Ivan Turgenev

“ Of herself, Glafira Petrovna had never allowed a portrait to be taken. "I, myself, little father, Fedor Ivanitch," Anton used to tell Lavretsky, "though I did not then live in the master's house, still I can remember your great-grandfather, Andrey Afanasyevitch, seeing that I had come to my eighteenth year when he died. Once I met him in the garden and my knees! were knocking with fright indeed; however, he did nothing, only asked me my name, and sent me to his room for his pocket-handkerchief. He was a gentleman--how shall I tell you--he didn't look on any one as better than himself. ”

“ Lemm, as he accompanied him as far as the street, agreed at once, and warmly pressed his hand; but when he was left standing alone in the fresh, damp air, in the just dawning sunrise, he looked round him, shuddered, shrank into himself, and crept up to his little room, with a guilty air. "Ich bin wohl nicht klug" (I must be out of my senses) , he muttered, as he lay down in his hard short bed. He tried to say that he was ill, a few days later, when Lavretsky drove over to fetch him in an open carriage; but Fedor Ivanitch went up into his room and managed to persuade him. ”

“ Lavretsky usually sat at the window with a pipe and a cup of cold tea. Anton stood at the door, his hands crossed behind him, and began upon his slow, deliberate stories of old times, of those fabulous times when oats and rye were not sold by measure, but in great sacks, at two or three farthings a sack; when there were impassable forests, virgin steppes stretching on every side, even close to the town. "And now," complained the old man, whose eightieth year had passed, "there has been so much clearing, so much ploughing everywhere, there's nowhere you may drive now." ”