Our Own Set. Ossip Schubin

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СКАЧАТЬ my dear Zinka," cried the general holding her back, "tell me at least where you are living before you whisk off like a whirlwind. Do not be so utterly unreasonable."

      "I am perfectly reasonable," she retorted. She was both embarrassed and angry; her cheeks were scarlet and her eyes full of tears. "It never would have occurred to me certainly that there was anything improper in calling on an old gentleman," and she emphasized the words quite viciously, "in his studio. Oh, the vanity of men! Who can foresee its limits!--But I am perfectly reasonable, I acknowledge my mistake--simpleton that I am! … And I have been looking forward all day to taking you by surprise. I meant to ask you to dine with us at the Hotel de l'Europe and to come with me first to the Pincio to see the sunset. And these are the thanks I get! … Do not trouble yourself to get your hat, it is waste of trouble; I do not want you now. Good-bye." And she flew off, her head in the air, without looking back once at the general who dutifully escorted her to the carriage.

      The old man came back much crest-fallen. A voice greeted him cheerfully:

      "Quite in disgrace, general!"

      It was Sempaly, who had witnessed the whole scene from a recess, and whom the general had entirely forgotten.

      "So it seems," said he shortly, beginning to scrape his palette.

      "But tell me who is this despotic little princess?"

      "Who? My god-daughter, Zinka Sterzl."

      Thunderbolts are out of date, no one believes in them now-a-days; nevertheless it is a fact, which Sempaly himself never contradicted, that he fell in love with Zinka at first sight. And when a few days after Zinka's irruption into the general's studio the old gentleman accepted an invitation to dine with the Baroness Sterzl at the Hotel de l'Europe, on entering the room he found, eagerly employed in looking over a quantity of photographs with the young lady--Count Sempaly.

      The two gentlemen were the only guests, and yet--or perhaps in consequence--the little party was as gay and pleasant as was possible with so affected and formal a hostess as the "Baroness."

      This lady, a narrow and perverse soul as ever lived, was the very essence of vanity and affectation. She imagined--Heaven alone knows on what grounds--that the general had formerly loved her hopelessly, and she always treated him accordingly with a consideration that was intolerably irritating. She had made great strides in the airs of refinement since she and the general had last met--at a time before she, or rather her children, had become rich through an advantageous sale of part of their land, and this of course added to the charms of her society. She was perpetually complaining in a tone of feeble elegance--the sleeping-carriages were intolerable, the seats were so badly stuffed, Rome was so dirty, the hotels were so bad, the conveyances so miserable; she brought in the names of all the aristocratic acquaintances they had made at Nice, at Meran, and at Biarritz, and asked--the next day being a saint's day--which church was fit to go to. The vehement old general answered hotly that "God was in them all." But Sempaly informed her with the politest gravity that Cardinal X---- read mass in the morning at St. Peter's and that the music was splendid. "I advise you to try St. Peter's."

      "Indeed, is St. Peter's possible on a saint's day?" she asked. "The company is usually so mixed in those large churches."

      The general fairly blushed for her follies on her children's account.

      "Have you forgiven me, Zinka?" he said to change the conversation.

      "As if I had time to trouble myself about your strait-laced proprieties!" exclaimed she, coloring slightly; she evidently did not like this allusion to her little indiscretion: "I have something much worse to think about."

      "Why--what is the matter, sweetheart?" asked her brother, who took everything seriously.

      "I have lost something," she said in a tone of deep melancholy which evidently covered some jest.

      "Not a four-leaved shamrock or a medal blessed by the pope?" asked the general.

      "Oh, no! something much more important."

      "Your purse!" exclaimed the baroness hastily. But Zinka burst out laughing. "No, no, something much greater--you will never guess: Rome."

      On which Sterzl, who could never make out what his fascinating little sister would be at, only said: "That is beyond me."

      But Sempaly was sympathetic. "I see you are terribly disappointed," he said, and Zinka went on like a person accustomed to be listened to.

      "Yes, ever since I could think at all I have dreamed of Rome and longed to see it. My Rome was a suburb of Heaven, but this Rome is a suburb of Paris. My Rome was glorious and this Rome is simply hideous."

      "Do not be flippant, Zinka," said the general, who always upheld traditional worship.

      "Well, as a city Rome is really very ugly," interposed her brother, "it is more interesting as a museum of antiquities with life-size illustrations. Still, you do not know it yet. You have seen nothing as yet. … "

      "But lodgings, you mean," retorted Zinka, casting down her eyes with sanctimonious sauciness.

      "It is dreadful!" the baroness began, "we have been here five days and cannot find an apartment fit to live in. Wherever we go there is some drawback; the stairs are too dark, or the entrance is bad, or there is only one door to the salon, or the servants' rooms. … "

      "But my dear Zinka," interrupted the general, "if you really have seen nothing of Rome excepting the lodgings in the Corso, of course. … "

      "Oh! but I have seen something else," cried Zinka, "indeed, I know my way about Rome very well."

      "In your dreams?"

      "No, I went yesterday; mamma had a sick headache."

      "Oh! those headaches!" sighed the baroness putting her salts to her nose, "I am a perfect martyr to them!"

      To have sick headaches and be a strict Catholic were marks of good style in the baroness's estimation. Sempaly put on a sympathetic expression, but returned at once to the subject in hand.

      "Yes, I know Rome very well," Zinka went on: "You have only to ask the driver of the street cab No. 1203, and he will tell you. I drove about with him for three hours yesterday. You see, to have been in Rome a whole week and to have seen nothing but furnished lodgings was really too bad, so I took advantage of the opportunity when mamma was in bed; I slipped out--you need not make that face, Uncle, I took the maid with me--we meant to walk everywhere with a map. Of course we lost our way, cela va sans dire, and as we were standing helpless, each holding the map by a corner, a driver signed to us--so, with his first finger. In we got and he asked us where we wished to go, but as I had no answer ready he said with the most paternal air: 'Ah! the signora wants to see Rome--good, I will show her Rome!' And he set off, round and round and in and out, all through the city. I was positively giddy with this waltz round all the sights of Rome. He showed me a perfect forest of fallen pillars, with images of gods and fragments of sculpture carefully heaped round them, like Christmas boxes for lovers of antiquities--'the Campo Vaccino,' he called it--I believe it was the Forum; then he pointed out the palace of Beatrice Cenci, the Jews' quarter, the Theatre of Marcellus, the Temple of Vesta; and every time he showed me anything he added: 'Now am I not a capital guide? Many a driver would only take you from place to place, and what would you see? Nothing … a heap of stones … but I tell you: that is the Colisseum, and this is the Portico of Octavia, and then the СКАЧАТЬ