Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/482

198 with a journey to Europe, to India, to Egypt. He proposed to follow their example. Before all, of course, he desired to reward himself for his years of hard toil; nevertheless, he was happy also for his wife's and daughter's sakes. His wife had never been distinguished for any particular susceptibility to fresh impressions, but then all elderly American women are ardent travellers. As for his daughter, a girl no longer young and somewhat ailing, the journey would do her positive good: to say nothing of the benefits her health would derive, was there not always the likelihood of happy encounters during journeys? While travelling one may indeed, at times, sit at the same table with a millionaire; or enjoy looking at frescoes in his company.

The itinerary planned by the gentleman from San Francisco was an extensive one. In December and January he hoped to enjoy the sun of Southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, serenades of strolling singers, and another thing for which men of his age have a peculiar relish, the love of young Neopolitan women, conferred—let us admit—not with wholly disinterested motives; he planned to spend the Carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, toward which the most select society gravitated at this season, that society upon which all the blessings of civilization depend; not alone the cut of the smoking jacket, but also the stability of thrones, and the declaration of wars, and the welfare of hotels—where some devote themselves with ardor to automobile and sail races, others to roulette, while a third group engages in what is called flirting; while a fourth in shooting pigeons which, emerging from their shelters, soar upward