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Updated: June 18, 2025
Pavel Vassilitch and his son abandon arithmetic and go in to tea. Pelageya Ivanovna is already sitting at the table with an aunt who never speaks, another aunt who is deaf and dumb, and Granny Markovna, a midwife who had helped Styopa into the world. The samovar is hissing and puffing out steam which throws flickering shadows on the ceiling.
With his knees raised almost to his chin, and his hands clasped round them, he is swaying to and fro like a Chinese idol and looking crossly at a sum book. "Are you working?" asks Pavel Vassilitch, sitting down to the table and yawning. "Yes, my boy. . . . We have enjoyed ourselves, slept, and eaten pancakes, and to-morrow comes Lenten fare, repentance, and going to work.
Styopotchka, have I given you your tea too weak? Ah, you have drunk it already. Pass your cup, my angel; let me give you some more." "So this Mamahin, my boy, could not bear the French master," Pavel Vassilitch goes on, addressing his son. "'I am a nobleman, he used to shout, 'and I won't allow a Frenchman to lord it over me!
'It's a trick, I said, 'that, if you were to set Socrates himself on one side and Frederick the Great on the other, even they could not make it out. And then I told him all about it. Didn't my Vassily Vassilitch jump out of bed! As though he had been scalded! He couldn't get into his boots. 'Horses, he cried, 'horses! I began trying to persuade him, but it was no use! He positively gasped!
"How can you go without your supper before the fast? You'll have nothing but Lenten food all through the fast!" Pavel Vassilitch is scared too. "Yes, yes, my boy," he says. "For seven weeks mother will give you nothing but Lenten food. You can't miss the last supper before the fast." "Oh dear, I am sleepy," says Styopa peevishly.
"Well, good-bye. . . . God give you all happiness." Von Koren gave Laevsky his hand; the latter took it and bowed. "Don't remember evil against me," said Von Koren. "Give my greetings to your wife, and say I am very sorry not to say good-bye to her." "She is at home." Laevsky went to the door of the next room, and said: "Nadya, Nikolay Vassilitch wants to say goodbye to you."
Laevsky, seeing that they were looking at him, said: "I have nothing against Nikolay Vassilitch; if he considers I'm to blame, I'm ready to apologise to him." Von Koren was offended. "It is evident, gentlemen," he said, "you want Mr. Laevsky to return home a magnanimous and chivalrous figure, but I cannot give you and him that satisfaction.
The children, the children! I would have run to fetch you, but Ivan Vassilitch stopped me, saying that it would only excite her it were best not to do so. Then suddenly she stretched her arms out and dropped them again. What she meant by that gesture the good God alone knows, but I think that in it she was blessing you you the children whom she could not see.
He never fell in love, never thought of marriage, and loved no one but his mother, his sister, his old nurse, and the gardener, Vassilitch. He was fond of good fare, of his nap after dinner, and of talking about politics and exalted subjects.
I put it to him, 'Won't you come home, Ilya Stepanitch; Alexandr Vassilitch is very much worried about you. And he said to me, 'What does he want to worry for! I want to be in the fresh air. My head aches. Go home, he said, 'and I will come later." "And you left him?" I cried, clasping my hands. "What else could I do? He told me to go ... how could I stay?"
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