was a Liberal, and in the district was regarded as a "Red," but
even his progressiveness was a bore. There was no originality nor
moving power about his independent views: he was revolted, indignant,
and delighted always on the same note; it was always spiritless and
ineffective. Even in moments of strong enthusiasm he never raised
his head or stood upright. But the most tiresome thing of all was
that he managed to express even his best and finest ideas so that
they seemed in him commonplace and out of date. It reminded one of
something old one had read long ago, when slowly and with an air
of profundity he would begin discoursing of his noble, lofty moments,
of his best years; or when he went into raptures over the younger
generation, which has always been, and still is, in advance of
society; or abused Russians for donning their dressing-gowns at
thirty and forgetting the principles of their _alma mater_. If you
stayed the night with him, he would put Pissarev or Darwin on your
bedroom table; if you said you had read it, he would go and bring
Dobrolubov.

In the district this was called free-thinking, and many people
looked upon this free-thinking as an innocent and harmless eccentricity;
it made him profoundly unhappy, however. It was for him the maggot
of which he had just been speaking; it had fastened upon him and
was sucking his life-blood. In his past there had been the strange
marriage in the style of Dostoevsky; long letters and copies written
in a bad, unintelligible hand-writing, but with great feeling,
endless misunderstandings, explanations, disappointments, then
debts, a second mortgage, the allowance to his wife, the monthly
borrowing of money--and all this for no benefit to any one, either
himself or others. And in the present, as in the past, he was still
in a nervous flurry, on the lookout for heroic actions, and poking
his nose into other people's affairs; as before, at every favourable
opportunity there were long letters and copies, wearisome, stereotyped
conversations about the village community, or the revival of
handicrafts or the establishment of cheese factories--conversations
as like one another as though he had prepared them, not in his
living brain, but by some mechanical process. And finally this
scandal with Zina of which one could not see the end!

And meanwhile Zina was young--she was only twenty-two--good-looking,
elegant, gay; she was fond of laughing, chatter, argument, a
passionat