esse-femme! * That's what is called putting things squarely.
She would like to be married to all three at the same time," thought he.

* A masterly woman.

"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin asked,
his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so
naive a question. "Will he agree?"

"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that
Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."

Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

"Even divorce you?" said he.

Helene laughed.

Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned
a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the
idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce
and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest told her that
it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel
which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband
is alive.

Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she
drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.

Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly and
ironically.

"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...'"
said the old princess.

"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma
position j'ai des devoirs," * said Helene changing from Russian, in
which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear,
into French which suited it better.

* "Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand
anything. In my position I have obligations."

"But, my dear...."

"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who has
the right to grant dispensations..."

Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to announce
that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre
lui, parce qu'il m'a manque parole." *

* "No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with
him for not keeping his word to me."

"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde," * said a fair-haired young man
with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.