the Madame Manilov who spent most of her time in yawning behind half-read books, and in hoping for a visit from some socially distinguished person in order that she might display her wit and carefully rehearsed thoughts — thoughts which had been de rigeur in town for a week past, yet which referred, not to what was going on in her household or on her estate — both of which properties were at odds and ends, owing to her ignorance of the art of managing them — but to the coming political revolution in France and the direction in which fashionable Catholicism was supposed to be moving?
