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136
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
My sister folded her hands submissively on her lap,
and remained silent.
" Where were you last night 1" asks Feodor
Mik-håilovitch, wrathfully.
" At a ball," replies my sister, indifferently.
" And you danced 1"
" Of course."
" With your second cousin ?"
" With him and with others."
" And that amuses you 1" Dostoévsky continues his
catechism. Aniuta shrugs her shoulders.
" In the absence of something better, that is
amusing," she replies, and takes up her embroidery again.
Dostoévsky glares at her in silence for a few
moments.
" You are an empty-headed, silly, naughty little girl;
that’s what you are!" he says, decisively, at last.
That was the spirit in which conversation was now
conducted at our house.
A constant and very burning subject of quarrels
between them was nihilism. The disputes on this
point often lasted until long after midnight, and the
longer they both talked the warmer they grew, and in
the heat of discussion they expressed far more extreme
opinions than they really held.
" All the young people of the present day are dull
and half educated!" Dostoévsky sometimes exclaimed.
" They think more of soft-boiled boots1 than they do
of Pushkin!"
" Pushkin has, indeed, become old-fashioned for
our day," my sister would remark calmly, knowing well
1 This sentiment, expressed by a revolutionary writer, has
become proverbial. The expression used declares that boots,
cooked like soft-boiled eggs, were better than all Piislikin.—
Trans.
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