“I am expected downstairs,” said Natalya Gavrilovna.

She got up from the table and turned to Ivan Ivanitch.

“So you will look in upon me downstairs for a minute?  I won’t say good-bye to you.”

And she went away.

Ivan Ivanitch was now drinking his seventh glass of tea, choking, smacking his lips, and sucking sometimes his moustache, sometimes the lemon.  He was muttering something drowsily and listlessly, and I did not listen but waited for him to go.  At last, with an expression that suggested that he had only come to me to take a cup of tea, he got up and began to take leave.  As I saw him out I said: 

“And so you have given me no advice.”

“Eh?  I am a feeble, stupid old man,” he answered.  “What use would my advice be?  You shouldn’t worry yourself....  I really don’t know why you worry yourself.  Don’t disturb yourself, my dear fellow!  Upon my word, there’s no need,” he whispered genuinely and affectionately, soothing me as though I were a child.  “Upon my word, there’s no need.”

“No need?  Why, the peasants are pulling the thatch off their huts, and they say there is typhus somewhere already.”

“Well, what of it?  If there are good crops next year, they’ll thatch them again, and if we die of typhus others will live after us.  Anyway, we have to die—­if not now, later.  Don’t worry yourself, my dear.”

“I can’t help worrying myself,” I said irritably.

We were standing in the dimly lighted vestibule.  Ivan Ivanitch suddenly took me by the elbow, and, preparing to say something evidently very important, looked at me in silence for a couple of minutes.

“Pavel Andreitch!” he said softly, and suddenly in his puffy, set face and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which he had once been famous and which was truly charming.  “Pavel Andreitch, I speak to you as a friend:  try to be different!  One is ill at ease with you, my dear fellow, one really is!”

He looked intently into my face; the charming expression faded away, his eyes grew dim again, and he sniffed and muttered feebly: 

“Yes, yes....  Excuse an old man....  It’s all nonsense... yes.”

As he slowly descended the staircase, spreading out his hands to balance himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck, he gave me the unpleasant impression of a sort of crab.

“You ought to go away, your Excellency,” he muttered.  “To Petersburg or abroad....  Why should you live here and waste your golden days?  You are young, wealthy, and healthy....  Yes....  Ah, if I were younger I would whisk away like a hare, and snap my fingers at everything.”

III