Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [72]
“Yes, Princess, it was a terrible misfortune for me.”
“What can we do? We must bear our misfortunes humbly. Not a hair falls from a man’s head but by the will of eternal Providence.”
“True, Princess.”
To the Princess’s sweet and friendly smiles and sighs the doctor answered coldly and dryly: “True, Princess.” And the expression of his face was cold and dry.
“What else can I say to him?” the Princess wondered.
“It is such a long time since we met,” she went on. “Five years! Think of all the water which has flown under the bridges in that time! So many changes have taken place, it is terrible to think about them! You know I am married now?… I’m not a countess any more, but a princess. And I have separated from my husband.”
“Yes, I heard about it.”
“God has sent me many trials. I am sure you have heard that I am almost ruined. My Dubovki, Kiryakovo, and Sofino estates have been sold to pay the debts of my miserable husband. There is only Baronovo and Mikhaltsevo left. It’s a terrible thing to look back over the past! So much has changed, so many misfortunes, and so many mistakes!”
“Yes, Princess, many mistakes.”
The Princess was a little put out. She knew she had made mistakes, but they were of such an intimate character that she thought she alone could think about them, or speak about them. She could not resist asking: “What mistakes were you thinking about?”
“You mentioned them, and you know them,” the doctor said, and smiled. “Why should we talk about them?”
“Do tell me, Doctor. I should be so grateful to you. And please don’t stand on ceremony with me. I love hearing the truth.”
“I am not judging you, Princess.”
“Not judging me indeed! What a tone you have! Then you really must know something! Tell me!”
“If you want me to, then I shall have to. Only I regret I am not a man with a clever tongue, and people do not always understand me.”
The doctor thought for a moment, and said: “There were a great number of mistakes, but in my opinion the most important was the spirit … the spirit prevailing on all your estates. As you see, I don’t know how to express myself very well. Chiefly I mean the lack of love, the loathing of people in general which could be felt as a positive force on all of them. Your entire way of living was built upon that loathing. Loathing the human voices, the faces of people, the scruffs of their necks, the way they walked … in a word, loathing everything that went to make up the human condition. At all the doors and on the stairways stand well-fed, ill-mannered, lazy grooms in livery who refuse to allow ill-dressed people into the house. In the hallway there are chairs with high backs especially placed there so that whenever you give balls or entertain, the servants won’t dirty the tapestries on the walls with the back of their heads; and in all the rooms there are thick carpets so that no human footsteps can be heard; and everyone who visits you is invariably commanded to speak softly and as little as possible, and never to say anything which would produce the least unpleasantness on your mind or on your nerves. And in your private sitting room you don’t shake hands with people or ask them to sit down—just as you don’t shake hands with me or ask me to sit down.…”
“Oh, please do sit down, if you wish,” the Princess said, holding out her hands and smiling. “Tell me, why are you so angry about such utterly unimportant things?”
“Why should I be angry?” The doctor laughed, but his face reddened, and he removed his hat and waved it about as he went on hotly: “To tell you the truth, I have been waiting for a long time for the opportunity to say these things to you.… I wanted to tell you that you have the Napoleonic way of regarding mankind—men are just cannon fodder. At least Napoleon had some ideas. You—you have nothing except your loathing!”
“Do I have a loathing for people?” The Princess smiled, shrugging her shoulders in amazement. “Do I?”
“Yes, you do! You want facts? Very well! At Mikhaltsevo there are three former