r eats with solid
dignity, jests with solid dignity, and condescendingly listens to the
remarks of the young ladies. From time to time he is moved to speak in
bad French, and then, for some reason or other, he thinks it necessary
to address me as _"Votre Excellence."_

And I am glum. Evidently I am a constraint to them and they are a
constraint to me. I have never in my earlier days had a close knowledge
of class antagonism, but now I am tormented by something of that sort.
I am on the lookout for nothing but bad qualities in Gnekker; I quickly
find them, and am fretted at the thought that a man not of my circle is
sitting here as my daughter's suitor. His presence has a bad influence
on me in other ways, too. As a rule, when I am alone or in the society
of people I like, never think of my own achievements, or, if I do recall
them, they seem to me as trivial as though I had only completed my
studies yesterday; but in the presence of people like Gnekker my
achievements in science seem to be a lofty mountain the top of which
vanishes into the clouds, while at its foot Gnekkers are running about
scarcely visible to the naked eye.

After dinner I go into my study and there smoke my pipe, the only one
in the whole day, the sole relic of my old bad habit of smoking from
morning till night. While I am smoking my wife comes in and sits down
to talk to me. Just as in the morning, I know beforehand what our
conversation is going to be about.

"I must talk to you seriously, Nikolay Stepanovitch," she begins. "I
mean about Liza.... Why don't you pay attention to it?"

"To what?"

"You pretend to notice nothing. But that is not right. We can't shirk
responsibility.... Gnekker has intentions in regard to Liza.... What do
you say?"

"That he is a bad man I can't say, because I don't know him, but that I
don't like him I have told you a thousand times already."

"But you can't... you can't!"

She gets up and walks about in excitement.

"You can't take up that attitude to a serious step," she says. "When it
is a question of our daughter's happiness we must lay aside all personal
feeling. I know you do not like him.... Very good... if we refuse him
now, if we break it all off, how can you be sure that Liza will not have
a grievance against us all her life? Suitors are not plentiful nowadays,
goodness knows, and it may happen that no other match will turn up....
He is very much in love with Liza, and she seems to like him.... O