First loves -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Russian fiction -- Translations into English
“I decline my shot,” said Sanin, and he threw his pistol on the ground.
“And I too do not intend to go on with the duel,” cried Dönhof, and he
too threw his pistol on the ground. “And more than that, I am prepared
to own that I was in the wrong—the day before yesterday.”
He moved uneasily, and hesitatingly held out his hand. Sanin went
rapidly up to him and shook it. Both the young men looked at each other
with a smile, and both their faces flushed crimson.
“_Bravi! bravi!_” Pantaleone roared suddenly as if he had gone mad, and
clapping his hands, he rushed like a whirlwind from behind the bush;
while the doctor, who had been sitting on one side on a felled tree,
promptly rose, poured the water out of the jug and walked off with a
lazy, rolling step out of the wood.
“Honour is satisfied, and the duel is over!” von Richter announced.
“_Fuori!_” Pantaleone boomed once more, through old associations.
When he had exchanged bows with the officers, and taken his seat in the
carriage, Sanin certainly felt all over him, if not a sense of
pleasure, at least a certain lightness of heart, as after an operation
is over; but there was another feeling astir within him too, a feeling
akin to shame…. The duel, in which he had just played his part, struck
him as something false, a got-up formality, a common officers’ and
students’ farce. He recalled the phlegmatic doctor, he recalled how he
had grinned, that is, wrinkled up his nose when he saw him coming out
of the wood almost arm-in-arm with Baron Dönhof. And afterwards when
Pantaleone had paid him the four crowns due to him … Ah! there was
something nasty about it!
Yes, Sanin was a little conscience-smitten and ashamed … though, on the
other hand, what was there for him to have done? Could he have left the
young officer’s insolence unrebuked? could he have behaved like Herr
Klüber? He had stood up for Gemma, he had championed her … that was so;
and yet, there was an uneasy pang in his heart, and he was
conscience-smitten, and even ashamed.
Not so Pantaleone—he was simply in his glory! He was suddenly possessed
by a feeling of pride. A victorious general, returning from the field
of battle he has won, could not have looked about him with greater
self-satisfaction. Sanin’s demeanour during the duel filled him with
enthusiasm. He called him a hero, and would not listen to his
exhortations and even his entreaties. He compared him to a monument of
marble or of bronze, with the statue of the commander in Don Juan! For
himself he admitted he had been conscious of some perturbation of mind,
“but, of course, I am an artist,” he observed; “I have a highly-strung
nature, while you are the son of the snows and the granite rocks.”
Sanin was positively at a loss how to quiet the jubilant artist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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