Vasili Ivanitch subsided with a grunt and the remark:
"Your logement reminds me of my military bivouacking days—this rick being a dressing-station." There followed a sigh. "Aye, many and many an experience have I had in my time. For instance, let me tell you a curious story about the black death in Bessarabia."
"When you received the order of St. Vladimir?" said Bazarov. "Yes, I know the story. But why do you never wear the badge of the order?"
"As I have told you, I care not a jot for appearances," protested Vasili Ivanitch (though only on the previous day had he had the red riband of the order removed from his coat). He then embarked upon the story.
"Evgenii has gone to sleep," presently he whispered to Arkady with a good-humoured wink and a pointing finger. "Come, come, Evgenii!" he added in a louder tone. "It is time to get up! Time for dinner!"
Father Alexis—a stout, good-looking man with thick, well-combed hair and an embroidered girdle over a lilac cassock—proved a clever, resourceful guest who, taking the initiative as regards shaking hands with Arkady and Bazarov (somehow he seemed to divine that they did not require his blessing), bore himself, in general, with complete absence of restraint, and, while neither demeaning himself nor imposing general constraint, made merry over scholastic Latin, defended his archbishop, quaffed a couple of glasses of wine (refusing a third), and accepted one of Arkady's cigars, though, instead of smoking it, he put it into his pocket to take home with him. The only thing that was at all unpleasant was the fact that every now and then, on raising a stealthy hand to brush from his face a fly, he, in lieu of doing so, crushed the insect flat!
Dinner over, he seated himself with modest zest at the card-table, and ended by despoiling Bazarov of two-and-a-half roubles in paper money (this rural establishment took no account of the system of computing cash in silver). During the game the hostess sat beside her son with her cheek resting on her hand as usual, and only rose from the table when it became necessary to order further relays of refreshment. Yet to caress Bazarov was more than she dared do; nor did he give her the least encouragement in that direction; in addition to which Vasili Ivanitch further restrained her ardour by whispering at intervals: "Do not worry our Evgenii. Young men do not like that sort of thing." Also, hardly need it be said that the dinner of which the company had just partaken had been of the usual sumptuousness, seeing that at break of day Timotheitch had set out for Circassian beef, and that the starosta also had galloped in quest of trout, eels, and crabs, while a sum of forty-two kopecks had been paid to peasant women for mushrooms. Arina Vlasievna's eyes, fixed immovably upon Bazarov, had in them something more than tenderness and affection. In them there were also sadness, curiosity, a touch of apprehension, and a kind of painful deference. Yet never did he mark their expression, since never did he turn in her direction, save to put to her the curtest of questions, and, once, to ask her to lay her hand in his, "for luck." On the latter occasion she slipped her plump fingers into his hard, capacious palm, waited a little, and then asked him:
"Has that helped you at all in your play?"
"It has not," he replied with a contemptuous grimace. "On the contrary, things are even worse than they were before."
"Yes, the cards seem to be against you," remarked Father Alexis with an assumed air of sympathy as he stroked his handsome beard.