“And what will it cost to go?”
Old Oblomov produced an ancient calendar. “Forty kopecks,” he said.
“What? You are going to throw away forty kopecks on such a trifle?” she exclaimed. “We had far better wait until we are sending other things also to the town. Let the peasants know about it.”
“That might be better,” agreed old Oblomov, tapping his pen against the table. With that he replaced the pen in the inkstand, and took off his spectacles.
“Yes, it might be better,” he concluded.
And to this day no one knows how long Philip Matveitch had to wait for that recipe.
Also, there were times when old Oblomov actually took a book in his hands. What book it might be he did not care, for he felt no actual craving to read; he looked upon literature as a mere luxury which could easily be indulged in, or be done without, even as one might have a picture on one’s wall, or one might not—one might go out for an occasional walk, or one might not. Hence, as I say, he was indifferent to the identity of a book, since he looked upon such articles as mere instruments of distraction from ennui and lack of employment. Also, he always adopted towards authors that half-contemptuous attitude which used to be maintained by gentry of the ancien régime; for, like many of his day, he considered a writer of books to be a roisterer, a ne’er-do-well, a drunkard, a sort of merry-andrew. Also, he would read aloud items of intelligence from journals three years old—such items as, “It is reported from The Hague that, on returning to the Palace from a short drive, the King gazed at the assembled onlookers through his spectacles,” or “At Vienna such and such an Ambassador has just presented his Letter of Credentials.”
Again, there was a day when he read aloud the intelligence that a certain work by a foreign writer had just been translated into Russian.
“The only reason why they go in for translating such things,” remarked a small landowner who happened to be present, “is that they may wheedle more money out of us dvoriané.” *
* Squires, or gentry