The Queen of Spades and Other Stories (Classics) by Alexander Pushkin

Author:Alexander Pushkin [Pushkin, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

4

7 mai 18—

Homme sans mœurs et sans religion!

FROM A CORRESPONDENCE

LIZAVETA IVANOVNA was sitting in her room, still in her ball dress, lost in thought. On returning home she had made haste to dismiss the sleepy maid who reluctantly offered to help her, saying that she would undress herself, and with trembling heart had gone to her own room, expecting to find Hermann and hoping that she would not find him. A glance convinced her he was not there, and she thanked fate for having prevented their meeting. She sat down without undressing and began to recall the circumstances that had led her so far in so short a time. It was not three weeks since she had first caught sight of the young man from the window – and yet she was carrying on a correspondence with him, and he had already succeeded in inducing her to agree to a nocturnal tryst! She knew his name only because he had signed some of his letters; she had never spoken to him, did not know the sound of his voice, had never heard him mentioned… until that evening. Strange to say, that very evening at the ball, Tomsky, piqued with the young Princess Pauline for flirting with somebody else instead of with him as she usually did, decided to revenge himself by a show of indifference. He asked Lizaveta Ivanovna to be his partner and danced the interminable mazurka with her. And all the time he kept teasing her about her partiality for officers of the Engineers, assuring her that he knew far more than she could suppose, and some of his sallies so found their mark that several times Lizaveta Ivanovna thought he must know her secret.

‘Who told you all this?’ she asked, laughing.

‘A friend of someone you know,’ Tomsky answered, ‘a very remarkable person.’

‘And who is this remarkable man?’

‘His name is Hermann.’

Lizaveta Ivanovna said nothing; but her hands and feet turned to ice.

‘This Hermann’, continued Tomsky, ‘is a truly romantic figure: he has the profile of a Napoleon and the soul of a Mephistopheles. I think there must be at least three crimes on his conscience. How pale you look!’

‘I have a bad headache… Well, and what did this Hermann – or whatever his name is – tell you?’

‘Hermann is very annoyed with his friend: he says that in his place he would act quite differently…. I suspect in fact that Hermann has designs upon you himself; at any rate he listens to his friend’s ecstatic exclamations with anything but indifference.’

‘But where has he seen me?’

‘In church, perhaps, or when you were out walking…. Heaven only knows! – in your own room maybe, while you were asleep, for there is nothing he –’

Three ladies coming up to invite Tomsky to choose between ‘oubli ou regret?’ interrupted the conversation which had become so painfully interesting to Lizaveta Ivanovna.

The lady chosen by Tomsky was the Princess Pauline herself. She succeeded in effecting a reconciliation with him while they danced an extra turn and spun round once more before she was conducted to her chair.

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