From that day they became friends. Irene enjoyed the society of Gzhatski, who was always gay, interesting, and sincere. However dear Italy had grown to her, however deeply she respected Père Etienne, it was delightful to talk to a Russian, a man of her own race, her own social circle, and her own education and traditions. She never suspected that she, on her side, represented for Gzhatski a sort of anchor of salvation. Poor Gzhatski had been unbearably lonely in Rome. Active, energetic, busy as he had always been, the enforced idleness of this new existence was insufferable to him. The Roman museums and monuments did not touch his heart. He had not enough imagination to people them with shadows of the past, as did Irene. He tried to study Rome with a Baedeker’s guide-book in his hand, but soon abandoned the task, and came to the conclusion that all the churches and ruins and galleries were exactly alike. “When you have seen one, you have seen them all,” he remarked frankly to his acquaintances. Gzhatski had begun to take an interest in Italian fox-hunting, but happened the very first time he joined a hunt to be caught in a downpour of rain, and developed such a severe chill that his alarmed doctor forbade him any future expeditions of the kind, on pain of death from galloping consumption! Every day the poor man wandered about sadly and aimlessly, finding fault with everything, hating everything, and abusing the strange Southern town that held him prisoner! Everything irritated him, even the climate, with its eternally warm, balmy breezes, even the dry Southern vegetation. Often, when sitting in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, he shut his eyes, and pictured to himself a Russian winter, the snow on the fields gleaming under the blue sky, the red sun, the little waves of smoke rising from a cottage chimney, the crunch of footsteps on the frozen ground, the frosty, invigorating air…! And then he opened his eyes, and looked resentfully at the broad Roman pines and the dusty grass and shrubs. “What is this extraordinary time of the year?” grumbled Gzhatski capriciously. “It is not autumn, because there are no yellow leaves; it is not winter, because it is not cold; it is not summer, because it is not hot; and it is not spring, because there is nothing vivifying or rejuvenating in the air. No—this is a sort of fifth season, Roman, stupid, and senseless!”