It happened in the town of SantafedaBogota, or perhaps it was Cracow, but more likely it was in the principality of Nassau, like the label on the seltzerwater bottles; certainly it was Nassau. Is that enough for you?
Well, so the prince seduced the girl and carried her off from her father, and managed to induce the girl to lay hands on the documents and take them with her.
There are cases of love like that, you know, Vanya.
Fugh! God have mercy upon us! She was an honest girl, you know, noble, exalted.
It’s true she very likely didn’t know much about the documents.
The only thing that troubled her was that her father might curse her.
The prince was equal to the occasion this time too; he gave her a formal, legal promise of marriage in writing.
By so doing he persuaded her that they were only going abroad for a time, for a holiday tour, and that when the old father’s anger had subsided they would return to him married, and would, the three of them, live happy ever after, and so on, to infinity.
She ran away, the old father cursed her and went bankrupt.
She was followed to Paris by Frauenmilch, who chucked up everything, chucked up his business even; he was very much in love with her.”
“Stop, who’s Frauenmilch?”
“Why, that fellow!
Feurbach, wasn’t it? Damn the fellow, Pfefferkuchen!
Well, of course, the prince couldn’t marry her: what would Countess Hlestov have said?
What would Baron Slops have thought?
So he had to deceive her.
And he did deceive her, too brutally.
To begin with, he almost beat her, and secondly, he purposely invited Pfefferkuchen to visit them. Well, he used to go and see them and became her friend. They would spend whole evenings alone, whimpering together, weeping over their troubles, and he would comfort her. To be sure, dear, simple souls!
The prince brought things to this pass on purpose. Once, he found them late at night, and pretended that they had an intrigue, caught at some pretext; said he’d seen it with his own eyes.
Well, he turned them both out of the house, and took his departure to London for a time.
She was just on the eve of her confinement; when he turned her out she gave birth to a daughter, that is, not a daughter but a son, to be sure, a little son. He was christened Volodka.
Pfefferkuchen stood godfather.
Well, so she went off with Pfefferkuchen.
He had a little money.
She travelled in Switzerland and Italy, through all the poetical places to be sure, most appropriately.
She cried all the time, and Pfefferkuchen whimpered, and many years passed like that, and the baby grew into a little girl.
And everything went right for the prince, only one thing was wrong, he hadn’t succeeded in getting back the promise of marriage.
‘You’re a base man,’ she had said to him at parting. ‘You have robbed me, you have dishonoured me and now you abandon me.
Goodbye.
But I won’t give you back your promise.
Not because I ever want to marry you, but because you’re afraid of that document.
So I shall always keep it in my hands.’
She lost her temper in fact, but the prince felt quite easy.
Such scoundrels always come off well in their dealings with socalled lofty souls.
They’re so noble that it’s always easy to deceive them, and besides they invariably confine themselves to lofty and noble contempt instead of practically applying the law to the case if it can be applied.
That young mother, for instance, she took refuge in haughty contempt, and though she kept the promise of marriage, the prince knew, of course, that she’d sooner hang herself than make use of it; so he felt secure for the time.
And though she spat in his nasty face, she had her Volodka left on her hands; if she had died what would have become of him?
But she didn’t think about that.
Bruderschaft, too, encouraged her and didn’t think about it. They read Schiller.
At last Bruderschaft sickened of something and died.”
“You mean Pfefferkuchen?”
“To be surehang him!
And she . . .”
“Stay.
How many years had they been travelling?”
“Exactly two hundred.
Well, she went back to Cracow.
Her father wouldn’t receive her, cursed her. She died, and the prince crossed himself for joy.
I was there too, drank goblets not a few, our ears full of mead, but our mouths full of need; they gave me a flip, and I gave them the slip. . . . Let’s drink, brother Vanya.”
“I suspect that you are helping him in that business, Masloboev.”