_a_ has the sound of _a_ in _father_.
_e_ „ „ _a_ in _pane_.
_i_ „ „ _ee_.
_u_ „ „ _oo_.
_y_ is always consonantal except when
it is the last letter of the word.
_g_ is always hard.
I
On the 10th of August 1862, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a great
number of people were thronging before the well-known _Konversation_ in
Baden-Baden. The weather was lovely; everything around--the green trees,
the bright houses of the gay city, and the undulating outline of the
mountains--everything was in holiday mood, basking in the rays of the
kindly sunshine; everything seemed smiling with a sort of blind,
confiding delight; and the same glad, vague smile strayed over the human
faces too, old and young, ugly and beautiful alike. Even the blackened
and whitened visages of the Parisian demi-monde could not destroy the
general impression of bright content and elation, while their
many-coloured ribbons and feathers and the sparks of gold and steel on
their hats and veils involuntarily recalled the intensified brilliance
and light fluttering of birds in spring, with their rainbow-tinted
wings. But the dry, guttural snapping of the French jargon, heard on
all sides could not equal the song of birds, nor be compared with it.
Everything, however, was going on in its accustomed way. The orchestra
in the Pavilion played first a medley from the Traviata, then one of
Strauss’s waltzes, then ‘Tell her,’ a Russian song, adapted for
instruments by an obliging conductor. In the gambling saloons, round the
green tables, crowded the same familiar figures, with the same dull,
greedy, half-stupefied, half-exasperated, wholly rapacious expression,
which the gambling fever lends to all, even the most aristocratic,
features. The same well-fed and ultra-fashionably dressed Russian
landowner from Tambov with wide staring eyes leaned over the table, and
with uncomprehending haste, heedless of the cold smiles of the croupiers
themselves, at the very instant of the cry ‘_rien ne va plus_,’ laid
with perspiring hand golden rings of _louis d’or_ on all the four
corners of the roulette, depriving himself by so doing of every
possibility of gaining anything, even in case of success. This did not
in the least prevent him the same evening from affirming the contrary
with disinterested indignation to Prince Kokó, one of the well-known
leaders of the aristocratic opposition, the Prince Kokó, who in Paris at
the salon of the Princess Mathilde, so happily remarked in the presence
of the Emperor: ‘_Madame, le principe de la propriété est profondément
ébranlé en Russie_.’ At the Russian tree, _à l’arbre Russe_, our dear
fellow-countrymen and countrywomen were assembled after their wont. They
approached haughtily and carelessly in fashionable style, greeted each
other with dignity and elegant ease, as befits beings who find
themselves at the topmost pinnacle of contemporary culture. But when
they had met and sat down together, they were absolutely at a loss for
anything to say to one another, and had to be content with a pitiful
interchange of inanities, or with the exceedingly indecent and
exceedingly insipid old jokes of a hopelessly stale French wit, once a
journalist, a chattering buffoon with Jewish shoes on his paltry little
legs, and a contemptible little beard on his mean little visage. He
retailed to them, _à ces princes russes_, all the sweet absurdities from
the old comic almanacs _Charivari_ and _Tintamarre_, and they, _ces
princes russes_, burst into grateful laughter, as though forced in spite
of themselves to recognise the crushing superiority of foreign wit, and
their own hopeless incapacity to invent anything amusing. Yet here were
almost all the ‘_fine fleur_’ of our society, ‘all the high-life and
mirrors of fashion.’ Here was Count X., our incomparable dilettante, a
profoundly musical nature, who so divinely recites songs on the piano,
but cannot in fact take two notes correctly without fumbling at random
on the keys, and sings in a style something between that of a poor gypsy
singer and a Parisian hairdresser. Here was our enchanting Baron Q., a
master in every line: literature, administration, oratory, and
card-sharping. Here, too, was Prince Y., the friend of religion and the
people, who in the blissful epoch when the spirit-trade was a monopoly,
had made himself betimes a huge fortune by the sale of vodka adulterated
with belladonna; and the brilliant General O. O., who had achieved the
subjugation of something, and the pacification of something else, and
who is nevertheless still a nonentity, and does not know what to do with
himself. And R. R. the amusing fat man, who regards himself as a great
invalid and a great wit, though he is, in fact, as strong as a bull, and
as dull as a post.... This R. R. is almost the only man in our day who
has preserved the traditions of the dandies of the forties, of the epoch
of the ‘Hero of our Times,’ and the Countess Vorotinsky. He has
preserved, too, the special gait with the swing on the heels, and _le
culte de la pose_ (it cannot even be put into words in Russian), the
unnatural deliberation of movement, the sleepy dignity of expression,
the immovable, offended-looking countenance, and the habit of
interrupting other people’s remarks with a yawn, gazing at his own
finger-nails, laughing through his nose, suddenly shifting his hat from
the back of his head on to his eyebrows, etc. Here, too, were people in
government circles, diplomats, big-wigs with European names, men of
wisdom and intellect, who imagine that the Golden Bull was an edict of
the Pope, and that the English poor-tax is a tax levied on the poor. And
here, too, were the hot-blooded, though tongue-tied, devotees of the
_dames aux camellias_, young society dandies, with superb partings down
the back of their heads, and splendid drooping whiskers, dressed in real
London costumes, young bucks whom one would fancy there was nothing to
hinder from becoming as vulgar as the illustrious French wit above
mentioned. But no! our home products are not in fashion it seems; and
Countess S., the celebrated arbitress of fashion and _grand genre_, by
spiteful tongues nicknamed ‘Queen of the Wasps,’ and ‘Medusa in a
mob-cap,’ prefers, in the absence of the French wit, to consort with the
Italians, Moldavians, American spiritualists, smart secretaries of
foreign embassies, and Germans of effeminate, but prematurely
circumspect, physiognomy, of whom the place is full. The example of the
Countess is followed by the Princess Babette, she in whose arms Chopin
died (the ladies in Europe in whose arms he expired are to be reckoned
by thousands); and the Princess Annette, who would have been perfectly
captivating, if the simple village washerwoman had not suddenly peeped
out in her at times, like a smell of cabbage wafted across the most
delicate perfume; and Princess Pachette, to whom the following mischance
had occurred: her husband had fallen into a good berth, and all at once,
_Dieu sait pourquoi_, he had thrashed the provost and stolen 20,000
roubles of public money; and the laughing Princess Zizi; and the tearful
Princess Zozo. They all left their compatriots on one side, and were
merciless in their treatment of them. Let us too leave them on one side,
these charming ladies, and walk away from the renowned tree near which
they sit in such costly but somewhat tasteless costumes, and God grant
them relief from the boredom consuming them!