Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
"What wretches they are! What wretches!" During these disturbances Victor Ivanich used to come and see us. He used to bring hampers of wine and dainties, and eat for a long time, and then go to sleep on the terrace and snore so that the labourers shook their heads and said: "He's all right!" Masha took no pleasure in his visits.
Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were received by a chambermaid; such a pretty young woman that both of them stopped and exchanged glances. "You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen," said Aliokhin, coming after them into the hall. "I never expected you. Pelagueya," he said to the maid, "give my friends a change of clothes. And I will change, too. But I must have a bath.
On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter than a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pants instead of trousers; and his boots were covered with mud and straw. His nose and eyes were black with dust. He recognised Ivan Ivanich and was apparently very pleased.
He was burning hot. "Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the drops and again went up to the cot. "Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary. But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant. "But I wish it," he said. "I beg you give it him!"
And only when the lamp was lit in the large drawing-room up-stairs, and Bourkin and Ivan Ivanich, dressed in silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, lounged in chairs, and Aliokhin himself, washed and brushed, in a new frock coat, paced up and down evidently delighting in the warmth and cleanliness and dry clothes and slippers, and pretty Pelagueya, noiselessly tripping over the carpet and smiling sweetly, brought in tea and jam on a tray, only then did Ivan Ivanich begin his story, and it was as though he was being listened to not only by Bourkin and Aliokhin, but also by the old and young ladies and the officer who looked down so staidly and tranquilly from the golden frames.
Pavel told me that nobody was at home; Victor Ivanich had gone to Petersburg and Maria Victorovna must be at a rehearsal at the Azhoguins'. I remember the excitement with which I went to the Azhoguins', and how my heart thumped and sank within me, as I went up-stairs and stood for a long while on the landing, not daring to enter that temple of the Muses!
"Will he go to heaven?" "Who?" "Pavel Ivanich." "He will. He suffered much. Besides, he was a priest's son, and priests have many relations. They will pray for his soul." The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev's hammock and said in an undertone: "You won't live much longer, Goussiev. You'll never see Russia." "Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?" asked Goussiev.
The boat was rolling violently so that it was impossible to get up or to drink tea or to take medicine. "You were an orderly?" Pavel Ivanich asked Goussiev. "That's it. An orderly." "My God, my God!" said Pavel Ivanich sorrowfully. "To take a man from his native place, drag him fifteen thousand miles, drive him into consumption ... and what for? I ask you.
At Kharkhov I have a friend, a literary man. I shall go to him and I shall say, 'now, my friend, give up your rotten little love-stories and descriptions of nature, and expose the vileness of the human biped.... There's a subject for you." He thought for a moment and then he said: "Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them?" "Who, Pavel Ivanich?"
But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind and everything is all right. "That night I was able to understand how I, too, had been content and happy," Ivan Ivanich went on, getting up.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking