e remember what you are doing!" he
cried. "To think that, after beginning your career so well, you should
abandon it merely for the reason that you have not fallen in with the
sort of Director whom you prefer! What do you mean by it, what do you
mean by it? Were others to regard things in the same way, the Service
would find itself without a single individual. Reconsider your
conduct--forego your pride and conceit, and make Lienitsin amends."

"But, dear Uncle," the nephew replied, "that is not the point. The point
is, not that I should find an apology difficult to offer, seeing that,
since Lienitsin is my superior, and I ought not to have addressed him as
I did, I am clearly in the wrong. Rather, the point is the following.
To my charge there has been committed the performance of another kind of
service. That is to say, I am the owner of three hundred peasant souls,
a badly administered estate, and a fool of a bailiff. That being so,
whereas the State will lose little by having to fill my stool with
another copyist, it will lose very much by causing three hundred peasant
souls to fail in the payment of their taxes. As I say (how am I to put
it?), I am a landowner who has preferred to enter the Public Service.
Now, should I employ myself henceforth in conserving, restoring, and
improving the fortunes of the souls whom God has entrusted to my care,
and thereby provide the State with three hundred law-abiding, sober,
hard-working taxpayers, how will that service of mine rank as inferior
to the service of a department-directing fool like Lienitsin?"

On hearing this speech, the State Councillor could only gape, for he
had not expected Tientietnikov's torrent of words. He reflected a few
moments, and then murmured:

"Yes, but, but--but how can a man like you retire to rustication in
the country? What society will you get there? Here one meets at least
a general or a prince sometimes; indeed, no matter whom you pass in the
street, that person represents gas lamps and European civilisation; but
in the country, no matter what part of it you are in, not a soul is
to be encountered save muzhiks and their women. Why should you go and
condemn yourself to a state of vegetation like that?"

Nevertheless the uncle's expostulations fell upon deaf ears, for already
the nephew was beginning to think of his estate as a retreat of a type
more likely to nourish the intellectual faculties and afford the only
profitable field of activity.