ragrance
of the orange-trees. And she signed herself "Your forsaken Ariadne."
Two days later came another letter in the same style, signed "Your
forgotten Ariadne." My mind was confused. I loved her passionately,
I dreamed of her every night, and then this "your forsaken," "your
forgotten"--what did it mean? What was it for? And then the
dreariness of the country, the long evenings, the disquieting
thoughts of Lubkov. . . . The uncertainty tortured me, and poisoned
my days and nights; it became unendurable. I could not bear it and
went abroad.

Ariadne summoned me to Abbazzia. I arrived there on a bright warm
day after rain; the rain-drops were still hanging on the trees and
glistening on the huge, barrack-like dependance where Ariadne and
Lubkov were living.

They were not at home. I went into the park; wandered about the
avenues, then sat down. An Austrian General, with his hands behind
him, walked past me, with red stripes on his trousers such as our
generals wear. A baby was wheeled by in a perambulator and the
wheels squeaked on the damp sand. A decrepit old man with jaundice
passed, then a crowd of Englishwomen, a Catholic priest, then the
Austrian General again. A military band, only just arrived from
Fiume, with glittering brass instruments, sauntered by to the
bandstand--they began playing.

Have you ever been at Abbazzia? It's a filthy little Slav town with
only one street, which stinks, and in which one can't walk after
rain without goloshes. I had read so much and always with such
intense feeling about this earthly paradise that when afterwards,
holding up my trousers, I cautiously crossed the narrow street, and
in my ennui bought some hard pears from an old peasant woman who,
recognising me as a Russian, said: "Tcheeteery" for "tchetyry"
(four)--"davadtsat" for "dvadtsat" (twenty), and when I wondered
in perplexity where to go and what to do here, and when I inevitably
met Russians as disappointed as I was, I began to feel vexed and
ashamed. There is a calm bay there full of steamers and boats with
coloured sails. From there I could see Fiume and the distant islands
covered with lilac mist, and it would have been picturesque if the
view over the bay had not been hemmed in by the hotels and their
dependances--buildings in an absurd, trivial style of architecture,
with which the whole of that green shore has been covered by greedy
money grubbers, so that for the most part you see nothing in this
little