A silence follows.  Styopa yawns loudly, and scrutinises the Chinaman on the tea-caddy whom he has seen a thousand times already.  Markovna and the two aunts sip tea carefully out of their saucers.  The air is still and stifling from the stove. . . .  Faces and gestures betray the sloth and repletion that comes when the stomach is full, and yet one must go on eating.  The samovar, the cups, and the table-cloth are cleared away, but still the family sits on at the table. . . .  Pelageya Ivanovna is continually jumping up and, with an expression of alarm on her face, running off into the kitchen, to talk to the cook about the supper.  The two aunts go on sitting in the same position immovably, with their arms folded across their bosoms and doze, staring with their pewtery little eyes at the lamp.  Markovna hiccups every minute and asks: 

“Why is it I have the hiccups?  I don’t think I have eaten anything to account for it . . . nor drunk anything either. . . .  Hic!”

Pavel Vassilitch and Styopa sit side by side, with their heads touching, and, bending over the table, examine a volume of the “Neva” for 1878.

“’The monument of Leonardo da Vinci, facing the gallery of Victor Emmanuel at Milan.’  I say! . . .  After the style of a triumphal arch. . . .  A cavalier with his lady. . . .  And there are little men in the distance. . . .”

“That little man is like a schoolfellow of mine called Niskubin,” says Styopa.

“Turn over. . . .  ’The proboscis of the common house-fly seen under the microscope.’  So that’s a proboscis!  I say—­a fly.  Whatever would a bug look like under a microscope, my boy?  Wouldn’t it be horrid!”

The old-fashioned clock in the drawing-room does not strike, but coughs ten times huskily as though it had a cold.  The cook, Anna, comes into the dining-room, and plumps down at the master’s feet.

“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake, Pavel Vassilitch!” she says, getting up, flushed all over.

“You forgive me, too, for Christ’s sake,” Pavel Vassilitch responds unconcernedly.

In the same manner, Anna goes up to the other members of the family, plumps down at their feet, and begs forgiveness.  She only misses out Markovna to whom, not being one of the gentry, she does not feel it necessary to bow down.

Another half-hour passes in stillness and tranquillity.  The “Neva” is by now lying on the sofa, and Pavel Vassilitch, holding up his finger, repeats by heart some Latin verses he has learned in his childhood.  Styopa stares at the finger with the wedding ring, listens to the unintelligible words, and dozes; he rubs his eyelids with his fists, and they shut all the tighter.

“I am going to bed . . .” he says, stretching and yawning.

“What, to bed?” says Pelageya Ivanovna.  “What about supper before the fast?”

“I don’t want any.”

“Are you crazy?” says his mother in alarm.  “How can you go without your supper before the fast?  You’ll have nothing but Lenten food all through the fast!”