“There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,” said the Countess.  “Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him.  He is a wonderful man.”

“It does not interest me, ma tante.”

“But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home.  Now you may go.  What else do you want of me? Videz votre sac.”

“The next is in the fortress.”

“In the fortress?  I can give you a note for that to the Baron Kriegsmuth. Cest un tres brave homme.  Oh, but you know him; he was a comrade of your father’s. Il donne dans le spiritisme.  But that does not matter, he is a good fellow.  What do you want there?”

“I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned there.  But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on Tcherviansky.”

“I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette’s husband; we might ask her.  She will do it for me. Elle est tres gentille.”

“I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without knowing what for.”

“No fear; she knows well enough.  They all know it very well, and it serves them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their hair short, like men] ones.”

“We do not know whether it serves them right or not.  But they suffer.  You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are so pitiless.”

“That has nothing to do with it.  The Gospels are the Gospels, but what is disgusting remains disgusting.  It would be worse if I pretended to love Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot bear them.”

“Why can you not bear them?”

“You ask why, after the 1st of March?” [The Emperor Alexander II was killed on the first of March, old style.]

“They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March.”

“Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs.  It’s not women’s business.”

“Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business.”

“Mariette?  Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what.  Want to teach everybody.”

“Not to teach but simply to help the people.”

“One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them.”

“But the peasants are in great need.  I have just returned from the country.  Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very limits of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are living in the greatest luxury?” said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by his aunt’s good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.

“What do you want, then?  That I should work and not eat anything?”

“No, I do not wish you not to eat.  I only wish that we should all work and all eat.”  He could not help smiling as he said it.

Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt look at him curiously. “Mon cher vous finirez mal,” she said.