Generally he liked to talk, and it always seemed to him that he was saying something new and original. In the presence of Meier, he felt an extraordinary inspiration and influx of thoughts. He found the magistrate sympathetic and was inspired by his youth, health, excellent manners, seriousness, and above all by his cordial attitude towards himself and his family. Generally acquaintances did not like Rashevich, avoided him, and, as he knew, told of him that he had supposedly driven his wife into the grave by his talk, and behind his back called him a hate-monger and a toad. Only Meier, a new and unprejudiced man, visited him frequently and willingly, and even said somewhere that Rashevich and his daughters were the only people in the district with whom he felt as warm as with his own family. Rashevich also liked him, because he was a young man who might make a suitable match for Zhenya, his older daughter.
And now, enjoying his thoughts and the sound of his own voice, and glancing with pleasure at the moderately plump, handsomely cropped, respectable Meier, Rashevich dreamed of how he would set his daughter up with a good man, and how the cares of the estate would then pass to his son-in-law. Unpleasant cares! The interest to the bank had not been paid for the last two periods, and over two thousand were owing in various fines and penalties!
“For me it is not subject to doubt,” Rashevich went on, becoming more and more inspired, “that if some Richard the Lionhearted or Frederick Barbarossa, say, is brave and magnanimous, those qualities will be inherited by his son along with the bumps and convolutions of the brain. And if this bravery and magnanimity are protected in his son by means of upbringing and exercise, and if he marries a princess who is also brave and magnanimous, those qualities will be passed on to the grandson, and so on, until they become a particularity of the species and are transmitted organically, so to speak, in flesh and blood. Owing to the strict sexual selection by means of which noble families instinctively protected themselves from unequal marriages and high-born young men did not marry the devil knows who, lofty inner qualities were passed on from generation to generation in all their purity, were protected, and in the course of time, by being exercised, became more perfect and lofty. Whatever good there is in mankind we owe precisely to nature, to the regular natural-historical, purposeful course of things, which carefully, over the centuries, has separated blue blood from common blood. Yes, my dear man! It was not some unwashed commoner, some scullery maid’s son, who gave us literature, science, the arts, law, the notions of honor, duty…Mankind owes all this exclusively to blue blood, and in that sense, from the natural-historical point of view, a bad Sobakevich,1 solely by being of blue blood, is more useful and lofty than the best of merchants, even one who builds fifteen museums. Say what you like, sir! And if I don’t offer my hand to an unwashed commoner, a scullery maid’s son, and don’t seat him at my table, I thereby protect what is best on earth and fulfill one of the highest designs of Mother Nature, who leads us to perfection…”
Rashevich paused, stroking his beard with both hands; on the wall his shadow, which looked like a pair of scissors, also paused.
“Take our Mother Russia,” he went on, putting his hands in his pockets and standing now on his heels, now on his toes. “Who are her best people? Take our first-class artists, writers, composers…Who are they? All of them, my dear, were representatives of blue blood. Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy—they were no sexton’s kids!”
“Goncharov2 was a merchant,” said Meier.
“What of it! Exceptions only prove the rule. And concerning Goncharov’s genius we could also have a hot debate. But let’s drop the names and get back to the facts. For instance, what will you say, my dear sir, of this eloquent fact: as soon as a commoner gets where he wasn’t allowed before—to high society, the sciences, literature, local government, the courts—notice, nature herself stands up for the highest human rights and is the first to declare war on this rabble. Indeed, as soon as the commoner gets into the wrong sled, he begins to mope, to languish, to lose his mind and degenerate, and you’ll never meet so many neurasthenics, psychological cripples, consumptives, and other wimps as among these sweethearts. They die like flies in autumn. If it weren’t for this saving degeneration, there would long since have been no stone left upon stone of our civilization, the unwashed would have gobbled everything up. Kindly tell me: What has this infestation given us so far? What have the unwashed brought with them?” Rashevich made a mysterious, frightened face and went on: “Never before have our science and literature been on such a low level as now! The modern-day ones, my dear sir, have no ideas, no ideals, and all their dealings are pervaded by one spirit: to rip off as much as possible and take the last shirt from whoever they can. All these modern-day ones, who pass themselves off as progressive and honest, can be bought for a rouble, and the contemporary intellectual has this special quality, that when you talk to him, you must keep a strong grip on your pocket, or else he’ll snatch your wallet.” Rashevich winked and burst out laughing. “By God, he will!” he went on in a gleefully high voice. “And morals? What about morals?” Rashevich glanced at the door. “Nowadays nobody’s surprised when a wife robs and abandons her husband—it’s nothing, mere trifles! Nowadays, my dear man, a twelve-year-old girl aims at having a lover, and all these amateur theatricals and literary evenings have been invented only to make it easier to hook up with a moneybag and be kept by him…Mothers sell their daughters, and husbands are asked outright about their wives’ going price, and can even haggle over it, my dear fellow…”
Meier, who had been silent all the while and sat motionless, suddenly got up from the divan and looked at his watch.
“Sorry, Pavel Ilyich,” he said, “it’s time I went home.”
But Pavel Ilyich, who had not yet finished talking, embraced him and, forcing him to sit back down on the divan, swore he would not let him go without supper. And Meier again sat and listened, but now kept glancing at Rashevich in perplexity and apprehension, as if he were only now beginning to understand him. Red blotches appeared on his face. And when the maid finally came in and said that the young ladies invited them to supper, he sighed with relief and was the first to leave the study.
At the table in the next room sat Rashevich’s daughters, Zhenya and Iraida, twenty-four and twenty-two years old, both dark-eyed, very pale, of identical height. Zhenya with her hair down, and Iraida with a tall hairdo. Before eating they both drank a glass of bitter liqueur, looking as if they had drunk it accidentally, for the first time in their life, and they both became embarrassed and burst into laughter.
“Don’t be mischievous, girls,” said Rashevich.
Zhenya and Iraida spoke French with each other, and Russian with their father and the guest. Interrupting each other and mixing Russian with French, they quickly began telling how, in former years, they used to leave for boarding school precisely then, in August, and what a happy time it was. Now there was nowhere to go, and they had to live there in the country without leaving all summer and winter. What boredom!
“Don’t be mischievous, girls,” Rashevich repeated.
He wanted to talk himself. When others talked in his presence, he experienced a feeling similar to jealousy.
“So it goes, my dear fellow…,” he began again, looking affectionately at the magistrate. “In our kindness and simplicity, and also for fear of being suspected of backwardness, we fraternize, forgive me, with all sorts of trash, we preach brotherhood and equality with moneybags and tavernkeepers; but if we cared to think about it, we would see to what degree this kindness of ours is criminal. The result of it is that our civilization is hanging by a hair. My dear fellow! That to which our ancestors devoted centuries will be desecrated and destroyed today or tomorrow by these latter-day Huns…”