“One comes to look at comfort and luxury as the invariable privilege of capital and education,” I said, “and it seems to me that the comforts of life may be combined with any sort of labour, even the hardest and dirtiest.  Your father is rich, and yet he says himself that it has been his lot to be a mechanic and an oiler.”

She smiled and shook her head doubtfully:  “My father sometimes eats bread dipped in kvass,” she said.  “It’s a fancy, a whim!”

At that moment there was a ring and she got up.

“The rich and well-educated ought to work like everyone else,” she said, “and if there is comfort it ought to be equal for all.  There ought not to be any privileges.  But that’s enough philosophizing.  Tell me something amusing.  Tell me about the painters.  What are they like?  Funny?”

The doctor came in; I began telling them about the painters, but, being unaccustomed to talking, I was constrained, and described them like an ethnologist, gravely and tediously.  The doctor, too, told us some anecdotes of working men:  he staggered about, shed tears, dropped on his knees, and, even, mimicking a drunkard, lay on the floor; it was as good as a play, and Mariya Viktorovna laughed till she cried as she looked at him.  Then he played on the piano and sang in his thin, pleasant tenor, while Mariya Viktorovna stood by and picked out what he was to sing, and corrected him when he made a mistake.

“I’ve heard that you sing, too?” I enquired.

“Sing, too!” cried the doctor in horror.  “She sings exquisitely, a perfect artist, and you talk of her ‘singing too’!  What an idea!”

“I did study in earnest at one time,” she said, answering my question, “but now I have given it up.”

Sitting on a low stool she told us of her life in Petersburg, and mimicked some celebrated singers, imitating their voice and manner of singing.  She made a sketch of the doctor in her album, then of me; she did not draw well, but both the portraits were like us.  She laughed, and was full of mischief and charming grimaces, and this suited her better than talking about the mammon of unrighteousness, and it seemed to me that she had been talking just before about wealth and luxury, not in earnest, but in imitation of someone.  She was a superb comic actress.  I mentally compared her with our young ladies, and even the handsome, dignified Anyuta Blagovo could not stand comparison with her; the difference was immense, like the difference between a beautiful, cultivated rose and a wild briar.

We had supper together, the three of us.  The doctor and Mariya Viktorovna drank red wine, champagne, and coffee with brandy in it; they clinked glasses and drank to friendship, to enlightenment, to progress, to liberty, and they did not get drunk but only flushed, and were continually, for no reason, laughing till they cried.  So as not to be tiresome I drank claret too.

“Talented, richly endowed natures,” said Miss Dolzhikov, “know how to live, and go their own way; mediocre people, like myself for instance, know nothing and can do nothing of themselves; there is nothing left for them but to discern some deep social movement, and to float where they are carried by it.”