an
aggregate of conceit and gasconade as would be unthinkable even in St.
Petersburg--which is saying a great deal! They used to try to make fun
of me, but I would console myself by drinking champagne and then
lolling in a retiring-room. Nevertheless, I found it deadly work.
"C'est un utchitel," Blanche would say of me, "qui a gagne deux cent
mille francs, and but for me, would have had not a notion how to spend
them. Presently he will have to return to his tutoring. Does any one
know of a vacant post? You know, one must do something for him."

I had the more frequent recourse to champagne in that I constantly felt
depressed and bored, owing to the fact that I was living in the most
bourgeois commercial milieu imaginable--a milieu wherein every sou was
counted and grudged. Indeed, two weeks had not elapsed before I
perceived that Blanche had no real affection for me, even though she
dressed me in elegant clothes, and herself tied my tie each day. In
short, she utterly despised me. But that caused me no concern. Blase
and inert, I spent my evenings generally at the Chateau des Fleurs,
where I would get fuddled and then dance the cancan (which, in that
establishment, was a very indecent performance) with eclat. At length,
the time came when Blanche had drained my purse dry. She had conceived
an idea that, during the term of our residence together, it would be
well if I were always to walk behind her with a paper and pencil, in
order to jot down exactly what she spent, what she had saved, what she
was paying out, and what she was laying by. Well, of course I could not
fail to be aware that this would entail a battle over every ten francs;
so, although for every possible objection that I might make she had
prepared a suitable answer, she soon saw that I made no objections, and
therefore, had to start disputes herself. That is to say, she would
burst out into tirades which were met only with silence as I lolled on
a sofa and stared fixedly at the ceiling. This greatly surprised her.
At first she imagined that it was due merely to the fact that I was a
fool, "un utchitel"; wherefore she would break off her harangue in the
belief that, being too stupid to understand, I was a hopeless case.
Then she would leave the room, but return ten minutes later to resume
the contest. This continued throughout her squandering of my money--a
squandering altogether out of proportion to our means. An example is
the way in which she changed her