As a rule he awoke very late in the morning; and on rising, he sat for a long time in his bed, rubbing his eyes. And, although his eyes were unfortunately small, this operation lasted a remarkably long time. In the meanwhile his man, Mikhailo, stood at the door, with a hand-basin and a towel. This poor Mikhailo stood an hour there, then another hour; then he went to the kitchen and came back again, but his master was still rubbing his eyes and sitting up in bed. Finally he rose from his bed, washed himself, put on his dressing-gown, and came out into the drawing-room to drink some tea, coffee, cocoa, and even some boiled milk, sipping a little of all of them, mercilessly crumbling his bread, and heedlessly scattering the ashes from his pipe all over the place. He sat for two hours over his tea, and that was not all: he took a cold cupful of it, and walked to the window which overlooked the court-yard; and at the window the following scene took place every day:—

First of all, Grigoriy, a house-serf, who acted as butler, roared at Perfilievna, the housekeeper, in some such terms as these: “You clumsy, big, rebellious darling! you worthless hussy! You might, at least, hold your noise, you disgusting woman!”

“And don’t you want that?” shrieked the worthless woman, making an insulting sign with her hand. Perfilievna was a coarse woman in her actions, despite of the fact that she was fond of raisins, fruit-tarts, and all sorts of sweets, which she kept under lock and key.

“You have entered into a compact with the steward, you storehouse good-for-nothing!” shouted Grigoriy.

“Yes, and the steward is just such another thief as you are. Do you think that the master doesn’t know you? Why, he’s there, he is listening.”

“Where’s the master?”

“There he is, sitting by the window; he sees everything.”

And the master really was sitting at the window, and he saw everything.

To complete the uproar, a child belonging to a house-serf which had received a hearty slap from its mother, screamed at the top of its voice; then a greyhound howled on account of the hot water with which the cook had splashed it as she chased it from the kitchen. In short, everything was screaming and wailing intolerably. The master saw and heard it all. And it was only when it became so unendurable that it prevented his doing anything whatever that he sent out word to say that they must make less noise.

Two hours before dinner he retired to his study to engage in a serious literary composition, which was designed to embrace all Russia, from all points of view—the political, social, religious, and philosophical—he meant to solve all the difficult questions attaching to her history, and to clearly define her great future; everything in short was to be done in that form and fashion in which the man of the day delights. This colossal undertaking was limited, however, to thought: our writer nibbles his pen, sundry drawings made their appearance upon his paper, and then everything was thrown aside and a book was taken in hand, and not dropped again until dinner-time. This book was perused with the soup, the roast, the salad, and even with the pastry, so that some dishes grew cold and some were even removed untasted. After this came a pipe and some coffee, and a game of chess with himself. What he did afterwards until supper- time it would be hard to say. It appeared that he simply did nothing whatever.

And thus did one utterly solitary young man of thirty pass his time, constantly sitting about in his dressing- gown, without any neckcloth. He did not walk out, he did not even care to go upstairs to look at the view; he did not care to open the windows to admit fresh air into the room; and it was as though the sight of the beautiful village, which no visitor could help admiring, did not exist for its owner. From this the reader will see that Andrei Ivanovitch Tentyotnikoff belonged to that class of people who are not extinct in Russia, and who were formerly called sluggards and lazybones, and who are now called I know not what. Are such characteristics born with a man, or are they developed later in life, begotten by the gloomy