“But what is all this abuse about?” Lavretsky clamoured in his turn.  “Work—­doing—­you’d better say what is to be done, instead of abusing me, Desmosthenes of Poltava!”

“There, what a thing to ask!  I can’t tell you that brother; that every one ought to know for himself,” retorted the Desmosthenes ironically.  “A landowner, a nobleman, and not know what to do?  You have no faith, or else you would know; no faith—­and no intuition.”

“Let me at least have time to breathe; you don’t let me have time to look round,” Lavretsky besought him.

“Not a minute, nor a second!” retorted Mihalevitch with an imperious wave of the hand.  “Not one second:  death does not delay, and life ought not to delay.”

“And what a time, what a place for men to think of loafing!” he cried at four o’clock, in a voice, however, which showed signs of sleepiness; “among us! now! in Russia where every separate individual has a duty resting upon him, a solemn responsibility to God, to the people, to himself.  We are sleeping, and the time is slipping away; we are sleeping.” . . . .

“Permit me to observe,” remarked Lavretsky, “that we are not sleeping at present but rather preventing others from sleeping.  We are straining our throats like the cocks—­listen! there is one crowing for the third time.”

This sally made Mihalevitch laugh, and calmed him down.  “Good-bye till to-morrow,” he said with a smile, and thrust his pipe into his pouch.

“Till to-morrow,” repeated Lavretsky.  But the friends talked for more than hour longer.  Their voices were no longer raised, however, and their talk was quiet, sad, friendly talk.

Mihalevitch set off the next day, in spite of all Lavretsky’s efforts to keep him.  Fedor Ivanitch did not succeed in persuading him to remain; but he talked to him to his heart’s content.  Mihalevitch, it appeared, had not a penny to bless himself with.  Lavretsky had noticed with pain the evening before all the tokens and habits of years of poverty; his boots were shabby, a button was off on the back of his coat, on his arrival, he had not even thought of asking to wash, and at supper he ate like a shark, tearing his meat in his fingers, and crunching the bones with his strong black teeth.  It appeared, too, that he had made nothing out of his employment, that he now rested all his hopes on the contractor who was taking him solely in order to have an “educated man” in his office.

For all that Mihalevitch was not discouraged, but as idealist or cynic, lived on a crust of bread, sincerely rejoicing or grieving over the destinies of humanity, and his own vocation, and troubling himself very little as to how to escape dying of hunger.  Mihalevitch was not married:  but had been in love times beyond number, and had written poems to all the objects of his adoration; he sang with especial fervour the praises of a mysterious black-tressed “noble Polish lady.”  There were rumours, it is true, that this “noble Polish lady” was a simple Jewess, very well known to a good many cavalry officers—­but, after all, what do you think—­does it really make any difference?