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170 risky a rôle. Sometimes I can listen with pleasure to a cracked barrel-organ, and its tunes stick in my memory; while at other times I leave the Opera before the piece is half over. It all depends upon the mood in which I am. In fact, there are moments when I could close my ears even to Mozart."

"Then it is clear that you do love music," said Olga.

"Sing him something," requested Schtoltz.

"But suppose that Monsieur Oblomov were, at this very moment, to be feeling inclined to close his ears?" she said as she turned to him.

"I suppose I ought to utter some compliment or another," he replied. "But I cannot do so, and I would not, even if I could."

"Why?"

"Because," was Oblomov's naïve rejoinder, "things would be so awkward for me if I were to find that you sing badly."

"Even as, the other day, you found things awkward with the biscuits?" she retorted before she could stop herself. The next moment she reddened as though she would have given worlds to have been able to recall her words. "Pardon me," she added. "I ought not to have said that."