Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/67

Rh with an aristocrat,' Nezhdanov continued, raising his voice, 'I applaud him for it; but the great thing is he knows how to sacrifice himself; he will face death, if need be, which you and I will never do!'

Paklin made a piteous little grimace, and pointed to his wasted, crippled little legs.

'Is fighting in my line, my friend Alexey Dmitritch? Good heavens! But never mind all that I repeat, I'm heartily glad of your connection with Mr. Sipyagin, and I even foresee great advantages from that connection, for our cause. You will get into a higher circle! You will see those lionesses, those women of "velvet body worked by springs of steel," as it says in the Letters from Spain; study them, my dear boy, study them! If you were an epicurean, I should be positively afraid for you upon my word, I should! But that's not your object in taking such an engagement, of course?'

'I am taking an engagement,' Nezhdanov caught him up, 'for the sake of bread and butter And to get away from all of you for a time! ' he added to himself.

'To be sure! to be sure! And so I say to you: study them! What a perfume that gentleman has left behind him!' Paklin sniffed with his nose in the air. It's the veritable ambre that the mayoress dreamed of in the Revisor!