Why, we artists undergo a
sentence at hard labour. In the morning, exercises; in the
daytime, rehearsals; and then there's scarcely time for dinner and
you're due for the performance. An hour or so for reading or such
diversion as you and I are having now, may be snatched only by a
miracle. And even so... the diversion is altogether of the
mediocre..."
She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers
of the hand lying on the barrier.
Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:
"Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to
distract your imagination and ennui?"
She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly,
even a trifle shyly, it seemed:
"Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of
any sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my
place and would have lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!"
No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her,
slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the
classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:
"Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!"
"Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a
clever child.
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