His whole figure seemed to exclaim "Cards! Me sit down to whist with you! Is it consistent?
Who is responsible for it?
Who has shattered my energies and turned them to whist?
Ah, perish, Russia!" and he would majestically trump with a heart.
And to tell the truth he dearly loved a game of cards, which led him, especially in later years, into frequent and unpleasant skirmishes with Varvara Petrovna, particularly as he was always losing.

But of that later.

I will only observe that he was a man of tender conscience (that is, sometimes) and so was often depressed.

In the course of his twenty years' friendship with Varvara Petrovna he used regularly, three or four times a year, to sink into a state of "patriotic grief," as it was called among us, or rather really into an attack of spleen, but our estimable Varvara Petrovna preferred the former phrase.

Of late years his grief had begun to be not only patriotic, but at times alcoholic too; but Varvara Petrovna's alertness succeeded in keeping him all his life from trivial inclinations.