“Why is it I have the hiccups? I don’t think I have eaten anything to account for it…nor drunk anything either.…Hic!”

Pavel Vassilitch and Styopa sit side by side, with their heads touching, and, bending over the table, examine a volume of the “Neva” for 1878.

“ ‘The monument of Leonardo da Vinci, facing the gallery of Victor Emmanuel at Milan.’ I say!…After the style of a triumphal arch.…A cavalier with his lady.…And there are little men in the distance.…”

“That little man is like a schoolfellow of mine called Niskubin,” says Styopa.

“Turn over.…‘The proboscis of the common house-fly seen under the microscope.’ So that’s a proboscis! I say—a fly. Whatever would a bug look like under a microscope, my boy? Wouldn’t it be horrid!”

The old-fashioned clock in the drawing-room does not strike, but coughs ten times huskily as though it had a cold. The cook, Anna, comes into the dining-room, and plumps down at the master’s feet.

“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake, Pavel Vassilitch!” she says, getting up, flushed all over.

“You forgive me, too, for Christ’s sake,” Pavel Vassilitch responds unconcernedly.

In the same manner, Anna goes up to the other members of the family, plumps down at their feet, and begs forgiveness. She only misses out Markovna to whom, not being one of the gentry, she does not feel it necessary to bow down.

Another half-hour passes in stillness and tranquillity. The “Neva” is by now lying on the sofa, and Pavel Vassilitch, holding up his finger, repeats by heart some Latin verses he has learned in his childhood. Styopa stares at the finger with the wedding ring, listens to the unintelligible words, and dozes; he rubs his eyelids with his fists, and they shut all the tighter.

“I am going to bed…” he says, stretching and yawning.

“What, to bed?” says Pelageya Ivanovna. “What about supper before the fast?”

“I don’t want any.”

“Are you crazy?” says his mother in alarm. “How can you go without your supper before the fast? You’ll have nothing but Lenten food all through the fast!”

Pavel Vassilitch is scared too.

“Yes, yes, my boy,” he says. “For seven weeks mother will give you nothing but Lenten food. You can’t miss the last supper before the fast.”

“Oh dear, I am sleepy,” says Styopa peevishly.

“Since that is how it is, lay the supper quickly,” Pavel Vassilitch cries in a fluster. “Anna, why are you sitting there, silly? Make haste and lay the table.”

Pelageya Ivanovna clasps her hands and runs into the kitchen with an expression as though the house were on fire.

“Make haste, make haste,” is heard all over the house. “Styopotchka is sleepy. Anna! Oh dear me, what is one to do? Make haste.”