"'_Eh bien, madame?_' queried her maid, a French woman whom she had brought from Paris, as she unlaced her corset. "'_Eh bien, Justine_,' she replied, 'he is a good deal older, but I fancy he is just the same good-natured fellow. Give me my gloves for the night, and get out my grey, high-necked dress for to-morrow, and don't forget the mutton cutlets for Ada.... I daresay it will be difficult to get them here; but we must try.' "'_A la guerre comme à la guerre_,' replied Justine, as she put out the candle." The reader should contrast with the above satiric passage, the summer evening scene in the garden at Vassilyevskoe (chap. xxvi.), where Marya Dmitrievna's party sit by the pond fishing. The soft tranquillity of the hour, the charm of this pure young girl, Liza, with "her soft, glowing cheeks and somewhat severe profile" as "she looked at the water, half frowning, to keep the sun out of her eyes, half smiling," the tender evening atmosphere, all are faintly stirred, like the rippling surface of a stream, by a puff of wind, by Liza's words upon her religious thoughts on death. In this delicate, glancing conversation, Turgenev while mirroring, as in a glass, the growing intimacy of feeling between Liza and Lavretsky, discloses almost imperceptibly the sunken rock on which his happiness is to strike and suffer shipwreck--Liza's profound instinct of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. Her sweet seriousness, her slowness of brain, her very lack of words, all appear to Lavretsky enchanting. This scene in the garden, in its tender breathing tranquillity, holds suspended beneath the gentle, flowing stream of the lovers' happiness, the faint, ambiguous menace of the days to come. In depicting the contest between Varvara Pavlovna's worldliness and Liza's spirituality, how comes it that Turgenev's _parti pris_ for Liza has not impaired the aesthetic balance? It is because he shows us how Lavretsky's mistake in marrying this syren has tied his hands. The forces of worldly convention when reinforced by Liza's religious conviction that Varvara Pavlovna, odious as she is, is still Lavretsky's wife, are bound to triumph. Accordingly the more the all-pervasive, all-conquering force of worldliness is done justice to, and the more its brilliant, polished appearances are displayed in all their deceptive colours, _the greater is our reaction towards spiritual beauty_. Therefore Turgenev, with his unerring instinct, intersperses Liza's sad love story with scenes of the brilliant worldly comedy played between that _comme-il-faut_ pair, Panshin, the brilliant young official from Petersburg, Liza's suitor, and Varvara Pavlovna.