eyes whenever there are men in the room.  Above all, I cannot understand why a creature utterly alien to my habits, my studies, my whole manner of life, completely different from the people I like, should come and see me every day, and every day should dine with me.  My wife and my servants mysteriously whisper that he is a suitor, but still I don’t understand his presence; it rouses in me the same wonder and perplexity as if they were to set a Zulu beside me at the table.  And it seems strange to me, too, that my daughter, whom I am used to thinking of as a child, should love that cravat, those eyes, those soft cheeks....

In the old days I used to like my dinner, or at least was indifferent about it; now it excites in me no feeling but weariness and irritation.  Ever since I became an “Excellency” and one of the Deans of the Faculty my family has for some reason found it necessary to make a complete change in our menu and dining habits.  Instead of the simple dishes to which I was accustomed when I was a student and when I was in practice, now they feed me with a puree with little white things like circles floating about in it, and kidneys stewed in madeira.  My rank as a general and my fame have robbed me for ever of cabbage-soup and savoury pies, and goose with apple-sauce, and bream with boiled grain.  They have robbed me of our maid-servant Agasha, a chatty and laughter-loving old woman, instead of whom Yegor, a dull-witted and conceited fellow with a white glove on his right hand, waits at dinner.  The intervals between the courses are short, but they seem immensely long because there is nothing to occupy them.  There is none of the gaiety of the old days, the spontaneous talk, the jokes, the laughter; there is nothing of mutual affection and the joy which used to animate the children, my wife, and me when in old days we met together at meals.  For me, the celebrated man of science, dinner was a time of rest and reunion, and for my wife and children a fete—­brief indeed, but bright and joyous—­in which they knew that for half an hour I belonged, not to science, not to students, but to them alone.  Our real exhilaration from one glass of wine is gone for ever, gone is Agasha, gone the bream with boiled grain, gone the uproar that greeted every little startling incident at dinner, such as the cat and dog fighting under the table, or Katya’s bandage falling off her face into her soup-plate.

To describe our dinner nowadays is as uninteresting as to eat it.  My wife’s face wears a look of triumph and affected dignity, and her habitual expression of anxiety.  She looks at our plates and says, “I see you don’t care for the joint.  Tell me; you don’t like it, do you?” and I am obliged to answer:  “There is no need for you to trouble, my dear; the meat is very nice.”  And she will say:  “You always stand up for me, Nikolay Stepanovitch, and you never tell the truth.  Why is Alexandr Adolfovitch eating so little?” And so on in the same style