It will be magnificent! Nous aurons enfin le grand monde russe peint par lui-même.'
'Where is it to appear?'
'In the Russian Messenger, of course. It is our Revue des Deux Mondes. I see you are reading that.'
'Yes; but do you know it is getting very dull?'
'Perhaps . . . perhaps. . . . And the Russian Messenger, perhaps, for some time past to speak in the language of the day─has been just a wee bit groggy.'
Kallomyetsev laughed heartily; he thought it very amusing to say 'groggy,' and even 'a wee bit.'
'Mais c'est un journal qui se respecte,' he went on. 'And that's the chief thing. I, I must admit, take very little interest in Russian literature; such plebeians are always figuring in it nowadays. It's positively come to the heroine of a novel being a cook, a plain cook, parole d'honneur! But Ladislas's novel I shall certainly read. Il y aura le petit mot pour rire . . . and the tendency! the tendency! The nihilists will be exposed. I can answer for Ladislas's way of thinking on that subject, qui est très correct!'
'More than one can say for his past,' remarked Madame Sipyagin.
'Ah! jetons un voile sur les erreurs de sa
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