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Часть текста: of doing so in her excitement. After listening for a time, Prince Valkovsky too, stood up. The whole scene became quite solemn. "Remember your own words on Tuesday." Natasha began. "You said you wanted money, to follow the beaten track, importance in the world - do you remember?" "I remember." "Well, to gain that money, to win all that success which was slipping out of your hands, you came here on Tuesday and made up this match, calculating that this practical joke would help you to capture what was eluding you." "Natasha!" I cried. "Think what you're saying!" "Joke! Calculating!" repeated the prince with an air of insulted dignity. Alyosha sat crushed with grief and gazed scarcely compre- hending. "Yes, yes, don't stop me. I have sworn to speak out," Natasha went on, irritated. "Remember, Alyosha was not obeying you. For six whole months you had been doing your utmost to draw him away from me. He held out against you. And at last the time came when you could not afford to lose a moment. If you let it pass, the heiress, the money - above all the money, the three millions of dowry - would slip through your fingers. Only one course was left you, to make Alyosha love the girl you destined for him; you thought that if he fell in love with her he would abandon me." "Natasha! Natasha!" Alyosha cried in distress, "what are you saying?" "And you have acted accordingly," she went on, not heeding Alyosha's exclamation, "but - it was the same old story again! Everything might have gone well, but I was in the way again. There was...

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Часть текста: to his wife's irresistible fancy, but was positively aflame with curiosity himself. "A capital idea!" he said, with the utmost satisfaction. "We'll have a look at the crocodile! On the eve of visiting Europe it is as well to acquaint ourselves on the spot with its indigenous inhabitants." And with these words, taking his wife's arm, he set off with her at once for the Arcade. I joined them, as I usually do, being an intimate friend of the family. I have never seen Ivan Matveitch in a more agreeable frame of mind than he was on that memorable morning-how true it is that we know not beforehand the fate that awaits us! On entering the Arcade he was at once full of admiration for the splendours of the building and, when we reached the shop in which the monster lately arrived in Petersburg was being exhibited, he volunteered to pay the quarter-rouble for me to the crocodile owner - a thing which had never happened before. Walking into a little room, we observed that besides the crocodile there were in it parrots of the species known as cockatoo, and also a group of monkeys in a special case in a recess. Near the entrance, along the left wall stood a big tin tank that looked like a bath covered with a thin iron grating, filled with water to the depth of two inches. In this shallow pool was kept a huge crocodile, which lay like a log absolutely motionless and apparently deprived of all its faculties by our damp climate, so inhospitable to foreign visitors. This...

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Часть текста: for it so happened that all its elder inmates were absent owing to a sudden and singular event. Madame Krassotkin had let two little rooms, separated from the rest of the house by a passage, to a doctor's wife with her two small children. This lady was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna, and a great friend of hers. Her husband, the doctor, had taken his departure twelve months before, going first to Orenburg and then to Tashkend, and for the last six months she had not heard a word from him. Had it not been for her friendship with Madame Krassotkin, which was some consolation to the forsaken lady, she would certainly have completely dissolved away in tears. And now, to add to her misfortunes, Katerina, her only servant, was suddenly moved the evening before to announce, to her mistress's amazement, that she proposed to bring a child into the world before morning. It seemed almost miraculous to everyone that no one had noticed the probability of it before. The astounded doctor's wife decided to move Katerina while there was still time to an establishment in the town kept by a midwife for such emergencies. As she set great store by her servant, she promptly carried out this plan and remained there looking after her. By the morning all Madame Krassotkin's friendly sympathy and energy were called upon to render assistance and appeal to someone for help in the case. So both the ladies were absent from home, the Krassotkins' servant, Agafya, had gone out to the market, and Kolya was thus left for a time to protect and look after "the kids," that is, the son and daughter of the doctor's wife, who were left alone. Kolya was not afraid of taking care of the house, besides he had Perezvon, who had been told to lie flat, without moving, under the bench in the hall. Every...

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Часть текста: at the empty spot, the door creaked and Petrushka came in with the tea-tray. "Where, where?" our hero said in a voice hardly audible, pointing to the place which had ben occupied by his visitor the night before. At first Petrushka made no answer and did not look at his master, but fixed his eyes upon the corner to the right till Mr. Golyadkin felt compelled to look into that corner too. After a brief silence, however, Petrushka in a rude and husky voice answered that his master was not at home. "You idiot; why I'm your master, Petrushka!" said Mr. Golyadkin in a breaking voice, looking open-eyed a his servant. Petrushka made no reply, but he gave Mr. Golyadkin such a look that the latter crimsoned to his ears - looked at hm with an insulting reproachfulness almost equivalent to open abuse. Mr. Golyadkin was utterly flabbergasted, as the saying is. At last Petrushka explained that the 'other one' had gone away an hour and a half ago, and would not wait. His answer, of course, sounded truthful and probable; it was evident that Petrushka was not lying; that his insulting look and the phrase the 'other one' employed by him were only the result of the disgusting circumstance with which he was already familiar, but still he understood, though dimly, that something was wrong, and that destiny had some other surprise, not altogether a pleasant one, in store for him. "All right, we shall see," he thought to himself. "We shall see in...

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Часть текста: saying a word to me. Mother and he had evidently been here for some time. His face looked overcast and careworn. "What I regret most of all," he began saying slowly to Vassin, evidently in continuation of what they had been discussing outside, "is that I had no time to set it all right yesterday evening; then probably this terrible thing would not have happened! And indeed there was time, it was hardly eight o'clock. As soon as she ran away from us last night, I inwardly resolved to follow her and to reassure her, but this unforeseen and urgent business, though of course I might quite well have put it off till to-day. . . or even for a week--this vexatious turn of affairs has hindered and ruined everything. That's just how things do happen!" "Perhaps you would not have succeeded in reassuring her; things had gone too far already, apart from you," Vassin put in. "No, I should have succeeded, I certainly should have succeeded. And the idea did occur to me to send Sofia Andreyevna in my place. It flashed across my mind, but nothing more. Sofia Andreyevna alone would have convinced her, and the unhappy girl would have been alive. No, never again will I meddle. . ....

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Часть текста: two card tables together, the coffin will be here tomorrow - white, pure white "gros de Naples" - but that's not it. . . I keep walking about, trying to explain it to myself. I have been trying for the last six hours to get it clear, but still I can't think of it all as a whole. The fact is I walk to and fro, and to and fro. This is how it was. I will simply tell it in order. (Order!) Gentlemen, I am far from being a literary man and you will see that; but no matter, I'll tell it as I understand it myself. The horror of it for me is that I understand it all! It was, if you care to know, that is to take it from the beginning, that she used to come to me simply to pawn things, to pay for advertising in the VOICE to the effect that a governess was quite willing to travel, to give lessons at home, and so on, and so on. That was at the very beginning, and I, of course, made no difference between her and the others: "She comes," I thought, "like any one else," and so on. But afterwards I began to see a difference. She was such a slender, fair little thing, rather tall, always a little awkward with me, as though embarrassed (I fancy she was the same with all strangers, and in her eyes, of course, I was exactly like anybody else - that is, not as a pawnbroker but as a man). As soon as she received the money she would turn round at once and go away. And always in silence. Other women argue so, entreat, haggle for me to give them more; this one did not ask for more. . . . I believe I am muddling it up. Yes; I was struck first of all by the things she brought: poor...

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Часть текста: They were pleased to see us. Liza flushed with pleasure, and saying “ merci ” to me, on Shatov's account of course, went to meet him, looking at him with interest. Shatov stopped awkwardly in the doorway. Thanking him for coming she led him up to her mother. “This is Mr. Shatov, of whom I have told you, and this is Mr. G——v, a great friend of mine and of Stepan Trofimovitch's. Mavriky Nikolaevitch made his acquaintance yesterday, too.” “And which is the professor?” “There's no professor at all, maman.” “But there is. You said yourself that there'd be a professor. It's this one, probably.” She disdainfully indicated Shatov. “I didn't tell you that there'd be a professor. Mr. G——v is in the service, and Mr. Shatov is a former student.” “A student or professor, they all come from the university just the same. You only want to argue. But the Swiss one had moustaches and a beard.” “It's the son of Stepan Trofimovitch that maman always calls the professor,” said Liza, and she took Shatov away to the sofa at the other end of the drawing-room. “When her legs swell, she's always like this, you understand she's ill,” she whispered to Shatov, still with the same marked curiosity, scrutinising him, especially his shock of hair. “Are you an officer?” the old lady inquired of me. Liza had mercilessly abandoned me to her. “N-no.—I'm in the service. . . .” “Mr. G——v is a great friend of Stepan Trofimovitch's,” Liza chimed in immediately. “Are you in Stepan Trofimovitch's service? Yes, and he's a professor, too, isn't he?” “Ah, maman, you ...

