“You have a bride?”
“Yes!”
“How surprising! A student, and already engaged! Is she pretty? Are you in love with her?”
“Yes, she is a beauty, and I love her very dearly.”
“Is she a brunetka or a blondinka?”
“I cannot tell you that; it is a secret!”
“Well, God be with her, if it is a secret! But what was the secret about women that she revealed to you that makes you avoid their society?”
“She saw that I did not like to be in a melancholy state of mind, and she whispered in my ear such a secret about them, that I cannot see a woman without getting into a melancholy mood, and so I avoid women.”
“You cannot see a woman without getting into a melancholy mood? At all events, you are a master in the art of making compliments.”
“What else can I say? To pity is the same thing as being in a melancholy state of mind.”
“Do we need pity so much as all that?”
“Yes; aren’t you a woman? I have only to repeat to you your dearest wish, and you will agree with me. It is the universal desire of all women.”
“Do tell me, tell me!”
“It is this: ‘Akh! how I should like to be a man!’ I never met a woman who did not secretly wish this with all her heart. And in the majority of cases, it is not necessary to search for it; it is expressed spontaneously without any need of drawing it out. If a woman has any trouble whatsoever, you will soon hear something like this: ‘We are poor miserable creatures, we women!’ or, ‘Men are so different from women!’ or even without any circumlocution, ‘Akh! why was I not a man?’ ”
Viérotchka smiled. “True; every woman has said that.”
“And now you see how women are to be pitied; for if their dearest wish were to be fulfilled, there would not be any women in the world!”
“Yes, it seems as if it were so,” said Viérotchka.
“It is exactly the same way; if the eager desires of every poor man were fulfilled, there would not be a single poor man in the world. Don’t you see how pitiable women are? They are just as much to be pitied as the poor are. Who likes to see poor people? Just the same way, it is painful for me to see women since I have learned their secret. And it was revealed to me by my jealous bride on the very day of our engagement. Till that time I was very fond of being in the society of women. After that, it was snatched away from me. My bride cured me.”
“Your bride must be a kind and sensible young lady; yes, we women are pitiable creatures, we are poor,” said Viérotchka; “but who is your bride? You speak so mysteriously!”
“That is one of my secrets which Feódor does not tell you. I entirely share the wish of the poor that there should not be any in existence, and some time this wish is going to be realized; sooner or later we shall be able to lay out our lives in such a way that there’ll be no poor; but—”
“What, no more poor?” interrupted Viérotchka. “I myself have thought that the time might come when there would not be any more poverty; but how it would come about I could not tell; tell me how!”
“I myself cannot tell this; only my bride can tell. I am alone here. I can only say this much: that she is looking out for that, and she is very strong; she is stronger than anyone else in the world. But let us not talk about her, but about women. I perfectly agree with the wish of the poor that there should not be any more poor, and my bride is going to bring this about. But I do not agree with the wish of women that there shouldn’t be more women in the world, because this wish cannot be realized; and I never agree with what cannot be realized. But I have a different kind of a wish: I should like all women to get acquainted with my bride; she takes as much care of them as she does of everything else. If they would make friends with her, I should have no reason to pity them and their wish ‘Akh, why wasn’t I born a man!’ would vanish; for if women get acquainted with her, then they would not be worse off than men are.”
“Monsieur Lopukhóf! one more quadrille, without fail!”
“I shall be very much pleased.” He pressed her hand as calmly and gravely as though he were an old friend, or she his comrade. “Which one?”
“The last one.”
“Very well.”
Marya Alekséyevna several times passed near them while they were dancing the quadrille.
What would Marya Alekséyevna have thought had she heard this conversation? We who have heard every word of it from beginning to end, all of us will say that such a conversation during a quadrille is very unnatural.
The last quadrille came.
“We spoke all the time about myself,” said Lopukhóf; “and that is very bad manners on my part, to be speaking all the time about myself. Now I want to make up for my impoliteness by speaking about you, Viéra Pavlovna. Did you know that I had a far worse opinion of you than you did of me. And now—well, we’ll speak about this afterwards. Now first of all, there is one question that I cannot answer; please answer it for me. Will your marriage take place soon?”
“Never!”
“I thought so, for the last three hours—ever since I left the card-table to come in here. But why is he considered to be your bridegroom?”
“Why is he considered to be my bridegroom? why, indeed? There’s one reason I cannot tell you; it
