XIV


We must, however, say a few words about Sanin himself.

In the first place, he was very, very good-looking. A handsome,
graceful figure, agreeable, rather unformed features, kindly bluish
eyes, golden hair, a clear white and red skin, and, above all, that
peculiar, naively-cheerful, confiding, open, at the first glance,
somewhat foolish expression, by which in former days one could
recognise directly the children of steady-going, noble families,
'sons of their fathers,' fine young landowners, born and reared in
our open, half-wild country parts,--a hesitating gait, a voice with a
lisp, a smile like a child's the minute you looked at him ... lastly,
freshness, health, softness, softness, softness,--there you have the
whole of Sanin. And secondly, he was not stupid and had picked up a
fair amount of knowledge. Fresh he had remained, for all his foreign
tour; the disturbing emotions in which the greater part of the young
people of that day were tempest-tossed were very little known to him.

Of late years, in response to the assiduous search for 'new types,'
young men have begun to appear in our literature, determined at
all hazards to be 'fresh'... as fresh as Flensburg oysters, when
they reach Petersburg.... Sanin was not like them. Since we have
had recourse already to simile, he rather recalled a young, leafy,
freshly-grafted apple-tree in one of our fertile orchards--or
better still, a well-groomed, sleek, sturdy-limbed, tender young
'three-year-old' in some old-fashioned seignorial stud stable, a