The fish soup was ready by now.  They were ladling it out by platefuls, and eating it with the religious solemnity with which this is only done at a picnic; and every one thought the fish soup very good, and thought that at home they had never eaten anything so nice.  As is always the case at picnics, in the mass of dinner napkins, parcels, useless greasy papers fluttering in the wind, no one knew where was his glass or where his bread.  They poured the wine on the carpet and on their own knees, spilt the salt, while it was dark all round them and the fire burnt more dimly, and every one was too lazy to get up and put wood on.  They all drank wine, and even gave Kostya and Katya half a glass each.  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna drank one glass and then another, got a little drunk and forgot about Kirilin.

“A splendid picnic, an enchanting evening,” said Laevsky, growing lively with the wine.  “But I should prefer a fine winter to all this.  ‘His beaver collar is silver with hoar-frost.’

“Every one to his taste,” observed Von Koren.

Laevsky felt uncomfortable; the heat of the campfire was beating upon his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and face:  this hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling in which there probably lay hid a well-grounded reason, humiliated him and enervated him, and unable to stand up against it, he said in a propitiatory tone: 

“I am passionately fond of nature, and I regret that I’m not a naturalist.  I envy you.”

“Well, I don’t envy you, and don’t regret it,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna.  “I don’t understand how any one can seriously interest himself in beetles and ladybirds while the people are suffering.”

Laevsky shared her opinion.  He was absolutely ignorant of natural science, and so could never reconcile himself to the authoritative tone and the learned and profound air of the people who devoted themselves to the whiskers of ants and the claws of beetles, and he always felt vexed that these people, relying on these whiskers, claws, and something they called protoplasm (he always imagined it in the form of an oyster), should undertake to decide questions involving the origin and life of man.  But in Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s words he heard a note of falsity, and simply to contradict her he said:  “The point is not the ladybirds, but the deductions made from them.”

VIII

It was late, eleven o’clock, when they began to get into the carriages to go home.  They took their seats, and the only ones missing were Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Atchmianov, who were running after one another, laughing, the other side of the stream.

“Make haste, my friends,” shouted Samoylenko.

“You oughtn’t to give ladies wine,” said Von Koren in a low voice.

Laevsky, exhausted by the picnic, by the hatred of Von Koren, and by his own thoughts, went to meet Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and when, gay and happy, feeling light as a feather, breathless and laughing, she took him by both hands and laid her head on his breast, he stepped back and said dryly: