“Don’t be naughty, girls,” said Rashevitch.

Genya and Iraida talked French with each other, and Russian with their father and their visitor.  Interrupting one another, and mixing up French words with Russian, they began rapidly describing how just at this time in August, in previous years, they had set off to the hoarding school and what fun it had been.  Now there was nowhere to go, and they had to stay at their home in the country, summer and winter without change.  Such dreariness!

“Don’t be naughty, girls,” Rashevitch said again.

He wanted to be talking himself.  If other people talked in his presence, he suffered from a feeling like jealousy.

“So that’s how it is, my dear boy,” he began, looking affectionately at Meier.  “In the simplicity and goodness of our hearts, and from fear of being suspected of being behind the times, we fraternize with, excuse me, all sorts of riff-raff, we preach fraternity and equality with money-lenders and innkeepers; but if we would only think, we should see how criminal that good-nature is.  We have brought things to such a pass, that the fate of civilization is hanging on a hair.  My dear fellow, what our forefathers gained in the course of ages will be to-morrow, if not to-day, outraged and destroyed by these modern Huns. . . .”

After supper they all went into the drawing-room.  Genya and Iraida lighted the candles on the piano, got out their music. . . .  But their father still went on talking, and there was no telling when he would leave off.  They looked with misery and vexation at their egoist-father, to whom the pleasure of chattering and displaying his intelligence was evidently more precious and important than his daughters’ happiness.  Meier, the only young man who ever came to their house, came—­they knew—­for the sake of their charming, feminine society, but the irrepressible old man had taken possession of him, and would not let him move a step away.

“Just as the knights of the west repelled the invasions of the Mongols, so we, before it is too late, ought to unite and strike together against our foe,” Rashevitch went on in the tone of a preacher, holding up his right hand.  “May I appear to the riff-raff not as Pavel Ilyitch, but as a mighty, menacing Richard Coeur-de-Lion.  Let us give up sloppy sentimentality; enough of it!  Let us all make a compact, that as soon as a plebeian comes near us we fling some careless phrase straight in his ugly face:  ’Paws off!  Go back to your kennel, you cur!’ straight in his ugly face,” Rashevitch went on gleefully, flicking his crooked finger in front of him.  “In his ugly face!”

“I can’t do that,” Meier brought out, turning away.

“Why not?” Rashevitch answered briskly, anticipating a prolonged and interesting argument.  “Why not?”

“Because I am of the artisan class myself!”

As he said this Meier turned crimson, and his neck seemed to swell, and tears actually gleamed in his eyes.