"We should," Bazarov assented. "Yes, that is a true saying."
Upon which the son said "Good night" to his mother, and kissed her on the forehead, while she bestowed upon him a threefold embrace and (covertly) a blessing; while Vasili Ivanitch conducted Arkady to his room, and wished him "such God-given rest as I myself used to enjoy during the happier years of my life."
And certainly Arkady slept splendidly in the mint-scented annexe to the bathroom, where the only sound to be heard was that of a cricket chirping lustily against a rival from behind the stove.
Meanwhile, on leaving Arkady, Vasili Ivanitch repaired to the study, where, squatting at the foot of the sofa, he was about to enter into a discursive conversation with his son when the latter dismissed him, on the plea that he desired, rather, to go to sleep. Yet never once did Bazarov close his eyes that night, but lay staring into the darkness, since his memories of childhood had less power to move him than had the remembrance of the bitter experience through which he had recently passed.
For her part, Arina Vlasievna said her prayers with an overflowing heart, and then indulged in a long talk with Anfisushka; who, planted like a block before her mistress, with her solitary eye fixed upon the latter, communicated in a mysterious whisper her opinions and prognostications on the subject of Evgenii Vasilitch. Finally Arina Vlasievna's pleasurable emotion, coupled with the wine and the tobacco smoke, so caused the old lady's head to start whirling that, when her husband came to bed, he found himself obliged to moderate her exuberance with a gesture.
Arina Vlasievna was a true Russian housewife of the old school. That is to say, she ought to have lived a couple of hundred years earlier, during the period when the ancient Muscovite Empire was in being. At once pious and extremely nervous, she believed in every species of portent, divination, proverb, and vision; also in such things as urodivïe,[9] household demons, wood spirits, unlucky encounters, spells, popular medicines, Thursday salt, and an ever-imminent end to the world. Again, she placed much faith in such ideas as that, if a lighted candle lasts through the night preceding Easter Day, the buckwheat crops will come up well; that, should a human eye chance to fall upon a mushroom during the process of its growth, such growth will terminate forthwith; that the devil loves to be where-soever there is water; and that all Jews bear on their breasts a blood-red stain. Again, she stood in great awe of mice, adders, frogs, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold water, draughts, horses, billy-goats, fair men, and black cats, and also looked upon crickets and dogs as unclean creatures. Again, she never ate veal, pigeons, crabs, cheese, asparagus, artichokes, hare, or water melons (the last-named for the reason that, when split open, they reminded her of the head of John the Baptist!). Nor could she ever speak of oysters without a shudder. Again, though she loved eating, she observed every fast; though she slept ten hours out of the twenty-four, she never even went to bed if Vasili Ivanitch had got a headache; she read no books beyond Alexis or Siskins of the Forest; she wrote, at most, two letters a year; she knew every wrinkle as regards the departments of housekeeping, boiling, and baking (and that even though she herself never laid a finger upon anything, and hated even to have to stir from her place); she was aware that there were certain folk in the world who must command, and others who must serve—wherefore she loved servility and genuflexions; she treated all her subordinates with kindness and consideration; she sent never a beggar away empty; and she condemned no one for a fault, although at times she had a tendency to talk scandal. Likewise, in her youth she had been comely, and a player of the clavichord, and able to speak a little French; but, owing to long residence with a husband whom she had married purely for love, she had grown rusty in those accomplishments, and forgotten alike her French and her music; she loved and feared her son to a degree almost beyond expression; she deputed the management of her property entirely to Vasili Ivanitch, and never interfered with it, but would fall to gasping, and waving her handkerchief about, and affrightedly raising her eyebrows, whenever her helpmeet happened to broach some new plan or some necessary reform which he had in his mind's eye; and, lastly, she was of so apprehensive a temperament that she lived in constant fear of some unknown misfortune, and would burst into tears should any one mention anything of a mournful character.
Such women are now extinct; and only God knows whether we ought to be glad of the fact.
[1] An endearing diminutive of Evgenii.
[2] Cossack whips.
[3] Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836), a well-known German physicist whose treatise Makrobiotik, or The Art of Prolonging Life, has been translated into almost every European language.