Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/270

Rh were stored up within him, like water in a closed mill. The floodgates could not be raised; the water had grown stagnant and stale. Mashurina had turned up so he lifted the floodgates and talked and talked. He fell upon Petersburg, Petersburg life, and all Russia. No one and nothing was spared. Mashurina took a very limited interest in all this, but she did not contradict or interrupt him and that was all he wanted.

'Yes, indeed,' he said, 'these are nice little times, I can assure you! In society the stagnation's absolute; every one bored to perdition! In literature a vacuum clean swept! In criticism if an advanced young reviewer has to say that "it's characteristic of the hen to lay eggs," it takes him twenty whole pages to expound this mighty truth, and even then he doesn't quite manage it! They're as soft, these fellows, let me tell you, as feather-beds, as greasy as cold stew, and foaming at the mouth they utter commonplaces! In science ha! ha! ha! we've a renowned Kant of our own indeed, if it's only the Kant' (i.e. braiding) 'on our engineers' collars! In art it's just the same! If you care to go to the concert to-day, you will hear the national singer Agremantsky. He is having an immense success. And if a stuffed bream, a stuffed bream, I tell you, were possessed