I not only lived and breathed there, but even grew strong and well! It is wonderful! it is incomprehensible! How could I grow up there into a love for goodness? It is incomprehensible! It is beyond belief!" thought Viéra Pavlovna, as she returned home; and she felt herself rescued from suffocation.
In a little while after they got home, the guests whom they expected came, their regular cronies,—Alekséi Petróvitch, and Natalia Andreyevna, and Kirsánof; and the evening passed as it usually did. How doubly happy seemed her new life to Viéra Pavlovna, with its pure thoughts, in the society of wholesome people! As was customary, they had a jolly conversation, with many anecdotes, and at the same time they talked seriously about everything in the world: on the historical events of the time (the civil war in Kansas, the forerunner of the great war between the North and the South, which is now going on, the forerunner of still greater events, not in America alone, occupied the minds of this circle. Now everybody talks about politics, but then, only a few felt any interest in this subject, and in this small number, were Lopukhóf, Kirsánof and their friends); and they talked about the arguments of that day, as to the chemical foundations of agriculture according to the theory of Liebig, and about the laws of historical progress, without which never a conversation in society like this could go on; and about the great importance of distinguishing between real desires, which search, and seek, and find satisfaction for themselves; and fantastic wishes, which cannot be realized, and which cannot find any satisfaction, like the fantastic thirst in time of fever, for which, for the one, as well as for the other, there is one satisfaction,—to cure the organism, by whose diseased state they are engendered through the disfiguring of actual wishes and finally, about the importance of this radical differentiation which was brought out at that time by the anthropological philosophy, and about everything of this sort, and not of this sort, but allied. The ladies at times listened to these scientific discussions, which were spoken as though there were no scientific terms, and took a share asking questions sometimes, but more often not waiting for the answers; and they have even thrown cold water on Lopukhóf and Alekséi Petróvitch, when they get too much interested in the great importance of recent mineral improvements: but Alekséi Petróvitch and Lopukhóf discussed their scientific
