Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/380

360 the other, "Now let us go to work"; or, "That's enough; now let us go to work." What work? Whatever happens—lessons or reviews, in Viéra Pavlovna's course of study. Sasha is her instructor in the study of medicine, but his aid is still more essential for the preparation of those subjects in the gymnasium course in which it was necessary for her to pass the examination, the study of which would be too tedious by herself; the most terrible thing of all was mathematics; yes, the Latin was if anything more tedious; but it can't be helped, she must endure the tediousness of it; not very long, however. In the examination which serves in place of the gymnasium certificate there is very little required in the medical school; for instance, I cannot guarantee that Viéra Pavlovna will ever reach such a perfection in the Latin language as to translate two lines of Cornelius Nepos, but she is already able to explain such phrases as she finds in medical books, because this knowledge is indispensable, though it is not very deep. No—but we have said enough about this. I see already that I am irreconcilably compromising Viéra Pavlovna; probably, the sapi.

"! an extreme case of blue stocking! I can't endure a blue stocking. A blue stocking is dull and tedious!" cries the sapient reader, losing his temper, and not without reason.

After all, what warm friends the sapient reader and I have become! He insulted me once; twice I took him by the throat and put him out, and yet we cannot help exchanging our inmost thoughts; it comes from a secret drawing of heart to heart. What can you do about it?

"O sapient reader!" I say to him, "you are right; the blue stocking is really dull and tedious, and it is beyond endurance to put up with him. You have fathomed it! But you have not guessed who the blue stocking is! Now you shall soon see as plain as in a mirror. The blue stocking, with an unreasonable affectation, talks with great self-satisfaction about literary and scientific matters of which he does