“But he is just like you an ugly man, as well as (like yourself, again) a man of the name of Vassili Nikolaitch?”
“Nevertheless he is no kinsman of mine. Besides, my first names are Ivan and Alexeitch.”
“Well, he is exactly like you, and a swine besides. You can tell him that when next you meet him.”
“I neither possess his acquaintance nor have ever set eyes upon him,” said Alexiev, opening his snuffbox.
“Give me a pinch,” put in Tarantiev. “You use the plain stuff, and not the French, do you? Why not use the French? Never have I seen a swine like that relative of yours. On one occasion I borrowed of him fifty roubles. That was two years ago. And fifty roubles are not a very large sum, are they? They are a sum which he might well have forgotten, mightn’t he? Yes, he very well might. But as a matter of fact, he remembered it. Not a month had passed before he took to saying, whenever he met me: ‘How about that debt?’ I assure you I found him a perfect nuisance! And only yesterday he walked into our office, and said to me: ‘I expect you have just received your salary, and are therefore in a position to repay me?’ Well, I handed him over my salary, even though he had come there for the express purpose of shaming me in public. I had much ado not to put him out of the door. ‘Poor fellow, you need the money, I suppose?’ As though I had not needed it! Am I such a rich man that I should quietly let him pouch fifty roubles? Oblomov, hand me a cigar.”
“The cigars are in that box there,” said Oblomov, pointing to a whatnot. He was still posed in his usual lazy but becoming attitude—he was still taking no notice whatever of what was being done or said around him, but contemplating his small white hands.
“What a rubbishy weed!” Tarantiev remarked, after sending out a puff of tobacco smoke and inhaling another.
“You have come too early in the morning,” suggested Oblomov with a yawn.
“Then I am boring you, am I?”
“No; I was merely making a remark. Usually you arrive at lunch-time, but to-day you have come an hour beforehand.”