Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/210

Rh intended to arrange for the workpeople to have a share of the profits.

'My dear soul!' answered Solomin, 'we have set up a school and a tiny hospital, and to be sure our master struggled against that like a bear!'

Once only Solomin lost his temper in earnest, and struck the table such a blow with his powerful fist that everything shook upon it, not excepting a forty-pound weight that lay near the inkstand. He had been told of some legal injustice, the oppressive treatment of a workmen's guild.

When Nezhdanov and Markelov started discussing how 'to act,' how to put their plans into execution, Solomin still listened with curiosity, even with respect; but he did not himself utter a single word. This conversation lasted till four o'clock. And what, what did they not discuss? Markelov, among other things, alluded mysteriously to the indefatigable traveller Kislyakov, to his letters, which were becoming more and more interesting; he promised to show Nezhdanov some of them, and even to let him take them home, since they were very lengthy, and not written in a very legible hand; and over and above this there was a great deal of erudition in them, and there were verses too, only not frivolous ones, but of