journey, promises to write, the last, half-smothered words of farewell.
Elena, all in tears, had already taken her seat in the sledge; Insarov had carefully wrapped her feet up in a rug; Shubin, Bersenyev, the landlord, his wife, the little daughter, with the inevitable kerchief on her head, the doorkeeper, a workman in a striped bedgown, were all standing on the steps, when suddenly a splendid sledge, harnessed with spirited horses, flew into the courtyard, and from the sledge, shaking the snow off the collar of his cloak, leapt Nikolai Artemyevitch.
'I am not too late, thank God,' he cried, running up to their sledge. 'Here, Elena, is our last parental benediction,' he said, bending down under the hood, and taking from his pocket a little holy image, sewn in a velvet bag, he put it round her neck. She began to sob, and kiss his hands; and the coachman meantime pulled out of the forepart of the sledge a half bottle of champagne, and three glasses.
'Come!' said Nikolai Artemyevitch—and his own tears were trickling on to the beaver collar of his cloak—'we must drink to—good journey—good wishes——' He began pouring out the champagne: his hands were shaking, the foam rose over the edge and fell on to the snow. He took one glass, and gave the other two to Elena and Insarov, who by now was seated beside hen 'God give you——' began Nikolai Artemyevitch, and he could not go on: he drank off the wine; they, too, drank off their glasses. 'Now you should drink, gentlemen,' he added, turning to Shubin and Bersenyev, but at that instant the driver started the horses. Nikolai Artemyevitch ran beside the sledge. 'Mind and write to us,' he said in a broken voice. Elena put out her head, saying: 'Good-bye, papa, Andrei Petrovitch, Pavel Yakovlitch, good-bye all, good-bye, Russia!' and dropped back in her place. The driver flourished his whip, and gave a whistle; the sledge, its runners crunching on the snow, turned out of the gates to the right and disappeared.
XXXIII
It was a bright April day. On the broad lagoon which separates Venice from the narrow strip of accumulated sea sand, called the Lido, a gondola was gliding—swaying rhythmically at every push made by the gondolier as he leaned on the big pole. Under its low awning, on soft leather cushions, were sitting Elena and Insarov.
Elena's features had not changed much since the day of her departure from Moscow, but their expression was different; it was more thoughtful and more severe, and her eyes had a bolder look. Her whole figure had grown finer and more mature, and the hair seemed to lie in greater thickness and luxuriance along her white brow and her fresh cheeks. Only about her lips, when she was not smiling, a scarcely perceptible line showed the presence of a hidden constant anxiety. In Insarov's face, on the contrary, the expression had remained the same, but his features had undergone a cruel change. He had grown thin, old, pale and bent; he was constantly coughing a short dry cough, and his sunken eyes shone with a strange brilliance. On the way from Russia, Insarov had lain ill for almost two months at Vienna, and only at the end of March had he been able to come with his wife to Venice; from there he was hoping to make his way through Zara to Servia, to Bulgaria; the other roads were closed. The war was now at its height about the Danube; England and France had declared war on Russia, all the Slavonic countries were roused and were preparing for an uprising.
The gondola put in to the inner shore of the Lido. Elena and Insarov walked along the narrow sandy road planted with sickly trees (every year they plant them and every year they die) to the outer shore of the Lido, to the sea.
They walked along the beach. The Adriatic rolled its muddy-blue waves before them; they raced into the shore, foaming and hissing, and drew back again, leaving fine shells and fragments of seaweed on the beach.
'What a desolate place!' observed Elena 'I'm afraid it's too cold for you here, but I guess why you wanted to come here.'
'Cold!' rejoined Insarov with a rapid and bitter smile, 'I shall be a fine soldier, if I'm to be afraid of the cold. I came here... I will tell you why. I look across that sea, and I feel as though here, I am nearer my country. It is there, you know,' he added, stretching out his hand to the East, 'the wind blows from there.'
'Will not this wind bring the ship you are expecting?' said Elena. 'See, there is a white sail, is not that it?'
Insarov gazed seaward into the distance to where Elena was pointing.
'Renditch promised to arrange everything for us within a week,' he said, 'we can rely on him, I think.... Did you hear, Elena,' he added with sudden animation, 'they say the poor Dalmatian fishermen have sacrificed their dredging weights—you know the leads they weigh their nets with for letting them down to the bottom—to make bullets! They have no money, they only just live by fishing; but they have joyfully given up their last property, and now are starving. What a nation!'
'
Insarov looked darkly after him.
'He was not to blame,' said Elena, 'you know, they have no other place where they can ride.'
'He was not to blame,' answered Insarov 'but he made my blood boil with his shout, his moustaches, his cap, his whole appearance. Let us go back.'
'Yes, let us go back, Dmitri. It's really cold here. You did not take care of yourself after your Moscow illness, and you had to pay for that at Vienna. Now you must be more cautious.'
Insarov did not answer, but the same bitter smile passed over his lips.
'If you like,' Elena went on, 'we will go along to the Canal Grande. We have not seen Venice properly, you know, all the while we have been here. And in the evening we are going to the theatre; I have two tickets for the stalls. They say there's a new opera being given. If you like, we will give up to-day to one another; we will forget politics and war and everything, we will forget everything but that we are alive, breathing, thinking together; that we are one for ever—would you like that?'
'If you would like it, Elena,' answered Insarov, 'it follows that I should like it too.'
'I knew that,' observed Elena with a smile, 'come, let us go.'
They went back to the gondola, took their seats, told the gondolier to take them without hurry along the Canal Grande.
No one who has not seen Venice in April knows all the unutterable fascinations of that magic town. The softness and mildness of spring harmonise with Venice, just as the glaring sun of summer suits the magnificence of Genoa, and as the gold and purple of autumn suits the grand antiquity of Rome. The beauty of Venice, like the spring, touches the soul and moves it to desire; it frets and tortures the inexperienced heart like the promise of a coming bliss, mysterious but not elusive. Everything in it is bright, and everything is wrapt in a drowsy, tangible mist, as it were, of the hush of love; everything in it is so silent, and everything in it is kindly; everything in it is feminine, from its name upwards. It has well been given the name of 'the fair city.' Its masses of palaces and churches stand out light and wonderful like the graceful dream of a young god; there is something magical, something strange and bewitching in the greenish-grey light and silken shimmer of the silent water of the canals, in the noiseless gliding of the gondolas, in the absence of the coarse din of a town, the coarse rattling, and crashing, and uproar. 'Venice is dead, Venice is deserted,' her citizens will tell you, but perhaps this last charm—the charm of decay—was not vouchsafed her in the very heyday of the flower and majesty of her beauty. He who has not seen her, knows her not; neither Canaletto nor Guardi (to say nothing of later painters) has been able to convey the silvery tenderness of the atmosphere, the horizon so close, yet so elusive, the divine harmony of exquisite lines and melting colours. One who has outlived his life, who has been crushed by it, should not visit Venice; she will be cruel to him as the memory of unfulfilled dreams of early days; but sweet to one whose strength is at its full, who is conscious of happiness; let him bring his bliss under her enchanted skies; and however bright it may be, Venice will make it more golden with her unfading splendour.
The gondola in which Insarov and Elena were sitting passed
