“It’s ages, my dear, since I have read anything,” he said when she asked him to tell her something.  “Though I do sometimes read Jules Verne.”

“I was expecting you to tell me something new.”

“H’m! . . . new,” Lysevitch muttered sleepily, and he settled himself further back in the corner of the sofa.  “None of the new literature, my dear, is any use for you or me.  Of course, it is bound to be such as it is, and to refuse to recognize it is to refuse to recognize —­would mean refusing to recognize the natural order of things, and I do recognize it, but . . .”  Lysevitch seemed to have fallen asleep.  But a minute later his voice was heard again: 

“All the new literature moans and howls like the autumn wind in the chimney.  ’Ah, unhappy wretch!  Ah, your life may be likened to a prison!  Ah, how damp and dark it is in your prison!  Ah, you will certainly come to ruin, and there is no chance of escape for you!’ That’s very fine, but I should prefer a literature that would tell us how to escape from prison.  Of all contemporary writers, however, I prefer Maupassant.”  Lysevitch opened his eyes.  “A fine writer, a perfect writer!” Lysevitch shifted in his seat.  “A wonderful artist!  A terrible, prodigious, supernatural artist!” Lysevitch got up from the sofa and raised his right arm.  “Maupassant!” he said rapturously.  “My dear, read Maupassant! one page of his gives you more than all the riches of the earth!  Every line is a new horizon.  The softest, tenderest impulses of the soul alternate with violent tempestuous sensations; your soul, as though under the weight of forty thousand atmospheres, is transformed into the most insignificant little bit of some great thing of an undefined rosy hue which I fancy, if one could put it on one’s tongue, would yield a pungent, voluptuous taste.  What a fury of transitions, of motives, of melodies!  You rest peacefully on the lilies and the roses, and suddenly a thought —­a terrible, splendid, irresistible thought—­swoops down upon you like a locomotive, and bathes you in hot steam and deafens you with its whistle.  Read Maupassant, dear girl; I insist on it.”

Lysevitch waved his arms and paced from corner to corner in violent excitement.

“Yes, it is inconceivable,” he pronounced, as though in despair; “his last thing overwhelmed me, intoxicated me!  But I am afraid you will not care for it.  To be carried away by it you must savour it, slowly suck the juice from each line, drink it in. . . .  You must drink it in! . . .”

After a long introduction, containing many words such as daemonic sensuality, a network of the most delicate nerves, simoom, crystal, and so on, he began at last telling the story of the novel.  He did not tell the story so whimsically, but told it in minute detail, quoting from memory whole descriptions and conversations; the characters of the novel fascinated him, and to describe them he threw himself into attitudes, changed