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Vologonov stirs his strong, stewed tea with a battered old teaspoon, and says with a sigh as he sips a little:

“All my life I have been engaged in gaining experience so that now I know most things, and ought to be listened to with attention. Usually folk do so listen to me, but though here and there one may find a living soul, of the rest it may be said: ‘In the House of David shall terrible things come to pass, and fire shall consume the spirit of lechery.'”

The words resemble bricks in that they seem, if possible, to increase the height of the walls of strange and extraneous events, and even stranger dramas, which loom for ever around, me.

“For example,” continues the old man, “why is Mitri Ermolaev Polukonov, our ex-mayor, lying dead before his time? Because he conceived a number of arrogant projects. For example, he sent his eldest son to study at Kazan– with the result that during the son’s second year at the University he, the son, brought home with him a curly-headed Jewess, and said to his father: ‘Without this woman I cannot live–in her are bound up my whole soul and strength.’ Yes, a pass indeed! And from that day forth nothing but misfortune befell in that Yashka took to drink, the Jewess gave way to repining, and Mitri had to go perambulating the town with piteous invitations to ‘come and see, my brethren, to what depths I have sunk!’ And though, eventually, the Jewess died of a bloody flux, of a miscarriage, the past was beyond mending, and, while the son went to the bad, and took to drink for good and all, the father ‘fell a victim by night to untimely death.’ Yes, the lives of two folk were thus undone by ‘the thorn-bearing company of Judaea.’ Like ourselves, the Hebrew has a destiny of his own. And destiny cannot be driven out with a stick. Of each of us the destiny is unhasting. It moves slowly and quietly, and can never be avoided. ‘Wait,’ it says. ‘ Seek not to press onward.'”

As he discourses, Vologonov’s eyes ceaselessly change colour–now turning to a dull grey, and wearing a tired expression, and now becoming blue, and assuming a mournful air, and now (and most frequently of all) beginning to emit green flashes of an impartial malevolence.

“Similarly, the Kapustins, once a powerful family, came at length to dust-became as nothing. It was a family the members of which were ever in favour of change, and devoted to anything that was new. In fact, they went and set up a piano! Well, of them only Valentine is still on his legs, and he (he is a doctor of less than forty years of age) is a hopeless drunkard, and saturated with dropsy, and fallen a prey to asthma, so that his cancerous eyes protrude horribly. Yes, the Kapustins, like the Polukonovs, may be ‘written down as dead.'”

Throughout, Vologonov speaks in a tone of unassailable conviction, in a tone implying that never could things happen, never could things have happened, otherwise than as he has stated. In fact, in his hands even the most inexplicable, the most grievous, phenomena of life become such as a law has inevitably decreed.

“And the same thing will befall the Osmukhins,” he next remarks. “Let them be a warning to you never to make friends with Germans, and never to engage in business with them. In Russia any housewife may brew beer; yet our people will not drink it–they are more used to spirits. Also, Russian folk like to attain their object in drinking AT ONCE; and a shkalik of vodka will do more to sap wit than five kruzhki of beer. Once our people liked uniform simplicity; but now they are become like a man who was born blind, and has suddenly acquired sight. A change indeed! For thirty-three years did Ilya of Murom [Ilya Murometz, the legendary figure most frequently met with In Russian bilini (folk songs), and probably identical with Elijah the Prophet, though credited with many of the attributes proper, rather, to the pagan god Perun the Thunderer.] sit waiting for his end before it came; and all who cannot bide patiently in a state of humility…”