Encore Read Online Free PDF

don’t come often enough to suit me, my son. A daughter is a mixed blessing. That, in fact, is one of the reasons I asked you here today. Nina is dutiful and attentive, but her court wedding to Prince Stassov has cost me a fortune.”
    â€œBut surely you have no objections, Papa? Nina already has a baby girl. And she lives so close by….”
    â€œI was not made to be the father of a daughter and the grandfather of another girl. All this business wreaks havoc on my mind. I call Nina Galina and Galina Nina.”
    â€œSurely you did not summon me to write you memory cards, did you, Papa?” Boris began to laugh, and got up to stoke the lazy fire. His father sat glaring at his back.
    â€œBorya, you are irresponsible. You spend money as if it were limitless, but you seem to forget that you have sisters, and with two more weddings on top of Nina’s, there will have to be two other large dowries. Your own income cannot remain the way it is, but your tastes are as extravagant as ever. I have this monstrosity of a household to keep up, as well as the summer estate, and there are the usual expenditures accruing to all members of the imperial court. Already, you have blithely consumed more than half the fortune left to you upon your mother’s death. And your artistic friends bleed you dry. How much did that Diaghilev fellow borrow for his Exhibition of Russian Portraits? No, don’t tell me: It was a gift, of course, from the bottomless purse of the bountiful Kussovs.” The old count snorted, and his nose twitched. Small red veinules seemed to swell over his cheekbones. “Damn it all, Boris! You will have sons, too, one day, and I shall not have you squander their inheritance before they are even born! ”
    The young man turned around, his face merry. “So that’s it! You worry that, as with Pushkin’s fisherman, my luxurious predilections will cause the magic fish to turn my palace back into a hovel. But you forget, Papa, that the fisherman started out poor, and that it was his wife’s boundless greed that finally irritated the little fish. I have never wished for more than I had; I am not a gambler and have no debts. I merely live well, as we Kussovs have been living since the days of Ivan the Terrible. Am I so different from the sons of your good friends?”
    The older man glared at Boris, then puffed silently upon his pipe. “Yes!” he finally stated, his voice rising to a dangerous bellow. “God in heaven, yes! A mistress, even an expensive one—even two expensive ones—can only exact so much per month. But art …! Someone was telling me—I can’t for the life of me remember who—that you have a new protégé, yet another one—a young painter this time. And your travels—other men buy baubles, but you! Silks from the Orient, Renaissance paintings, first folios, Meissen figurines—it never ceases. Even Kussov money dwindles down. There is only one solution, for you are my only son and I refuse to beggar my daughters. You must marry, Borya. You must make an advantageous union with a woman of standing who will bring you a considerable dowry. You are too old for bachelorhood.”
    Boris was quiet. He fingered his mustache, his beard. “I love you very much, Papa,” he remarked after some thought. “But one no longer weds to please one’s father. Isn’t that a rather antiquated notion?”
    â€œI am asking for your sake. A dowry would not hurt your extravagance. And …one does not have to deny oneself certain discreet pleasures, my boy. If you loved someone, then all the better. But if you are forming a bond of convenience, there are means of easing the pressures. And those means are augmented by a second fortune.”
    â€œDo you have someone in mind, Papa?”
    â€œIndeed. Do you remember Princess Marguerite Tumarkina, the niece of the provincial governor of Kiev? Her father is