“There must have been many things!”
“Indeed, there was nothing. I admit of only three sorts of letters: love, congratulatory, and business letters. The first I did not write to you because you are not a woman, and I am not in love with you; the second you don't require; and from the third category we are relieved as from our birth we have never had any business connexion together.”
“That's about true,” the Count said, agreeing readily and quickly with everything; “but all the same, you might have written, if only a line.… And what's more, as Pëtr Egorych tells me, all these two years you've not set foot here, as though you were living a thousand versts away or disdained my property. You might have lived here, shot over my grounds. Many things might have happened here while I was away.”
The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end, quite regardless of the triviality or insignificance of his subject.
In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem'yanych. I could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by his butler, Il'ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.
“So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!” I said.
“No, Serezha, I have not.”
“Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and shaking your head! It's disgusting!”
“My dear boy, I'm going to drop everything.… The doctors have forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it's unhealthy to drop habits all at once.… It must be done gradually.…”
I looked at the Count's unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the butler in yellow shoes. I looked at the dark-browed Pole, who from the very first moment for some reason had appeared to me to be a scoundrel and a blackguard. I looked at the one-eyed muzhik, who stood there at attention, and a feeling of dread and of oppression came over me.… I suddenly wanted to leave this dirty atmosphere, having first opened the Count's eyes to all the unlimited antipathy I felt for him.… There was a moment when I was ready to rise and depart.… But I did not go away.… I was prevented (I'm ashamed to confess it!) by physical laziness.…