He spoke for
the most part in French, always with a good accent, very fluently and
ornately; and he had the skill of drawing others gently and politely
into the conversation. As a general thing, he behaved toward all, and
toward me, in a somewhat supercilious manner, and I felt that he was
perfectly right in this way of treating people. I always feel that way
in regard to men who are firmly convinced that they ought to treat me
superciliously, and who are comparative strangers to me.
Now, as he sat with me, and gave me his hand, I keenly recalled in him
that same old haughtiness of expression; and it seemed to me that he did
not properly appreciate his position of official inferiority, as, in the
presence of the officers, he asked me what I had been doing in all that
time, and how I happened to be there. In spite of the fact that I
invariably made my replies in Russian, he kept putting his questions in
French, expressing himself as before in remarkably correct language.
About himself he said fluently that after his unhappy, wretched story
(what the story was, I did not know, and he had not yet told me), he had
been three months under arrest, and then had been sent to the Caucasus
to the N.
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