“The younger generation. . .  A scientific star and a luminary of the Church. . . .  I shouldn’t wonder if the long-skirted alleluia will be shooting up into a bishop; I dare say I may come to kissing his hand. . . .  Well . . . please God. . . .”

Soon a snore was heard.  Von Koren and the deacon finished their tea and went out into the street.

“Are you going to the harbour again to catch sea-gudgeon?” asked the zoologist.

“No, it’s too hot.”

“Come and see me.  You can pack up a parcel and copy something for me.  By the way, we must have a talk about what you are to do.  You must work, deacon.  You can’t go on like this.”

“Your words are just and logical,” said the deacon.  “But my laziness finds an excuse in the circumstances of my present life.  You know yourself that an uncertain position has a great tendency to make people apathetic.  God only knows whether I have been sent here for a time or permanently.  I am living here in uncertainty, while my wife is vegetating at her father’s and is missing me.  And I must confess my brain is melting with the heat.”

“That’s all nonsense,” said the zoologist.  “You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without the deaconess.  You mustn’t be slack; you must pull yourself together.”

V

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went to bathe in the morning, and her cook, Olga, followed her with a jug, a copper basin, towels, and a sponge.  In the bay stood two unknown steamers with dirty white funnels, obviously foreign cargo vessels.  Some men dressed in white and wearing white shoes were walking along the harbour, shouting loudly in French, and were answered from the steamers.  The bells were ringing briskly in the little church of the town.

“To-day is Sunday!” Nadyezhda Fyodorovna remembered with pleasure.

She felt perfectly well, and was in a gay holiday humour.  In a new loose-fitting dress of coarse thick tussore silk, and a big wide-brimmed straw hat which was bent down over her ears, so that her face looked out as though from a basket, she fancied she looked very charming.  She thought that in the whole town there was only one young, pretty, intellectual woman, and that was herself, and that she was the only one who knew how to dress herself cheaply, elegantly, and with taste.  That dress, for example, cost only twenty-two roubles, and yet how charming it was!  In the whole town she was the only one who could be attractive, while there were numbers of men, so they must all, whether they would or not, be envious of Laevsky.