On the eve: A novel

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

‘Very likely. To be sure, that’s how it should be. Practical, a business man——’

‘And a capital hand at cards,’ Shubin remarked again.

‘To be sure, and a capital hand at cards. But Elena Nikolaevna.... Is there any understanding her? I should be glad to know if there is any one who would undertake to make out what it is she wants. One day she’s cheerful, another she’s dull; all of a sudden she’s so thin there’s no looking at her, and then suddenly she’s well again, and all without any apparent reason——’

A disagreeable-looking man-servant came in with a cup of coffee, cream and sugar on a tray.

‘The father is pleased with a suitor,’ pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, breaking off a lump of sugar; ‘but what is that to the daughter! That was all very well in the old patriarchal days, but now we have changed all that. Nous avons changé tout ça. Nowadays a young girl talks to any one she thinks fit, reads what she thinks fit; she goes about Moscow alone without a groom or a maid, just as in Paris; and all that is permitted. The other day I asked, “Where is Elena Nikolaevna?” I’m told she has gone out. Where? No one knows. Is that—the proper thing?’

‘Take your coffee, and let the man go,’ said Shubin. ‘You say yourself that one ought not devant les domestiques’ he added in an undertone.

The servant gave Shubin a dubious look, while Nikolai Artemyevitch took the cup of coffee, added some cream, and seized some ten lumps of sugar.

‘I was just going to say when the servant came in,’ he began, ‘that I count for nothing in this house. That’s the long and short of the matter. For nowadays every one judges from appearances; one man’s an empty-headed fool, but gives himself airs of importance, and he’s respected; while another, very likely, has talents which might—which might gain him great distinction, but through modesty——’

‘Aren’t you a born statesman?’ asked Shubin in a jeering voice.

‘Give over playing the fool!’ Nikolai Artemyevitch cried with heat. ‘You forget yourself! Here you have another proof that I count for nothing in this house, nothing!’