Upon my word, women are beyond my comprehension!
Beyond my comprehension! How can they waste whole days doing nothing?
A man works like an ox, like a b-beast, while his wife, the partner
of his life, sits like a pretty doll, sits and does nothing but
watch for an opportunity to quarrel with her husband by way of
diversion. It's time to drop these schoolgirlish ways, my dear. You
are not a schoolgirl, not a young lady; you are a wife and mother!
You turn away? Aha! It's not agreeable to listen to the bitter
truth!

"It's strange that you only speak the bitter truth when your liver
is out of order."

"That's right; get up a scene."

"Have you been out late? Or playing cards?"

"What if I have? Is that anybody's business? Am I obliged to give
an account of my doings to any one? It's my own money I lose, I
suppose? What I spend as well as what is spent in this house belongs
to me--me. Do you hear? To me!"

And so on, all in the same style. But at no other time is Stepan
Stepanitch so reasonable, virtuous, stern or just as at dinner,
when all his household are sitting about him. It usually begins
with the soup. After swallowing the first spoonful Zhilin suddenly
frowns and puts down his spoon.

"Damn it all!" he mutters; "I shall have to dine at a restaurant,
I suppose."

"What's wrong?" asks his wife anxiously. "Isn't the soup good?"

"One must have the taste of a pig to eat hogwash like that! There's
too much salt in it; it smells of dirty rags . . . more like bugs
than onions. . . . It's simply revolting, Anfissa Ivanovna," he
says, addressing the midwife. "Every day I give no end of money for
housekeeping. . . . I deny myself everything, and this is what they
provide for my dinner! I suppose they want me to give up the office
and go into the kitchen to do the cooking myself."

"The soup is very good to-day," the governess ventures timidly.

"Oh, you think so?" says Zhilin, looking at her angrily from under
his eyelids. "Every one to his taste, of course. It must be confessed
our tastes are very different, Varvara Vassilyevna. You, for instance,
are satisfied with the behaviour of this boy" (Zhilin with a tragic
gesture points to his son Fedya); "you are delighted with him, while
I . . . I am disgusted. Yes!"

Fedya, a boy of seven with a pale, sickly face, leaves off eating
and drops his eyes. His face grows paler still.

"Yes, you are delighted, and I am disgusted. Which of us is right,
I cannot say, b