listening with white metal.

CHAPTER VI.

That very same day, at evening, a very important event took place in
the house of Anna Markovna: the whole institution--with land and house,
with live and inanimate stock--passed into the hands of Emma Edwardovna.

They had been speaking of this, on and off, for a long time in the
establishment; but when the rumours so unexpectedly, immediately right
after the death of Jennka, turned into realities, the misses could not
for a long time come to themselves for amazement and fear. They knew
well, having experienced the sway of the German upon themselves, her
cruel, implacable pedantism; her greed, arrogance, and, finally, her
perverted, exacting, repulsive love, now for one, now for another
favorite. Besides that, it was no mystery to any one, that out of the
fifteen thousand which Emma Edwardovna had to pay the former
proprietress for the firm and for the property, one third belonged to
Kerbesh, who had, for a long time already, been carrying on
half-friendly, half-business relations with the fat housekeeper. From
the union of two such people, shameless, pitiless, and covetous, the
girls could expect all sorts of disasters for themselves.

Anna Markovna had to let the house go so cheaply not simply because
Kerbesh, even if he had not known about certain shady little
transactions to her credit, could still at any time he liked trip her
up and eat her up without leaving anything. Of pretexts and cavils for
this even a hundred could be found every day; and certain ones of them
not merely threatened the shutting down of the house alone, but, if you
like, even with the court.

But, dissembling, oh-ing and sighing, bewailing her poverty, her
maladies and orphanhood, Anna Markovna at soul was glad of even such a
settlement. And then it must be said: she was already for a long time
feeling the approach of senile infirmity, together with all sorts of
ailments and the thirst for complete, benevolent rest, undisturbed by
anything. All, of which she had not even dared dream in her early
youth, when she herself had yet been a prostitute of the rank and
file--all had now come to her of itself, one in addition to the other:
peaceful old age, a house--a brimming cup on one of the quiet, cozy
streets, almost in the centre of the city,--the adored daughter Birdie,
who--if not to-day then tomorrow--must marry a respected man, an
engineer, a house-owner, and member of the city-council; p