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"Not a minute, nor a second!" retorted Mihalevitch with an imperious wave of the hand. "Not one second: death does not delay, and life ought not to delay."
His offer was accepted; the general had long before, almost on the eve of Lavretsky's first visit, inquired of Mihalevitch how many serfs Lavretsky owned; and indeed Varvara Pavlovna, who through the whole time of the young man's courtship, and even at the very moment of his declaration, had preserved her customary composure and clearness of mind Varvara Pavlovna too was very well aware that her suitor was a wealthy man; and Kalliopa Karlovna thought "meine Tochter macht eine schone Partie," and bought herself a new cap.
From him he learnt that the name of the beauty was Varvara Pavlovna Korobyin; that the old people sitting with her in the box were her father and mother; and that he, Mihalevitch, had become acquainted with them a year before, while he was staying at Count N.'s, in the position of a tutor, near Moscow. The enthusiast spoke in rapturous praise of Varvara Pavlovna.
Some are even proud of it: 'I'm such a clever fellow, they say, 'I do nothing, while these fools are in a fuss. Yes! and there are fine gentlemen among us though I don't say this as to you who reduce their whole life to a kind of stupor of boredom, get used to it, live in it, like like a mushroom in white sauce," Mihalevitch added hastily, and he laughed at his own comparison.
The light of youth and life played in every feature of her lovely dark oval face; subtle intelligence was expressed in the splendid eyes which gazed softly and attentively from under her fine brows, in the swift smile of her sensitive lips, in the very poise of her head, her hands, her neck. Suddenly the door of her box opened, and a man came in it was Mihalevitch.
He appeared to them to be a queer kind of pedant; they did not care for him, made no overtures to him, and he avoided them. During the first two years he spent at the University he only became fairly intimate with one student, Mihalevitch by name, for he took lessons in Latin. One day at the theatre he saw in a box in the front tier a young girl leaning her elbow on the velvet of the box.
Mihalevitch spoke about music; she sat down without ceremony to the piano, and very correctly played some of Chopin's mazurkas, which were then just coming into fashion. Dinner-time came; Lavretsky would have gone away, but they made him stay: at dinner the general regaled him with excellent Lafitte, which the general's lackey hurried off in a street-sledge to Dupre's to fetch.
A month previously he had received a position in the private counting-house of a spirit-tax contractor, two hundred and fifty miles from the town of O , and hearing of Lavretsky returned from abroad he had turned out of his way so as to see his old friend. Mihalevitch and talked as impetuously as in his youth; made as much noise and was as effervescent as of old.
Under the influence of his persistent gaze her eyes slowly turned and rested on him. All night he was haunted by those eyes. The skilfully constructed barriers were broken down at last; he was in a shiver and a fever, and the next day he went to Mihalevitch, from whom he learnt that her name was Barbara Paulovna Korobyin.
"And from what do you infer that I lie idle?" Lavretsky protested stoutly. "Why do you attribute such ideas to me?" "And, besides that, you are all, all the tribe of you," continued Mihalevitch, "cultivated loafers.
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