My uncle's a man of most honourable principles; since he fell ill in earnest, he's made people respect him - he couldn't have thought of a better way. His example's a lesson to us all...."But, God! - what a bore it is to sit by a sick man day and night, never moving one step away! What low dishonesty to try to amuse someone who's only half-alive, straighten his pillows, solemnly bring him his medicine sigh - and be thinking to oneself 'Will the Devil never carry, you off ?' "

These were the reflections of a young good-for-nothing as he galloped along post-haste in a cloud of dust, heir-apparent, by God's sovereign-will to all his family's wealth.

Friends of my Ruslan and Ludmila, may I introduce to you straight away without preamble, the hero of my novel: Eugene Onegin, a good friend of mine. He was born in St. Petersburg on the banks of the Neva, where maybe you were born too, reader, or made your name. I was out and about there myself once - but the North disagrees with me!

Eugene's father, after an 'honourable and distingished', career in the public service, lived on credit, held three balls a year, and finally ruined himself. Fate preserved Eugene. At first a French governess looked after him; then a 'monsieur' replaced 'madame'. The boy was mischievous, but sweet. The French monsieur (a down-and-out Cleric), so as not to bore him, joked his way through every lesson, spared him strict moral teaching, scolded him but mildly for his prankis, and took him for, walks in the Summer Gardens.

When the age of rebellious adolescence came - age of hopes and gentle
moodiness - monsieur was sent packing. Eugene was free! He had his hair cut in the latest fashion; dressed like a London 'dandy'; and at last took a look at society. He spoke and wrote in perfect French; he danced the mazurka with grace; and he bowed without stiffness. What more could you want? Society decided he was clever, and awfully nice.

We've all of us spent too long learning the wrong subjects the wrong way;
so for us it's not hard, thank goodness, to seem brilliantly educated. Those who were decided and strict in their judgements - most people, that is - took the view that Onegin was a well-read lad, but a know-all. He had the happy knack in ordinary conversation of touching lightly and naturally on any subject whatsoever, and in a serious discussion of keeping silent with the knowing look of an expert. And he could make the ladies smile with the flash of his unexpected jibes.

Latin has gone out of fashion nowadays. Yet, to do Onegin justice, he knew enough of it to make out the meaning of mottoes, to pass a comment about juvenal, to write 'vale' at the end of a letter, and recite - even if not faultlessly - a couple of lines from the Aeneid. For him there was no urge to dig deep in the dusty archives of world history; it was anecdotes of the past, from Romulus to our own day, that he liked to store away in his memory.

He had no lofty yearning to devote his life to poetry; indeed, for all our efforts, he could never learn the difference between an iambus and a trochee. He couldn't get on with Homer or Theocritus. Instead he took to reading Adam Smith, and became a learned economist: that is, he could tell what makes a nation prosperous, what it lives on, and why it has no need of gold provided it produces more than it spends. Onegin's father couldn't be made to understand this, and went on mortgaging his estates.

I haven't time to run through all that Onegin knew. But there was one branch of knowledge in which he was a true genius, of which he had a surer grasp than of any other art or science; from his youngest days it had been his work, his pain, his joy; it had occupied his aching idleness for days on end. I mean the Art of Love, that Ovid once celebrated in his poetry, and for which he ended his glittering and controversial career in martyrdom in the remote and lonely plains of Moldavia, far from his native Italy.

Very early on Onegin learned how to put on an act. He could hide hope, or show jealousy; he could sow doubts, or talk them away; he could seem resentful or pathetic; unbending, or obliging; attentive or uninterested. Sometimes he would be languid and silent, at others ablaze with eloquence - and in his love letters engagingly informal. His thoughts and emotions might be intent on one object, but he knew well how to be self-forgetful. His glance was now brusque, now tender; now shamefaced, now bold; and on occasion it could glisten with an obedient tear.

He knew so well how to play the novice, and how to scandalise the pure-minded with a joke. He could terrify with timely fits of despair, and charm with pleasant words of flattery. He could seize the moment to be sympathetic, and he could overpower innocent inhibitions with argument and passion. He knew how to wait for the involuntary softening of the feelings, how to implore and demand an admission, how to listen for the first response of the heart, how to keep up love's pressure, secure a secret rendez-vous .... and finally, alone with her, give her lessons in the stillness.

Early on he learned to alarm even the practised flirts. If he wished to eliminate a rival, he spread abroad the most cutting slanders and laid the most ingenious of traps. But husbands blissfully stayed friends with him: even the cunning ones - ex-pupils of the same school - and the elderly suspicious ones, all made a fuss of him, and so did those whom conceit had blinded to their predicament, well-satisfied as they were with themselves, their dinners, and their wives.

This is how Eugene spent a typical day. He would still be in bed when messages were brought in to him. "What? Invitations?" Yes indeed, three households were asking him to soirees; at one place there'd be a ball; at another a children's party. Which one would my playboy friend rush off to? Where would he begin? No problem: he could easily make a quick round of them all.

Meanwhile, in morning dress and a fashionable wide-brimmed hat, Onegin rode to Nevsky Boulevard and took a stroll there in the open air until his ever-wakeful chiming watch struck the hour for dinner. It was dark already. He mounted a sledge; the cry rang out "Make way! Make way!"; and a frosty powder besilvered his beaver collar. He hurried to Talon's, sure, that friend Kaverin would already be waiting there for him. No sooner had he entered than a cork hit the ceiling and a jet of vintage wine gushed out. Before him were spread roast beef cut rare, and truffles - that delicacy of the young, the finest flower of French cuisine - and Strasbourg pie, ever-fresh, between a live Limburg cheese and a golden pineapple.

The friends were still thirsty enough for more glasses of champagne to wash down the hot fat of the cutlets, but the chime of Onegin's watch informed them that the new ballet had begun. Onegin, a malign trend-setter among theatre-goers, an inconstant wooer of pretty actresses, and quite an honorary citizen of the backstage, flew straight off to the theatre. There everyone was making the most of their freedom, eager to applaud the tricky ballet steps, hiss the wicked heroines, and heartily encore the good ones - with the sole object of making themselves heard!

Ah, St Petersburg theatre - enchanted territory! It was there years back that Fonvizin, friend of liberty and daring master of satire, pursued his brilliant career, as did the great adapter Knyazhnin. There Ozerov shared with the young Semyonova the nation's spontaneous tribute of tears and applause. There Katyenin revived for us Corneille's majestic genius. There the caustic Shahovskoy released his buzzing swarm of comedies. There too Didelot received his crown of acclaim. And there in the shadow of the wings I spent my own young days.

Those actresses I worshipped! What has become of them? Where are they now? It's a sad question I have to ask. Are they still as they were? Or have
other girls taken their place, without replacing them? Shall I hear their singing again? Shall I see again the great Russian ballerinas' leaps performed with artistry and conviction? Rather I fear my dejected gaze will find no familiar faces on the dreary stage: I shall focus my opera glasses in disillusionment on an alien world, and I shall watch the frivolous spectacle with indifference, yawn quietly, and reflect nostalgically on the past.