“Well, you don’t know moderation in anything,” interrupted Tikhon Ilitch with a frown. “You’re forever hammering away at the same thing: ‘an unhappy nation, an unhappy nation!’ And now—you call them brutes!”
“Yes, I do hammer at that idea, and I shall go on hammering at it!” Kuzma broke in hotly. “But I’ve lost my wits completely! Nowadays I don’t understand at all: whether it is an unhappy nation, or—Come now, listen to me. You know you hate that man yourself, that Deniska! You both hate each other! He never speaks of you except to call you a ‘bloodsucker who has gnawed himself into the very vitals of the people,’ and here you are calling him a bloodsucker! He is boasting insolently about the village that now he is the equal of the king!”
“Well, I know that,” Tikhon Ilitch again interrupted.
“But do you know what he is saying about the Bride?” went on Kuzma, not listening to him. “She’s handsome—she has, you know, such a white, delicate complexion—but he, the stupid animal—do you know what he is saying about her? ‘She’s all enameled, the trollop!’ And, by this time, you must understand one thing: he certainly will not live in the village. You couldn’t keep that vagabond in the country now with a lasso. What sort of a farmer and what sort of a family man do you suppose he’ll be? Yesterday, I heard, he was roaming about the village and singing in a lewd voice: ‘She’s beautiful as an angel from heaven, as sly as a damon from hell.’ ”
“I know it!” yelled Tikhon Ilitch. “He won’t live in the country—not for any consideration on earth, he won’t! Well, and devil take him! And as for his being no sort of a farmer, you and I are nice farmers ourselves, ain’t we? I remember how I was talking to you about business—in the eating-house, do you remember?—and all the while you were listening to that quail. Well, go on; what comes next?”