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Часть текста: though I could do with one room, it must be a large one, and, of course, it had at the same time to be as cheap as possible. I have observed that in a confined space even thought is cramped; When I was brooding over a future novel I liked to walk up and down the room. By the way, I always like better brooding over my works and dreaming how they should be written than actually writing them. And this really is not from laziness. Why is it? I had been feeling unwell all day, and towards sunset I felt really very ill. Something like a fever set in. Moreover, I had been all day long on my legs and was tired. Towards evening, just before it got dark, I was walking along the Voznesensky Prospect. I love the March sun in Petersburg, especially at sunset, in clear frosty weather, of course. The whole street suddenly glitters, bathed in brilliant light. All the houses seem suddenly, as it were, to sparkle. Their grey, yellow, and dirty- green hues for an instant lose all their gloominess, it is as though there were a sudden clearness in one's soul, as though one were startled, or as though someone had nudged one with his elbow. There is a new outlook, a new train of thought.... It is wonderful what one ray of sunshine can do for the soul of man! But the ray of sunshine had died away; the frost...

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Часть текста: Chapter III I found two of my old schoolfellows with him. They seemed to be discussing an important matter. All of them took scarcely any notice of my entrance, which was strange, for I had not met them for years. Evidently they looked upon me as something on the level of a common fly. I had not been treated like that even at school, though they all hated me. I knew, of course, that they must despise me now for my lack of success in the service, and for my having let myself sink so low, going about badly dressed and so on--which seemed to them a sign of my incapacity and insignificance. But I had not expected such contempt. Simonov was positively surprised at my turning up. Even in old days he had always seemed surprised at my coming. All this disconcerted me: I sat down, feeling rather miserable, and began listening to what they were saying. They were engaged in warm and earnest conversation about a farewell dinner which they wanted to arrange for the next day to a comrade of theirs called Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was going away to a distant province. This Zverkov had been all the time at school with me too. I had begun to hate him particularly in the upper forms. In the lower forms he had simply been a pretty, playful boy whom everybody liked. I had hated him, however, even in the lower forms, just because he was a pretty and playful boy. He was always bad at his lessons and got worse and worse as he went on; however, he left with a good certificate, as he had powerful interests. During his last year at school he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all of us were...

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Часть текста: although I had seen him many times before that minute. I looked into his eyes, as though his expres- sion might explain all that bewildered me, might explain how this boy could enthral her, could arouse in her love so frantic that it made her forget her very first duty and sacrifice all that had been till that moment most holy to her. The prince took both my hands and pressed them warmly, and the look in his eyes, gentle and candid, penetrated to my heart. I felt that I might be mistaken in my conclusions about him if only from the fact that he was my enemy. Yes, I was not fond of him; and I'm sorry to say I never could care for him - and was perhaps alone among his acquaintances in this. I could not get over my dislike of many things in him, even of his elegant appearance, perhaps, indeed, because it was too elegant. After- wards I recognized that I had been prejudiced in my judgement. He was tall, slender and graceful; his face was rather long and always pale; he had fair hair, large, soft, dreamy, blue eyes, in which there were occasional flashes of the most spontaneous, childish gaiety. The full crimson lips of his small, exquisitely modelled mouth almost always had a grave expression, and this gave a peculiarly unexpected and fascinating charm to the smile which suddenly appeared on them, and was so naive and candid that, whatever mood one was in, one felt instantly tempted to respond to it with a similar smile. He dressed not over-fashion- ably, but always elegantly; it was evident that this elegance cost him no effort whatever, that it was innate in him. It is true that he had some unpleasant traits, some of the bad habits characteristic of aristocratic...

Поиск по творчеству и критикеCлово "UNDERTONE"

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Cлово "UNDERTONE"