of perfect health and
youth--the carelessness, conceit, self-indulgence, and charm of youth.
He used his eyes, and smiled and leaned his head as boys do who know
that people look at them admiringly. He wore a loose white coat,
made like a blouse, a blue kerchief wrapped his slender throat, and a
battered straw hat had been flung on the grass beside him.

His companion seemed elderly in comparison with him; and no one would
have supposed, from his angular figure, that he too was happy and
enjoying himself. He lay in an awkward attitude; his large head--wide
at the crown and narrower at the base--hung awkwardly on his long neck;
awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his hands, of his body,
tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long legs with their
knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all that, it was
impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good education; the
whole of his clumsy person bore the stamp of good-breeding; and his
face, plain and even a little ridiculous as it was, showed a kindly
nature and a thoughtful habit. His name was Andrei Petrovitch Bersenyev;
his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Pavel Yakovlitch
Shubin.

'Why don't you lie on your face, like me?' began Shubin. 'It's ever
so much nicer so; especially when you kick up your heels and clap them
together--like this. You have the grass under your nose; when you're
sick of staring at the landscape you can watch a fat beetle crawling on
a blade of grass, or an ant fussing about. It's really much nicer.
But you've taken up a pseudo-classical pose, for all the world like a
ballet-dancer, when she reclines upon a rock of paste-board. You should
remember you have a perfect right to take a rest now. It's no joking
matter to come out third! Take your ease, sir; give up all exertion, and
rest your weary limbs!'

Shubin delivered this speech through his nose in a half-lazy,
half-joking voice (spoilt children speak so to friends of the house who
bring them sweetmeats), and without waiting for an answer he went on:

'What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy
insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such
a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance!
A man the lord of creation, the highest being, stares at them, if you
please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle
on the lord of creation's nose, and mak