He swayed lazily from side to side as he walked; in all his movements there was perceptible something which was not exactly carelessness, nor yet exactly fatigue.
“Still about Petersburg.”—replied Nadézhda Alexyéevna.—“Vladímir Sergyéitch cannot sufficiently praise it.”
“‘Tis a fine town,”—remarked Véretyeff;—“but, in my opinion, it is nice everywhere. By Heaven, it is. If one only has two or three women, and—pardon my frankness—wine, a man really has nothing left to wish for.”
“You surprise me,”—retorted Vladímir Sergyéitch. “Can it be possible that you are really of one opinion, that there does not exist for the cultured man....”
“Perhaps ... in fact ... I agree with you,”—interrupted Véretyeff, who, notwithstanding all his courtesy, had a habit of not listening to the end of retorts;—“but that’s not in my line; I’m not a philosopher.”
“Neither am I a philosopher,”—replied Vladímir Sergyéitch;—“and I have not the slightest desire to be one; but here it is a question of something entirely different.”
Véretyeff cast an abstracted glance at his sister, and she, with a faint laugh, bent toward him, and whispered in a low voice:
“Petrúsha, my dear, imitate Egór Kapítonitch for us, please.”
Véretyeff’s face instantly changed, and, Heaven knows by what miracle, became remarkably like the face of Egór Kapítonitch, although the features of the two faces had absolutely nothing in common, and Véretyeff himself barely wrinkled up his nose and pulled down the corners of his lips.
“Of course,”—he began to whisper, in a voice which was the exact counterpart of Egór Kapítonitch’s,—“Matryóna Márkovna is a severe lady on the score of manners; but, on the other hand, she is a model wife. It is true that no matter what I may have said....”