. And really, how is a man to go through
life without letting off just a few squibs every now and again? So life
in St. Petersburg became insupportable to Paklin and he longed to remove
to Moscow. Speculations of all sorts--ideas, fancies, and sarcasms--were
stored up in him like water in a closed mill. The floodgates could not
be opened and the water grew stagnant. With the appearance of Mashurina
the gates opened wide, and all his pent-up ideas came pouring out with a
rush. He talked about St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg life, the whole of
Russia. No one was spared! Mashurina was very little interested in
all this, but she did not contradict or interrupt, and that was all he
wanted of her.

"Yes," he began, "a fine time we are living in, I can assure you!
Society in a state of absolute stagnation; everyone bored to death! As
for literature, it's been reduced to a complete vacuum swept clean! Take
criticism for example. If a promising young critic has to say, 'It's
natural for a hen to lay eggs,' it takes him at least twenty whole pages
to expound this mighty truth, and even then he doesn't quite manage
it! They're as puffed up as feather-beds, these fine gentlemen, as
soft-soapy as can be, and are always in raptures over the merest
commonplaces! As for science, ha, ha, ha! we too have our learned Kant!
[The word kant in Russian means a kind of braid or piping.] on the
collars of our engineers! And it's no better in art! You go to a concert
and listen to our national singer Agremantsky. Everyone is raving about
him. But he has no more voice than a cat! Even Skoropikin, you know,
our immortal Aristarchus, rings his praises. 'Here is something,'
he declares, 'quite unlike Western art!' Then he raves about our
insignificant painters too! 'At one time, I bowed down before Europe
and the Italians,' he says, 'but I've heard Rossini and seen Raphael
and confess I was not at all impressed.' And our young men just go about
repeating what he says and feel quite satisfied with themselves. And
meanwhile the people are dying of hunger, crushed down by taxes. The
only reform that has been accomplished is that the men have taken to
wearing caps and the women have left off their head-dresses! And the
poverty! the drunkenness! the usury!"

But at this point Mashurina yawned and Paklin saw that he must change
the subject.

"You haven't told me yet," he said, turning to her, "where you've
been these two years; when you came back, what