An old lady of his acquaintance, a landowner of the neighbourhood, drove past him in a light, elegant landau.  He bowed to her, and smiled all over his face.  And at once he caught himself in that smile, which was so out of keeping with his gloomy mood.  Where did it come from if his whole heart was full of vexation and misery?  And he thought nature itself had given man this capacity for lying, that even in difficult moments of spiritual strain he might be able to hide the secrets of his nest as the fox and the wild duck do.  Every family has its joys and its horrors, but however great they may be, it’s hard for an outsider’s eye to see them; they are a secret.  The father of the old lady who had just driven by, for instance, had for some offence lain for half his lifetime under the ban of the wrath of Tsar Nicolas I.; her husband had been a gambler; of her four sons, not one had turned out well.  One could imagine how many terrible scenes there must have been in her life, how many tears must have been shed.  And yet the old lady seemed happy and satisfied, and she had answered his smile by smiling too.  The student thought of his comrades, who did not like talking about their families; he thought of his mother, who almost always lied when she had to speak of her husband and children....

Pyotr walked about the roads far from home till dusk, abandoning himself to dreary thoughts.  When it began to drizzle with rain he turned homewards.  As he walked back he made up his mind at all costs to talk to his father, to explain to him, once and for all, that it was dreadful and oppressive to live with him.

He found perfect stillness in the house.  His sister Varvara was lying behind a screen with a headache, moaning faintly.  His mother, with a look of amazement and guilt upon her face, was sitting beside her on a box, mending Arhipka’s trousers.  Yevgraf Ivanovitch was pacing from one window to another, scowling at the weather.  From his walk, from the way he cleared his throat, and even from the back of his head, it was evident he felt himself to blame.

“I suppose you have changed your mind about going today?” he asked.

The student felt sorry for him, but immediately suppressing that feeling, he said: 

“Listen...  I must speak to you seriously... yes, seriously.  I have always respected you, and... and have never brought myself to speak to you in such a tone, but your behaviour... your last action...”

The father looked out of the window and did not speak.  The student, as though considering his words, rubbed his forehead and went on in great excitement: 

“Not a dinner or tea passes without your making an uproar.  Your bread sticks in our throat... nothing is more bitter, more humiliating, than bread that sticks in one’s throat....  Though you are my father, no one, neither God nor nature, has given you the right to insult and humiliate us so horribly, to vent your ill-humour on the weak.  You have worn my mother out and made a slave of her, my sister is hopelessly crushed, while I...”