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Musa came back; a decrepit little old woman followed her, bringing in a tarnished samovar. Punin began fussing about, and pressing me to take things; Baburin sat down to the table, leaned his head on his hands, and looked with weary eyes about him. At tea, however, he began to talk. He was dissatisfied with his position. ‘A screw–not a man,’ so he spoke of his employer; ‘people in a subordinate position are so much dirt to him, of no consequence whatever; and yet it’s not so long since he was under the yoke himself. Nothing but cruelty and covetousness. It’s a bondage worse than the government’s! And all the trade here rests on swindling and flourishes on nothing else!’

Hearing such dispiriting utterances, Punin sighed expressively, assented, shook his head up and down, and from side to side; Musa maintained a stubborn silence…. She was obviously fretted by the doubt, what I was, whether I was a discreet person or a gossip. And if I were discreet, whether it was not with some afterthought in my mind. Her dark, swift, restless eyes fairly flashed to and fro under their half-drooping lids. Only once she glanced at me, but so inquisitively, so searchingly, almost viciously … I positively started. Baburin scarcely talked to her at all; but whenever he did address her, there was a note of austere, hardly fatherly, tenderness in his voice.

Punin, on the contrary, was continually joking with Musa; she responded unwillingly, however. He called her little snow-maiden, little snowflake.

‘Why do you give Musa Pavlovna such names?’ I asked.

Punin laughed. ‘Because she’s such a chilly little thing.’

‘Sensible,’ put in Baburin: ‘as befits a young girl.’

‘We may call her the mistress of the house,’ cried Punin. ‘Hey? Paramon Semyonitch?’ Baburin frowned; Musa turned away … I did not understand the hint at the time.

So passed two hours … in no very lively fashion, though Punin did his best to ‘entertain the honourable company.’ For instance, he squatted down in front of the cage of one of the canaries, opened the door, and commanded: ‘On the cupola! Begin the concert!’ The canary fluttered out at once, perched on the cupola, that is to say, on Punin’s bald pate, and turning from side to side, and shaking its little wings, carolled with all its might. During the whole time the concert lasted, Punin kept perfectly still, only conducting with his finger, and half closing his eyes. I could not help roaring with laughter … but neither Baburin nor Musa laughed.

Just as I was leaving, Baburin surprised me by an unexpected question. He wished to ask me, as a man studying at the university, what sort of person Zeno was, and what were my ideas about him.

‘What Zeno?’ I asked, somewhat puzzled.

‘Zeno, the sage of antiquity. Surely he cannot be unknown to you?’

I vaguely recalled the name of Zeno, as the founder of the school of Stoics; but I knew absolutely nothing more about him.

‘Yes, he was a philosopher,’ I pronounced, at last.

‘Zeno,’ Baburin resumed in deliberate tones, ‘was that wise man, who declared that suffering was not an evil, since fortitude overcomes all things, and that the good in this world is one: justice; and virtue itself is nothing else than justice.’

Punin turned a reverent ear.

‘A man living here who has picked up a lot of old books, told me that saying,’ continued Baburin; ‘it pleased me much. But I see you are not interested in such subjects.’

Baburin was right. In such subjects I certainly was not interested. Since I had entered the university, I had become as much of a republican as Baburin himself. Of Mirabeau, of Robespierre, I would have talked with zest. Robespierre, indeed … why, I had hanging over my writing-table the lithographed portraits of Fouquier-Tinville and Chalier! But Zeno! Why drag in Zeno?

As he said good-bye to me, Punin insisted very warmly on my visiting them next day, Sunday; Baburin did not invite me at all, and even remarked between his teeth, that talking to plain people of nondescript position could not give me any great pleasure, and would most likely be disagreeable to my granny. At that word I interrupted him, however, and gave him to understand that my grandmother had no longer any authority over me.