We must, however, say a few words about Sanin himself.
In the first place, he was very, very good-looking. A handsome,
graceful figure, agreeable, rather unformed features, kindly bluish
eyes, golden hair, a clear white and red skin, and, above all, that
peculiar, naïvely-cheerful, confiding, open, at the first glance,
somewhat foolish expression, by which in former days one could
recognise directly the children of steady-going, noble families, “sons
of their fathers,” fine young landowners, born and reared in our open,
half-wild country parts,—a hesitating gait, a voice with a lisp, a
smile like a child’s the minute you looked at him … lastly, freshness,
health, softness, softness, softness,—there you have the whole of
Sanin. And secondly, he was not stupid and had picked up a fair amount
of knowledge. Fresh he had remained, for all his foreign tour; the
disturbing emotions in which the greater part of the young people of
that day were tempest-tossed were very little known to him.
Of late years, in response to the assiduous search for “new types,”
young men have begun to appear in our literature, determined at all
hazards to be “fresh”… as fresh as Flensburg oysters, when they reach
Petersburg…. Sanin was not like them. Since we have had recourse
already to simile, he rather recalled a young, leafy, freshly-grafted
apple-tree in one of our fertile orchards—or better still, a
well-groomed, sleek, sturdy-limbed, tender young “three-year-old” in
some old-fashioned seignorial stud stable, a young horse that they have
hardly begun to break in to the traces…. Those who came across Sanin in
later years, when life had knocked him about a good deal, and the
sleekness and plumpness of youth had long vanished, saw in him a
totally different man.
Next day Sanin was still in bed when Emil, in his best clothes, with a
cane in his hand and much pomade on his head, burst into his room,
announcing that Herr Klüber would be here directly with the carriage,
that the weather promised to be exquisite, that they had everything
ready by now, but that mamma was not going, as her head was bad again.
He began to hurry Sanin, telling him that there was not a minute to
lose…. And Herr Klüber did, in fact, find Sanin still at his toilet. He
knocked at the door, came in, bowed with a bend from the waist,
expressed his readiness to wait as long as might be desired, and sat
down, his hat balanced elegantly on his knees. The handsome
shop-manager had got himself up and perfumed himself to excess: his
every action was accompanied by a powerful whiff of the most refined
aroma. He arrived in a comfortable open carriage—one of the kind called
landau—drawn by two tall and powerful but not well-shaped horses. A
quarter of an hour later Sanin, Klüber, and Emil, in this same
carriage, drew up triumphantly at the steps of the confectioner’s shop.
Madame Roselli resolutely refused to join the party; Gemma wanted to
stay with her mother; but she simply turned her out.
“I don’t want any one,” she declared; “I shall go to sleep. I would
send Pantaleone with you too, only there would be no one to mind the
shop.”
“May we take Tartaglia?” asked Emil.
“Of course you may.”
Tartaglia immediately scrambled, with delighted struggles, on to the
box and sat there, licking himself; it was obviously a thing he was
accustomed to. Gemma put on a large straw hat with brown ribbons; the
hat was bent down in front, so as to shade almost the whole of her face
from the sun. The line of shadow stopped just at her lips; they wore a
tender maiden flush, like the petals of a centifoil rose, and her teeth
gleamed stealthily—innocently too, as when children smile. Gemma sat
facing the horses, with Sanin; Klüber and Emil sat opposite. The pale
face of Frau Lenore appeared at the window; Gemma waved her
handkerchief to her, and the horses started.