"They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing
that isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get
me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given
me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the
celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it
difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so
stale..."
"That has been said long ago," the ambassador's wife interrupted
him, laughing.
The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too
amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to
the sure, never-failing topic--gossip.
"Don't you think there's something Louis Quinze about
Tushkevitch?" he said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired
young man, standing at the table.
"Oh, yes! He's in the same style as the drawing room and that's
why it is he's so often here."
This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to
what could not be talked of in that room--that is to say, of the
relations of Tushkevitch with their hostess.
Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been
meanwhile vacillating in just the same way between three
inevitable topics: the latest piece of public news, the
theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on the last
topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.
"Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman--the mother, not the
daughter--has ordered a costume in _diable rose_ color?"
"Nonsense! No, that's too lovely!"
"I wonder that with her sense--for she's not a fool, you know--
that she doesn't see how funny she is."
Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the
luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled
merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent
collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came
into the drawing room before going to his club. Stepping
noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up to Princess Myakaya.
"How did you like Nilsson?" he asked.
"Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled
me!" she responded. "Please don't talk to me about the opera;
you know nothing about music. I'd better meet you on your own
ground, and talk about your majolica and engravings. Come now,
what treasure have you been buying lately at the old curiosity
shops?"
"Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such
things."
"Oh, do show me! I've been learning about them at those--what's
their names?...the bankers...they've some splendid engravings.
They showed them to us."