He had the art of revealing everywhere and driving away banality, an art which is only possible to a man who demands much from life and which comes from a keen desire to see men simple, beautiful, harmonious. Banality always found in him a discerning and merciless judge.
Some one told in his presence how the editor of a popular magazine, who was always talking of the necessity of love and pity, had, for no reason at all, insulted a railway guard, and how he usually acted with extreme rudeness towards his inferiors.
“Well,” said Anton Pavlovitch with a gloomy smile, “but isn't he an aristocrat, an educated gentleman? He studied at the seminary. His father wore bast shoes, and he wears patent-leather boots.”
And in his tone there was something which at once made the “aristocrat” trivial and ridiculous.
“He's a very gifted man,” he said of a certain journalist. “He always writes so nobly, humanely, … lemonadely. Calls his wife a fool in public … the servants' rooms are damp and the maids constantly get rheumatics.”
“Don't you like N. N., Anton Pavlovitch?”
“Yes, I do—very much. He's a pleasant fellow,” Anton Pavlovitch agrees, coughing. “He knows everything … reads a lot … he hasn't returned three of my books … he's absent-minded. To-day he will tell you that you're a wonderful fellow, and to-morrow he will tell somebody else that you cheat your servants, and that you have stolen from your mistress's husband his silk socks … the black ones with the blue stripes.”
Some one in his presence complained of the heaviness and tediousness of the “serious” sections in thick monthly magazines.
“But you mustn't read those articles,” said Anton Pavlovitch. “They are friends' literature—written for friends. They are written by Messrs. Red, Black, and White. One writes an article; the other replies to it; and the third reconciles the contradictions of the other two. It is like playing whist with a dummy. Yet none of them asks himself what good it is to the reader.”
Once a plump, healthy, handsome, well-dressed lady came to him and began to speak à la Chekhov:—