Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/65

 Rh neighbour, and she herself, huddled in her furs, sat motionless and in thought.

"Eternally the same old things—the ugliness of it!—shiny red faces reeking with liquor and with tobacco, the same words, the same thoughts, for ever the same abomination. And they are all content and satisfied that it should be so. And thus they will go on till they die. But I can't—it bores me. I want something to happen that will upset and shatter the whole thing. We might at least be frozen to death, as they were at Saratov. What would these people do? How would they behave? Execrably, I suppose. Everybody would think of nothing but himself, and I no less than the rest. But I have beauty—that's something. They know it. Well, and that monk—I wonder if he really is indifferent to beauty. No; they all care for it, just like that cadet last autumn. And what a fool he was!"

"Ivan Nicolaievich," she said.

He answered, "Yes?"

"How old is he?"

"Who?"

"Why, Kasatsky."

"Over forty, I should think."

"Does he receive visitors? Does he see everybody?"

"Everybody, yes; but not always."