Tuesday, 29 August 1876 (17 August)

Yesterday I heard Paul say to Alexandre, indicating me with a glance:

— If you only knew! She has turned all Gavronzi upside down! She has remade Papa in her own fashion! Everything bows to her!

Really, have I done all that? So much the better.

I have been sleepy and bored since this morning. I do not yet admit boredom that comes from a lack of distraction or amusement, and when I am bored I look for a cause, convinced that this greater or lesser malaise springs from something and is not, on the contrary, the mere effect of a lack of amusement or of solitude.

But here, at Gavronzi, I desire nothing, I regret nothing, everything goes as I wish, and yet I am bored. Must I then simply believe that I am bored in the country? I do not know¹. But the devil take it!

When the others sat down to cards I stayed in my studio with Gritz and Michel. But Gritz has decidedly changed since yesterday. There is a certain awkwardness in his manner that I cannot account for.

Tomorrow’s outing has been put off until Thursday, and now he wants to leave on some serious business and come back tomorrow evening. As for Michel, I simply ordered him to stay. Gritz left.

I was preoccupied, and people remarked on it. Besides, for some time now I have been hovering between two worlds: people speak to me and I do not hear. Michel was playing cards in the red drawing room; I went in three or four times, exchanged a few words with the players and with Michel, and no sooner had I left the room than I forgot him and said to myself: what a horrid boy, I told him to stay and he has gone, for I do not see him. And that is only a sample of my absent-mindedness.

The gentlemen went to bathe in the river, which is lovely, deep and shaded by trees at the bathing place, and I stayed with the Princess on the great balcony which forms a covered entrance for the carriages. Among other things, the little hunchback told me a curious story. Yesterday Michel came to her and said: Maman, marry me off. To whom? To Mousse. He insisted so seriously that she was obliged to tell him to go to the devil.

— Only, she added, dear Mousse, do not tell him I told you, or he would eat me alive.

Kapitan (who came back yesterday), Alexandre, Paul, Michel and Pacha (whom I am beginning to dislike) found us still on the balcony, breathing in an exasperating heat — as for air, there was none to speak of, and in the evening not the faintest breeze. But the view is charming. Opposite, the red house and the scattered pavilions; to the right, the hill, halfway up which stands the church, all buried in trees, and further off the family vault; to the left, the river, the fields, the trees, open space. And the thought that all this is ours, that we are the sovereign masters of it all, and that all these houses, this church, the courtyard, which is like a little town, everything, everything belongs to us, and the servants, nearly sixty of them, and everything...

I played croquet; Eristoff kept count of the hoops, simpering humbly.

I waited impatiently for dinner to end so that I could go to Paul and ask him to explain a few words spoken during croquet which had disturbed me unpleasantly.

— Have you not noticed, Paul said to me when I was in his room, that Gritz has changed since yesterday?

— Me? No, I have not noticed.

— Well, I have, and it is because of Michel.

— How so?

— Michel is a good fellow, but he has never kept company with anyone except women at supper parties, and he does not know how to behave; what is more, he has a wicked tongue — witness the story the other day. I do not know exactly whether he asked Gritz if he had.... or whether he said he would like to... well, I have told you. I spoke of it to Alexandre, and Alexandre says I ought to have pulled his ears for him; Aunt Nathalie (Eristoff) is of the same opinion.

— But...

— Wait. I told you that Gritz has been persuaded, by his mother or by his acquaintances or by I know not what, that people are only trying to catch him and marry him off. And he is afraid of young ladies, imagining that they all want to throw themselves at his head. Well, until yesterday Gritz praised you to the skies, and yesterday... of course, I know you do not want him, you do not give a hang (pardon the expression) about any of it, but it is not right. He said nothing more yesterday, and I noticed, so... there it is.

— Yes, but what is to be done?

— You must — you are clever enough for that and for more besides — you must say... make him understand; he is stupid, but he will understand that; in a word, you must... one day at dinner, I will help, and you can tell a story or whatever you like.

— That was just what I was thinking.

— We shall see, my brother.

Having talked business with Alexandre for two hours — talked of tenant farmers, of wheat, barley, oats, the devil, sheep... — we talked of my father and, by extension, of the scene that took place yesterday halfway to Gavronzi. His fair one came running out of her forest all in tears; monsieur took her off to Poltava, she wept there for an hour, and monsieur put on his hat and left in a rage. As they were speaking French, the servant who told the story understood nothing, but he remembered these words, which the lady kept repeating: I am utterly lost!

