“An idyll!” he said.  “They sing and dream in the moonlight!  It’s charming, upon my soul!  May I sit down and dream with you?”

We looked at one another and said nothing.  My uncle sat down on the bottom step, yawned, and looked at the sky.  A silence followed.  Pobyedimsky, who had for a long time been wanting to talk to somebody fresh, was delighted at the opportunity, and was the first to break the silence.  He had only one subject for intellectual conversation, the epizootic diseases.  It sometimes happens that after one has been in an immense crowd, only some one countenance of the thousands remains long imprinted on the memory; in the same way, of all that Pobyedimsky had heard, during his six months at the veterinary institute, he remembered only one passage: 

“The epizootics do immense damage to the stock of the country.  It is the duty of society to work hand in hand with the government in waging war upon them.”

Before saying this to Gundasov, my tutor cleared his throat three times, and several times, in his excitement, wrapped himself up in his Inverness.  On hearing about the epizootics, my uncle looked intently at my tutor and made a sound between a snort and a laugh.

“Upon my soul, that’s charming!” he said, scrutinizing us as though we were mannequins.  “This is actually life....  This is really what reality is bound to be.  Why are you silent, Pelagea Ivanovna?” he said, addressing Tatyana Ivanovna.

She coughed, overcome with confusion.

“Talk, my friends, sing... play!...  Don’t lose time.  You know, time, the rascal, runs away and waits for no man!  Upon my soul, before you have time to look round, old age is upon you....  Then it is too late to live!  That’s how it is, Pelagea Ivanovna....  We mustn’t sit still and be silent....”

At that point supper was brought out from the kitchen.  Uncle went into the lodge with us, and to keep us company ate five curd fritters and the wing of a duck.  He ate and looked at us.  He was touched and delighted by us all.  Whatever silly nonsense my precious tutor talked, and whatever Tatyana Ivanovna did, he thought charming and delightful.  When after supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly down and took up her knitting, he kept his eyes fixed on her fingers and chatted away without ceasing.

“Make all the haste you can to live, my friends...” he said.  “God forbid you should sacrifice the present for the future!  There is youth, health, fire in the present; the future is smoke and deception!  As soon as you are twenty begin to live.”

Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle.  My uncle jumped up, picked up the needle, and handed it to Tatyana Ivanovna with a bow, and for the first time in my life I learnt that there were people in the world more refined than Pobyedimsky.

“Yes...” my uncle went on, “love, marry, do silly things.  Foolishness is a great deal more living and healthy than our straining and striving after rational life.”