第57章

`That is said to be a difficult task - only that which is spiteful is supposed to be amusing,' he began with a smile. `However, I'll make the attempt. Give me a theme. it's all a matter of the theme. If the theme be but given, it's easy enough to embroider it. I often think that the celebrated conversationalists of the last century would find it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever has become such a bore....'

`That has been said long ago,' the ambassador's wife interrupted him, laughing.

The conversation had begun amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure, never-failing remedy - malicious gossip.

`Don't you think there's something Louis Quinze about Tushkevich?'

he said, glancing toward a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at the table.

`Oh, yes! He's in the same style as the drawing room, and that's why it is he's so often here.'

This conversation was kept up, since it depended on allusions to what could not be talked of in that room - that is to say, of the relations of Tushkevich with their hostess.

Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation having, in the meanwhile, vacillated in precisely the same way between the three inevitable topics - the latest piece of public news, the theater, and censuring the fellow creature - had finally come to rest on the last topic - that is, malicious gossip.

`Have you heard that even the Maltishcheva - the mother, not the daughter - has ordered a costume in diable rose color?'

`Impossible! No, that's just charming!'

`I wonder that with her sense - for after all she's no fool -she doesn't see how funny she is.'

Every one had something to say in censure or ridicule of the hapless Maltishcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a blazing bonfire.

The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured corpulent man, an ardent collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, had come into the drawing room before leaving for his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he approached Princess Miaghkaia.

`How did you like Nilsson?' he asked.

`Oh, how can you steal up on anyone like that! How you startled me!' she responded. `Please don't talk to me about the opera; you know nothing about music. I'd rather come down to your own level, and discuss with you your majolica and engravings. Come, now, what treasure have you been buying lately at the rag fair?'

`Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such things.'

`Yes, show me. I've been learning about them at those - what's their names?... those bankers... They have some splendid engravings. They showed them to us.'

`Why, have you been at the Schutzburgs?' asked the hostess from behind the samovar.

`Yes, ma chère . They asked my husband and myself to dinner, and I was told that the sauce at that dinner cost a thousand roubles,' Princess Miaghkaia said, speaking loudly, conscious that all were listening; `and very nasty sauce it was - some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made a sauce for eighty-five kopecks, and everybody was very much pleased with it. I can't afford thousand-rouble sauces.'

`She's unique!' said the lady of the house.

`Amazing!' somebody else added.

The effect produced by Princess Miaghkaia's speeches was always the same, and the secret of the effect she produced lay in the fact that though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said homely truths, not devoid of sense. In the society in which she lived such utterances had the same result as the most pungent wit. Princess Miaghkaia could never see why it had that result, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.

Since everyone had been listening while Princess Miaghkaia spoke, and the conversation around the ambassador's wife had dropped, Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole party together, and she addressed the ambassador's wife.

`Really won't you have tea? Do come and join us.'

`No, we're very comfortable here,' the ambassador's wife responded with a smile, and went on with the interrupted conversation.

It was a most agreeable conversation. They were censuring the Karenins, husband and wife.

`Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's something strange about her,' said one of her feminine friends.

`The great change is that she has brought back with her the shadow of Alexei Vronsky,' said the ambassador's wife.

`Well, what of it? There's a fable of Grimm's about a man without a shadow - a man deprived of his shadow. As a punishment for something or other. I never could understand just how this was a punishment. Yet a woman must probably feel uncomfortable without a shadow.'

`Yes, but women followed by a shadow usually come to a bad end,'

said Anna's friend.

`Bite your tongue!' said Princess Miaghkaia suddenly. `Karenina is a splendid woman. I don't like her husband - but her I like very much.'

`Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man,'

said the ambassador's wife. `My husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.'

`And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,'

said Princess Miaghkaia. `If our husbands didn't talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexei Alexandrovich, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper.... But doesn't it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he's a fool, though only in a whisper, everything became clear - isn't that so?'

`How spiteful you are today!'

`Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of us two had to be the fool. And, as you know, one could never say that of oneself.'

`No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit,' the diplomatist repeated the French saying.

`That's it - that's just it,' Princess Miaghkaia turned to him promptly. `But the point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies.