Page:Rudin - a novel (IA rudinnovel00turgrich).pdf/123

RUDIN When Rudin met her on the terrace she was just going indoors with Mlle. Boncourt to put on her hat and go out into the garden. Her morning occupations were over. Natalya was not treated as a school-girl now. Mlle. Boncourt had not given her lessons in mythology and geography for a long while; but Natalya had every morning to read historical books, travels, or other instructive works with her. Darya Mihailovna selected them, ostensibly on a special system of her own. In reality she simply gave Natalya everything which the French bookseller forwarded her from Petersburg, except, of course, the novels of Dumas Fils and Co. These novels Darya Mihailovna read herself. Mlle. Boncourt looked specially severely and sourly through her spectacles when Natalya was reading historical books; according to the old French lady’s ideas all history was filled with impermissible things, though for some reason or other of all the great men of antiquity she herself knew only one— Cambyses, and of modern times—Louis XIV. and Napoleon, whom she could not endure. But Natalya read books too, the existence of 85