Volume V Part 84 (2/2)
My servant and coache
I called her Zaira, and she got into the carriage and returned within her coarse clothes, without a chemise of any kind
After I had dropped Zinowieff at his lodging I went hoingtill I had dressed her modestly in the French style In less than three h Italian to tell me what she wanted and to understand ot jealous But we shall hearchapter
CHAPTER XX
Crevecoeur--Bomback--Journey to Moscow--My Adventures At St
Petersburg
The day on which I took Zaira I sent Laot drunk every day, and when in his cups he was unbearable nobody would have anything to say to him except as a common soldier, and that is not an enviable position in Russia I got hih money for the journey I heard afterwards that he entered the Austrian service
In May, Zaira had become so beautiful that when I went to Moscow I dared not leave her behind me, so I took her in place of a servant It was delicious to ht her On a Saturday I would go with her to the bath where thirty of forty naked htest constraint This absence of shaine, from native innocence; but I wondered that none looked at Zaira, who seeinal of the statue of Psyche I had seen at the Villa Borghese at Rome She was only fourteen, so her breast was not yet developed, and she bore about her few traces of puberty Her skin was as white as snow, and her ebony tresses covered the whole of her body, save in a few places where the dazzling whiteness of her skin shone through
Her eyebroere perfectly shaped, and her eyes, though they er, could not have been more brilliant or more expressive If it had not been for her furious jealousy and her blind confidence in fortune-telling by cards, which she consulted every day, Zaira would have been a paragon a and distinguished-looking French Parisian named La Riviere, as tolerably pretty but quite devoid of education, unless it were that education coirls who sell their char man came to me with a letter from Prince Charles of Courland, who said that if I could do anything for the young couple he would be grateful towith Zaira
”YouFrench us to your co us to your friends”
”Well, I aer here, and I will come and see you, and you can cohted; but I never dine at hoer, I could not introduce you and the lady Is she your wife? People will askWhat am I to say? I wonder Prince Charles did not send you to soentleman of Lorraine, and Mada to St Petersburg is to amuse myself”
”Then I don't knohom I could introduce you under the circumstances; but I should think you will be able to find plenty of a anyone The theatres, the streets, and even the Court entertainments, are open to everyone I suppose you have plenty of ot, and I don't expect any either”
”Well, I have not much more, but you really astonish me How could you have been so foolish as to come here without money?”
”Well, ot fro, and up to now it seeet on somehow”
”Then she has the purse?”
”My purse,” said she, ”is in the pockets of my friends”
”I understand, and I a the ithal to live If I had such a purse, it should be opened for you, but I a, wholand whence he had fled on account of his debts, had co and entered the army He was the son of a rich e, and an araly y He happened to call on e traveller whose purse was in the pocket of her friends I introduced the couple to hi the whole story, the item of the purse excepted The adventure was just to Bo advances to Madahly professional spirit, and I was inwardly amused and felt that her axiom was a true one Boed them to come and take an unceremonious dinner the same day with him at Crasnacaback I was included in the invitation, and Zaira, not understanding French, askedher expressed a desire to accoave in to appease her, for I knew the wish proceeded from jealousy, and that if I did not consent I should be tormented by tears, ill-humour, reproaches, melancholy, etc This had occurred several times before, and so violent had she been that I had been compelled to confore to say, I could not have taken a better way to prove my love Such is the character of the Russian worees she becaain, and a love encounter sealed the reconciliation
Boh spirits, and while Zaira was dressing, Madame Riviere talked in such a manner as to make e of the world
The astonishi+ng thing was that her lover did not seeht say that he was in love with the Messalina, but the excuse would not have been admissible