The Torrents Of Spring

XLIV
Sanin told his friends he was going abroad, but he did not say where exactly:
the reader will readily conjecture that he made straight for Frankfort.
Thanks to the general extension of railways, on the fourth day after
leaving Petersburg he was there. He had not visited the place since 1840.
The hotel, the White Swan, was standing in its old place and still flourishing,
though no longer regarded as first class. The Zeile, the principal
street of Frankfort was little changed, but there was not only no trace of
Signora Roselli’s house, the very street in which it stood had disappeared.
Sanin wandered like a man in a dream about the places once so
familiar, and recognised nothing; the old buildings had vanished; they
were replaced by new streets of huge continuous houses and fine villas;
even the public garden, where that last interview with Gemma had taken
place, had so grown up and altered that Sanin wondered if it really were
the same garden. What was he to do? How and where could he get information?
Thirty years, no little thing! had passed since those days. No
one to whom he applied had even heard of the name Roselli; the hotelkeeper
advised him to have recourse to the public library, there, he told
him, he would find all the old newspapers, but what good he would get
from that, the hotel-keeper owned he didn’t see. Sanin in despair made
inquiries about Herr Klüber. That name the hotel-keeper knew well, but
there too no success awaited him. The elegant shop-manager, after making
much noise in the world and rising to the position of a capitalist, had
speculated, was made bankrupt, and died in prison… . This piece of
news did not, however, occasion Sanin the slightest regret. He was beginning
to feel that his journey had been rather precipitate… . But, behold,
one day, as he was turning over a Frankfort directory, he came on
the name: Von Dönhof, retired major. He promptly took a carriage and
drove to the address, though why was this Von Dönhof certain to be that
Dönhof, and why even was the right Dönhof likely to be able to tell him
any news of the Roselli family? No matter, a drowning man catches at
straws.
Sanin found the retired major von Dönhof at home, and in the greyhaired
gentleman who received him he recognised at once his adversary
of bygone days. Dönhof knew him too, and was positively delighted to
see him; he recalled to him his young days, the escapades of his youth.
Sanin heard from him that the Roselli family had long, long ago emigrated
to America, to New York; that Gemma had married a merchant;
that he, Dönhof, had an acquaintance also a merchant, who would
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