Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/258

. Ploughing? I would do it this minute. Mowing and ploughing is not so easily forgotten.

. After the city life you will not, for example, have the patience.

. One can live well in the village, too.

. Now here is Uncle Mítri, and he is covetous of your delicate life.

. Uncle Mítri, you would get tired of it. It looks easy, but there is a great deal of running about. One gets all mixed up.

. Uncle Mítri, you ought just to see their balls,—you would be surprised!

. Why, do they eat all the time?

. No! You ought to have seen it! Fédor Iványch took me to see it. When I looked, I got scared. Oh, how they were fitted out! You never saw the like! Naked down to here, and their arms bare.

. O Lord!

. Fie, what nastiness!

. The climate, so to speak, permits it.

. So, uncle, I looked at them, and I saw they were all of them naked. Would you believe it, the old ones—even our lady who has grandchildren—were bare, too.

. O Lord!

. What do you think? When the music struck up, and they began to play, the gentlemen came up and embraced the ladies and began to whirl around.

. The old women, too?

. The old women, too.

. No, the old women remain sitting.

. What are you saying? I saw them myself.

. I tell you, no.

(sticking his head out, in a hoarse voice). This is the polka-mazurka. Oh, you fool, you don't know anything that's the way they dance—

. You, dancer, keep quiet! Somebody is coming.