Old Grandet reminded me vividly of grandfather. I was annoyed that the book was so small, and surprised at the amount of truth it contained.
Truths which were familiar and boring to me in life were shown to me in a different light in this book, without malice and quite calmly.
All the books which I had read before Greenwood’s, condemned people as severely and noisily as my employers did, often arousing my sympathy for the villain and a feeling of irritation with the good people.
I was always sorry to see that despite enormous expenditure of intelligence and will-power, a man still failed to obtain his desires. The good characters stood awaiting events from first to last page, as immovable as stone pillars, and although all kinds of evil plots were formed against these stone pillars, stones do not arouse sympathy.
No matter how beautiful and strong a wall may be, one does not love it if one wants to get the apple on the tree on the other side of it.
It always seemed to me that all that was most worth having, and vigorous was hidden behind the “good” people.
In Goncourt, Greenwood, and Balzac there were no villains, but just simple people, wonderfully alive. One could not doubt that, whatever they were alleged to have said and done, they really did say and do, and they could not have said and done anything else.
In this fashion I learned to understand what a great treat a “good and proper” book can be.
But how to find it?
The tailor’s wife could not help me in this.
“Here is a good book,” she said, laying before me Arsene Huissier’s
“Hands full of Roses, Gold, and Blood.” She also gave me the novels of Beyle, Paul de Kock and Paul Feval, and I read them all with relish.
She liked the novels of Mariette and Vernier, which to me appeared dull.
I did not care for Spielhagen, but I was much taken with the stories of Auer — bach.
Sue and Huga, also, I did not like, preferring Walter Scott.
I wanted books which excited me, and made me feel happy, like wonderful Balzac.
I did not care for the porcelain woman as much as I had done at first.
When I went to see her, I put on a clean shirt, brushed my hair, and tried to appear good-looking. In this I was hardly successful. I always hoped that, seeing my good looks, she would speak to me in a simple and friendly manner, without that fish-like smile on her frivolous face.
But all she did was to smile and ask me in her sweet, tired voice:
“Have you read it?
Did you like it?”
“No.”
Slightly raising her eyebrows, she looked at me, and, drawing in her breath, spoke through her nose.
“But why?”
“I have read about all that before.”
“Above what?”
“About love.”
Her eyes twinkled, as she burst out into her honeyed laugh.
““Ach, but you see all books are written about love!”
Sitting in a big arm-chair, she swung her small feet, incased in fur slippers, to and fro, yawned, wrapped her blue dressing-gown around her, and drummed with her pink fingers on the cover of the book on her knee.
I wanted to say to her:
“Why don’t you leave this flat?
The officers write letters to you, and laugh at you.”
But I had not the audacity to say this, and went away, bearing with me a thick book on “Love,” a sad sense of disenchantment in my heart.
They talked about this woman in the yard more evilly, derisively, and spitefully than ever.
It offended me to hear these foul and, no doubt, lying stories. When I was away from her, I pitied the woman, and suffered for her; but when I was with her, and saw her small, sharp eyes, the cat-like flexibility of her small body, and that always frivolous face, pity and fear disappeared, vanished like smoke.
In the spring she suddenly went away, and in a few days her husband moved to new quarters.
While the rooms stood empty, awaiting a new tenant, I went to look at the bare walls, with their square patches where pictures had hung, bent nails, and wounds made by nails.
Strewn about the stained floor were pieces of different-colored cloth, balls of paper, broken boxes from the chemist, empty scent-bottles. A large brass pin gleamed in one spot.
All at once I felt sad and wished that I could see the tailor’s little wife once more to tell her how grateful I was to her.
CHAPTER X
BEFORE the departure of the tailor’s wife there had come to live under the flat occupied by my employers a black-eyed young lady, with her little girl and her mother, a gray-haired old woman, everlastingly smoking cigarettes in an amber mouthpiece.
The young lady was very beautiful, imperious, and proud. She spoke in a pleasant, deep voice. She looked at every one with head held high and unblinking eyes, as if they were all far away from her, and she could hardly see them.
Nearly every day her black soldier-servant, Tuphyaev, brought a thin-legged, brown horse to the steps of her flat. The lady came out in a long, steel-colored, velvet dress, wearing white gauntleted gloves and tan boots.
Holding the train of her skirt and a whip with a lilac-colored stone in its handle in one hand, with the other little hand she lovingly stroked the horse’s muzzle. He fixed his great eyes upon her, trembling all over, and softly trampled the soaked ground under his hoofs.
“Robaire, Robaire,” she said in a low voice, and patted the beautiful, arched neck of the steed with a firm hand.
Then setting her foot on the knee of Tuphyaev, she sprang lightly into the saddle, and the horse, prancing proudly, went through the gateway. She sat in the saddle as easily as if she were part of it.
She was beautiful with that rare kind of beauty which always seems new and wonderful, and always fills the heart with an intoxicating joy.
When I looked at her I thought that Diana of Poitiers, Queen Margot, the maiden La Valliere, and other beauties, heroines of historical novels, were like her.
She was constantly surrounded by the officers of the division which was stationed in the town, and in the evenings they used to visit her, and play the piano, violin, guitar, and dance and sing.