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Updated: June 19, 2025
Everything culture and the moral law would pass away and not even a burdock would grow out of them. Of what consequence was shame in the presence of a shopkeeper, of what consequence was the insignificant Hobotov or the wearisome friendship of Mihail Averyanitch? It was all trivial and nonsensical. But such reflections did not help him now.
"No, honoured Mihail Averyanitch; I do not believe it, and have no grounds for believing it." "I must own I doubt it too. And yet I have a feeling as though I should never die. Oh, I think to myself: 'Old fogey, it is time you were dead! But there is a little voice in my soul says: 'Don't believe it; you won't die." Soon after nine o'clock Mihail Averyanitch would go away.
"Andrey Yefimitch, isn't it time for you to have your beer?" she would ask anxiously. "No, it's not time yet . . ." he would answer. "I'll wait a little . . . . I'll wait a little. . ." Towards the evening the postmaster, Mihail Averyanitch, the only man in town whose society did not bore Andrey Yefimitch, would come in.
Mihail Averyanitch had once been a very rich landowner, and had served in the calvary, but had come to ruin, and was forced by poverty to take a job in the post office late in life. He had a hale and hearty appearance, luxuriant grey whiskers, the manners of a well-bred man, and a loud, pleasant voice. He was good-natured and emotional, but hot-tempered.
"You go alone and let me get home! I entreat you!" "On no account," protested Mihail Averyanitch. "It's a marvellous town." Andrey Yefimitch had not the strength of will to insist on his own way, and much against his inclination went to Warsaw.
This bothered the doctor and prevented him from thinking or concentrating his mind. In the train they travelled, from motives of economy, third-class in a non-smoking compartment. Half the passengers were decent people. Mihail Averyanitch soon made friends with everyone, and moving from one seat to another, kept saying loudly that they ought not to travel by these appalling lines.
Mihail Averyanitch, too, thought it his duty to visit his friend and entertain him. Every time he went in to Andrey Yefimitch with an affectation of ease, laughed constrainedly, and began assuring him that he was looking very well to-day, and that, thank God, he was on the highroad to recovery, and from this it might be concluded that he looked on his friend's condition as hopeless.
His actions seemed strange. Often Mihail Averyanitch did not find him at home, which had never happened in the past, and Daryushka was greatly perturbed, for the doctor drank his beer now at no definite time, and sometimes was even late for dinner. One day it was at the end of June Dr. Hobotov went to see Andrey Yefimitch about something.
Mihail Averyanitch looked upon the doctor as an honourable man, yet he suspected that he had accumulated a fortune of at least twenty thousand. Now learning that Andrey Yefimitch was a beggar, that he had nothing to live on he was for some reason suddenly moved to tears and embraced his friend. Andrey Yefimitch now lodged in a little house with three windows.
Daryushka would come out of the kitchen and with an expression of blank dejection would stand in the doorway to listen, with her face propped on her fist. "Eh!" Mihail Averyanitch would sigh. "To expect intelligence of this generation!" And he would describe how wholesome, entertaining, and interesting life had been in the past.
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