“And from what do you infer that I lie idle?” Lavretsky protested stoutly. “Why do you attribute such ideas to me?”
“And, besides that, you are all, all the tribe of you,” continued Mihalevitch, “cultivated loafers. You know which leg the German limps on, you know what’s amiss with the English and the French, and your pitiful culture goes to make it worse, your shameful idleness, your abominable inactivity is justified by it. Some are even proud of it: ‘I’m such a clever fellow,’ they say, ‘I do nothing, while these fools are in a fuss.’ Yes! and there are fine gentlemen among us—though I don’t say this as to you—who reduce their whole life to a kind of stupor of boredom, get used to it, live in it, like—like a mushroom in white sauce,” Mihalevitch added hastily, and he laughed at his own comparison. “Oh! this stupor of boredom is the ruin of Russians. Ours is the age for work, and the sickening loafer” …
“But what is all this abuse about?” Lavretsky clamoured in his turn. “Work—doing—you’d better say what is to be done, instead of abusing me, Desmosthenes of Poltava!”
“There, what a thing to ask! I can’t tell you that brother; that everyone ought to know for himself,” retorted the Desmosthenes ironically. “A landowner, a nobleman, and not know what to do? You have no faith, or else you would know; no faith—and no intuition.”
“Let me at least have time to breathe; you don’t let me have time to look round,” Lavretsky besought him.
“Not a minute, nor a second!” retorted Mihalevitch with an imperious wave of the hand. “Not one second: death does not delay, and life ought not to delay.”
“And what a time, what a place for men to think of loafing!” he cried at four o’clock, in a voice, however, which showed signs of sleepiness; “among us! now! in Russia where every separate individual has a duty resting upon him, a solemn responsibility to God, to the people, to himself. We are sleeping, and the time is slipping away; we are sleeping.” …
“Permit me to observe,” remarked Lavretsky, “that we are not sleeping at present but rather preventing others from sleeping. We are straining our throats like the cocks—listen! there is one crowing for the third time.”
This sally made Mihalevitch laugh, and calmed him down. “Goodbye till tomorrow,” he said with a smile, and thrust his pipe into his pouch.
“Till tomorrow,” repeated Lavretsky. But the friends talked for more than an hour longer. Their voices were no longer raised, however, and their talk was quiet, sad, friendly talk.
Mihalevitch set off the next day, in spite of all Lavretsky’s efforts to keep him. Fedor Ivanitch did not succeed in persuading him to remain; but he talked to him to his heart’s content. Mihalevitch, it appeared, had not a penny to bless himself with. Lavretsky had noticed with pain the evening before all the tokens and habits of years of poverty; his boots were shabby, a button was off on the back of his coat, on his arrival, he had not even thought of asking to wash, and at supper he ate like a shark, tearing his meat in his fingers, and crunching the bones with his strong black teeth. It appeared, too, that he had made nothing out of his employment, that he now rested all his hopes on the contractor who was taking him solely in order to have an “educated man” in his office.
For all that Mihalevitch was not discouraged, but as idealist or cynic, lived on a crust of bread, sincerely rejoicing or grieving over the destinies of humanity, and his own vocation, and troubling himself very little as to how to escape dying of hunger. Mihalevitch was not married: but had been in love times beyond number, and had written poems to all the objects of his adoration; he sang with especial fervour the praises of a mysterious black-tressed “noble Polish lady.” There were rumours, it is true, that this “noble Polish lady” was a simple Jewess, very well known to a good many cavalry officers—but, after all, what do you think—does it really make any difference?
With Lemm, Mihalevitch did not get on; his noisy talk and brusque manners scared the German, who was unused to such behaviour. One poor devil detects another by instinct at once, but in old age he rarely gets on with him, and that is hardly astonishing, he has nothing to share with him, not even hopes.
Before setting off, Mihalevitch had another long discussion with Lavretsky, foretold his ruin, if he did not see the error of his ways, exhorted him to devote himself seriously to the welfare of his peasants, and pointed to himself as an example, saying that he had been purified in the furnace of suffering; and in the same breath called himself several times a happy man, comparing himself with the fowl of the air and the lily of the field.
“A black lily, anyway,” observed Lavretsky.
“Ah, brother, don’t be a snob!” retorted Mihalevitch, good-naturedly, “but thank God rather there is pure plebeian blood in your veins too. But I see that you want some pure, heavenly creature to draw you out of your apathy.”
“Thanks, brother,” remarked Lavretsky. “I have had quite enough of those heavenly creatures.”
“Silence, ceeneec!” cried Mihalevitch.
“Cynic,” Lavretsky corrected him.
“Ceeneec, just so,” repeated Mihalevitch unabashed.
Even when he had taken his seat in the carriage, to which his flat, yellow, strangely light trunk was carried, he still talked; muffled in a kind of Spanish cloak with a collar, brown with age, and a clasp of two lion’s paws; he went on developing his views on the destiny of Russia, and waving his swarthy hand in the air, as though he were sowing the seeds of her future prosperity. The horses started at last.
“Remember my three last words,” he cried, thrusting his whole body out of the carriage and balancing so, “Religion, progress, humanity! … Farewell.”
His
