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Henrietta was furious; she was shivering with cold, her eyes smarting with the smoke, and not at all interested in M.B.'s political career, or Madame's servants, and said she would have been thankful to have even a glass of vin de Chypre. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that we had arrived during the "lessive"; that is always a most important function in France. Every one looks busy and energetic.
He shaved, took a cold bath, dressed and went out. "We've come to fetch you. Your lessive lasted a good time today," said Petritsky. "Well, is it over?" "It is over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though after the perfect order into which his affairs had been brought any over-bold or rapid movement might disturb it.
The colouring matter of the hair, naturally a bluish-black, is removed by a mixture of quicklime and water, or in the desert by a lessive of ashes : this makes it a dull yellowish-white, which is converted into red permanently by henna, temporarily by ochreish earth kneaded with water.
This simplifies matters, but it needs a considerable stock of linen, which, by-the-bye, peasants generally possess. The wash-house odour that arose from the lessive was not grateful, but I tried to accommodate myself to it.
It is quite a long affair lasts three or four days. I often went to see the performance when we made our "lessive" at the château every month. It always interested our English and American friends, as the washing is never done in that way in either of their countries. It was very convenient at our place as we had plenty of room.
She thought herself his little nurse, and missing from his broth the yellow petals that she had been wont to think the charm of tisane, the housewifely little being had trotted off, unseen and unmissed, across the quadrangle, over the embankment, where she had often gathered them, or attended on the 'lessive' on the river's brink; and now she broke forth exultingly, 'Here, here is the tisane, with all the soucis.
But remembering what was in store for her alone at home, if she did not come to some decision, remembering that gesture terrible even in memory when she had clutched her hair in both hands she said good-bye and went away. In spite of Vronsky's apparently frivolous life in society, he was a man who hated irregularity. This he used to call his day of reckoning or faire la lessive.
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