“Well, he was ceremonious with you because you were strangers, but I am a relative.”
“We are strangers, but older acquaintances than you, and we know him better.”
Zavilovski, unaccustomed to contradiction, began to move his white mustaches, and pant from displeasure. For the first time in his life he had to trouble himself about the question, would the man to whom he wished to give money be pleased to accept it? This astonished, pleased, and angered him all at once; he recalled, then, something which he did not mention to Pan Stanislav, and this was it,—how many times had he paid notes for the father of the young man?—and what notes! But see, the apple has fallen so far from the tree that now there is a new and unexpected trouble.
“Well,” said he, after a while, “may the merciful God grant the young generation to change; for now, O devil, do not go even near them!”
Here his face grew bright all at once with an immense honest pleasure. The inexhaustible optimism, lying at the bottom of his soul, when it found a real cause to justify itself, filled his heart with glad visions.
“Bite him now, lord devil,” said he, “for the beast is as if of stone!—a capable rascal! resolute in work, and character; that is what it is,—character.”
Here he stared, and, shaking his head, fixed his lips as a sign of wonder, as if to whistle, and after a moment, added,—
“Indeed! and that in a noble! As God lives, I didn’t expect it.”
But talking in this way he deceived himself, for all his life he had expected everything.
“It seems, then,” said Pan Stanislav, “that there is no help but this, Panna Castelli must accommodate herself to him.”