preceding evening at the English club
a discussion had arisen in a corner of the smoking-room as to the
incapacity of Russians to make speeches. 'Which of us can speak? Mention
any one!' one of the disputants had exclaimed. 'Well, Stahov, for
instance,' had answered the other, pointing to Nikolai Artemyevitch, who
stood up on the spot almost squealing with delight.)

'For instance,' pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, 'my daughter Elena. Don't
you consider that the time has come for her to take a decisive step
along the path--to be married, I mean to say. All these intellectual
and philanthropic pursuits are all very well, but only up to a certain
point, up to a certain age. It's time for her to drop her mistiness, to
get out of the society of all these artists, scholars, and Montenegrins,
and do like everybody else.'

'How am I to understand you?' asked Anna Vassilyevna.

'Well, if you will kindly listen,' answered Nikolai Artemyevitch, still
with the same dropping of the corners of his lips, 'I will tell you
plainly, without beating about the bush. I have made acquaintance, I
have become intimate with this young man, Mr. Kurnatovsky, in the hope
of having him for a son-in-law. I venture to think that when you see
him, you will not accuse me of partiality or precipitate judgment.'
(Nikolai Artemyevitch was admiring his own eloquence as he talked.) 'Of
excellent education--educated in the highest legal college--excellent
manners, thirty-three years old, and upper-secretary, a councillor, and
a Stanislas cross on his neck. You, I hope, will do me the justice to
allow that I do not belong to the number of those _peres de famille_
who are mad for position; but you yourself told me that Elena Nikolaevna
likes practical business men; Yegor Andreyevitch is in the first place
a business man; now on the other side, my daughter has a weakness for
generous actions; so let me tell you that Yegor Andreyevitch, directly
he had attained the possibility--you understand me--the possibility
of living without privation on his salary, at once gave up the yearly
income assigned him by his father, for the benefit of his brothers.'

'Who is his father?' inquired Anna Vassilyevna.

'His father? His father is a man well-known in his own line, of the
highest moral character, _un vrai stoicien_, a retired major, I think,
overseer of all the estates of the Count B----'

'Ah!' observed Anna Vassilyevna.

'Ah! why ah?' interposed Nikolai Artemyev