'Herr Klüber, too, had intended to give me a small sum for the improvement of the shop,' Lenore observed after a slight hesitation.
'Mother! for mercy's sake, mother!' cried Gemma in Italian.
'These things must be discussed in good time, my daughter,' Frau Lenore replied in the same language. She addressed herself again to Sanin, and began questioning him as to the laws existing in Russia as to marriage, and whether there were no obstacles to contracting marriages with Catholics as in Prussia. (At that time, in 1840, all Germany still remembered the controversy between the Prussian Government and the Archbishop of Cologne upon mixed marriages.) When Frau Lenore heard that by marrying a Russian nobleman, her daughter would herself become of noble rank, she evinced a certain satisfaction. 'But, of course, you will first have to go to Russia?'
'Why?'
'Why? Why, to obtain the permission of your Tsar.'
Sanin explained to her that that was not at all necessary ... but that he might certainly have to go to Russia for a very short time before his marriage--(he said these words, and his heart ached painfully, Gemma watching him, knew it was aching, and blushed and grew dreamy)--and that he would try to take advantage of being in his own country to sell his estate ... in any case he would bring back the money needed.
'I would ask you to bring me back some good Astrakhan lambskin for a cape,' said Frau Lenore. 'They're wonderfully good, I hear, and wonderfully cheap!'
'Certainly, with the greatest pleasure, I will bring some for you and for Gemma!' cried Sanin.
'And for me a morocco cap worked in silver,' Emil interposed, putting his head in from the next room.
'Very well, I will bring it you ... and some slippers for Pantaleone.'
'Come, that's nonsense, nonsense,' observed Frau Lenore. 'We are talking now of serious matters. But there's another point,' added the practical lady. 'You talk of selling your estate. But how will you do that? Will you sell your peasants then, too?'
Sanin felt something like a stab at his heart. He remembered that in a conversation with Signora Roselli and her daughter about serfdom, which, in his own words, aroused his deepest indignation, he had repeatedly assured them that never on any account would he sell his peasants, as he regarded such a sale as an immoral act.
'I will try and sell my estate to some man I know something of,' he articulated, not without faltering, 'or perhaps the peasants themselves will want to buy their freedom.'