The Count does not know how to be silent, even on such a calm spring evening, when the voice of man is the least agreeable sound.
“I don't know if you will be satisfied?” he said to me. “I have ordered a fish-soup and game for supper. With the vodka we shall have cold sturgeon and sucking-pig with horse-radish.”
As if angered at this prosaic observation, the poetical pines suddenly shook their tops and a gentle rustle passed through the wood. A fresh breeze swept over the glade and played with the grass.
“Down, down!” Urbenin cried to the flame-coloured dogs, who were preventing him from lighting his cigarette with their caresses. “I think we shall have rain before night. I feel it in the air. It was so terribly hot to-day that it does not require a learned professor to prophesy rain. It will be a good thing for the corn.”
“What's the use of corn to you,” I thought, “if the Count will spend it all on drink? The rain need not trouble about it.”
Once more a light breeze passed over the forest, but this time it was stronger. The pines and the grass rustled louder.
“Let us go home.”
We rose and strolled lazily back towards the little house.
“It is better to be this fair-haired Olenka,” I said, addressing myself to Urbenin, “and to live here with the beasts than to be a magistrate and live among men.… It's more peaceful. Is it not so, Pëtr Egorych?”
“It's all the same what one is, Sergey Petrovich, if only the soul is at peace.”