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Updated: May 28, 2025
"Do you wish me to settle with you?" he said to Hermann. "If you please," replied the latter. Chekalinsky drew from his pocket a number of banknotes and paid at once. Hermann took up his money and left the table. Narumov could not recover from his astonishment. Hermann drank a glass of lemonade and returned home. The next evening he again repaired to Chekalinsky's. The host was dealing.
There was a card party at the rooms of Narumov of the Horse Guards. The long winter night passed away imperceptibly, and it was five o'clock in the morning before the company sat down to supper. Those who had won, ate with a good appetite; the others sat staring absently at their empty plates. When the champagne appeared, however, the conversation became more animated, and all took a part in it.
Tomsky was left alone with the young lady. "Who is the gentleman you wish to introduce to the Countess?" asked Lizaveta Ivanovna in a whisper. "Narumov. Do you know him?" "No. Is he a soldier or a civilian?" "A soldier." "Is he in the Engineers?" "No, in the Cavalry. What made you think that he was in the Engineers?" The young lady smiled, but made no reply.
"Stake!" said Hermann, writing some figures with chalk on the back of his card. "How much?" asked the banker, contracting the muscles of his eyes; "excuse me, I cannot see quite clearly." "Forty-seven thousand rubles," replied Hermann. At these words every head in the room turned suddenly round, and all eyes were fixed upon Hermann. "He has taken leave of his senses!" thought Narumov.
Narumov introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook him by the hand in a friendly manner, requested him not to stand on ceremony, and then went on dealing. The game occupied some time. On the table lay more than thirty cards.
"What!" said Narumov, "you have a grandmother who knows how to hit upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded in getting the secret of it out of her?"
But hearing that Narumov was not an Engineer, she regretted that by her thoughtless question, she had betrayed her secret to the volatile Tomsky. Hermann was the son of a German who had become a naturalised Russian, and from whom he had inherited a small capital.
"Will you allow me to take a card?" said Hermann, stretching out his hand from behind a stout gentleman who was punting. Chekalinsky smiled and bowed silently, as a sign of acquiescence. Narumov laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and wished him a lucky beginning.
"Hermann is a German: he is economical that is all!" observed Tomsky. "But if there is one person that I cannot understand, it is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedotovna." "How so?" inquired the guests. "I cannot understand," continued Tomsky, "how it is that my grandmother does not punt." "What is there remarkable about an old lady of eighty not punting?" said Narumov.
Narumov conducted Hermann to Chekalinsky's residence. They passed through a suite of magnificent rooms, filled with attentive domestics. The place was crowded. Generals and Privy Counsellors were playing at whist; young men were lolling carelessly upon the velvet-covered sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes.
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