sion
was indispensable to her, after such a bereavement, and her health required
a warm climate. They spent the summer and autumn in Germany and
Switzerland, and in the winter, as might have been expected, they went to
Paris. In Paris Varvara Pavlovna blossomed out like a rose, and managed
to build a little nest for herself as promptly and as adroitly as in
Petersburg. She found an extremely pretty apartment, in one of the quiet
but fashionable Paris streets; she made her husband such a dressing-gown as
he had never owned before; she hired a trim maid, a capital cook, a smart
footman; she got an enchanting carriage, a charming little piano. A week
had not passed before she crossed a street, wore her shawl, opened her
parasol, and put on her gloves in a style equal to that of the
purest-blooded Parisienne. And she soon provided herself with
acquaintances. At first, only Russians went to her house, then Frenchmen
began to make their appearance, very amiable, courteous, unmarried, with
beautiful manners and euphonious family names; they all talked fast and
much, bowed with easy grace, and screwed up their eyes in a pleasing way;
all of them had white teeth which gleamed beneath rosy lips,--and how they
did understand the art of smiling! Every one of them brought his friends,
and "la belle Madame de Lavretzki" soon became known from the Chaussee
d'Antin to the Rue de Lille. In those days (this took place in 1836), that
tribe of feuilleton and chronicle writers, which now swarm everywhere, like
ants in an ant-hill which has been cut open, had not multiplied; but even
then, a certain M----r Jules presented himself in Varvara Pavlovna's
salon, a gentleman of insignificant appearance, with a scandalous
reputation, insolent and base, like all duellists and beaten men. This M--r
Jules was extremely repulsive to Varvara Pavlovna, but she received him
because he scribbled for various journals, and incessantly alluded to her,
calling her now _"Mme. de L * * * tzki_," now "_Mme. de * * * cette
grande dame Russe si distinguee, qui demeure rue de P._"; narrating to all
the world, that is to say, to a few hundred subscribers, who cared nothing
whatever about "_Mme. de L * * * tzki_," how that pretty and charming
lady was a real Frenchwoman in mind (_une vraie francaise par
l'esprit_),--there is no higher encomium for the French,--what a remarkable
musician she was, and how wonderfully she waltzed (Varvara Pavlovna, in
reality, did waltz i