"Ich bin wohl nicht klug" (I must be out of my senses), he muttered, as he lay down in his hard short bed.

He tried to say that he was ill, a few days later, when Lavretsky drove over to fetch him in an open carriage; but Fedor Ivanitch went up into his room and managed to persuade him.
What produced the most powerful effect upon Lemm was the circumstance that Lavretsky had ordered a piano from town to be sent into the country expressly for him.
They set off together to the Kalitins' and spent the evening with them, but not so pleasantly as on the last occasion.

Panshin was there, he talked a great deal about his expedition, and very amusingly mimicked and described the country gentry he had seen; Lavretsky laughed, but Lemm would not come out of his corner, and sat silent, slightly tremulous all over like a spider, looking dull and sullen, and he only revived when Lavretsky began to take leave.

Even when he was sitting in the carriage, the old man was still shy and constrained; but the warm soft air, the light breeze, and the light shadows, the scent of the grass and the birch-buds, the peaceful light of the starlit, moonless night, the pleasant tramp and snort of the horses--all the witchery of the roadside, the spring and the night, sank into the poor German's soul, and he was himself the first to begin a conversation with Lavretsky..