^>r Your third idiocy, Alexandr!" said Piotr Ivanitch, picking up the pieces, " it cost fifty roubles."
" I will pay for it, uncle! Oh 1 I will pay for it, but don't blame my emotion; it's pure and generous; I am happy, so happy ! Good God ! how sweet life is ! "
The uncle shook his head.
" When will you have more sense, Alexandr. Pay for it indeed !" he said. " That would be the fourth silliness. You want, I can see, to talk about your happiness. Well, there seems no help for it, so be it, I will give you a quarter of an hour; sit quietly, don't commit any fifth piece of stupidity, and talk away, and then, after that fresh stupidity you must go away; I have no time to spare. Well .... you are happy .... how is that? Tell me about it quickly."
" I admit it is silly, uncle, but such things cannot be told in this way," replied Alexandr with a modest smile.
" I have paved the way for you, but I see you want to begin with the ordinary prelude. That means that the conversation will last a whole hour; I haven't time for it; the post will not wait. You must stop, or better let me tell it myself."
" You ? that's amusing."
" H'm ! listen, it is extremely amusing! You saw your charmer yesterday by herself."
" But how do you know? " asked Alexandr, going up to his uncle.
"Sit down, sit down, for God's sake, and don't come near the table, you will be smashing something. It's all written in your face, I will read it off. Well, you had an explanation," said his uncle.
Alexandr blushed and was silent. It was clear that his uncle was right again.
" You were both very foolish as lovers always are," said Piotr Ivanitch.
The nephew made a gesture of impatience.
" It all began from trifles when you were left alone, from a fancy-work pattern perhaps," the uncle went on; " you asked whom she was working it for. She answered, ' For mamma or for auntie,' or something of that sort, and you shivered as if you were in a fever."
"There you have not guessed right; that was no fancy-work ; we were in the garden," Alexandr blurted out and relapsed into silence.
" Well, then, from flowers, I suppose," said Piotr Ivanitch; " perhaps from a yellow flower, it makes no difference what is before your eyes provided only it serves to start the conversation ; words don't come too readily to the tongue in such circumstances. You asked whether she liked flowers, she answered * Yes.' ' Why ?' you ask. ' Oh, because,' she said, and then you were both silent, because you wanted to say something altogether different and the conversation did not progress. Then you looked at one another, smiled and blushed."
" Oh, uncle, how you talk!" said Alexandr in evident confusion.
" Then," continued his inexorable uncle, " you began in a roundabout way to talk about a new world having opened itself to you. She looked suddenly at you, as though she were hearing something new and unexpected; you, I expect, were at your wits' end, and in confusion, then you said, scarcely audibly again, that only now you understood the value of life, that before you saw her—what her? Maria, or what ? "
" Nadinka."
"You had already seen her in a dream, that you had foreseen your meeting, that some affinity had brought you together, and that now you dedicate to her alone all your verses and prose. And, I expect, your hands weren't still a moment! no doubt you were upsetting or breaking something."
" Uncle ! you must have been listening to us!" shrieked Alexandr beside himself.
" Yes, I was there behind a bush. I have nothing better to do than to run after you and listen to all your absurdities."
" How then do you know all this?" asked Alexandr in perplexity.
" Wonderful, isn't it ? from Adam and Eve downwards, it's the same story for everybody with little variation. You a^writer and surprised at this ? Jtfow you will be walking on air for the next three days like an imbecile, throwing yourself on every one's neck. I should advise you to lock yourself in your room till that period is over and work off your foolishness on Yevsay, so that none else may see it Then you will come to your senses a little, and will obtain some further favour—a kiss for instance."
\
" A kiss from Nadinka! oh, what a high heavenly reward!" cried Alexandr almost weeping.
" Heavenly!"
" Why, do you call it earthly, material ? "
" Well, one must admit a kiss is an electric act; lovers are just like two electric batteries, both heavily charged; the electricity is let off in kisses, and when it's fully let off —then good-bye to love, the cooling process follows."
" Uncle!"
" Oh, I forgot; l material tokens of immaterial relations' are still promient objects in your brain. You will be collecting all sorts of rubbish again and poring and dreaming over them, and work will be laid on the shelf."
Alexandr at once clapped his hand on his pocket.
" What, there already ? so you will do exactly what men have done ever since the creation of the world"
" Then it is what you too have done, uncle ? "
" Yes, it's only a little sillier."
" Sillier! Don't you call it silliness just because my love will be deeper, stronger than yours, because I don't make light of my feelings, and turn them into ridicule as coldly as you, nor tear every veil off the sacred mystery."
"Your love will be just like other people's, neither deeper nor stronger; and you too will tear the veil off the sacred mystery; the only difference is that you will believe in eternal, unchanging love, and will think about nothing else, and that is just what is so silly; you are only preparing for yourself more unhappiness than you need."
" Ah !" said Alexandr, " in spite of your prophecies, I will be happy, I will love once and for ever."
" Oh, no ! I foresee you will break a good many more of my properties before you've done. But that does not signify; love is love, no one hinders you; we don't generally take love in a boy of your age very seriously, only don't let it go so far as to make you neglect business, love is love and business is business."
" Well, I am making an abstract from the German."
" There, there, you are not doing anything of the sort, you are giving yourself up to * soft emotions,' and the editor will get rid of you."
" Let him ! I don't depend on him. Can I be thinking now of contemptible money—now, when "
" Contemptible money, indeed! You had better build yourself a hut upon the mountains, live on bread and water, and sing—
0 • A cottage poor with thee,
Is Paradise to me,'
only when you've no more contemptible money, don't come to me, I won't give you "
" I don't think I have often troubled you."
" So far, I'm thankful to say you haven't, only it may come to that if you neglect work; love too costs money; you want to be extra smart and lots of different expenses. Oh, love at twenty! Come that's contemptible, contemptible if you like ! There's no sense in it."
" What love has sense in it, uncle ? Love at forty ? "
" I don't know what love is like at forty, but love at thirty-seven "
" Like yours ? "
" Yes, if you like, like mine."
" That is, no love at all."
" How do you know ? "
" Do you mean to say you can love ? "
" Why not ? Am I not a man, or am I seventy ? Only if I love, I love reasonably, I reflect on myself, I don't smash or upset things."
" Reasonable love! a fine kind of love that reflects on itself!" remarked Alexandr scoffingly, "that never forgets itself for an instant."
" When it is savage, instinctive," put in Piotr Ivanitch, " it does not reflect, but reasonable feeling must reflect; if it does not, it is not love."
" What is it then ? "
" Oh, vileness, as you would call it."
"You—love!" said Alexandr, looking incredulously at his uncle, " ha ! ha! ha ! "