"Perhaps because one cannot help winning if one is fanatically certain of doing so."
"Yet I dare wager that you do not think me capable of serious feeling in the matter?"
"I do not care whether you are so or not," answered Polina with calm indifference.
"Well, since you ask me, I DO doubt your ability to take anything seriously.
You are capable of worrying, but not deeply.
You are too ill-regulated and unsettled a person for that.
But why do you want money?
Not a single one of the reasons which you have given can be looked upon as serious."
"By the way," I interrupted, "you say you want to pay off a debt.
It must be a large one.
Is it to the Frenchman?"
"What do you mean by asking all these questions?
You are very clever today.
Surely you are not drunk?"
"You know that you and I stand on no ceremony, and that sometimes I put to you very plain questions.
I repeat that I am your slave—and slaves cannot be shamed or offended."
"You talk like a child.
It is always possible to comport oneself with dignity.
If one has a quarrel it ought to elevate rather than to degrade one."
"A maxim straight from the copybook!
Suppose I CANNOT comport myself with dignity.
By that I mean that, though I am a man of self-respect, I am unable to carry off a situation properly.
Do you know the reason?
It is because we Russians are too richly and multifariously gifted to be able at once to find the proper mode of expression.
It is all a question of mode.
Most of us are so bounteously endowed with intellect as to require also a spice of genius to choose the right form of behaviour.
And genius is lacking in us for the reason that so little genius at all exists.
It belongs only to the French—though a few other Europeans have elaborated their forms so well as to be able to figure with extreme dignity, and yet be wholly undignified persons.
That is why, with us, the mode is so all-important.
The Frenchman may receive an insult—a real, a venomous insult: yet, he will not so much as frown. But a tweaking of the nose he cannot bear, for the reason that such an act is an infringement of the accepted, of the time-hallowed order of decorum.
That is why our good ladies are so fond of Frenchmen—the Frenchman's manners, they say, are perfect!
But in my opinion there is no such thing as a Frenchman's manners. The Frenchman is only a bird—the coq gaulois.
At the same time, as I am not a woman, I do not properly understand the question.
Cocks may be excellent birds.
If I am wrong you must stop me.
You ought to stop and correct me more often when I am speaking to you, for I am too apt to say everything that is in my head.
"You see, I have lost my manners.
I agree that I have none, nor yet any dignity.
I will tell you why.
I set no store upon such things.
Everything in me has undergone a cheek.
You know the reason.
I have not a single human thought in my head.
For a long while I have been ignorant of what is going on in the world—here or in Russia.
I have been to Dresden, yet am completely in the dark as to what Dresden is like.
You know the cause of my obsession.
I have no hope now, and am a mere cipher in your eyes; wherefore, I tell you outright that wherever I go I see only you—all the rest is a matter of indifference.
"Why or how I have come to love you I do not know.
It may be that you are not altogether fair to look upon.
Do you know, I am ignorant even as to what your face is like.