They had a small suite of apartments, consisting of two rooms. I could hear Mile. Blanche laugh and call out from the bedroom.
She was getting up.
'A, c'est ltd! Viens done, bete! Is it true, que tu as gagne une montagne d'or et d'atrgent? J'aimerais mieux Vor.'
'Yes, I did win,' I answered, laughing.
'How much?'
'A hundred thousand florins.'
'Bihi, comme tu es bete. Why, come in here. I can't hear anything. Nous ferans bombcmce, n'est ce pas?'
I went in to her. She was lying under a pink satin quilt, above which her robust, swarthy, wonderfully swarthy, shoulders were visible, shoulders such as one only sees in one's dreams, covered to some extent by a batiste nightgown bordered with white lace which was wonderfully becoming to her dark skin.
'Mon fits, as-tu dm coew?' she cried, seeing me, and burst out laughing. She laughed very good-humouredly, and sometimes quite genuinely.
'Tout autre,' I began, paraphrasing Comeille.
'Here you see, vots-ki,' she began babbling; 'to begin with, find my stockings, help me to put them on; and then, si tu n'es pas trop bete, je te prends d, Paris. You know I am just going.'
'Just going?'
'In half an hour.'
All her things were indeed packed. All her portmanteaux and things were ready. Coffee had been served some time before.
'Eh bient, if you like, Ut verras Paris. Dis dcmc qu'est ce que c'est qu'tm outchitel? Tu ettds bien bete, qtumd tu etcds outchitel. Where are my stockings? Put them on for me!'
She thrust out some positively fascinating feet, little dark-skinned feet, not in the least misshapen, as feet that look so small in shoes always are. I laughed and began drawing her silk stockings on for her. Meanwhile Mile. Blanche sat up in bed, pratthng away.
'Eh bien, que feras-tu, si je te prends avec? To begin with, I want fifty thousand francs. You'll give them to me at Frankfurt. Nous allons a Paris: there we'll play together: et je te jerai voir des etoiles en plein jour. You will see women such as you have never seen before. Listen ...'
'Wait a minute—if I give you fifty thousand francs, what will be left for me?'
'Et cent cunqumde mille francs, you have forgotten: and what's more, I consent to live with you a month, two months: qiie scns-je! In those two months we shall certainly get through tiiat hundred and fifty thousand francs, you see, je suis botme enfant, and I tell you beforehand, mais tu verras des etoiles.'
'What! all in two months!'
'Why! does that horrify you? Ah, vil esclave! But, do you know? one month of such a life is worth your whole existence. One month— et apres le deluge! Mais tu ne peux comprendre; va! Go along, go along, you are not worth it! Aie, que fads tu?'
At that moment I was putting a stocking on the other leg, but could not resist kissing it. She pulled it away and began hitting me on the head with the tip of her foot. At last, she turned me out altogether.
'Et bien! nwn outchitel, je f attends, si tu veux; I am starting in a quarter of an hour!' she called after me.
On returning home I felt as though my head were going round. Well, it was not my fault that Mile. Polina had thrown the whole pile of money in my face, and had even yesterday
preferred Mr. Astley to me. Some of the banknotes that had been scattered about were still lying on the floor; I picked them up. At that moment the door opened and the ober-keU^ter himself made his appearance (he had never deigned to look into my room before) with a suggestion that I might like to move downstairs to a magnificent suite of apartments which had just been vacated by Count V.
I stood still and thought a little.
'My bill—I am just leaving, in ten minutes,' I cried. 'If it's to be Paris, let it be Paris,' I thought to myself; 'it seems it was fated at my birth!'
