“How can you ask! Bunsen lives there!”
Bazarov could find no reply to that one.
“Pierre Sapozhnikov . . . do you know him?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Not know Pierre Sapozhnikov . . . he’s always at Lydia Khostatov’s.”
“I don’t know her either.”
“Well, he undertook to escort me. Thank God I’m independent — I’ve no children . . . what did I say? Thank God!
Never mind though!”
Evdoksya rolled a cigarette between her fingers, brown with tobacco stains, put it across her tongue, licked it and started to smoke.
The maid came in with a tray.
“Ah, here’s lunch!
Will you have an aperitif first?
Viktor, open the bottle; that’s in your line.”
“Yes, it’s in my line,” mumbled Sitnikov, and again uttered a piercing convulsive laugh.
“Are there any pretty women here?” asked Bazarov, as he drank down a third glass.
“Yes, there are,” answered Evdoksya, “but they’re all so empty-headed.
For instance, my friend Odintsova is nice looking.
It’s a pity she’s got such a reputation . . . Of course that wouldn’t matter, but she has no independent views, no breadth of outlook, nothing . . . of that kind.
The whole system of education wants changing.
I’ve thought a lot about it; our women are so badly educated.”
“There’s nothing to be done with them,” interposed Sitnikov; “one ought to despise them and I do despise them utterly and completely.” (The possibility of feeling and expressing contempt was the most agreeable sensation to Sitnikov; he attacked women in particular, never suspecting that it would be his fate a few months later to cringe to his wife merely because she had been born a princess Durdoleosov.) “Not one of them would be capable of understanding our conversation; not one of them deserves to be spoken about by serious men like us.”
“But there’s no need whatsoever for them to understand our conversation,” remarked Bazarov.
“Whom do you mean?” sad Evdoksya.
“Pretty women.”
“What?
Do you then share the ideas of Proudhon?”
Bazarov drew himself up haughtily.
“I share no one’s ideas; I have my own.”
“Damn all authorities!” shouted Sitnikov, delighted to have an opportunity of expressing himself boldly in front of the man he slavishly admired.
“But even Macaulay . . .,” Madame Kukshina was trying to say.
“Damn Macaulay!” thundered Sitnikov. “Are you going to stand up for those silly females?”
“Not for silly females, no, but for the rights of women which I have sworn to defend to the last drop of my blood.”
“Damn . . .,” but here Sitnikov stopped. “But I don’t deny you that,” he said.
“No, I see you’re a Slavophil!”
“No, I’m not a Slavophil, though, of course . . . .”
“No, no, no!
You are a Slavophil.
You’re a supporter of patriarchal despotism.
You want to have the whip in your hand!”
“A whip is a good thing,” said Bazarov, “but we’ve got to the last drop . . .”
“Of what?” interrupted Evdoksya.
“Of champagne, most honored Avdotya Nikitishna, of champagne — not of your blood.”
“I can never listen calmly when women are attacked,” went on Evdoksya. “It’s awful, awful.
Instead of attacking them you should read Michelet’s book De l’Amour!
That’s something exquisite!
Gentlemen, let us talk about love,” added Evdoksya, letting her arm rest on the crumpled sofa cushion.
A sudden silence followed.
“No, why should we talk of love?” said Bazarov. “But you mentioned just now a Madame Odintsov . . . That was the name, I think — who is the lady?”
“She’s charming, delightful,” squeaked Sitnikov. “I’ll introduce you.
Clever, rich, a widow.