The Gambler

shoulders protruded—shoulders such as can only be seen in a dream—negligently covered by a batiste nightgown trimmed with the whitest lace, which went wonderfully with her swarthy skin.

“Mon fils, as-tu du coeur?”[62] she cried, seeing me, and laughed loudly. She always laughed very gaily and sometimes even sincerely.

“Tout autre…”[63] I began, paraphrasing Corneille.^{14}

“You see, vois tu,” she suddenly began chattering, “first, find my stockings, help me into my shoes, and second, si tu n’est pas trop bete, je te prends a Paris.[64] You know, I’m going right now.”

“Now?”

“In half an hour.”

Indeed, everything was packed. All her suitcases and things were standing ready. Coffee had been served long ago.

“Eh bien! If you want, tu verra Paris. Dis donc qu’est-ce que c’est qu’un outchitel? Tu etais bien bete quand tu etais outchitel.[65] But where are my stockings? So, help me on with them!”

She stuck out a really delightful little foot, swarthy, small, not misshapen, like almost all those little feet that look so cute in shoes. I laughed and began to pull a silk stocking onto it. Mlle Blanche meanwhile sat on the bed and chattered.

“Eh bien, que feras-tu, si je te prends avec? First, je veux cinquante mille francs. You’ll give them to me in Frankfurt. Nous allons a Paris; there we’ll live together et je te ferais voir des etoiles en plein jour.[66] You’ll see women such as you’ve never seen before. Listen…”

“Wait, so I give you fifty thousand francs, and what am I left with?”

“Et cent cinquante mille francs, you’ve forgotten, and, on top of that, I agree to live in your apartment for a month, two months, que sais-je! Of course, in two months we’ll go through that hundred and fifty thousand francs. You see, je suis bonne enfant and am telling you beforehand, mais tu verras des etoiles.”[67]

“What, all in two months?”

“What? So it frightens you? Ah, vil esclave! You don’t know that one month of that life is better than your whole existence? One month—et apresledeluge! ^{15} Mais tu ne peux comprendre, va! Off with you, you’re not worthy of it! Aie, que fais-tu?”[68]

At that moment I was putting a stocking on her other foot, but I couldn’t help myself and kissed it. She pulled it back and began flicking me in the face with her toe. Finally, she drove me out altogether.

“Eh bien, mon outchitel, je t’attends, si tu veux; [69] I’m leaving in a quarter of an hour!” she called after me.

Returning home, I was already as if in a whirl. What, then, was it my fault that Mlle Polina had thrown the whole wad in my face and already yesterday had preferred Mr. Astley to me? Some stray banknotes still lay on the floor; I picked them up. At that moment the door opened and the manager himself (who wouldn’t even look at me before) came with an invitation: wouldn’t I like to move downstairs to an excellent suite in which Count V. had just been staying?

I stood and thought a moment.

“The bill!” I cried. “I’m leaving right now, in ten minutes.” “If it’s Paris, let it be Paris,” I thought to myself, “it must have been written down at my birth!”

A quarter of an hour later the three of us were indeed sitting in a family compartment: myself, Mlle Blanche, and Mme la veuve Cominges. Mlle Blanche laughed loudly, looking at me, to the point of hysterics. La veuve Cominges seconded her. I wouldn’t say that I felt very gay. My life was breaking in two, but since the previous day I had become accustomed to staking all I had. Maybe it was really true that the money was too much for me and got me into a whirl. Peut-etre, je ne demandais pas mieux.[70] It seemed to me that for a time—but only for a time—the stage set was being changed. “But in a month I’ll be back here, and then…then I’ll still have it out with you, Mr. Astley!” No, as I remember it now, I felt terribly sad then, though I did laugh my head off with that little fool Blanche.

“But what is it to you? How stupid you are! oh, how stupid!” cried Blanche, interrupting her laughter and beginning to scold me seriously. “Well, yes, yes, we’ll go through your two hundred thousand francs, but to make up for it, mais tu seras heureux, comme un petit roi;[71] I’ll tie your necktie myself and introduce you to Hortense. And when we’ve gone through all our money, you’ll come back here and break the bank again. What did those Jews tell you? It’s boldness above all, and you have it, and you’ll be coming to Paris bringing me money more than once. Quant a moi, je veux cinquante mille francs de rente et alors…[72]

“And the general?” I asked her.

“And the general, as you know yourself, goes to fetch me a bouquet every day at this hour. Today I purposely told him to find the rarest flowers. The poor thing will come back, and the bird will have flown. He’ll fly after us, you’ll see. Ha, ha, ha! I’ll be very glad. He’ll be useful to me in Paris; here Mr. Astley will pay for him…”

And so it was that I left for Paris then.

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT SHALL I SAY about Paris? It was all, of course, both delirium and foolery. I lived in Paris for only a little more than three weeks, and in that time my hundred thousand francs were completely finished. I’m speaking of only a hundred thousand; the remaining hundred thousand I gave to Mlle Blanche in straight cash—fifty thousand in Frankfurt, and three days later in Paris I handed her the other fifty thousand francs in a promissory note, for which, however, she took the money from me a week later, “et les cent mille francs qui nous restent, tu les mangeras avec moi, mon outchitel.”[73] She always called me outchitel. It’s hard to imagine anything in the world more calculating, mean, and stingy than the category of beings like Mlle Blanche. But that’s with regard to her own money. As for my hundred thousand francs, she later declared to me straight out that she needed it in order to establish herself initially in Paris. “So that now I’m standing on a decent footing once and for all, and it will be a long time before anybody throws me off, so at least I’ve arranged things,” she added. However, I scarcely saw that hundred thousand; she kept the money herself all the while, and my purse, which she visited every day, never held more than a hundred francs, and almost always less.

“What do you need money for?” she said occasionally with a most artless look, and I didn’t argue with her. Instead, she decorated her apartment very, very nicely on this money, and later when she moved me to the new place, she said, as she was showing me the rooms: “See what can be done, with calculation and taste, on the scantiest means.” This scantiness added up, however, to exactly fifty thousand francs. The other fifty thousand she spent on a carriage and horses, and besides that we threw two balls, that is, two evening parties, to which Hortense, and Lisette, and Cleopatre came—women remarkable in many, many respects, and even far from bad. At these two parties I was forced to play the utterly stupid role of host, to meet and entertain some rich and extremely dull merchants, impossibly ignorant and shameless army lieutenants of various sorts, and pathetic little authors and magazine midges, who arrived in fashionable tailcoats, straw-colored gloves, and with a vanity and conceit of dimensions inconceivable even in Petersburg—which is saying a lot. They even ventured to make fun of me, but I got drunk on champagne and lay about in the back room. All this was loathsome to me in the highest degree. “C’est un outchitel,” Blanche said of me, “il a gagne deux cent mille francs,[74] and without me he wouldn’t know how to spend it.