In two hours, Pauline wakened Julie: it was dinner time. They sat down alone without Serge, who had gone to some great dinner. Julie and Viérotchka again got hilarious, and then again they grew serious; when they bade each other farewell they became entirely serious, and Julie thought of asking—she had never had a chance to do so before—why Viérotchka meant to establish a sewing shop. If she wanted to make money, then it would be much easier if she would become an actress, or a singer: she has such a strong voice. This matter caused them to sit down again. Viérotchka began to describe her plan, and Julie again became enthusiastic, and she poured out blessings, and, among other things, she declared that she, Julie Le Tellier, was an abandoned woman, and she wept, but she knew what virtue was, and again she wept, and again she kissed her, and again she broke out into blessings.
Four days later Julie came to Viéra Pavlovna and gave her a good many orders for herself; she gave her the addresses of a number of her friends, from whom she might also receive orders. She brought Serge along with her, telling him that it could not be avoided: “Lopukhóf called on me, and now you must return it.” Julie behaved with exemplary seriousness, and kept it up without the least failure, although she stayed at the Lopukhófs’ a long time. She saw that there were no thick walls, but thin partitions, and that her remarks might be overheard. She did not get excited, but she fell rather into a bucolic frame of mind, looking with delight at all the particulars of the poor estate of the Lopukhófs’, and finding that that was the way to live; that men ought not to live otherwise; that only in moderate circumstances is true happiness possible, and she even announced to Serge that she would go with him to live in Switzerland, where they would have a little house amid the fields and mountains, on the shore of a lake, loving each other, fishing, taking care of their garden. Serge declared that he was perfectly ready, but he wanted to wait and see what she would say at the end of three or four hours.
The thunder of the elegant carriage, and the prancing of Julie’s wonderful horses, made a startling impression on the inhabitants of the fifth block, between the Middle and the Little Prospekts, where nothing of the sort had been seen, at least since the time of Peter the Great, if not longer. Many eyes were looking as the wonderful phenomenon stopped at the locked gates of a one-storied, frame building, with its seven windows, and when from the wonderful carriage stepped the still more wonderful phenomenon of an elegant lady, with a brilliant officer, whose important position could not be doubted. The grief was general, when in a moment the gates were opened, and the carriage rolled into the dvor; curiosity was deprived of the hope of seeing the graceful officer, and still more graceful lady, a second time, when they took their departure. When Daniluitch returned home from his peddling, Petrovna had a talk with him:—
“Daniluitch, well our tenants must be from among very important folks. A general and a generálsha came to see them. The generálsha was dressed so elegant that I can’t begin to tell you; and the general had two stars!”
How Petrovna came to see the stars on Serge, who had never had any decorations, and would not have worn them if he had had them, while out on service with Julie, is a wonderful circumstance; but that she actually saw them; that she was not mistaken, and did not exaggerate, for this I will not take her word; but I will myself be responsible for her: she did actually see them. It is we who know that he did not have them; but he had such an appearance, that from Petrovna’s standpoint, it was impossible not to see two stars on him—and so she saw them; I am not joking when I tell you that she really saw them.
“And what livery the lackey wore, Daniluitch! Real English stuff, five rubles an arshín; such a solemn man he was, and so important, but just as perlite as could be; he give me a civil answer; he allowed me to feel of his sleeve; elegant cloth. They seem to have so much money that they feed it out to their chickens.30 And they sat in our tenants’ rooms, Daniluitch, and talked with them cosily, for more’n two hours, just as I talk with you, and them tenants did not even bow to them, and they were joking with them, and the tenant was sitting with the general, both of them sitting comfortably on the chair, and they were smoking! and our tenant smoked right in the general’s face, and he sat comfortably before him! what else? His cigarette went out, and then he lighted it at the general’s! And with what grace the general kissed our lady’s little hand! why, I can’t begin to tell you! What can we make out of this, Daniluitch?”
“Everything is from God, is the way I reason it; I reckon that whether it’s acquaintance or relation, it’s all from God.”
“So it is, Daniluitch; there’s no doubt about it; but this is what I think: that either our tenant or his wife are either a brother or a sister of either the general or the
