Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince

Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and

Kissingen to Russian friends--to get a breath of Russian air, as

he said--came back to his wife and daughter.

The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were

completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful,

and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she

tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she

was not--for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian

gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether

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suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything

foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his

Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less

European than he was in reality.

The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags

on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His

good humor was even greater when he saw Kitty completely

recovered. The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and

Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of

change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused

his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his

daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have

got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible

to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea

of kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and

more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.

The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with

his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched

collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest

good humor.

It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their

little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed,

beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the

heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener

they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable

than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German

life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright

sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music

were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces,

with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for

which she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety

of the June morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay

waltz then in fashion, and above all, the appearance of the

healthy attendants, seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in

conjunction with these slowly moving, dying figures gathered

together from all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of

pride and, as it were, of the return of youth, with his favorite

daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his

vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost like a

man not dressed in a crowd.




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