“A black lily, any way,” observed Lavretsky.
“Ah, brother, don’t be a snob!” retorted Mihalevitch, good-naturedly, “but thank God rather there is a pure plebeian blood in your veins too. But I see that you want some pure, heavenly creature to draw you out of your apathy.”
“Thanks, brother,” remarked Lavretsky. “I have had quite enough of those heavenly creatures.”
“Silence, ceeneec!” cried Mihalevitch.
“Cynic,” Lavretsky corrected him.
“Ceeneec, just so,” repeated Mihalevitch unabashed.
Even when he had taken his seat in the carriage, to which his flat, yellow, strangely light trunk was carried, he still talked; muffled in a kind of Spanish cloak with a collar, brown with age, and a clasp of two lion’s paws; he went on developing his views on the destiny of Russian, and waving his swarthy hand in the air, as though he were sowing the seeds of her future prosperity. The horses started at last.
“Remember my three last words,” he cried, thrusting his whole body out of the carriage and balancing so, “Religion, progress, humanity!... Farewell.”
His head, with a foraging cap pulled down over his eyes, disappeared. Lavretsky was left standing alone on the steps, and he gazed steadily into the distance along the road till the carriage disappeared out of sight. “Perhaps he is right, after all,” he thought as he went back into the house; “perhaps I am a loafer.” Many of Mihalevitch’s words had sunk irresistibly into his heart, though he had disputed and disagreed with him. If a man only has a good heart, no one can resist him.