Part 32

The visitors looked at one another. No one knew what kurpey meant; at least, Markelov knew that the tassel on a Cossack or Circassian cap was called a kurpey, but then how could Fomishka have injured that? But no one dared to question him further.

“Well, now that you have shown off,” Fimishka remarked suddenly, “I will show off too.” And going up to a small bonheur du jour, as they used to call an old-fashioned bureau, on tiny, crooked legs, with a round lid which fitted into the back of it somewhere when opened, she took out a miniature in water colour, in an oval bronze frame, of a perfectly naked little child of four years old with a quiver over her shoulders fastened across the chest with pale blue ribbons, trying the points of the arrows with the tip of her little finger. The child was all smiles and curls and had a slight squint.

“And that was I,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes, as a child. When my father was alive a Frenchman used to come and see him, such a nice Frenchman too! He painted that for my father’s birthday. Such a nice man! He used to come and see us often. He would come in, make such a pretty courtesy and kiss your hand, and when going away would kiss the tips of his own fingers so prettily, and bow to the right, to the left, backwards and forwards! He was such a nice Frenchman!”

The guests praised his work; Paklin even declared that he saw a certain likeness.

Here Fomishka began to express his views on the modern French, saying that they had become very wicked nowadays!

“What makes you think so, Foma Lavrentievitch?”

“Look at the awful names they give themselves nowadays!”

“What, for instance?”

“Nogent Saint Lorraine, for instance! A regular brigand’s name!”

Fomishka asked incidentally who reigned in Paris now, and when told that it was Napoleon, was surprised and pained at the information.

“How?... Such an old man—” he began and stopped, looking round in confusion.

Fomishka had but a poor knowledge of French, and read Voltaire in translation; he always kept a translated manuscript of “Candide” in the bible box at the head of his bed. He used to come out with expressions like: “This, my dear, is fausse parquet,” meaning suspicious, untrue. He was very much laughed at for this, until a certain learned Frenchman told him that it was an old parliamentary expression employed in his country until the year 1789.

As the conversation turned upon France and the French, Fimishka resolved to ask something that had been very much on her mind. She first thought of addressing herself to Markelov, but he looked too forbidding, so she turned to Solomin, but no! He seemed to her such a plain sort of person, not likely to know French at all, so she turned to Nejdanov.

“I should like to ask you something, if I may,” she began; “excuse me, my kinsman Sila Samsonitch makes fun of me and my woman’s ignorance.”

“What is it?”

“Supposing one wants to ask in French, ‘What is it?’ must one say ‘Kese-kese-kese-la?’”

“Yes.”

“And can one also say ‘Kese-kese-la?’”

“Yes.”

“And simply ‘Kese-la?’”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And does it mean the same thing?”

“Yes, it does.”

Fimishka thought awhile, then threw up her arms.

“Well, Silushka,” she exclaimed; “I am wrong and you are right. But these Frenchmen.... How smart they are!”

Paklin began begging the old people to sing them some ballad. They were both surprised and amused at the idea, but consented readily on condition that Snandulia accompanied them on the harpsichord. In a corner of the room there stood a little spinet, which not one of them had noticed before. Snandulia sat down to it and struck several chords. Nejdanov had never heard such sour, toneless, tingling, jangling notes, but the old people promptly struck up the ballad, “Was it to Mourn.”