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Updated: June 2, 2025
Sanine found everybody interesting and liked making new acquaintances. Yourii considered that very few people in this world were interesting, and always felt disinclined to meet strangers. Ivanoff knew Sanine slightly and liked what he had about him. He was the first to go up to him and begin talking, while Semenoff ceremoniously shook hands with him.
"Why do you suppose that I have not?" asked Yourii, and his dark eyes flashed menacingly. "Perhaps my conception of life may be a wrong one, but I have it." "Very well, then," said Sanine, "why seek to acquire another?" Pistzoff tittered. "Hush!" cried Koudriavji contemptuously, as his neck twitched. "How clever he is!" thought Sina Karsavina, full of naive admiration for Sanine.
Yourii glanced wistfully at him, and felt a sudden sympathy for the old man. Ivanoff now brought in bread, salted cucumbers, and glasses, which he placed on the table that was covered with a newspaper. Then, with a swift, scarcely perceptible movement, he uncorked the bottle, not a drop of its contents being spilt. "Very neat!" exclaimed Ilitsch approvingly.
Then he began talking about the melon-fields and other personal matters, Yourii feeling only more and more embarrassed, although he rather liked listening to it all. Footsteps were heard approaching. A little red dog with a curly white tail appeared in the light, sniffing at Yourii and Riasantzeff, and rubbing itself against Sanine's knees, who patted its rough coat.
When to the sound of martial music Sarudine's remains were borne to the churchyard, Yourii from his window watched the sad, imposing procession. He saw the horses draped in black, and the deceased officer's cap that lay on the coffin-lid. There were flowers in profusion, and many female mourners, Yourii was deeply grieved at the sight.
It seemed to him so strange that pretty, fresh-looking little Lialia, almost a child, should already have a lover, and should soon become a bride a wife. It touched him to a vague sense of pity for his sister. Yourii put his arm round Lialia's waist and went with her into the dining-room where in the lamp-light shone the large, highly polished samovar.
That was a triumph, if you like! But what about us? The most we do is to throw faggots on a fire that we have never kindled, and which by us will never be put out." It suddenly struck him that if things were wrong it was because he, Yourii, was not a Prometheus. Such a thought, in itself most distressing, yet gave him another opportunity for morbid self-torture.
And then, by ways inscrutable, Yourii was led to the strange, disquieting thought that all which went to make up a life, the secret instincts of loving or of hating that involuntarily caused him to accept one thing and to reject another; his intuitive sense regarding good or bad; that all this was merely as a faint mist, in which his personality alone was shrouded.
Why he was of this opinion he could not tell, but if Novikoff had thought the picture a bad one, he would have felt thoroughly hurt and annoyed. However, Novikoff murmured ecstatically, "Ve ... ry fine indeed!" Yourii felt as if he were a genius despising his own work. He sighed and flung down his brush which stained the edge of the couch, and he moved away without looking at the picture.
What do you suppose I care for Bebel, or Tolstoi or a million other gibbering apes?" These last words he uttered with sudden fury. Yourii was too depressed to reply. "Well, good-night!" said Semenoff faintly. "I must go in." Yourii shook hands with him, feeling deep pity for him, hollow-chested, round- shouldered, and with the crooked stick hanging from a button of his overcoat.
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