lture goes to make it worse, your shameful idleness, your
abominable inactivity is justified by it. Some are even proud of it:
'I'm such a clever fellow,' they say, 'I do nothing, while these fools
are in a fuss.' Yes! and there are fine gentlemen among us--though
I don't say this as to you--who reduce their whole life to a kind of
stupor of boredom, get used to it, live in it, like--like a mushroom
in white sauce," Mihalevitch added hastily, and he laughed at his own
comparison. "Oh! this stupor of boredom is the ruin of Russians. Ours is
the age for work, and the sickening loafer"...

"But what is all this abuse about?" Lavretsky clamoured in his turn.
"Work--doing--you'd better say what is to be done, instead of abusing
me, Desmosthenes of Poltava!"

"There, what a thing to ask! I can't tell you that brother; that every
one ought to know for himself," retorted the Desmosthenes ironically.
"A landowner, a nobleman, and not know what to do? You have no faith, or
else you would know; no faith--and no intuition."

"Let me at least have time to breathe; you don't let me have time to
look round," Lavretsky besought him.

"Not a minute, nor a second!" retorted Mihalevitch with an imperious
wave of the hand. "Not one second: death does not delay, and life ought
not to delay."

"And what a time, what a place for men to think of loafing!" he cried
at four o'clock, in a voice, however, which showed signs of sleepiness;
"among us! now! in Russia where every separate individual has a duty
resting upon him, a solemn responsibility to God, to the people,
to himself. We are sleeping, and the time is slipping away; we are
sleeping."....

"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."

This sally made Mihalevitch laugh, and calmed him down. "Good-bye till
to-morrow," he said with a smile, and thrust his pipe into his pouch.

"Till to-morrow," repeated Lavretsky. But the friends talked for more
than hour longer. Their voices were no longer raised, however, and their
talk was quiet, sad, friendly talk.

Mihalevitch set off the next day, in spite of all Lavretsky's efforts
to keep him. Fedor Ivanitch did not succeed in persuading him to remain;
but he talked to him to his heart's content. Mihalevitch, it appeared,
had not a penny to bless himself with. Lavr