Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/146

Rh had contradicted him. He gnawed his moustache, and with flashing eyes began to speak in a hoarse, agitated, but distinct voice of hideous acts of injustice that had been committed, of the necessity for immediate action, maintaining that practically everything was ready, and none but cowards could procrastinate; that some violence was as essential as the lancet's prick to the abscess, however ready to break the abscess might be! He repeated this simile of the lancet several times; it obviously pleased him; he had not invented it, but had read it in some book. It seemed that, having lost all hope of Marianna's reciprocating his feelings, he felt he had nothing now to lose, and only thought how to set to work as soon as might be 'for the cause.' His words came like the blows of an axe, with absolute directness, sharply, simply, and vindictively; monotonous and weighty, they fell one after another from his blanched lips, recalling the sharp, abrupt bark of a grim old watchdog. He said he knew the peasants of the neighbourhood and the factory hands well, and that there were capable people among them─Eremey of Goloplyok, for instance─who would be ready for anything you like any minute. The name of Eremey from the village of Goloplyok was constantly on his tongue. At