Aratoff went about his customary avocations, busying himself now with one, now with another; but his work did not make progress, was not a success.  Suddenly he noticed that he was waiting for Kupfer, that he wanted to interrogate him, or even communicate something to him....  But Kupfer did not make his appearance.  Then Aratoff got Pushkin and read Tatyana’s letter and again felt convinced that that “gipsy” had not in the least grasped the meaning of the letter.  But there was that jester Kupfer shouting:  “A Rachel!  A Viardot!” Then he went to his piano, raised the cover in an abstracted sort of way, tried to search out in his memory the melody of Tchaikovsky’s romance; but he immediately banged to the piano-lid with vexation and went to his aunt, in her own room, which was always kept very hot, and was forever redolent of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and crowded with such a multitude of rugs, etageres, little benches, cushions and various articles of softly-stuffed furniture that it was difficult for an inexperienced person to turn round in it, and breathing was oppressive.  Platonida Ivanovna was sitting by the window with her knitting-needles in her hand (she was knitting a scarf for Yashenka—­the thirty-eighth, by actual count, during the course of his existence!)—­and was greatly surprised.  Aratoff rarely entered her room, and if he needed anything he always shouted in a shrill voice from his study:  “Aunt Platosha!”—­But she made him sit down and, in anticipation of his first words, pricked up her ears, as she stared at him through her round spectacles with one eye, and above them with the other.  She did not inquire after his health, and did not offer him tea, for she saw that he had not come for that.  Aratoff hesitated for a while ... then began to talk ... to talk about his mother, about the way she had lived with his father, and how his father had made her acquaintance.  He knew all this perfectly well ... but he wanted to talk precisely about that.  Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know how to converse in the least; she made very brief replies, as though she suspected that Yasha had not come for that purpose.

“Certainly!”—­she kept repeating hurriedly, as she plied her knitting-needles almost in an angry way.  “Every one knows that thy mother was a dove ... a regular dove....  And thy father loved her as a husband should love, faithfully and honourably, to the very grave; and he never loved any other woman,”—­she added, elevating her voice and removing her spectacles.

“And was she of a timid disposition?” asked Aratoff, after a short pause.

“Certainly she was.  As is fitting for the female sex.  The bold ones are a recent invention.”

“And were there no bold ones in your time?”

“There were such even in our day ... of course there were!  But who were they?  Some street-walker, or shameless hussy or other.  She would drag her skirts about, and fling herself hither and thither at random....  What did she care?  What anxiety had she?  If a young fool came along, he fell into her hands.  But steady-going people despised them.  Dost thou remember ever to have beheld such in our house?”