“There is no poetry in my composition, I know, but I have my share of common shrewdness, and I have no doubt that the lady was kind to the youngster, once he did find his way inside her salon.  His getting in is the real marvel.  However, he did get in, the innocent, and he found himself in distinguished company there, amongst men of considerable position.  And you know, what that means:  thick waists, bald heads, teeth that are not—­as some satirist puts it.  Imagine amongst them a nice boy, fresh and simple, like an apple just off the tree; a modest, good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian.  My word!  What a change!  What a relief for jaded feelings!  And with that, having, in his nature that, dose; of poetry which saves even a simpleton from being a fool.

“He became an artlessly, unconditionally devoted slave.  He was rewarded by being smiled on and in time admitted to the intimacy of the house.  It may be that the unsophisticated young barbarian amused the exquisite lady.  Perhaps—­since he didn’t feed on tallow candles—­he satisfied some need of tenderness in the woman.  You know, there are many kinds of tenderness highly civilized women are capable of.  Women with heads and imagination, I mean, and no temperament to speak of, you understand.  But who is going to fathom their needs or their fancies?  Most of the time they themselves don’t know much about their innermost moods, and blunder out of one into another, sometimes with catastrophic results.  And then who is more surprised than they?  However, Tomassov’s case was in its nature quite idyllic.  The fashionable world was amused.  His devotion made for him a kind of social success.  But he didn’t care.  There was his one divinity, and there was the shrine where he was permitted to go in and out without regard for official reception hours.

“He took advantage of that privilege freely.  Well, lie had no official duties, you know.  The Military Mission was supposed to be more complimentary than anything else, the head of it being a personal friend of our Emperor Alexander; and he, too, was laying himself out for successes in fashionable life exclusively—­as it seemed.  As it seemed.

“One afternoon Tomassov called on the mistress of his thoughts earlier than usual.  She was not alone.  There was a man with her, not one of the thick-waisted, bald-headed personages, but a somebody all the same, a man over thirty, a French officer who to some extent was also a privileged intimate.  Tomassov was not jealous of him.  Such a sentiment would have appeared presumptuous to the simple fellow.

“On the contrary he admired that officer.  You have no idea of the French military men’s prestige in those days, even with us Russian soldiers who had managed to face them perhaps better than the rest.  Victory had marked them on the forehead—­it seemed for ever.  They would have been more than human if they had not been conscious of it; but they were good comrades and had a sort of brotherly feeling for all who bore arms, even if it was against them.