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Updated: June 10, 2025
He often drew a laugh from them, but he tried in vain to distract them from the grief which hung like a cloud over them both and over the whole house. He himself was sad when he saw that neither his esteem nor Tatiana Markovna's kindness could give back to poor Vera her courage, her pride, her confidence and her strength of will.
In Tatiana Markovna's sitting-room stood an old-fashioned carved bureau with a mirror, urns, lyres, and genii. But she had hung up the mirror, because she said it was a hindrance to writing when you stared at your own stupid face. The room also contained a round table where she lunched and drank her tea and coffee, and a rather hard leather-covered armchair with a high back.
These would be, in fact, no means at all, for she had outgrown Tatiana Markovna's circle of experience and morals. No, authority might serve with Marfinka, but not with the clear-headed, independent Vera. Such were Raisky's thoughts as he walked silently by Vera's side, no longer desiring full knowledge for his own sake, but for her salvation.
At Treppel's three roubles are taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten. Three of the two-rouble establishments Sophie Vassilievna's, The Old Kiev, and Anna Markovna's are somewhat worse, somewhat poorer. The remaining houses on Great Yamskaya are rouble ones; they are furnished still worse.
In answer Boris showed his sketching folio; then he would play her quadrilles, mazurkas, excerpts from opera, and finally his own improvisations. Tatiana Markovna's astonishment remained. "Just like your mother," she said. "She was just as restless, always sighing as if she expected something to happen. Then she would begin to play and was gay again.
Tatiana Markovna's consideration for Vera was by no means assumed, but her kindness did not make Vera's heart lighter.
Man, as a matter of fact, is a poly and exceedingly so a polygamous animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel's or Anna Markovna's. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of prostitution.
Sitting in the daytime at Anna Markovna's, he was saying, squinting from the smoke of the cigarette, and swinging one leg crossed over the other: "The question is ... What do you need this same Sonka for? It's no place for her in a decent establishment. If we'll float her down the stream, then you'll make a hundred roubles for yourself, I twenty-five for myself.
Raisky wanted to call the old doctor; he waited impatiently till the morning and spent his time in going from Vera to Tatiana Markovna, and from Tatiana Markovna back to Vera. As Vera's condition had not improved next morning, Raisky went with Vassilissa into Tatiana Markovna's bedroom, where they found the old lady in the same state as she had been in the whole of the day before.
Tatiana Markovna's household was full of stir and bustle. The horses were being harnessed to the caleche and to an old fashioned carriage. The coachmen, already drunk, donned their new dark blue caftans, and their hair shone with grease.
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