KISSINGEN
Every day in Paris was too short for me, and I left the Great Babylon
with immense regret. Sergy went to Kissingen to begin his cure, and I
returned to St. Petersburg to publish my book.
About a week after my arrival I was on my way to Kissingen. Sergy wrote
to me entreating me to come, as he couldn’t do without me, and had been
very miserable since we parted. He said that he would give up his cure
and start for St. Petersburg if I would not rejoin him. I telegraphed
back that I was starting off immediately.
Spoilt by the comforts of my travels in Turkestan, I felt very
uncomfortable in a train full of passengers. We were crowded together
like herrings in a barrel. I squeezed myself into my place in the corner
of the carriage, pressing close my elbows. My fellow-passengers were
going straight to Berlin and I couldn’t stretch my legs the whole night
to get the cramp out of them. We looked at one another with no great love
in our eyes. I was placed by the side of a well preserved lady of about
fifty years of age, trying to pass off for thirty, who had still the
remains of what she had been in her young days and did not like to part
with them. I caught her practising her fascinations in the mirror. She
was accompanied by her daughter, a grown-up girl of about eighteen, clad
in a short frock, with her hair down her back in a plait. When I heard
them say “I reckon,” I knew they were Americans. My neighbour opened her
basket and offered a part of her supper to me. She was most communicative
respecting her own concerns, and chatted away like a magpie. She told
me that they were going to do Paris, and spoke all the time of her
conquests, stating to me that she had got all the men at her feet. I
scarcely listened to her prattle, but she chatted on, accustomed to do
without answers. Opposite me, sat a full contrast to that chatter-box, a
placid materfamilias endowed with three babies aged respectively five,
four and two, who kept singing praises to the many charms and wondrous
perfection of her offsprings. The children were petted and fondled by
their mother, who crammed them all the way with bonbons and cake in
profusion. Her little girl hugging in her arms an immense doll, began
quarreling with her brother, an ugly and anything but well-behaved brat,
with nose and mouth blackened with chocolate; they kicked and screamed
until they were both black in the face. I only just stopped short of
throwing my book at their heads. The baby, the pet of the family, was
cutting a tooth and kept roaring the whole night.
We arrived early in the morning at the frontier of Prussia. At the
Customs my trunks were unmercifully turned topsy-turvy, the horrid
officials stirring them up as I used to do with my nursery pudding when
all the plums had sunk to the bottom.
When we approached Kissingen, I thrust my head out of the
railway-carriage, with my body half out of the window, to catch the first
sight of my husband’s face. As we drew up at the station I perceived
him on the platform, beaming with delight. I jumped out of the train
joyfully, and the next moment I was in Sergy’s arms.
Kissingen is surrounded by mountains and buried in verdure. It is the
favourite meeting-place for aristocratic Europe. There is a great rush of
ailing humanity towards these healing waters.
I found Sergy comfortably established in a villa belonging to Doctor
Sautier, by whom he was treated. The next day I accompanied my husband
when he made his visit to the doctor. The drawing-room was crowded with
patients who had arrived from all parts of the world. They perused
magazines, and plunged their heads into large books of photographs,
awaiting their turn to appear before the esculapius.
Early in the morning, as soon as I heard the postilion sounding his horn,
I hastened to jump out of bed, and accompanied Sergy to the Kurhaus,
where he took his waters. A beautiful string-orchestra entertained the
Kurhaus guests from six to eight. The sick, undergoing a cure, walk in
the broad alley, carrying their glasses with them. They stroll from
one spring to another, sipping the water on the way. We saw invalids
in wheeled chairs, basking in the sun with a shawl over their legs,
discussing and comparing their various diseases.
The outskirts of Kissingen are beautiful. We made long walks every
afternoon; exercise gave me a ravenous appetite, and I was far from being
satisfied with our meagre dinner when we returned home, being put on low
diet like my husband, for company’s sake. We were kept with a discipline
that was worse than that of a convent, and were all put to bed at nine
o’clock, in accordance with the doctor’s order. I didn’t like at all
to be under hospital rules, and began to revolt against this tedious
discipline. At the end of three days I longed for change of air and
surroundings, and wanted much to run away. I am sick to death of seeing
the same faces every day and of hearing the same sort of talk of people
drinking disgusting waters and occupied only with the engrossing pastime
of taking care of one’s health. We have also become imaginary sufferers,
and very often came upon Maria Michaelovna looking at her tongue in the
glass.
The weather is bad again, it is raining all the time. The sick are
promenading sulky and morose under their umbrellas, emptying their
glasses in a melancholy way.
Sergy has accomplished his cure at Kissingen; the treatment had
proved successful and his health was now gradually returning. I felt
reassured for the moment. But Sergy, instead of seeking a spot for an
after-treatment, hastened back to Tashkend, where he at once resumed
his work, which had become more complicated than ever, thanks to the
Boxer’s rising in China. The foreign diplomatists living in Pekin, are
besieged by a hostile crowd of natives. The Boxers have attacked the
newly-built Manchuria railway. When my husband was Governor-General of
the Amour Provinces, and there was no sign whatever of a misunderstanding
between China and European countries, he formed the project of building a
railway-line along the Amour banks, being against the construction of the
Manchuria railway on a foreign land, but he was not listened to, and we
see now the deplorable consequences.