“Vereshtchagin has a picture in which some men condemned to death are languishing at the bottom of a very deep well.  Your magnificent Caucasus strikes me as just like that well.  If I were offered the choice of a chimney-sweep in Petersburg or a prince in the Caucasus, I should choose the job of chimney-sweep.”

Laevsky grew pensive.  Looking at his stooping figure, at his eyes fixed dreamily at one spot, at his pale, perspiring face and sunken temples, at his bitten nails, at the slipper which had dropped off his heel, displaying a badly darned sock, Samoylenko was moved to pity, and probably because Laevsky reminded him of a helpless child, he asked: 

“Is your mother living?”

“Yes, but we are on bad terms.  She could not forgive me for this affair.”

Samoylenko was fond of his friend.  He looked upon Laevsky as a good-natured fellow, a student, a man with no nonsense about him, with whom one could drink, and laugh, and talk without reserve.  What he understood in him he disliked extremely.  Laevsky drank a great deal and at unsuitable times; he played cards, despised his work, lived beyond his means, frequently made use of unseemly expressions in conversation, walked about the streets in his slippers, and quarrelled with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna before other people—­and Samoylenko did not like this.  But the fact that Laevsky had once been a student in the Faculty of Arts, subscribed to two fat reviews, often talked so cleverly that only a few people understood him, was living with a well-educated woman—­all this Samoylenko did not understand, and he liked this and respected Laevsky, thinking him superior to himself.

“There is another point,” said Laevsky, shaking his head.  “Only it is between ourselves.  I’m concealing it from Nadyezhda Fyodorovna for the time. . . .  Don’t let it out before her. . . .  I got a letter the day before yesterday, telling me that her husband has died from softening of the brain.”

“The Kingdom of Heaven be his!” sighed Samoylenko.  “Why are you concealing it from her?”

“To show her that letter would be equivalent to ’Come to church to be married.’  And we should first have to make our relations clear.  When she understands that we can’t go on living together, I will show her the letter.  Then there will be no danger in it.”

“Do you know what, Vanya,” said Samoylenko, and a sad and imploring expression came into his face, as though he were going to ask him about something very touching and were afraid of being refused.  “Marry her, my dear boy!”

“Why?”

“Do your duty to that splendid woman!  Her husband is dead, and so Providence itself shows you what to do!”

“But do understand, you queer fellow, that it is impossible.  To marry without love is as base and unworthy of a man as to perform mass without believing in it.”

“But it’s your duty to.”

“Why is it my duty?” Laevsky asked irritably.