frenchman began talking much and quickly. The general tried to support him, but I recommended that he read, for instance, bits from the Notes of General Perovsky, ^{5} who was taken prisoner by the French in the year twelve. Finally, Marya Filippovna started talking about something, so as to disrupt the discussion. The general was very displeased with me, because the Frenchman and I had almost begun to shout. But it seemed that Mr. Astley liked my argument with the Frenchman very much; getting up from the table, he suggested that he and I drink a glass of wine. In the evening, I duly managed to have a fifteen-minute talk with Polina Alexandrovna. Our talk took place during a stroll. Everybody went to the park near the vauxhall. Polina sat down on a bench opposite the fountain and sent Nadenka to play not far away with some children. I also let Misha play by the fountain, and we were finally alone.

At first we began, naturally, with business. Polina simply became angry when I gave her only seven hundred guldens in all. She was sure I’d bring her from Paris, in pawn for her diamonds, at least two thousand guldens or even more.

“I need money at all costs,” she said, “and I must get it; otherwise I’m simply lost.”

I started asking about what had happened in my absence.

“Nothing, except that we received two pieces of news from Petersburg, first, that grandmother was very unwell, and, two days later, that it seemed she had died. This was news from Timofei Petrovich,” Polina added, “and he’s a precise man. We’re waiting for the final, definitive news.”

“So everyone here is in expectation?” I asked.

“Of course: everyone and everything; for the whole six months that’s the only thing they’ve hoped for.”

“And you’re hoping, too?” I asked.

“Why, I’m not related to her at all, I’m only the general’s stepdaughter. But I know for certain that she’ll remember me in her will.”

“It seems to me you’ll get a lot,” I said affirmatively.

“Yes, she loved me; but why does it seem so to you?”

“Tell me,” I answered with a question, “our marquis, it seems, is also initiated into all the family secrets?”

“And why are you interested in that?” asked Polina, giving me a stern and dry look.

“Why not? If I’m not mistaken, the general has already managed to borrow money from him.”

“You’ve guessed quite correctly.”

“Well, would he lend him money if he didn’t know about grandma? Did you notice, at dinner: three times or so, speaking about grandmother, he called her ‘grandma’—‘la baboulinka.’ Such close and friendly relations!”

“Yes, you’re right. As soon as he learns that I’m also getting something in the will, he’ll immediately propose to me. Is that what you wanted to find out?”

“Only then? I thought he proposed a long time ago.”