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Updated: June 19, 2025
To both girls the interior in the establishment of Sophia Vasilievna, which is directly opposite, is distinctly visible the shining yellow parquet, draperies of a dark cherry colour on the doors, caught up with cords, the end of a black grand-piano, a pier glass in a gilt frame, and the figures of women in gorgeous dresses, now flashing at the windows, now disappearing, and their reflections in the mirrors.
All this disgusted him, and also made him feel ashamed. "Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!" "No, no," he thought; "freedom from all these false relations with the Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and from all the rest must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go abroad, to Rome and work at my picture!" He remembered the doubts he had about his talent for art.
Seeing that Nekhludoff was in ill humor, and could not be drawn into pleasant and clear conversation, Sophia Vasilievna turned to Kolosoff for his opinion of the new drama, with an air as if Kolosoff's opinion would dispel all doubt and every word of his was destined to become immortalized. Kolosoff condemned the drama and took occasion to state his views on art.
Next, a resonant bass voice said with a sort of indolent incisiveness: "Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the extent of oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?" "To the extent of total loss of power of articulation," replied a voice feminine and youthful of timbre.
He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged himself in it. How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and her husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his children in the eyes? How disentangle himself from Missy? How choose between the two opposites the recognition that holding land was unjust and the heritage from his mother? How atone for his sin against Katusha?
Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff noticed that neither he nor she cared anything about the play or each other, and that if they talked it was only to gratify the physical desire to move the muscles of the throat and tongue after having eaten; and that Kolosoff, having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy.
There the whole Korchagin family except the mother, Sophia Vasilievna, who never left her cabinet were sitting round the table. At the head of the table sat old Korchagin; on his left the doctor, and on his right, a visitor, Ivan Ivanovitch Kolosoff, a former Marechal de Noblesse, now a bank director, Korchagin's friend and a Liberal.
He recalled with disgust her beautiful shoulders and arms; and her coarse, brutal father, with his dark past, his cruelties, and her mother with her doubtful reputation. All this was disgusting and at the same time shameful. "No, no; I must free myself from all these false relations with the Korchagins, with Maria Vasilievna, with the inheritance and all the rest," he thought.
And he suddenly understood that the disgust which he had lately felt toward everybody, and especially to-day toward the Prince and Maria Vasilievna, and Missy, and Kornei, was disgust with himself. And in this confession of his own baseness there was something painful, and at the same time joyous and calming.
Princess Sophia Vasilievna was a long, thin woman, with dark hair, large black eyes and long teeth, and still pretended to be young. Her intimacy with the doctor was being talked about. Nekhludoff had known that for some time; but when he saw the doctor sitting by her couch, his oily, glistening beard parted in the middle, he not only remembered the rumours about them, but felt greatly disgusted.
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