you were gracious to people; or whether you were harsh to those who were weaker than you, such as your servants, your clerks.”

“I was always the benefactor of those that served me; they ought to remember me in their prayers forever,” said the old man, with conviction, but touched by Yulia’s tone of sincerity, and anxious to give her pleasure, he said: “Very well; bring my grandchildren to-morrow. I will tell them to buy me some little presents for them.”

The old man was slovenly in his dress, and there was cigar ash on his breast and on his knees; apparently no one cleaned his boots, or brushed his clothes. The rice in the pies was half cooked, the tablecloth smelt of soap, the servants tramped noisily about the room. And the old man and the whole house had a neglected look, and Yulia, who felt this, was ashamed of herself and of her husband.

“I will be sure to come and see you to-morrow,” she said.

She walked through the rooms, and gave orders for the old man’s bedroom to be set to rights, and the lamp to be lighted under the ikons in it. Fyodor, sitting in his own room, was looking at an open book without reading it. Yulia talked to him and told the servants to tidy his room, too; then she went downstairs to the clerks. In the middle of the room where the clerks used to dine, there was an unpainted wooden post to support the ceiling and to prevent its coming down. The ceilings in the basement were low, the walls covered with cheap paper, and there was a smell of charcoal fumes and cooking. As it was a holiday, all the clerks were at home, sitting on their bedsteads waiting for dinner. When Yulia went in they jumped up, and answered her questions timidly, looking up at her from under their brows like convicts.

“Good heavens! What a horrid room you have!” she said, throwing up her hands. “Aren’t you crowded here?”

“Crowded, but not aggrieved,” said Makeitchev. “We are greatly indebted to you, and will offer up our prayers for you to our Heavenly Father.”

“The congruity of life with the conceit of the personality,” said Potchatkin.

And noticing that Yulia did not understand Potchatkin, Makeitchev hastened to explain:

“We are humble people and must live according to our position.”

She inspected the boys’ quarters, and then the kitchen, made acquaintance with the housekeeper, and was thoroughly dissatisfied.

When she got home she said to her husband:

“We ought to move into your father’s house and settle there for good as soon as possible. And you will go every day to the warehouse.”

Then they both sat side by side in the study without speaking. His heart was heavy, and he did not want to move into Pyatnitsky Street or to go into the warehouse; but he guessed what his wife was thinking, and could not oppose her. He stroked her cheek and said:

“I feel as though our life is already over, and that a grey half-life is beginning for us. When I knew that my brother Fyodor was hopelessly ill, I shed tears; we spent our childhood and youth together, when I loved him with my whole soul. And now this catastrophe has come, and it seems, too, as though, losing him, I am finally cut away from my past. And when you said just now that we must move into the house in Pyatnitsky Street, to that prison, it began to seem to that to me that there was no future for me either.”

He got up and walked to the window.