It has grown so horribly vulgar. A cook is now made the heroine of a novel. A mere cook, parole d'honneur! Of course, I shall read Ladislas' novel. Il y aura le petit mot pour rire, and he writes with a purpose! He will completely crush the nihilists, and I quite agree with him. His ideas sont tres correctes."

"That is more than can be said of his past," Valentina Mihailovna remarked.

"Ah! jeton une voile sur les erreurs de sa jeunesse!" Kollomietzev exclaimed, pulling off his other glove.

Valentina Mihailovna half-closed her exquisite eyes and looked at him coquettishly.

"Simion Petrovitch!" she exclaimed, "why do you use so many French words when speaking Russian? It seems to me rather old-fashioned, if you will excuse my saying so."

"But, my dear lady, not everyone is such a master of our native tongue as you are, for instance. I have a very great respect for the Russian language. There is nothing like it for giving commands or for governmental purposes. I like to keep it pure and uncorrupted by other languages and bow before Karamzin; but as for an everyday language, how can one use Russian? For instance, how would you say, in Russian, de tout a l'heure, c'est un mot? You could not possibly say 'this is a word,' could you?"

"You might say 'a happy expression.'"

Kollomietzev laughed.

"A happy expression! My dear Valentina Mihailovna. Don't you feel that it savours of the schoolroom; that all the salt has gone out of it?

"I am afraid you will not convince me. I wonder where Mariana is?" She rang the bell and a servant entered.

"I asked to have Mariana Vikentievna sent here. Has she not been told?"

The servant had scarcely time to reply when a young girl appeared behind him in the doorway. She had on a loose dark blouse, and her hair was cut short. It was Mariana Vikentievna Sinitska, Sipiagin's niece on the mother's side.





VI

"I am sorry, Valentina Mihailovna," Mariana said, drawing near to her, "I was busy and could not get away."

She bowed to Kollomietzev and withdrew into a corner, where she sat down on a little stool near the parrot, who began flapping its wings as soon as it caught sight of her.

"Why so far away, Mariana?" Valentina Mihailovna asked, looking after her. "Do you want to be near your little friend? Just think, Simion Petrovitch," she said, turning to Kollomietzev, "our parrot has simply fallen in love with Mariana!"

"I don't wonder at it!"

"But he simply can't bear me!"

"How extraordinary! Perhaps you tease him."

"Oh, no, I never tease him. On the contrary, I feed him with sugar. But he won't take anything out of my hand. It is a case of sympathy and antipathy."

Mariana looked sternly at Valentina Mihailovna and Valentina Mihailovna looked at her. These two women did not love one another.

Compared to her aunt Mariana seemed plain. She had a round face, a large aquiline nose, big bright grey eyes, fine eyebrows, and thin lips. Her thick brown hair was cut short; she seemed retiring, but there was something strong and daring, impetuous and passionate, in the whole of her personality. She had tiny little hands and feet, and her healthy, lithesome little figure reminded one of a Florentine statuette of the sixteenth century. Her movements were free and graceful.

Mariana's position in the Sipiagin's house was a very difficult one. Her father, a brilliant man of Polish extraction, who had attained the rank of general, was discovered to have embezzled large state funds. He was tried and convicted, deprived of his rank, nobility, and exiled to Siberia. After some time he was pardoned and returned, but was too utterly crushed to begin life anew, and died in extreme poverty. His wife, Sipiagin's sister, did not survive the shock of the disgrace and her husband's death, and died soon after. Uncle Sipiagin gave a home to their only child, Mariana. She loathed her life of dependence and longed for freedom with all the force of her upright soul. There was a constant inner battle between her and her aunt. Valentina Mihailovna looked upon her as a nihilist and freethinker, and Mariana detested her aunt as an unconscious tyrant. She held aloof from her uncle and, indeed, from everyone else in the house.