There now began a long succession of dull, ugly days, which Time's grey, yawning abyss swallowed up, one after the other. Arina Petrovna never received him, nor was he allowed to see his father. Three days after his arrival, his mother informed him through Finogey Ipatych, the bailiff, that he would receive board and clothing and also a pound of Faler's tobacco monthly. Stepan Vladimirych listened to the bailiff, and merely remarked: "The hag! She's found out that Zhukov's tobacco costs two rubles, while Faler's is only one ruble ninety kopeks a pound. So she pockets ten kopeks a month." The symptoms of the moral sobering that had appeared during the hours of his approaching Golovliovo on the country road, vanished. Frivolity reasserted its rights and was followed by an acceptance of the conditions his mother imposed upon him. The disquieting thought of the hopeless future, which had once pierced his mind, faded gradually away and finally was no more. The day and the evil thereof, the petty interests of existence in all its undisguised ugliness absorbed his entire being. What part, indeed, could his intentions and opinions play when the course of the rest of his life in all its details was laid out in advance in Arina Petrovna's brain? All day long he walked to and fro in his room, pipe in mouth, humming bits of songs, passing unaccountably from church tunes to boisterous airs. If the village clerk happened to be in the office, he went up to him and engaged in a conversation, of which the chief topic was Arina Petrovna's income. "What does she do with all her wealth?" he would exclaim wonderingly, having reached the sum of more than eighty thousand rubles. "My brothers' allowances are rather poor; she herself lives shabbily, and she feeds cured meats to father. She deposits the money in the bank, that's what she does with it." On one occasion Finogey Ipatych came to deliver the taxes he had gathered, and the table was littered with paper money, and Stepan's eyes glittered. "Ah, what a heap of money!" he exclaimed. "And it all flows right down her throat. As for giving her son some of these nice greenbacks, no, she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't say: 'Here, my son, you who are visited by sorrow, here is some cash for wine and tobacco.'" This was usually followed by endless cynical talks about how he could win over his mother's heart. "In Moscow," he held forth, "I used to meet a man who knew a magic word. If his mother refused to give him money he would utter 'the word,' and she instantly got cramps in her hands and feet, in fact all over." "It must have been a spell, I suppose," remarked the village clerk.