s company we spent our time differently. I was
more inclined to quiet, so to say idyllic pleasures; I liked fishing,
evening walks, gathering mushrooms; Lubkov preferred picnics,
fireworks, hunting. He used to get up picnics three times a week,
and Ariadne, with an earnest and inspired face, used to write a
list of oysters, champagne, sweets, and used to send me into Moscow
to get them, without inquiring, of course, whether I had money. And
at the picnics there were toasts and laughter, and again mirthful
descriptions of how old his wife was, what fat lap-dogs his mother
had, and what charming people his creditors were.

Lubkov was fond of nature, but he regarded it as something long
familiar and at the same time, in reality, infinitely beneath himself
and created for his pleasure. He would sometimes stand still before
some magnificent landscape and say: "It would be nice to have tea
here."

One day, seeing Ariadne walking in the distance with a parasol, he
nodded towards her and said:

"She's thin, and that's what I like; I don't like fat women."

This made me wince. I asked him not to speak like that about women
before me. He looked at me in surprise and said:

"What is there amiss in my liking thin women and not caring for fat
ones?"

I made no answer. Afterwards, being in very good spirits and a
trifle elevated, he said:

"I've noticed Ariadne Grigoryevna likes you. I can't understand why
you don't go in and win."

His words made me feel uncomfortable, and with some embarrassment
I told him how I looked at love and women.

"I don't know," he sighed; "to my thinking, a woman's a woman and
a man's a man. Ariadne Grigoryevna may be poetical and exalted, as
you say, but it doesn't follow that she must be superior to the
laws of nature. You see for yourself that she has reached the age
when she must have a husband or a lover. I respect women as much
as you do, but I don't think certain relations exclude poetry.
Poetry's one thing and love is another. It's just the same as it
is in farming. The beauty of nature is one thing and the income
from your forests or fields is quite another."

When Ariadne and I were fishing, Lubkov would lie on the sand close
by and make fun of me, or lecture me on the conduct of life.

"I wonder, my dear sir, how you can live without a love affair,"
he would say. "You are young, handsome, interesting--in fact,
you're a man not to be sniffed at, yet you live like a monk. Och!
I c