No dreams of poetry, no creations of art, touch our
hearts with a sweet rapture. We stingily hoard
up within our breasts the last remnants of feeling—a
treasure concealed by avarice, and which remains utterly
unprofitable.
We love and we hate capriciously, sacrificing nothing
either to our animosity or to our affection, a certain
secret coldness possessing our souls, even while a
fire is raging in our veins.
The sumptuous pleasures of our ancestors weary us,
as well as their simple, childish diversions.
Without enjoying happiness, without reaping glory,
we hasten onwards to the grave, casting naught but
unlucky glances behind us.
A saturnine crowd, soon to be forgotten, we silently
pass away from the world and leave no trace behind,
without having handed down to the ages to come a single
work of genius, or even a solitary thought laden with
meaning.
And our descendants, regarding our memory with the
severity of citizens called to sit in judgment on
an affair concerning the state, will allude to us
with the scathing irony of a ruined son, when he speaks
of the father who has squandered away his patrimony.
Liza had not uttered a single word during the dispute
between Lavretsky and Panshine, but she had followed
it attentively, and had been on Lavretsky’s
side throughout. She cared very little about
politics; but she was repelled by the self-sufficient
tone of the worldly official, who had never shown
himself in that light before, and his contempt for
Russia offended her. It had never occurred to
Liza to imagine that she was a patriot. But she
was thoroughly at her ease with the Russian people.
The Russian turn of mind pleased her. She would
chat for hours, without thinking anything of it, with
the chief of the village on her mother’s estate,
when he happened to come into town, and talk with
him as if he were her equal, without any signs of
seigneurial condescension. All this Lavretsky
knew well. For his own part, he never would have
cared to reply to Panshine; it was only for Liza’s
sake that he spoke.
They said nothing to each other, and even their eyes
but rarely met. But they both felt that they
had been drawn closer together that evening, they
knew that they both had the same likes and dislikes.
On one point only were they at variance; but Liza
secretly hoped to bring him back to God. They
sat down close by Marfa Timofeevna, and seemed to
be following her game; nay, more, did actually follow
it. But, meantime, their hearts grew full within
them, and nothing escaped their senses—for
them the nightingale sang softly, and the stars burnt,
and the trees whispered, steeped in slumberous calm,
and lulled to rest by the warmth and softness of the
summer night.
Lavretsky gave himself up to its wave of fascination,
and his heart rejoiced within him. But no words
can express the change that was being worked within
the pure soul of the maiden by his side. Even
for herself it was a secret; let it remain, then,
a secret for all others also. No one knows, no
eye has seen or ever will see, how the grain which
has been confided to the earth’s bosom becomes
instinct with vitality, and ripens into stirring,
blossoming life.
