Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince
Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and
Kissingen to Russian friends--to get a breath of Russian air, as
he said--came back to his wife and daughter.
The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were
completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful,
and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she
tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she
was not--for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian
gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether
suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything
foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his
Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less
European than he was in reality.
The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags
on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His
good humor was even greater when he saw Kitty completely
recovered. The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and
Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of
change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused
his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his
daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have
got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible
to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea
of kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and
more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.
The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with
his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched
collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest
good humor.
It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their
little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed,
beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the
heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener
they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable
than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German
life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright
sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music
were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces,
with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for
which she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety
of the June morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay
waltz then in fashion, and above all, the appearance of the
healthy attendants, seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in
conjunction with these slowly moving, dying figures gathered
together from all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of
pride and, as it were, of the return of youth, with his favorite
daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his
vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost like a
man not dressed in a crowd.