No dreams of poetry, no creations of art, touch our hearts with a sweet rapture.  We stingily hoard up within our breasts the last remnants of feeling—­a treasure concealed by avarice, and which remains utterly unprofitable.

We love and we hate capriciously, sacrificing nothing either to our animosity or to our affection, a certain secret coldness possessing our souls, even while a fire is raging in our veins.

The sumptuous pleasures of our ancestors weary us, as well as their simple, childish diversions.  Without enjoying happiness, without reaping glory, we hasten onwards to the grave, casting naught but unlucky glances behind us.

A saturnine crowd, soon to be forgotten, we silently pass away from the world and leave no trace behind, without having handed down to the ages to come a single work of genius, or even a solitary thought laden with meaning.

And our descendants, regarding our memory with the severity of citizens called to sit in judgment on an affair concerning the state, will allude to us with the scathing irony of a ruined son, when he speaks of the father who has squandered away his patrimony.

XXXII.

Liza had not uttered a single word during the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshine, but she had followed it attentively, and had been on Lavretsky’s side throughout.  She cared very little about politics; but she was repelled by the self-sufficient tone of the worldly official, who had never shown himself in that light before, and his contempt for Russia offended her.  It had never occurred to Liza to imagine that she was a patriot.  But she was thoroughly at her ease with the Russian people.  The Russian turn of mind pleased her.  She would chat for hours, without thinking anything of it, with the chief of the village on her mother’s estate, when he happened to come into town, and talk with him as if he were her equal, without any signs of seigneurial condescension.  All this Lavretsky knew well.  For his own part, he never would have cared to reply to Panshine; it was only for Liza’s sake that he spoke.

They said nothing to each other, and even their eyes but rarely met.  But they both felt that they had been drawn closer together that evening, they knew that they both had the same likes and dislikes.  On one point only were they at variance; but Liza secretly hoped to bring him back to God.  They sat down close by Marfa Timofeevna, and seemed to be following her game; nay, more, did actually follow it.  But, meantime, their hearts grew full within them, and nothing escaped their senses—­for them the nightingale sang softly, and the stars burnt, and the trees whispered, steeped in slumberous calm, and lulled to rest by the warmth and softness of the summer night.

Lavretsky gave himself up to its wave of fascination, and his heart rejoiced within him.  But no words can express the change that was being worked within the pure soul of the maiden by his side.  Even for herself it was a secret; let it remain, then, a secret for all others also.  No one knows, no eye has seen or ever will see, how the grain which has been confided to the earth’s bosom becomes instinct with vitality, and ripens into stirring, blossoming life.