Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him. “Ah, I see you’re as soft as silk! Your wife will have an easy time of it with you. That buffoon,” she went on, pointing with her fan towards the howling actor (he was acting the part of a tutor), “reminded me of my young days; I, too, was in love with a teacher. It was my first … no, my second passion. The first time I fell in love with a young monk of the Don monastery. I was twelve years old. I only saw him on Sundays. He used to wear a short velvet cassock, smelt of lavender water, and as he made his way through the crowd with the censer, used to say to the ladies in French, ‘_Pardon, excusez_’ but never lifted his eyes, and he had eyelashes like that!” Maria Nikolaevna marked off with the nail of her middle finger quite half the length of the little finger and showed Sanin. “My tutor was called—Monsieur Gaston! I must tell you he was an awfully learned and very severe person, a Swiss,—and with such an energetic face! Whiskers black as pitch, a Greek profile, and lips that looked like cast iron! I was afraid of him! He was the only man I have ever been afraid of in my life. He was tutor to my brother, who died … was drowned. A gipsy woman has foretold a violent death for me too, but that’s all moonshine. I don’t believe in it. Only fancy Ippolit Sidoritch with a dagger!” “One may die from something else than a dagger,” observed Sanin. “All that’s moonshine! Are you superstitious? I’m not a bit. What is to be, will be. Monsieur Gaston used to live in our house, in the room over my head. Sometimes I’d wake up at night and hear his footstep—he used to go to bed very late—and my heart would stand still with veneration, or some other feeling. My father could hardly read and write himself, but he gave us an excellent education. Do you know, I learnt Latin!” “You? learnt Latin?” “Yes; I did. Monsieur Gaston taught me. I read the _Æneid_ with him. It’s a dull thing, but there are fine passages. Do you remember when Dido and Æneas are in the forest?…” “Yes, yes, I remember,” Sanin answered hurriedly. He had long ago forgotten all his Latin, and had only very faint notions about the _Æneid_. Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him, as her way was, a little from one side and looking upwards. “Don’t imagine, though, that I am very learned. Mercy on us! no; I’m not learned, and I’ve no talents of any sort. I scarcely know how to write … really; I can’t read aloud; nor play the piano, nor draw, nor sew—nothing! That’s what I am—there you have me!” She threw out her hands. “I tell you all this,” she said, “first, so as not to hear those fools (she pointed to the stage where at that instant the actor’s place was being filled by an actress, also howling, and also with her elbows projecting before her) and secondly, because I’m in your debt; you told me all about yourself yesterday.” “It was your pleasure to question me,” observed Sanin.