We touched briefly on the Miloradovitches. The old woman is living for the moment with a certain Yonina, a magistrate and our enemy. He loved my mother and asked for her hand. But to this offer Grandpapa replied with words the man has never been able to forgive: You ask for my daughter’s hand, he said, and the shade² of your murdered wife still rises behind you! — Whereupon he called his numerous servants and ordered them to sweep the gentleman out, which those good people did with real brooms, upon my word of honour.

Besides, the story is well known.

Lisaveta Ivanovna acquired this handsome lover through Mme Belli, a dirty nihilist and the handsome fellow’s acknowledged mistress; the handsome fellow passed for a Don Juan, but he was simply a man of the town. Mme Potasky having died, he needed an income, and Belli served him up Mme Miloradovitch.

Such are the hands Gritz is in. And these are the reasons I gave Alexandre to prove to him that a marriage was impossible, though I wished very much to be reassured. [Marie’s note, on “the shade”: His wife cut her own throat out of jealousy.] Alexandre went to the theatre after us and heard talk of the arrival of “Bashkirtseff’s Belle, who is a great beauty.” It was the man-woman, Mlle Bedriaga, who put it that way.

In the foyer he was drawn aside by Gritz, who spoke of me with enthusiasm.

— The matter could be arranged abroad, said Alexandre, and once you were married you would know how to manage; besides, I will take it upon myself to send Yonina and all that riff-raff to the devil.

Alexandre is the strong man of the family.

While we talked business I asked a great many questions; that is the way not to be cheated. And then, instead of beating about the bush, I spoke plainly about everything, telling him he could rest easy.

— They say you steal, but I do not believe it. That is nonsense and wicked slander. Only, you are a lucky man; everything goes right for you.

I went on in this vein. Do not laugh. The proof of my shrewdness is the trouble my uncle takes to deceive me, or rather to flatter me, reassure me, make me believe in his boundless devotion.

At bottom he is not a bad man, but I must keep my wits about me. I succeed by saying everything, bluntly; that gives an impression of great simplicity, and then it is easier to manoeuvre.

On my way back into the white house I saw Michel’s troika at the door and Michel ready to leave.

— Michel! Michel! I cried from a distance. Are you leaving?

He presented me with a box of my favourite sweets.

— I have just brought them... he said.

— Ah! I understand; this troika has brought you from Poltava.

— But...

— Very good, thank you; let us go in...

And taking his arm, I led him, quite dumbfounded, into the house, saying to the coachman:

— Unharness the horses; the prince is not leaving.

I do not know why, but the effect of this scene was so comical that I laughed at it myself; as for the others, it was a triumph. The Princess went in laughing, Paul stood speechless with his red lantern in his hand, Alexandre’s eyes travelled from me to Michel, Pacha began to shout, and Michel cast a look of distress at the coachman, who shrugged his shoulders and went back to the stable.

I did it to keep the bad influence away from Gritz for one day at least.

We were sitting quietly in the drawing room when Michel disappeared, and a moment later we heard the bells of the troika fading away at a full gallop.

— How horrid! I thought.

I meant to say it, and thought it, believing I had said it. These lapses often happen to me.

— What, said the Princess, they have gone, Michel and Pacha!

— So it seems, I said.

But at that moment the two of them burst into the room, holding their sides.

— Ah! ha! ha! cried Michel.

— Ho! ho! ho! howled Pacha.

— Ah, Lord, Vasaka is a treasure, cried the prince, a treasure! What a run! He is the one who ran with the harness arch³ over his head. The peasants took him for a madman who thought he was a horse! He would never have stopped at all, but I shouted so!

And the wretched scamp, losing his voice, coughed and beat his breast.

The Princess went off to bed furious; there was talk of an Italian troupe, of a baritone who was asking for the means to get back to Italy.

— I can see that it will fall to me, she said.

And Michel replied that if this Italian came, he would set all his hounds on him.

— A hunt — for an Italian! That would be original.

And he held forth on every detail of the hunt at such length that the little woman went out saying she would go to Italy to hunt Italians, since there are plenty of them there.

I could not resist making a tableau on the great staircase. I sat in the middle; the gentlemen who were going up with me sat lower down on the steps, and the prince knelt. Do you know the engraving of Goethe’s Eleonore? It was just that, even my costume. Only I looked at no one; I looked at the lamps. If Paul had not put out one of them, we would have stayed like that for a long time. I think it an adorable way of holding one’s salon. In my palace I shall arrange something of the kind.

Good night. Ah, how bored I am!