Free, ample, active life, not without its luxuries; lying at ease in her soft, warm bed; cream, or baked dishes and cream; it is a life that greatly delights Viéra Pavlovna.
Can there be any better life in the world? To Viéra Pavlovna it seems impossible.
Well (da), in early youth nothing better can be imagined.
But years pass on; and with the years, things improve, if life goes on as it should, as it goes on with a few now, as it will pass with a good many in the future.
VI
Once (it was towards the end of summer) the girls gathered, according to their custom on Sunday, at the outskirts of the city for a picnic. During the summer they used to go out almost every holiday in boats to the islands. Viéra Pavlovna generally went with them, and this time Dmitri Sergéitch went along too, and that made this picnic remarkable. His company was a rarity, and it was the second time that he had been with them. The shop, when they heard about it, was greatly pleased. “Viéra Pavlovna will be gayer than usual, and it may be expected that the picnic will be particularly hilarious.” Some of them, who had intended to spend their Sunday otherwise, changed their plans and joined those who had decided to go. It was necessary to take instead of four great hampers, five, and afterwards the number was increased to six. The company consisted of fifty people or more. There were more than twenty seamstresses (there were only six who did not take part in the picnic), three middle-aged women, a dozen children or so—mothers, sisters, and brothers of the seamstresses; three young men—bridegrooms (one was a watchmaker’s apprentice, the second was a small dealer, and these two were not in the least inferior in manners to the third, who was a schoolteacher); there were five other young men of different ranks, among them even two army officers; and there were eight university and medical students. They took with them four big samovars, great heaps of different baked things, huge reserve stores of cold veal and other eatables. The people are young, there will be much motion, and the fresh air besides; one can count on their appetites. There are half a dozen bottles of wine. For fifty people, including fifteen young men, it does not seem a great supply!
And, in point of fact, the picnic turned out better than was even expected. They had everything. They danced in sixteen couples, and then in twelve, and also in eighteen; and in one quadrille they had even twenty out at once. They played high spy, about twenty-two couples of them; they improvised three swings between the trees; and in the intervals they drank tea and partook of luncheon. For half an hour—no, less, much less—almost half the company listened to a discussion between Dmitri Sergéitch and two students, the most radical of all his younger friends. They found in each other’s arguments inconsequentiality, moderantism, and bourgeoisism.32 These were the terms that they applied to each other; but in private each one had a special sin. One student, romanticism, and Dmitri Sergéitch was a schematist, and the other student believed in rigorism. Of course a stranger would find it hard to keep up his interest in such a discussion longer than five minutes; even one of the disputants, the romanticist, could not hold out longer than an hour and a half, then ran off to those who were dancing; but he did not run off ingloriously. He was indignant at some moderantist or other (almost with me, though I was not there at all), and, knowing that the cause of his indignation was not very old, he cried out, “Why are you talking about him? I will tell you the words which were said to me a few days ago by a respectable person—a very witty woman, ‘Only till a man is twenty-five may he preserve intact the style of his thoughts.’ ” “I know who that lady is,” said an officer who, to the romanticist’s mortification, joined the disputants, “It was Mrs. N. She said it in my presence, and she is really an elegant woman; but she was caught on the spot. Half an hour before she had said that she was twenty-six years old, and do you remember how we all roared?”
And at this all four laughed, and the romanticist beat a retreat, laughing. But the officer took his place in the dispute, and the fun was much more lively than before until it was teatime. The officer, while showing up the rigorist and the schematist much more cruelly than the romanticist had done, was himself mournfully convicted of Auguste Comteism. After tea, the officer announced that as long as his age still allowed his style of thought to be intact, he would not refrain from joining other people of his age. Then Dmitri Sergéitch and, though it was much against his will, the rigorist followed his example. They did not dance in the dances, but they played high spy. And when the men decided to run races, to jump over the ditch, then the three thinkers distinguished themselves as the most agile champions of manly exercise. The officer received the first prize for jumping over the ditch. Dmitri Sergéitch, who was a very strong man, got into a great rage when the officer defeated him.
