up calling on Varvara
Petrovna. Of our governor's wife (who was only expected to arrive in the
autumn) it was reported that though she was, so it was heard, proud,
she was a real aristocrat, and "not like that poor Varvara Petrovna."
Everybody seemed to know for a fact, and in the greatest detail, that
our governor's wife and Varvara Petrovna had met already in society and
had parted enemies, so that the mere mention of Madame von Lembke's name
would,' it was said, make a painful impression on Varvara Petrovna.
The confident and triumphant air of Varvara Petrovna, the contemptuous
indifference with which she heard of the opinions of our provincial
ladies and the agitation in local society, revived the flagging spirits
of Stepan Trofimovitch and cheered him up at once. With peculiar,
gleefully-obsequious humour, he was beginning to describe the new
governor's arrival.

"You are no doubt aware, _excellente amie_," he said, jauntily
and coquettishly drawling his words, "what is meant by a Russian
administrator, speaking generally, and what is meant by a new Russian
administrator, that is the newly-baked, newly-established..._ces
interminables mots Russes!_ But I don't think you can know in practice
what is meant by administrative ardour, and what sort of thing that is."

"Administrative ardour? I don't know what that is."

"Well..._Vous savez chez nous...En un mot,_ set the most insignificant
nonentity to sell miserable tickets at a railway station, and the
nonentity will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a
Jupiter, _pour montrer son pouvoir_ when you go to take a ticket. 'Now
then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'...and in them it comes to a
genuine, administrative ardour. _En un mot,_ I've read that some verger
in one of our Russian churches abroad--_mais c'est tres curieux_--drove,
literally drove a distinguished English family, _les dames charmantes_,
out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service..._vous
savez ces chants et le livre de Job_...on the simple pretext that
'foreigners are not allowed to loaf about a Russian church, and that
they must come at the time fixed....' And he sent them into fainting
fits.... That verger was suffering from an attack of administrative
ardour, _et il a montre son pouvoir_."

"Cut it short if you can, Stepan Trofimovitch."

"Mr. von Lembke is making a tour of the province now. _En un mot,_ this
Andrey Antonovitch, though he is a russified German