fille allait a l'eau_ was how he rendered the sense of the original)
were not calculated to inspire his listeners with an exalted idea
of Russian poetry, he first recited, then translated, and then sang
Pushkin's, 'I remember a marvellous moment,' set to music by Glinka,
whose minor bars he did not render quite faithfully. Then the ladies
went into ecstasies. Frau Lenore positively discovered in Russian
a wonderful likeness to the Italian. Even the names Pushkin (she
pronounced it Pussekin) and Glinka sounded somewhat familiar to her.
Sanin on his side begged the ladies to sing something; they too did
not wait to be pressed. Frau Lenore sat down to the piano and sang
with Gemma some duets and 'stornelle.' The mother had once had a fine
contralto; the daughter's voice was not strong, but was pleasing.




VI


But it was not Gemma's voice--it was herself Sanin was admiring. He
was sitting a little behind and on one side of her, and kept thinking
to himself that no palm-tree, even in the poems of Benediktov--the
poet in fashion in those days--could rival the slender grace of her
figure. When, at the most emotional passages, she raised her eyes
upwards--it seemed to him no heaven could fail to open at such a look!
Even the old man, Pantaleone, who with his shoulder propped against
the doorpost, and his chin and mouth tucked into his capacious cravat,
was listening solemnly with the air of a connoisseur--even he was
admiring the girl's lovely face and marvelling at it, though one would
have thought he must have been used to it! When she had finished the