Charsky made every possible effort to rid himself of the intolerable label. He avoided the company of his fellow litterateurs and preferred society people, even the most vapid of them. His conversation was the most banal and never touched on literature. In his dress he always observed the latest fashion with the shyness and superstition of a young Muscovite arriving in Petersburg for the first time in his life. In his study, decorated like a lady’s bedroom, there was nothing reminiscent of a writer; no books were scattered over and under the tables; the sofa was not spattered with ink; there was no disorder betraying the presence of the muse and the absence of a broom and brush. Charsky was in despair if one of his society friends found him with pen in hand. It was hard to believe what trifles a man could sink to, one who was, incidentally, endowed with talent and soul. He pretended to be now a passionate fancier of horses, now a desperate gambler, now a refined gastronome; though he was unable to tell a mountain breed from an Arabian, could never remember trumps, and secretly preferred baked potatoes to all possible concoctions of French cuisine. He led a most dissipated life; hung around at all the balls, overate at all the diplomatic dinners, and was as unavoidable at every soirée as Rezanov’s ice cream.
And yet he was a poet, and his passion was insuperable: when such
One morning Charsky felt that blessed state of mind when dreams are clearly outlined before you and you find vivid, unexpected words to embody your visions, when verses lie down easily under your pen and sonorous rhymes rush to meet harmonious thoughts. Charsky’s soul was plunged in sweet oblivion…and society, and society’s opinion, and his own caprices did not exist for him. He was writing verses.
Suddenly the door of his study creaked and a stranger’s head appeared. Charsky gave a start and frowned.
“Who’s there?” he asked with vexation, cursing his servants to himself for never staying put in the front hall.
The stranger came in.
He was tall, lean, and seemed about thirty years old. The features of his swarthy face were expressive: the pale, high forehead overhung by black locks of hair, the dark, flashing eyes, the aquiline nose, and the thick beard surrounding the sunken, swarthy yellow cheeks, betrayed him as a foreigner. He was wearing a black tailcoat, already discolored at the seams; summer trousers (though outside it was already deep autumn); a false diamond gleamed under a shabby black cravat over his yellowed shirtfront; his rough felt hat seemed to have seen both fair weather and foul. Meeting such a man in the forest, you would have taken him for a robber; in society, for a political conspirator; in the front hall, for a quack peddling elixirs and arsenic.
“What do you want?” Charsky asked him in French.
Charsky did not offer him a chair and stood up himself; the conversation went on in Italian.
“I am a Neapolitan artist,” said the stranger. “Circumstances have forced me to leave my fatherland. I came to Russia with hopes for my talent.”
Charsky thought that the Neapolitan was preparing to give some cello concerts and was selling tickets door to door. He was about to hand him his twenty-five roubles, the sooner to be rid of him, but the stranger added:
“I hope,
It would have been impossible to deliver a more painful blow to Charsky’s vanity. He glanced haughtily at the man who called himself his confrere.
“Allow me to ask, who are you and whom do you take me for?” he asked, barely controlling his indignation.
The Neapolitan noticed his vexation.
“What do you want?” Charsky repeated drily.
“I have heard much about your astonishing talent; I am sure that the local gentry consider it an honor to offer all possible patronage to so excellent a poet,” replied the Italian, “and I therefore made so bold as to come to you…”
