Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume IV).djvu/147

 appetiser first? Victor, open the bottle; that's in your line.'

'Yes, it's in my line,' muttered Sitnikov, and again he gave vent to the same convulsive laugh.

'Are there any pretty women here?' inquired Bazarov, as he drank off a third glass.

'Yes, there are,' answered Evdoksya; 'but they're all such empty-headed creatures. Mon amie, Odintsova, for instance, is nice-looking. It's a pity her reputation's rather doubtful.... That wouldn't matter, though, but she's no independence in her views, no width, nothing ... of all that. The whole system of education wants changing. I've thought a great deal about it, our women are very badly educated.'

'There's no doing anything with them,' put in Sitnikov; 'one ought to despise them, and I do despise them fully and completely!' (The possibility of feeling and expressing contempt was the most agreeable sensation to Sitnikov; he used to attack women in especial, never suspecting that it was to be his fate a few months later to be cringing before his wife merely because she had been born a princess Durdoleosov.) 'Not a single one of them would be capable of understanding our conversation; not a single one deserves to be spoken of by serious men like us!'