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 "Why should they be? I don't see that. Allow me to believe that apart from our family connection, you have toward me, to a certain extent at least, the same friendly sentiments which I have always felt toward you. .... And genuine regard ...." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pressing his hand. "Even if your worst surmises were justified, I should never take it on myself to criticize either side, and I see no reason why our relations should be changed. But now do this,—come and see my wife."

"Well, you and I look on this matter differently," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, coldly. "However, we will not discuss it."

"No, but why should you not come and dine with us at least to-day? My wife expects you. Please come! and above all talk with her; she is, I assure you, a superior woman. For God's sake come, I beg you on my knees."

"If you wish it so much, I will go," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, sighing. And to change the conversation, he asked Stepan Arkadyevitch about a matter which interested them both: about the new nachalnik, a man still young, who had suddenly received such an important appointment.

Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had never liked Count Anitchkin, and had always differed with him about many questions; and now he could not help a feeling of envy natural to an official who had suffered defeat in his work and saw a younger man receiving advancement.

"Well, have you met him yet?" asked Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, with a venomous smile.

"Oh, yes; he was with us yesterday at the session. He seems like a man very well informed and very active."

"Active? but how does he employ his activity?" exclaimed Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. "Is it in doing his work, or in destroying what others have done before him? The plague of our government is this scribbling bureaucracy, of which Anitchkin is a worthy representative."

"Truly I don't know how this criticism applies to him. I don't even know his tendencies; at any rate, he is a