United States or Curaçao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Ach, the damned mountains!" sighed Laevsky. "How sick I am of them!" At the place where the Black River falls into the Yellow, and the water black as ink stains the yellow and struggles with it, stood the Tatar Kerbalay's duhan, with the Russian flag on the roof and with an inscription written in chalk: "The Pleasant duhan."
"If that charming individual were drowning, I would push him under with a stick and say, 'Drown, brother, drown away. . . ." "That's untrue. You wouldn't do it." "Why do you think that?" The zoologist shrugged his shoulders. "I'm just as capable of a good action as you are." "Is drowning a man a good action?" asked the deacon, and he laughed. "Laevsky? Yes."
"He sits from morning till night, he's always at work. He works to pay off his debts. And he lives, brother, worse than a beggar!" Half a minute of silence followed. The zoologist, the doctor, and the deacon stood at the window and went on looking at Laevsky. "So he didn't get away from here, poor fellow," said Samoylenko. "Do you remember how hard he tried?"
"Why?" asked Laevsky. "The impression is better than any description. The wealth of sights and sounds which every one receives from nature by direct impression is ranted about by authors in a hideous and unrecognisable way." "Really?" Von Koren asked coldly, choosing the biggest stone by the side of the water, and trying to clamber up and sit upon it.
"Only remember one thing, Alexandr Daviditch: primitive man was preserved from such as Laevsky by the struggle for existence and by natural selection; now our civilisation has considerably weakened the struggle and the selection, and we ought to look after the destruction of the rotten and worthless for ourselves; otherwise, when the Laevskys multiply, civilisation will perish and mankind will degenerate utterly.
Save me, Vanya, save me. . . . I have been mad. . . . I am lost. . . ." Laevsky heard her sobs. He felt stifled and his heart was beating violently. In his misery he got up, stood in the middle of the room, groped his way in the dark to an easy-chair by the table, and sat down. "This is a prison . . ." he thought. "I must get away . . . I can't bear it."
After a long night spent in cheerless, unprofitable thoughts which prevented him from sleeping, and seemed to intensify the darkness and sultriness of the night, Laevsky felt listless and shattered. He felt no better for the bathe and the coffee. "Let us go on with our talk, Alexandr Daviditch," he said. "I won't make a secret of it; I'll speak to you openly as to a friend.
"I see. . . . But why shouldn't you send her on first?" "My goodness, as though that were possible!" Laevsky was horrified. "Why, she's a woman; what would she do there alone? What does she know about it? That would only be a loss of time and a useless waste of money."
I bow my back humbly before Von Koren's hatred because at times I hate and despise myself." Laevsky began again pacing from one end of the room to the other in excitement, and said: "I'm glad I see my faults clearly and am conscious of them. That will help me to reform and become a different man. My dear fellow, if only you knew how passionately, with what anguish, I long for such a change.
Ustimovitch, pacing to and fro, suddenly turned sharply to Laevsky and said in a low voice, breathing into his face: "They have very likely not told you my terms yet. Each side is to pay me fifteen roubles, and in the case of the death of one party, the survivor is to pay thirty."
Word Of The Day