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'Mind you don't go and fall in love with him, remarked Sergei Sergeitch. 'I know you girls are all like that nowadays so what shall I say? romantic... 'No, Masha responded simply. Nenila Makarievna looked coldly at her husband.

Without returning the greetings of the monks, apparently unconscious of his surroundings, he went straight to his cell and there gave way to a flood of passion. An hour afterwards a monk found him upon his knees before an icon, in fervent prayer. "I have been bewitched, Sergeitch," he said, with his wonted calmness. "Pray for me that the evil spirit may leave me."

'My faithful companion, he faltered, 'my honoured wife, I would bow down at your little feet for all your love and faithfulness but how to get up? Let me sign you with the cross. Malania Pavlovna moved closer, bent down.... But the hand he had raised fell back powerless on the quilt, and a few moments later Alexey Sergeitch was no more.

Alexey Sergeitch was a Russian in everything; he liked none but Russian dishes, he was fond of Russian songs, but the harmonica a 'manufactured contrivance' he hated; he liked looking at the serf-girls' dances and the peasant-women's jigs; in his youth, I was told, he had been an enthusiastic singer and a dashing dancer; he liked steaming himself in the bath, and steamed himself so vigorously that Irinarh, who, serving him as bathman, used to beat him with a bundle of birch-twigs steeped in beer, to rub him with a handful of tow, and then with a woollen cloth the truly devoted Irinarh used to say every time, as he crept off his shelf red as a 'new copper image': 'Well, this time I, the servant of God, Irinarh Tolobiev, have come out alive.

'But you yourself, Onisim Sergeitch, if you remember, were put out with him about it; "Why is he such friends?" you said; "what's he always coming for?" 'Well, was I to be pleased with him for it, do you suppose? 'Well, then, why are you angry with me now? Here, he's given up coming. Onisim positively stamped. 'But what am I to do with him, if he's such a madman? he added, dropping his voice.

And the flowers, the flowers that were brought! ... Simply loads of flowers! And how on that day a foreigner, a wealthy, tremendously wealthy person, had shot himself from love and how Orlov too had been there.... And going up to Alexey Sergeitch, he had congratulated him and called him a lucky man.... 'A lucky man you are, you silly fellow! said he.

Alexey Sergeitch called him a philosopher, and positively respected him; at table the dishes were handed to him first, after the guests and master and mistress. 'God has afflicted him, Alexey Sergeitch used to say; 'such is His Divine will; but it's not for me to afflict him further. 'How is he a philosopher? I asked him once.

Nenila Makarievna came in and gave Fyodor Fedoritch a friendly greeting. At dinner they were all laughing and making jokes; even Sergei Sergeitch plucked up spirit and described one of the merriest pranks of his youthful days, hiding his head from his wife like an ostrich, as he told the story.

"No!" said Mashenka resolutely, beginning to tremble. "Let me alone, I entreat you!" "Well, God bless you!" sighed Nikolay Sergeitch, sitting down on the stool near the box. "I must own I like people who still can feel resentment, contempt, and so on. I could sit here forever and look at your indignant face. . . . So you won't stay, then?

These lines were the composition of a certain Gormitch-Gormitsky, a wandering poet, to whom Alexey Sergeitch had given a home in his house, as he struck him as a man of delicate feeling and even of subtlety; he wore slippers adorned with ribbons, spoke with a broad accent, and frequently sighed, turning his eyes to heaven; in addition to all these qualifications, Gormitch-Gormitsky spoke French decently, having been educated in a Jesuit college, while Alexey Sergeitch only 'followed conversation. But having once got terribly drunk at the tavern, that same subtle Gormitsky showed a turbulence beyond all bounds; he gave a fearful thrashing to Alexey Sergeitch's valet, the man cook, two laundry-maids who chanced to get in his way, and a carpenter from another village, and he broke several panes in the windows, screaming furiously all the while: 'There, I'll show them, these Russian loafers, rough-hewn billy-goats!