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By Root 3526 0

working in the garden and supervising the construction work that never ceased on his estate. As the main condition for activity was order, so the order in his way of life was brought to the utmost degree of precision. His coming to the table was performed under the same invariable conditions, and not only at the same hour, but at the same minute. With the people around him, from his daughter to the servants, the prince was brusque and invariably demanding, and thus, without being cruel, inspired a fear and respect for himself such as the cruelest of men would not find it easy to obtain. Though he was retired and now had no importance in state affairs, every governor of the province in which the prince’s estate lay considered it his duty to call on him and, like the architect, the gardener, or Princess Marya, to wait at the appointed hour for the prince to come out to the high-ceilinged waiting room. And each person in the waiting room experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear at the moment when the immensely high door to the study opened and revealed the small figure of the old man, in a powdered wig, with small dry hands and gray beetling brows, which sometimes, when he frowned, hid the brightness of his intelligent and youthfully bright eyes.

On the day of the young couple’s arrival, in the morning, as usual, Princess Marya went into the waiting room at the appointed hour for the morning greeting and fearfully crossed herself and inwardly recited a prayer. Every day she went in and every day she prayed that this daily meeting would go well.

A powdered old servant who was sitting in the waiting room got up with a quiet movement and in a whisper announced: “If you please.”

From behind the door came the regular sounds of a lathe. The princess timidly pulled the easily and smoothly opening door and stopped in the doorway. The prince was working at the lathe and, having glanced at her, went on with what he was doing.

The immense study was filled with things obviously in constant use. The big table with books and plans lying on it, the tall bookcases with keys in their glass doors, the tall table for writing in a standing position, on which lay an open notebook, the lathe with tools laid out and wood shavings strewn around it—everything spoke of constant, diverse, and orderly activity. By the movements of the small foot shod in a silver-embroidered Tartar boot, by the firm pressure of the sinewy, lean hand, one could see in the prince the still persistent and much-enduring strength of fresh old age. Having made a few more turns, he took his foot from the pedal of the lathe, wiped the chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, going to the table, called his daughter over. He never blessed his children, but, offering her his bristly, as yet unshaven cheek and giving her a stern and at the same time attentively tender look, merely said:

“Are you well?…Sit down, then!”

He took the geometry notebook, written in his own hand, and moved a chair over with his foot.

“For tomorrow!” he said, quickly finding the page and marking it paragraph by paragraph with his hard fingernail.

The princess bent to the table over the notebook.

“Wait, there’s a letter for you,” the old man said suddenly, taking an envelope with a woman’s handwriting on it from a pouch attached to the table and dropping it in front of her.

At the sight of the letter, the princess’s face became covered with red blotches. She hastily took it and bent over it.

“From Héloïse?”43 asked the prince, baring his still strong and yellowish teeth in a cold smile.

“Yes, from Julie,” said the princess, glancing up timidily and smiling timidly.

“I’ll skip two letters and read the third,” the prince said sternly. “I’m afraid you write a lot of nonsense. I’ll read the third.”

“You can read this one, mon père,” the princess replied, blushing still more and handing him the letter.

“The third, I said, the third,” the prince shouted curtly, pushing the letter away, and, leaning his elbow on the table, he drew the notebook with geometric