"And that's all?" he said.
"All that's left of twenty years?
Our last farewell?"
"You're awfully fond of these exclamations, Stepan Trofimovitch.
It's not at all the fashion.
Nowadays people talk roughly but simply.
You keep harping on our twenty years!
Twenty years of mutual vanity, and nothing more.
Every letter you've written me was written not for me but for posterity.
You're a stylist, and not a friend, and friendship is only a splendid word. In reality—a mutual exchange of sloppiness...."
"Good heavens! How many sayings not your own!
Lessons learned by heart!
They've already put their uniform on you too.
You, too, are rejoicing; you, too, are basking in the sunshine. Chere, chere, for what a mess of pottage you have sold them your freedom!"
"I'm not a parrot, to repeat other people's phrases!" cried Varvara Petrovna, boiling over.
"You may be sure I have stored up many sayings of my own.
What have you been doing for me all these twenty years?
You refused me even the books I ordered for you, though, except for the binder, they would have remained uncut.
What did you give me to read when I asked you during those first years to be my guide?
Always Kapfig, and nothing but Kapfig.
You were jealous of my culture even, and took measures.
And all the while every one's laughing at you.
I must confess I always considered you only as a critic. You are a literary critic and nothing more.
When on the way to Petersburg I told you that I meant to found a journal and to devote my whole life to it, you looked at me ironically at once, and suddenly became horribly supercilious."
"That was not that, not that.... we were afraid then of persecution...."
"It was just that. And you couldn't have been afraid of persecution in Petersburg at that time.
Do you remember that in February, too, when the news of the emancipation came, you ran to me in a panic, and demanded that I should at once give you a written statement that the proposed magazine had nothing to do with you; that the young people had been coming to see me and not you; that you were only a tutor who lived in the house, only because he had not yet received his salary. Isn't that so?
Do remember that?
You have distinguished yourself all your life, Stepan Trofimovitch."
"That was only a moment of weakness, a moment when we were alone," he exclaimed mournfully. "But is it possible, is it possible, to break off everything for the sake of such petty impressions?
Can it be that nothing more has been left between us after those long years?"
"You are horribly calculating; you keep trying to leave me in your debt.
When you came back from abroad you looked down upon me and wouldn't let me utter a word, but when I came back myself and talked to you afterwards of my impressions of the Madonna, you wouldn't hear me, you began smiling condescendingly into your cravat, as though I were incapable of the same feelings as you."
"It was not so. It was probably not so. J'ai oublie!"
"No; it was so," she answered, "and, what's more, you've nothing to pride yourself on. That's all nonsense, and one of your fancies.
Now, there's no one, absolutely no one, in ecstasies over the Madonna; no one wastes time over it except old men who are hopelessly out of date.
That's established."
"Established, is it?"
"It's of no use whatever.
This jug's of use because one can pour water into it. This pencil's of use because you can write anything with it. But that woman's face is inferior to any face in nature.
Try drawing an apple, and put a real apple beside it. Which would you take?
You wouldn't make a mistake, I'm sure.
This is what all our theories amount to, now that the first light of free investigation has dawned upon them."
"Indeed, indeed."
"You laugh ironically.
And what used you to say to me about charity?
Yet the enjoyment derived from charity is a haughty and immoral enjoyment. The rich man's enjoyment in his wealth, his power, and in the comparison of his importance with the poor.
Charity corrupts giver and taker alike; and, what's more, does not attain its object, as it only increases poverty.
Fathers who don't want to work crowd round the charitable like gamblers round the gambling-table, hoping for gain, while the pitiful farthings that are flung them are a hundred times too little.
Have you given away much in your life?