The Torrents Of Spring

‘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.’
‘That would be best of all,’ Frau Lenore agreed. ‘Though indeed selling
live people … ’
‘Barbari!’ grumbled Pantaleone, who showed himself behind Emil in
the doorway, shook his topknot, and vanished.
‘It’s a bad business!’ Sanin thought to himself, and stole a look at
Gemma. She seemed not to have heard his last words. ‘Well, never
mind!’ he thought again. In this way the practical talk continued almost
uninterruptedly till dinner-time. Frau Lenore was completely softened at
last, and already called Sanin ‘Dimitri,’ shook her finger affectionately at
him, and promised she would punish him for his treachery. She asked
many and minute questions about his relations, because ‘that too is very
important’; asked him to describe the ceremony of marriage as performed
by the ritual of the Russian Church, and was in raptures already
at Gemma in a white dress, with a gold crown on her head.
‘She’s as lovely as a queen,’ she murmured with motherly pride,’ indeed
there’s no queen like her in the world!’
‘There is no one like Gemma in the world!’ Sanin chimed in.
‘Yes; that’s why she is Gemma!’ (Gemma, as every one knows, means
in Italian a precious stone.)
Gemma flew to kiss her mother… . It seemed as if only then she
breathed freely again, and the load that had been oppressing her
dropped from off her soul.
Sanin felt all at once so happy, his heart was filled with such childish
gaiety at the thought, that here, after all, the dreams had come true to
which he had abandoned himself not long ago in these very rooms, his
whole being was in such a turmoil that he went quickly out into the
shop. He felt a great desire, come what might, to sell something in the
shop, as he had done a few days before… . ‘I have a full right to do so
81