Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/75

Rh the phrases, 'if I may be permitted so to express myself.' It was a criticism of one of the ministers of the day, of whom he said that he had a fickle and frivolous intellect, bent on visionary aims. On the other hand Sipyagin, not forgetting that he had to deal with a Russian—one of the people—did not fail to knock off a few sayings, intended to prove that he was himself, not merely Russian in blood, but a real Russian bear, every inch of him, and in close touch with the very inmost essence of the national life! Thus, for example, upon Kallomyetsev observing that the rain might delay getting in the hay, he promptly rejoined, 'Let the hay be black, for then the buckwheat'll be white'; he used proverbial terms such as, 'A store masterless is a child fatherless'; 'Try on ten times, for once you cut out'; 'Where there is corn, you can always find a bushel'; 'If the leaves on the birch are big as farthings by St. Yegor's day, there'll be corn in the barn by the feast of Our Lady of Kazan.' It must be admitted that he sometimes got them wrong, and would say, for instance, 'Let the carpenter stick to his last!' or 'Fine houses make full bellies!' But the society in which these mishaps befell did not for the most part even suspect that notre bon Russe had blundered; and