_Mávra._ As soon as vespers are over, I shall go to her, but not sooner. Yet, I do not advise you to stay longer than six o’clock. At that time she receives the visits of ladies like her who amuse her with bits of news that they have gathered in all the corners of the city. They talk about all their acquaintances, and malign them, and in their Christian love pass them over in review. They inform her of all the news of St. Petersburg, adding to them their own lying inventions: some say less, others more. No one in that assembly is responsible for the truth,--that we do not care for,--provided all they have heard and have invented has been told. _Sensible._ Will she at least invite me to supper? What do you think about that? _Mávra._ I doubt it. What suppers do you expect of fasters? _Sensible._ What? Do you fast out of stinginess? To-day is not a fast-day. _Mávra._ I did not mean exactly that, only,--only--we do not like extra guests. _Sensible._ Speak more openly with me, Mávra, for you certainly must know your mistress. Tell me the truth. It seems to me that she is full of superstitions and hypocrisy, and that she is at that a mean woman. _Mávra._ He who looks for virtues in long prayers and in external forms and observances will not leave my lady without praise. She strictly observes all holidays; goes every day to mass; always places a taper before the images on a holiday; never eats meat on a fast-day; wears woollen dresses,--do not imagine that she does so from niggardliness,--and despises all who do not follow her example. She cannot bear the customs of the day and luxury, but likes to boast of the past and of those days when she was fifteen years old, since when, the Lord be blessed! there have passed fifty years or more. _Sensible._ As regards external luxury, I myself do not like it, and I gladly agree with her in that, just as I respect the sincerity of ancient days. Praiseworthy, most praiseworthy is the ancient faithfulness of friendship, and the stern observance of a promise, for fear that the non-observance of the same might redound to one’s dishonour. In all that I am of the same opinion with her. It is a pity, a real pity, that now-a-days people are ashamed of nothing, and many young people no longer blush when they utter a lie or cheat their creditors, nor young women when they deceive their husbands. _Mávra._ Let us leave that alone. In her dress and head-gear, you will find the representation of the fashion of her ancestors, and in this she discovers a certain virtue and purity of morals. _Sensible._ But why ancestral morals? Those are nothing else but meaningless customs which she does not distinguish or cannot distinguish from morals. _Mávra._ Yet, according to the opinion of my lady, the older a dress, the more venerable it is. _Sensible._ Tell me, then, what she does during the whole day.