'Every one has his own taste,' Susanna said in a low voice, and her lips
were trembling; 'but your remarks, Ivan Demianitch, you know, cannot
hurt me.'

'Oh! of course not! Only don't you imagine'--Mr. Ratsch turned to
me--'don't you imagine, my young friend, that that comes from our
excessive good-nature and meekness of spirit; it's simply that we fancy
ourselves so highly exalted that--oo-oo!--we can't keep our cap on our
head, as the Russian proverb says, and, of course, no criticism can
touch us. The conceit, my dear sir, the conceit!'

I listened in surprise to Mr. Ratsch. Spite, the bitterest spite, seemed
as it were boiling over in every word he uttered.... And long it must
have been rankling! It choked him. He tried to conclude his tirade with
his usual laugh, and fell into a husky, broken cough instead. Susanna
did not let drop a syllable in reply to him, only she shook her head,
raised her face, and clasping her elbows with her hands, stared straight
at him. In the depths of her fixed, wide-open eyes the hatred of long
years lay smouldering with dim, unquenchable fire. I felt ill at ease.

'You belong to two different musical generations,' I began, with an
effort at lightness, wishing by this lightness to suggest that I noticed
nothing, 'and so it is not surprising that you do not agree in your
opinions.... But, Ivan Demianitch, you must allow me to take rather...
the side of the younger generation. I'm an outsider, of course; but I
must confess nothing in music has ever made such an impression on me as
the... as what Susanna Ivanovna has just played us.'

Ratsch pounced at once upon me.