Volodin looked offended.
"Allow me to say, Ardalyon Borisitch," he said, "that I eat bread with butter, but that I do not want to eat a fig with butter."
Peredonov, without listening to him, was solicitously wrapping up his neck in a scarf and buttoning up his overcoat. Routilov said with a laugh:
"Why are you wrapping yourself up, Ardalyon Borisitch? It's quite warm."
"Health before everything," replied Peredonov.
It was quiet in the street—the street was stretched out in the darkness as if asleep and snored gently. It was dark, melancholy and damp. Heavy clouds moved across the sky. Peredonov growled:
"They've let loose the darkness. Why?"
He was not afraid now—he was walking with Varvara and not alone.
Soon a small, rapid, continuous rain began to fall. Everything was still. And only the rain babbled something obtrusively and quickly, sobbing out incoherent, melancholy phrases.
Peredonov felt in nature the reflection of his own dejection, his own dread before the mask of her hostility to him—he had no conception of that inner life in all nature which is inaccessible to external decrees, the life which alone creates the true, deep and unfailing relations between man and nature, because all nature seemed to him permeated with petty human feelings. Blinded by the illusions of personality and distinct existence he could not understand elemental Dionysian exultations rejoicing and clamouring in nature. He was blind and pitiful, like so many of us.