re if one could live in Petersburg or
abroad? And one would have thought it would be nothing for a rich man
like him to make a good road instead of this bad one, to avoid enduring
this misery and seeing the despair on the faces of his coachman and
Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently did not mind, and wanted no
better life. He was kind, soft, naive, and he did not understand this
coarse life, just as at the examination he did not know the prayers.
He subscribed nothing to the schools but globes, and genuinely regarded
himself as a useful person and a prominent worker in the cause of
popular education. And what use were his globes here?

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.

The cart lurched violently and was on the point of upsetting; something
heavy rolled on to Marya Vassilyevna's feet--it was her parcel of
purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill through the clay; here in the
winding ditches rivulets were gurgling. The water seemed to have gnawed
away the road; and how could one get along here! The horses breathed
hard. Hanov got out of his carriage and walked at the side of the road
in his long overcoat. He was hot.

"What a road!" he said, and laughed again. "It would soon smash up one's
carriage."

"Nobody obliges you to drive about in such weather," said Semyon
surlily. "You should stay at home."

"I am dull at home, grandfather. I don't like staying at home."

Beside old Semyon he looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his walk
there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a being
already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin. And all at once
there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya Vassilyevna was filled
with dread and pity for this man going to his ruin for no visible cause
or reason, and it came into her mind that if she had been his wife or
sister she would have devoted her whole life to saving him from ruin.
His wife! Life was so ordered that here he was living in his great house
alone, and she was living in a God-forsaken village alone, and yet
for some reason the mere thought that he and she might be close to one
another and equals seemed impossible and absurd. In reality, life was
arranged and human relations were complicated so utterly beyond all
understanding that when one thought about it one felt uncanny and one's
heart sank.

"And it is beyond all understanding," she thought, "why God gives
beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet eyes to weak, unluc