modern man at the sight of suffering is, to my mind,
far greater proof of culture and moral elevation than hatred and
aversion. Woman is as tearful and as coarse in her feelings now as she
was in the Middle Ages, and to my thinking those who advise that she
should be educated like a man are quite right.

My wife also dislikes Katya for having been an actress, for ingratitude,
for pride, for eccentricity, and for the numerous vices which one woman
can always find in another.

Besides my wife and daughter and me, there are dining with us two or
three of my daughter's friends and Alexandr Adolfovitch Gnekker, her
admirer and suitor. He is a fair-haired young man under thirty, of
medium height, very stout and broad-shouldered, with red whiskers near
his ears, and little waxed moustaches which make his plump smooth face
look like a toy. He is dressed in a very short reefer jacket, a flowered
waistcoat, breeches very full at the top and very narrow at the ankle,
with a large check pattern on them, and yellow boots without heels. He
has prominent eyes like a crab's, his cravat is like a crab's neck, and
I even fancy there is a smell of crab-soup about the young man's whole
person. He visits us every day, but no one in my family knows anything
of his origin nor of the place of his education, nor of his means of
livelihood. He neither plays nor sings, but has some connection with
music and singing, sells somebody's pianos somewhere, is frequently
at the Conservatoire, is acquainted with all the celebrities, and is a
steward at the concerts; he criticizes music with great authority, and I
have noticed that people are eager to agree with him.

Rich people always have dependents hanging about them; the arts and
sciences have the same. I believe there is not an art nor a science
in the world free from "foreign bodies" after the style of this Mr.
Gnekker. I am not a musician, and possibly I am mistaken in regard
to Mr. Gnekker, of whom, indeed, I know very little. But his air of
authority and the dignity with which he takes his stand beside the piano
when any one is playing or singing strike me as very suspicious.

You may be ever so much of a gentleman and a privy councillor, but if
you have a daughter you cannot be secure of immunity from that petty
bourgeois atmosphere which is so often brought into your house and into
your mood by the attentions of suitors, by matchmaking and marriage. I
can never reconcile myself, for instanc