A quarter of an hour later we were actually sitting in a reserved compartment. Mile. Blanche, Madame la veuve Cominges and I. Mile. Blanche, looking at me, laughed till she was almost hysterical. Madame de Cominges followed suit; I cannot say that I felt cheerful. My life had broken in two, but since the previous day I had grown used to staking everything on a card. Perhaps it is reaJly the truth that my sudden wealth was too much for me and had turned my head. Peut-etre, je ne demmidcds pas mieux. It seemed to me for a time— but only for a time, the scenes were shifted. 'But in a month I shall be here, and then . . . and then we will try our strength, Mr. Astley!' No, as I recall it now, I was awfully sad then, though I did laugh as loudly as that idiot, Blanche.
'But what is the matter with you? How silly you are! Oh! how silly you are!' Blanche kept exclaiming, interrupting her laughter to scold me in earnest. 'Oh well, oh well, we'U spend your two hundred thousand francs: but in exchange mcds t<u> seras heweux comme im petit foi; I will tie your cravat myself and introduce you to Hortense. And when we have spent all our money, you will come back here cind break the Ixmk again. What did the Jews tell you? The great thing is— boldness, and you have it, and you will bring me money to Paris more than once again. Qunmt a moi, je veux cmqwmte miUe francs de rentes 06 aHws . . .'
'And the General?' I asked her.
'Why, the General, as you know, comes to see me every day with a bouquet. This time I purposely asked him to get me some very rare flowers. The poor fellow will come back and will find the bird has flown. He'll fly after us, you will see. Ha-ha-ha! I shall be awfully pleased to see him. He'll be of use to me in Paris; Mr. Astley will pay his bill here. . . .'
And so that was the way in which I went to Paris.
CHAPTER XVI
WHAT shall I say about Paris? It was madness, of course, and foolery. I only spent a little over three weeks in Paris, and by the end of that time my hundred thousand francs was finished. I speak only of a hundred thousand. The other hundred thousand I gave to Mile. Blanche in hard cash—^fifty thousand at Frankfurt and three days later in Paris I gave her an lOU for another fifty thousand francs, though a week later she exchanged this for cash from me. 'Et les cent miU& frimes, qui nous restent, tu les tnamgeras av0c moi, man ouichitel.' She always called me an outchitel, i.e., a tutor. It is difficult to imagine anything in the world meaner, stingier and more niggardly than the class of creaures to which MUe. Blanche belonged. But that was in the spending of her own money. As regards my hundred thousand francs, she openly informed me, later on, that she needed them to establish herself in Paris, 'as now I am going to settle in decent style once for all, and now no one shall turn me aside for a long time; at least, that is my plan,' she added. I hardly saw that hundred thousand, however; she kept the money the whole time, and in my purse, into which she looked every day, there was never more than a hundred francs, and always less and less.
'What do you want money for?' she would say, sometimes, in the simplest way, and I did not dispute with her. But she furnished and decorated her flat very nicely with that money, and afterwards, when she took me to her new abode, as she showed me the rooms, she said: 'You see what care and taste can do even with the scantiest means.' These 'scanty means' amounted to fifty thousand francs, however. With the second fifty thousand she provided herself with a carriage and horses. Moreover, we gave two balls, that is, two evening parties at which were present Hortense, Lizette and Cleopatra, women remarkable in very many respects and even quite good- looking. At those two evenings I had to play the very foolish part of host, to receive and entertain the stupidest rich tradesmen, incredibly ignorant and shameless, various army lieutenants and miserable little authors and journalistic insects, who appeared in the most fashionable swallow-tails and straw-coloured gloves, and displayed a vanity and affectation whose proportions were beyond anything conceivable in Petersburg—and
that is saying a great deal. Many of them thought fit to jeer at me; but I got drunk with champagne and lolled at full length in a back room. To me it was all loathsome to the last degree. 'C'esi im outchiDel,' Blanche kept saying about me, 'ii a gagnd deux ceni milh francs. Without me he wouldn't have known how to spend it. And afterwards he will be an ot^chitel again; don't you know of a place for one? we ought to do something for him.'
I had recourse to champagne very often, because I was often sad and dreadfully bored. I lived in the most
