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RUDIN ‘And so you are going to your country place?’ he asked at last

‘Yes.’

‘There you have some property left?’

‘Something is left me there. Two souls and a half. It is a corner to die in. You are thinking perhaps at this moment: “Even now he cannot do without fine words!” Words indeed have been my ruin; they have consumed me, and to the end I cannot be free of them. But what I have said was not mere words. These white hairs, brother, these wrinkles, these ragged elbows—they are not mere words. You have always been hard on me, Mihail, and you were right; but now is not a time to be hard, when all is over, when there’s no oil left in the lamp, and the lamp itself is broken, and the wick is just smouldering out. Death, brother, should reconcile at last.’

Lezhnyov jumped up.

‘Rudin!’ he cried, ‘why do you speak like that to me? How have I deserved it from you? Am I such a judge, and what kind of a man should I be, if at the sight of your hollow cheeks and wrinkles, “mere words” could occur to my 253