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RUDIN our modern literature; other people do the work, and it does the groaning.’

Darya Mihailovna smiled.

‘And that is called expressing contemporary life,’ continued Pigasov indefatigably, ‘profound sympathy with the social question and so on. Oh, how I hate those grand words!’

‘Well, the women you attack so—they at least don’t use grand words.’

Pigasov shrugged his shoulders.

‘They don’t use them because they don’t understand them.’

Darya Mihailovna flushed slightly.

‘You are beginning to be impertinent, African Semenitch!’ she remarked with a forced smile.

There was complete stillness in the room.

‘Where is Zolotonosha?’ asked one of the boys suddenly of Bassistoff.

‘In the province of Poltava, my dear boy,’ replied Pigasov, ‘in the centre of Little Russia.’ (He was glad of an opportunity of changing the conversation.) ‘We were talking of literature,’ he continued, ‘if I had money to spare, I would at once become a Little Russian poet.’

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