I looked at the bill of fare and ordered half a woodcock and a glass of Lafitte.
The prince looked at this.
“You won’t sup with me!
Why, this is positively ridiculous!
Pardon, mon ami, but this is . . . revolting punctiliousness.
It’s the paltriest vanity.
There’s almost a suspicion of class feeling about this. I don’t mind betting that’s it.
I assure you you’re offending me.”
But I stuck to my point.
“But, as you like,” he added.
“I won’t insist. . . . Tell me, Ivan Petrovitch, may I speak to you as a friend?”
“I beg you to do so.”
“Well, then, to my thinking such punctiliousness stands in your way.
All you people stand in your own light in that way.
You are a literary man; you ought to know the world, and you hold yourself aloof from everything.
I’m not talking of your woodcock now, but you are ready to refuse to associate with our circle altogether, and that’s against your interests.
Apart from the fact that you lose a great deal, a career, in fact, if only that you ought to know what you’re describing, and in novels we have counts and princes and boudoirs. . . . But what am I saying!
Poverty is all the fashion with you now, lost coats,[1] inspectors, quarrelsome officers, clerks, old times, dissenters, I know, I know. . . .”
“But you are mistaken, prince. If I don’t want to get into your socalled ‘higher circle,’ it’s because in the first place it’s boring, and in the second I’ve nothing to do there; though, after all, I do sometimes. . . .”
“I know; at Prince R.‘s, once a year. I’ve met you there.
But for the rest of the year you stagnate in your democratic pride, and languish in your garrets, though not all of you behave like that.
Some of them are such adventurers that they sicken me. . . .”
“I beg you, prince, to change the subject and not to return to our garrets.”
“Dear me, now you’re offended.
But you know you gave me permission to speak to you as a friend.
But it’s my fault; I have done nothing to merit your friendship.
The wine’s very decent.
Try it.”
He poured me out half a glass from his bottle.
“You see, my dear Ivan Petrovitch, I quite understand that to force one’s friendship upon anyone is bad manners.
We’re not all rude and insolent with you as you imagine. I quite understand that you are not sitting here from affection for me, but simply because I promised to talk to you.
That’s so, isn’t it?”
He laughed.
“And as you’re watching over the interests of a certain person you want to hear what I am going to say.
That’s it, isn’t it?” he added with a malicious smile.
“You are not mistaken,” I broke in impatiently. (I saw that he was one of those men who if anyone is ever so little in their power cannot resist making him feel it.
I was in his power. I could not get away without hearing what he intended to say, and he knew that very well.
His tone suddenly changed and became more and more insolently familiar and sneering.)
“You’re not mistaken, prince, that’s just what I’ve come for, otherwise I should not be sitting here . . . so late.”
I had wanted to say “I would not on any account have been supping with you,” but I didn’t say this, and finished my phrase differently, not from timidity, but from my cursed weakness and delicacy.
And really, how can one be rude to a man to his face, even if he deserves it, and even though one may wish to be rude to him?
I fancied the prince detected this from my eyes, and looked at me ironically as I finished my sentence, as though enjoying my faintheartedness, and as it were challenging me with his eyes:
“So you don’t dare to be rude; that’s it, my boy!”
This must have been so, for as I finished he chuckled, and with patronizing friendliness slapped me on the knee.
“You’re amusing, my boy!” was what I read in his eyes.
“Wait a bit!” I thought to myself.
“I feel very lively tonight!” said he,” and I really don’t know why.
Yes, yes, my boy!
It was just that young person I wanted to talk to you about.
We must speak quite frankly; talk till we reach some conclusion, and I hope that this time you will thoroughly understand me.