LITMIR.BIZ

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knowing for a fact that I had been shut up for four hours, and expecting me to be brought by our nurse. But Nastya forgot me entirely, the more readily as I always undressed myself. And so I was left to spend the night in prison.

      At four o’clock in the night I heard someone knocking and trying to break in. I was asleep, lying anyhow on the floor. When I awoke, I cried out with terror, but at once recognised Katya’s voice which rang out above all the rest, then the voice of Madame Leotard, then of the frightened Nastya, then of the housekeeper. At last the door was opened, and Madame Leotard hugged me with tears in her eyes, begging me to forgive her for having forgotten me. I flung myself on her neck in tears. I was shivering with cold, and all my bones ached from lying on the bare floor. I looked for Katya, but she had run into our bedroom, leapt into bed, and when I went in she was already asleep — or pretending to be. She had accidentally fallen asleep while waiting for me in the evening, and had slept on till four o’clock in the morning. When she woke, she had made a fuss, a regular uproar in fact, wakened Madame Leotard, who had returned, our nurse, all the maids, and released me.

      In the morning the whole household knew of my adventure; even the princess said that I had been treated too severely. As for the prince, I saw him that day, for the first time, moved to anger. He came upstairs at ten o’clock in the morning in great excitement.

      “Upon my word,” he began to Madame Leotard, “what are you about? What a way to treat the poor child. It’s barbarous.

      simply barbarous! Savage! A delicate, sick child, such a dreamy, timid little girl, so imaginative, and you shut her in a dark room all night! Why, it is ruining her! Don’t you know her story? It’s barbarous, it’s inhuman, I tell you, madam! And how is such a punishment possible? Who invented, who could have invented such a punishment?”

      Poor Madame Leotard, with tears in her eyes, began in confusion explaining how it had all happened, how she had forgotten me, how her daughter had arrived; but that the punishment in itself was good if it did not last too long, and that Jean Jacques Rousseau indeed said something of the sort.

      “Jean Jacques Rousseau, madam! But Jean Jacques could not have said that. Jean Jacques is no authority. Jean Jacques Rousseau should not have dared to talk of education, he had no right to do so. Jean Jacques Rousseau abandoned his own children, madam! Jean Jacques was a bad man, madam!”

      “Jean Jacques Rousseau! Jean Jacques a bad man! Prince! Prince! What are you saying?”

      And Madame Leotard flared up.

      Madame Leotard was a splendid woman, and above all things disliked hurting anyone’s feelings; but touch one of her favourites, trouble the classic shades of Corneille, or Racine, insult Voltaire, call Jean Jacques Rousseau a bad man, call him a barbarian and — good heavens! Tears came into Madame Leotard’s eyes, and the old lady trembled with excitement.

      “You are forgetting yourself, prince!” she said at last, beside herself with agitation.

      The prince pulled himself up at once and begged her pardon, then came up to me, kissed me with great feeling, made the sign of the cross over me, and left the room.

      “Pauvre prince!” said Madame Leotard growing sentimental in her turn. Then we sat down to the schoolroom table.

      But Katya was very inattentive at her lessons. Before going in to dinner she came up to me, looking flushed, with a laugh on her lips, stood facing me, seized me by the shoulders and said hurriedly as though ashamed:

      “Well? You were shut up for a long time for me, weren’t you? After dinner let us go and play in the drawing-room.”

      Someone passed by, and Katya instantly turned away from me.

      In the dusk of evening we went down together to the big drawing-room, hand in hand. Katya was much moved and breathless with excitement. I was happy and joyful as I had never been before.

      “Would you like a game of ball?” she said. “Stand here.”

      She set me in one corner of the room, but instead of walking away and throwing the ball to me, she stopped three steps from me, glanced at me, flushed crimson and sank on the sofa, hiding her face in both hands. I made a movement towards her; she thought that I meant to go away.

      “Don’t go, Nyetochka, stay with me,” she said. “I shall be all right in a minute.”

      But in a flash she had jumped up from her place, and flushed and in tears flung herself on my neck. Her cheeks were wet, her lips were swollen like cherries, her curls were in disorder. She kissed me as though she were frantic, she kissed my face, eyes, lips, neck and hands, she sobbed as though she were in hysterics; I hugged her tight and we embraced each other sweetly, joyfully, like friends, like lovers who had met after a long separation. Katya’s heart beat so violently that I could hear every throb.

      But we heard a voice in the next room. Katya was called to go to her mother. She kissed me for the last time, quietly, silently, warmly, and flew from me at Nastya’s call. I ran upstairs as though I had risen from the dead, flung myself on the sofa, hid my face in the pillow and sobbed with rapture. My heart was thumping as though it would burst my chest. I don’t know how I existed until the night. At last it struck eleven and I went to bed. Katya did not come back till twelve; she smiled at me from a distance but did not say a word. Nastya began undressing her slowly as though on purpose.

      “Make haste, make haste, Nastya,” Katya muttered.

      “What’s the matter with you, princess? Have you been running upstairs that your heart beats so?…” Nastya inquired.

      “Oh, dear, how tiresome you are, Nastya! Make haste, make haste!” And Katya stamped on the floor in her vexation.

      “Ah, what a little heart!” said Nastya, kissing the little foot from which she was taking off the shoe.

      At last everything was done, Katya got into bed and Nastya went out of the room. Instantly Katya jumped out of bed and flew to me. I cried out as she came to me.

      “Get into my bed, sleep with me!” she said, pulling me out of bed. A minute later I was in her bed. We embraced and hugged each other eagerly. Katya kissed and kissed me.

      “Ah, I remember how you kissed me in the night,” she said, flushing as red as a poppy.

      I sobbed.

      “Nyetochka!” whispered Katya through her tears, “my angel, I have loved you for so long, for so long! Do you know since when?’’

      “Since when?”

      “Ever since father told me to beg your pardon that time when you stood up for your father, Nyetochka… my little for — lorn one,” she said, showering kisses on me again. She was crying and laughing together.

      “Oh, Katya!”

      “Oh, what — oh, what?”

      “Why have we waited so long… so long..,” and I could not go on. We hugged each other and said nothing for three minutes.

      “Listen, what did you think of me?” asked Katya.

      “Oh, what a lot I thought about you, Katya. I have been thinking about you all the time, I thought about you day and night.”

      “And at night you talked about me.”

      “Really?”

      “You cried ever so many times.”

      “I say, why were you so proud all the time?”

      “I was stupid, you know, Nyetochka. It comes upon me, and then it’s all over with me. I was angry with you.”

      “What for?”

      “Because I was horrid. First, because you were better than I was; and then because father loves you more than me! And father is a kind man, Nyetochka, isn’t he?”

      “Oh, yes,” I said, thinking with tears of the prince.

      “He’s a good man,” said Katya gravely. “But

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