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Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg,
so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered
between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though
Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive
than Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying
court to her. When they had last met on the old prince's name
day, she had answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally,
evidently not listening to what he was saying.
Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though
in a manner peculiar to herself.
She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she
had become very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought
herself not merely as good-looking as before but even far more
attractive. She was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that
she had become a very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that
the older she grew the less dangerous she became to men, and the
more freely they could associate with her and avail themselves
of her suppers, soirees, and the animated company that assembled
at her house, without incurring any obligation. A man who would
have been afraid ten years before of going every day to the house
when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of compromising
her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day and
treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.
That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and
hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner
parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every
day, supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning.
Julie never missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses
were always of the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed
to be disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she
did not believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the
joys of life, and expected peace only "yonder." She
adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great disappointment,
like a girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly
deceived by him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her
she was regarded in that light, and had even herself come to believe
that she had suffered much in life. This melancholy, which did
not prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder the young people
who came to her house from passing the time pleasantly. Every
visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to the melancholy
mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with society gossip,
dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which were in vogue
at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among them Boris,
entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with these she
had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of all worldly
things, and to them she showed her albums filled with mournful
sketches, maxims, and verses.
To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his
early disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation
of friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render,
and showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album
and wrote: "Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and
melancholy upon me."
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.*
*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge. Julia said this
was charming
"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy,"
she said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied
from a book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade
between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."
In reply Boris wrote these lines:
Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,
Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
Et mele une douceur secrete
A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*
*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
And mingle a secret sweetness
With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp.
Boris read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted
the reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at
large gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the
only souls who understood one another in a world of indifferent
people.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing
cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry
(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests).
Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her
son to the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the
Divine will.
"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie,"
she said to the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose
at your house. He has suffered so many disappointments and is
so sensitive," said she to the mother. "Ah, my dear,
I can't tell you how fond I have grown of Julie latterly,"
she said to her son. "But who could help loving her? She
is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"- she paused. "And
how I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed
me her accounts and letters from Penza (they have enormous estates
there), and she, poor thing, has no one to help her, and they
do cheat her so!"
Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother.
He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what
she had to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the
Penza and Nizhegorod estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy
adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of
repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for
her artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility
of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He
spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day
on thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose
tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and
chin (nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression
of continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural
rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words,
though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor
of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the
use of the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and
sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to
him, but her feminine self-deception immediately supplied her
with consolation, and she told herself that he was only shy from
love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability,
and not long before Boris' departure she formed a definite plan
of action. Just as Boris' leave of absence was expiring, Anatole
Kuragin made his appearance in Moscow, and of course in the Karagins'
drawing room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became
cheerful and very attentive to Kuragin.
"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I
know from a reliable source that Prince Vasili has sent his son
to Moscow to get him married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that
I should be sorry for her. What do you think of it, my dear?"
The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away
that whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of
seeing all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already
mentally apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands
of another, and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole,
pained Boris. He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention
of proposing. Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually
of how she had enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was
leaving. Though Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love
and therefore meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably
of feminine inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness
to joy, and how their moods depend solely on who happens to be
paying court to them. Julie was offended and replied that it was
true that a woman needs variety, and the same thing over and over
again would weary anyone.
"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing
to sting her; but at that instant the galling thought occurred
to him that he might have to leave Moscow without having accomplished
his aim, and have vainly wasted his efforts- which was a thing
he never allowed to happen.
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered
his eyes to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute
face, and said:
"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the
contrary..."
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability
had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were
fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange
so as not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair
has been begun and must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised
his eyes to hers, and said:
"You know my feelings for you!"
There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph
and self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is
said on such occasions- that he loved her and had never loved
any other woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates
and Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received
what she demanded.
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed
gloom and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a
splendid house in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything
for a brilliant wedding.
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