No More Learning

Heard he the truth? And thus she could--
And can it be? But late a child
And now a fickle flirt and wild,
Cunning already to display
And well-instructed to betray!
Lenski the stroke could not sustain,
At womankind he growled a curse,
Departed, ordered out his horse
And galloped home. But pistols twain,
A pair of bullets--nought beside--
His fate shall presently decide.


END OF CANTO THE FIFTH



CANTO THE SIXTH

The Duel

'La, sotto giorni nubilosi e brevi,
Nasce una gente a cui 'l morir non duole. '
Petrarch

Canto The Sixth

[Mikhailovskoe, 1826: the two final stanzas were, however,
written at Moscow. ]

I

Having remarked Vladimir's flight,
Oneguine, bored to death again,
By Olga stood, dejected quite
And satisfied with vengeance ta'en.
Olga began to long likewise
For Lenski, sought him with her eyes,
And endless the cotillon seemed
As if some troubled dream she dreamed.
'Tis done. To supper they proceed.
Bedding is laid out and to all
Assigned a lodging, from the hall(61)
Up to the attic, and all need
Tranquil repose. Eugene alone
To pass the night at home hath gone.

[Note 61: Hospitality is a national virtue of the Russians. On
festal occasions in the country the whole party is usually
accommodated for the night, or indeed for as many nights
as desired, within the house of the entertainer.
This of
course is rendered necessary by the great distances which
separate the residences of the gentry. Still, the alacrity with
which a Russian hostess will turn her house topsy-turvy for
the accommodation of forty or fifty guests would somewhat
astonish the mistress of a modern Belgravian mansion. ]

II

All slumber. In the drawing-room
Loud snores the cumbrous Poustiakoff
With better half as cumbersome;
Gvozdine, Bouyanoff, Petoushkoff
And Flianoff, somewhat indisposed,
On chairs in the saloon reposed,
Whilst on the floor Monsieur Triquet
In jersey and in nightcap lay.
In Olga's and Tattiana's rooms
Lay all the girls by sleep embraced,
Except one by the window placed
Whom pale Diana's ray illumes--
My poor Tattiana cannot sleep
But stares into the darkness deep.

III

His visit she had not awaited,
His momentary loving glance
Her inmost soul had penetrated,
And his strange conduct at the dance
With Olga; nor of this appeared
An explanation: she was scared,
Alarmed by jealous agonies:
A hand of ice appeared to seize(62)
Her heart: it seemed a darksome pit
Beneath her roaring opened wide:
"I shall expire," Tattiana cried,
"But death from him will be delight.
I murmur not! Why mournfulness?
He _cannot_ give me happiness. "

[Note 62: There must be a peculiar appropriateness in this expression
as descriptive of the sensation of extreme cold. Mr. Wallace
makes use of an identical phrase in describing an occasion
when he was frostbitten whilst sledging in Russia. He says
(vol. i. p. 33): "My fur cloak flew open, the cold seemed to
_grasp me in the region of the heart_, and I fell insensible.