d bliss, if it even comes once to a man. It was
not complete, it was not genuine, you say; but prove your right to full,
genuine happiness Look round and see who is happy, who enjoys life about
you? Look at that peasant going to the mowing; is he contented with his
fate?... What! would you care to change places with him? Remember your
mother; how infinitely little she asked of life, and what a life fell to
her lot. You were only bragging it seems when you said to Panshin that
you had come back to Russia to cultivate the soil; you have come back
to dangle after young girls in your old age. Directly the news of your
freedom came, you threw up everything, forgot everything; you ran like a
boy after a butterfly."....

The image of Lisa continually presented itself in the midst of his
broodings. He drove it away with an effort together with another
importunate figure, other serenely wily, beautiful, hated features. Old
Anton noticed that the master was not himself: after sighing several
times outside the door and several times in the doorway, he made up his
mind to go up to him, and advised him to take a hot drink of something.
Lavretsky swore at him; ordered him out; afterwards he begged his
pardon, but that only made Anton still more sorrowful. Lavretsky
could not stay in the drawing-room; it seemed to him that his
great-grandfather Andrey, was looking contemptuously from the canvas at
his feeble descendant. "Bah: you swim in shallow water," the distorted
lips seemed to be saying. "Is it possible," he thought, "that I cannot
master myself, that I am going to give in to this... nonsense?" (Those
who are badly wounded in war always call their wounds "nonsense." If
man did not deceive himself, he could not live on earth.) "Am I really
a boy? Ah, well; I saw quite close, I almost held in my hands the
possibility of happiness for my whole life; yes, in the lottery
too--turn the wheel a little and the beggar perhaps would be a rich man.
If it does not happen, then it does not--and it's all over. I will set
to work, with my teeth clenched, and make myself be quiet; it's as well,
it's not the first time I have had to hold myself in. And why have I
run away, why am I stopping here sticking my head in a bush, like an
ostrich? A fearful thing to face trouble... nonsense! Anton," he called
aloud, "order the coach to be brought round at once. Yes," he thought
again, "I must grin and bear it, I must keep myself well in hand."

With suc