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Updated: June 17, 2025
...'Yes, she said, suppressing her sobs and continually wiping her eyes; 'I know you are a good man, an honest man; you are not like Kolosov.... 'That name again! thought I. But with what delight I kissed those warm, damp little hands! with what subdued rapture I gazed into that sweet face!... I talked to her of the future, walked about the room, sat down on the floor at her feet, hid my eyes in my hands, and shuddered with happiness.... Ivan Semyonitch's heavy footsteps cut short our conversation.
This torture continued for two hours; they beat me hollow. Before the end of the last rubber, I heard a slight sound behind my chair I looked round and saw Kolosov; beside him stood a girl of seventeen, who was watching me with a scarcely perceptible smile. 'Fill me my pipe, Varia, muttered Ivan Semyonitch. The girl promptly flew off into the other room.
The hunchback old woman laid the table; we sat down to supper. At supper Kolosov told all sorts of nonsensical stories; the lieutenant's guffaws were deafening; I peeped from under my eyelids at Varia. She never took her eyes off Kolosov ... and from the expression of her face alone, I could divine that she both loved him and was loved by him.
Reproaches were heard ... Sometimes I asked Kolosov with affected indifference, 'Well, shall we go to Ivan Semyonitch's to-day? ... He looked coldly at me, and answered quietly, 'No, we're not going. I sometimes fancied that he smiled slily when he spoke to me of Varia.... I failed generally to fill Gavrilov's place with him.... Gavrilov was a thousand times more good-natured and foolish than I.
Matrona Semyonovna garrulously praised and thanked Kolosov; Varvara sat silent, pouring out the tea, glanced at him now and then, and with timid shame-faced attentiveness handed him first a cup of tea, then the cream, then the sugar-basin. Meanwhile the lieutenant waked up, loudly called for his pipe, and after a short pause bawled: 'Sister! hi, sister! Matrona Semyonovna went to his bedroom.
'If she had loved Kolosov, I thought, 'how was it she consented so soon? It's clear she's glad to marry any one.... Well, what of it? all the better for me.... It was with such vague and curious feelings that I crossed the threshold of my room. Possibly, gentlemen, my story does not strike you as sounding true.
Kolosov liked us all equally, but was particularly friendly with a silent, flaxen-haired, and unobtrusive youth, called Gavrilov. From Gavrilov he was almost inseparable; he would often speak to him in a whisper, and used to disappear with him out of Moscow, no one knew where, for two or three days at a time.... Kolosov did not care to be questioned, and I was lost in surmises.
And where's Sevastian Sevastianovitch? 'Gavrilov is dead, answered Kolosov mournfully. 'Dead! you don't say so! And who's this? 'My relation I have the honour to present to you Nikolai Alexei.... 'All right, all right, Ivan Semyonitch cut him short, 'delighted, delighted. And does he play cards? 'Play, of course he does! 'Ah, then, that's capital; we'll sit down directly. Hey!
Kolosov was neither a wit nor a humorist; but you cannot imagine how readily we all fell under that fellow's sway. We felt a sort of instinctive admiration of him; his words, his looks, his gestures were all so full of the charm of youth that all his comrades were head over ears in love with him. The professors considered him as a fairly intelligent lad, but 'of no marked abilities, and lazy.
And, as I have already told you, we used, Kolosov and I, to go pretty often to Ivan Semyonitch's. Sometimes, when he was out of humour, the retired lieutenant did not make me sit down to cards; on such occasions, he would shrink into a corner in silence, scowling and looking crossly at every one.
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