A House of Gentlefolk quotes

A bright spring day was fading into evening.

High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue.

“How hard you always are on him! Sergei Petrovitch is a worthy man.”

“Worthy!” repeated the old lady scornfully.

“And how devoted he was to my poor husband!” observed Marya Dmitrievna; “even now he cannot speak of him without emotion.”

“We must remember your aunt’s age … there’s no help for it,” replied Gedeonovsky. “She spoke of a man not playing the hypocrite. But who is not hypocritical nowadays? It’s the age we live in.

One of my friends, a most worthy man, and, I assure you, a man of no mean position, used to say, that nowadays the very hens can’t pick up a grain of corn without hypocrisy⁠—they always approach it from one side.

But when I look at you, dear lady—your character is so truly angelic; let me kiss your little snow-white hand!”

He learnt fairly quickly, though he was often lazy; he never cried, but at times he was overtaken by a fit of savage obstinacy; then no one could soften him. Fedya loved no one among those around him. …

Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth!

Thus Ivan Petrovitch found him, and without loss of time he set to work to apply his system to him.

… greater cheapness of living, and took a tiny low-pitched house in the Old Stables Road, with a coat of arms seven feet long on the roof, and there began the life of a retired general at Moscow on an income of 2750 roubles a year.

Moscow is a hospitable city, ready to welcome all stray comers, generals by preference.

Pavel Petrovitch’s heavy figure, which was not quite devoid of martial dignity, however, soon began to be seen in the best drawing-rooms in Moscow. His bald head with its tufts of dyed hair, and the soiled ribbon of the Order of St.

Time, however, did not pass in vain.

He was not born to be a victim; his healthy nature reasserted its rights.

Much became clear to him; even the blow that had fallen on him no longer seemed to him to have been quite unforeseen; he understood his wife—we can only fully understand those who are near to us, when we are separated from them.

“She seems to like him, but there, God knows!

The heart of another, you know, is a dark forest, and a girl’s more than any.

Shurotchka’s heart, for instance—I defy you to understand it! What makes her hide herself and not come out ever since you came in?”

they had been planted too close and at some time or other—a hundred years before—they had been lopped. At the end of the garden was a small clear pool bordered with high reddish rushes.

The traces of human life very quickly pass away

; Glafira Petrovna’s estate had not had time to become quite wild, but already it seemed plunged in that quiet slumber in which everything reposes on earth where there is not the infection of man’s restlessness. Fedor Ivanitch walked also through the village;

“

Oh! this stupor of boredom is the ruin of Russians.

Ours is the age for work, and the sickening loafer” …

“Permit me to observe,” remarked Lavretsky, “that we are not sleeping at present but rather preventing others from sleeping.

We are straining our throats like the cocks⁠—listen! there is one crowing for the third time.

”

With Lemm, Mihalevitch did not get on; his noisy talk and brusque manners scared the German, who was unused to such behaviour.

One poor devil detects another by instinct at once, but in old age he rarely gets on with him, and that is hardly astonishing, he has nothing to share with him, not even hopes.

Before setting off, Mihalevitch had another long discussion with Lavretsky, foretold his ruin, if he did not see the error of his ways, exhorted him to devote himself seriously to the welfare of his peasants, and pointed to himself as an example, saying that he …

“Perhaps he is right, after all,” he thought as he went back into the house; “perhaps I am a loafer.” Many of Mihalevitch’s words had sunk irresistibly into his heart, though he had disputed and disagreed with him.

If a man only has a good heart, no one can resist him.

“you as a man of intelligence, will agree with me at once,” were constantly on his lips. Lavretsky listened coldly to Panshin’s chatter; he did not like this handsome, clever, easily-elegant young man, with his bright smile, affable voice, and inquisitive eyes.

Panshin, with the quick insight into the feelings of others, which was peculiar to him, soon guessed that he was not giving his companion any special satisfaction

, and made a plausible excuse to go away, inwardly deciding that Lavretsky might be an “excellent man,” but he was unattractive, aigri, and, en somme, rather absurd. Marya Dmitrievna made her appearance escorted by Gedeonovsky, then Marfa Timofyevna and Lisa came in;

Lavretsky went back to the drawing-room and drew near the card-table. Marfa Timofyevna, flinging back the ribbons of her cap and flushing with annoyance, began to complain of her partner, Gedeonovsky, who in her words, could not play a bit.

“Card-playing, you see,” she said, “is not so easy as talking scandal.”

The latter continued to blink and wipe his face. Lisa came into the drawing-room and sat down in a corner; Lavretsky looked at her, she looked at him, and both felt the position insufferable.

Lavretsky was completely carried away, and surrendered himself wholly to his passion—and rejoiced in it. But no word can express what was passing in the pure heart of the young girl. It was a mystery for herself. Let it remain a mystery for all.

No one knows, no one has seen, nor will ever see, how the grain, destined to life and growth, swells and ripens in the bosom of the earth.

Ten o’clock struck. Marfa Timofyevna went off upstairs to her own apartments with Nastasya Karpovna. Lavretsky and Lisa walked across the room, stopped at the open door into the garden, looked into the darkness in the distance and then at one another, and smiled.

When she had eaten her fill, and was neither playing cards nor chattering, her face assumed an expression almost deathlike. She was sitting, looking, breathing—yet it was clear that there was not an idea in her head. One could not even call her good-natured.

Birds are not good-natured.

Either as a result of her frivolous youth or of the air of Paris, which she had breathed from childhood, a kind of cheap universal scepticism had found its way into her, usually expressed by the words: tout ça c’est des bêtises.

But she was herself unwilling to give up the kerchief and always wore a dark dress. After her mistress’ death she became still more quiet and humble.

A Russian readily feels fear, and affection; but it is hard to gain his respect: it is not soon given, nor to everyone.

For Agafya everyone in the home had great respect; no one even remembered her previous sins, as though they had been buried with the old master.

He fell into conversation with Anton; the old man, as if purposely, seemed full of cheerless fancies. He told Lavretsky how, at her death, Glafira Petrovna had bitten her own arm, and after a brief pause, added with a sigh:

“Every man, dear master, is destined to devour himself.”

It was late when Lavretsky set off on the way back. He was haunted by the music of the day before, and Lisa’s image returned to him in all its sweet distinctness;

“You are going?” cried his wife in a voice of despair. “Oh, this is cruel! Without uttering one word to me, not even a reproach. This contempt will kill me, it is terrible!”

“What do you want to hear from me?”

he articulated in an expressionless voice.

But this was more than Lavretsky could stand.

“In such a melodrama must there really be a scene like this?”

he muttered, and went out of the room.

“Bah: you swim in shallow water,” the distorted lips seemed to be saying. “Is it possible,” he thought, “that I cannot master myself, that I am going to give in to this … nonsense?”

(Those who are badly wounded in war always call their wounds “nonsense.” If man did not deceive himself, he could not live on earth.)

“Am I really a boy? Ah, well; I saw quite close, I almost held in my hands the possibility of happiness for my whole life; yes, in the lottery too—turn the wheel a little and the beggar perhaps would be a rich man.

Lisa looked at him again.

“Now you see yourself, Fedor Ivanitch, that happiness does not depend on us, but on God.”

The door from the adjoining room opened quickly and Marfa Timofyevna came in with her cap in her hand.

“It seems to you now in the midst of the worst of it that nothing can ever heal your sorrow.

Ah, my darling, the only thing that can’t be cured is death.

You only say to yourself now: ‘I won’t give in to it—so there!’ and you will be surprised yourself how soon, how easily it will pass off. Only have patience.”

Fedor Ivanitch has given her a promissory note for a large sum, and has so secured immunity from the possibility of her making a second sudden descent upon him. She has grown older and stouter, but is still charming and elegant.

Everyone has his ideal.

Varvara Pavlovna found hers in the dramatic works of M. Dumas Fils. She diligently frequents the theatres, when consumptive and sentimental “dames aux camélias” are brought on the stage; to be Madame Doche seems to her the height of human bliss;