The Torrents of Spring | Page 2

women. He could not have said why he was doing
it; he was not looking for anything--he simply wanted by some kind of
external occupation to get away from the thoughts oppressing him.
Opening several letters at random (in one of them there was a withered
flower tied with a bit of faded ribbon), he merely shrugged his
shoulders, and glancing at the hearth, he tossed them on one side,
probably with the idea of burning all this useless rubbish. Hurriedly,
thrusting his hands first into one, and then into another drawer, he
suddenly opened his eyes wide, and slowly bringing out a little
octagonal box of old-fashioned make, he slowly raised its lid. In the
box, under two layers of cotton wool, yellow with age, was a little
garnet cross.
For a few instants he looked in perplexity at this cross--suddenly he
gave a faint cry.... Something between regret and delight was expressed
in his features. Such an expression a man's face wears when he
suddenly meets some one whom he has long lost sight of, whom he has
at one time tenderly loved, and who suddenly springs up before his
eyes, still the same, and utterly transformed by the years.
He got up, and going back to the hearth, he sat down again in the
arm-chair, and again hid his face in his hands.... 'Why to-day? just
to-day?' was his thought, and he remembered many things, long since
past.

This is what he remembered....
But first I must mention his name, his father's name and his surname.
He was called Dimitri Pavlovitch Sanin.
Here follows what he remembered.

I
It was the summer of 1840. Sanin was in his twenty-second year, and
he was in Frankfort on his way home from Italy to Russia. He was a
man of small property, but independent, almost without family ties. By
the death of a distant relative, he had come into a few thousand roubles,
and he had decided to spend this sum abroad before entering the service,
before finally putting on the government yoke, without which he could
not obtain a secure livelihood. Sanin had carried out this intention, and
had fitted things in to such a nicety that on the day of his arrival in
Frankfort he had only just enough money left to take him back to
Petersburg. In the year 1840 there were few railroads in existence;
tourists travelled by diligence. Sanin had taken a place in the
'bei-wagon'; but the diligence did not start till eleven o'clock in the
evening. There was a great deal of time to be got through before then.
Fortunately it was lovely weather, and Sanin after dining at a hotel,
famous in those days, the White Swan, set off to stroll about the town.
He went in to look at Danneker's Ariadne, which he did not much care
for, visited the house of Goethe, of whose works he had, however, only
read Werter, and that in the French translation. He walked along the
bank of the Maine, and was bored as a well-conducted tourist should be;
at last at six o'clock in the evening, tired, and with dusty boots, he
found himself in one of the least remarkable streets in Frankfort. That
street he was fated not to forget long, long after. On one of its few
houses he saw a signboard: 'Giovanni Roselli, Italian confectionery,'
was announced upon it. Sanin went into it to get a glass of lemonade;
but in the shop, where, behind the modest counter, on the shelves of a
stained cupboard, recalling a chemist's shop, stood a few bottles with
gold labels, and as many glass jars of biscuits, chocolate cakes, and

sweetmeats--in this room, there was not a soul; only a grey cat blinked
and purred, sharpening its claws on a tall wicker chair near the window
and a bright patch of colour was made in the evening sunlight, by a big
ball of red wool lying on the floor beside a carved wooden basket
turned upside down. A confused noise was audible in the next room.
Sanin stood a moment, and making the bell on the door ring its loudest,
he called, raising his voice, 'Is there no one here?' At that instant the
door from an inner room was thrown open, and Sanin was struck dumb
with amazement.

II
A young girl of nineteen ran impetuously into the shop, her dark curls
hanging in disorder on her bare shoulders, her bare arms stretched out
in front of her. Seeing Sanin, she rushed up to him at once, seized him
by the hand, and pulled him after her, saying in a breathless voice,
'Quick, quick, here, save him!' Not through disinclination to obey, but
simply from excess of amazement, Sanin did not at once