Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/483

Rh above emerald-green lawns, against the background of a sea of the colour of forget-me-nots, only in the next instant to strike the ground as crumpled little shapes of white. The beginning of March he wanted to devote to Florence; on the eve of the Passion of Our Lord to arrive at Rome, in order to hear the Miserere there; his plans also included Venice, and Paris, and bullfights in Seville, and sea-bathing in the British Isles, and Athens, and Constantinople, and Palestine, and Egypt, and even Japan—naturally, on the return journey. . . And everything went splendidly at first.

It was the end of November; almost to Gibraltar itself the ship proceeded now through an icy mist, now through a storm with wet snow; but it sailed on unperturbed and even without rolling; the passengers on the steamer were many, and all of them persons of consequence; the ship the famous Atlantis—resembled the most expensive of European hotels, with all conveniences; an all-night bar, Turkish baths, a newspaper of its own, and life upon it flowed in accordance with a splendid system of regulations; the passengers rose early, to the sound of bugles, sharply reverberating through the passages at the yet dark hour when day was so slowly and reluctantly dawning above the gray-green watery desert, ponderously restless in the mist. They put on their flannel pyjamas, drank coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then they reclined in marble bath-tubs, performed exercises, awakening an appetite and a sense of well-being, attended to their daily toilet and went to breakfast. Until eleven they were supposed to promenade the decks lustily, breathing in the cool freshness of the ocean, or to play at