related to me was absolutely true. I authenticated his
story on the spot, and learned fresh particulars which I will relate
separately.

In that night-lodging house, on the lower floor, in No. 32, in which my
friend had spent the night, among the various, ever-changing lodgers, men
and women, who came together there for five kopeks, there was a
laundress, a woman thirty years of age, light-haired, peaceable and
pretty, but sickly. The mistress of the quarters had a boatman lover. In
the summer her lover kept a boat, and in the winter they lived by letting
accommodations to night-lodgers: three kopeks without a pillow, five
kopeks with a pillow.

The laundress had lived there for several months, and was a quiet woman;
but latterly they had not liked her, because she coughed and prevented
the women from sleeping. An old half-crazy woman eighty years old, in
particular, also a regular lodger in these quarters, hated the laundress,
and imbittered the latter's life because she prevented her sleeping, and
cleared her throat all night like a sheep. The laundress held her peace;
she was in debt for her lodgings, and was conscious of her guilt, and
therefore she was bound to be quiet. She began to go more and more
rarely to her work, as her strength failed her, and therefore she could
not pay her landlady; and for the last week she had not been out to work
at all, and had only poisoned the existence of every one, especially of
the old woman, who also did not go out, with her cough. Four days before
this, the landlady had given the laundress notice to leave the quarters:
the latter was already sixty kopeks in debt, and she neither paid them,
nor did the landlady foresee any possibility of getting them; and all the
bunks were occupied, and the women all complained of the laundress's
cough.

When the landlady gave the laundress notice, and told her that she must
leave the lodgings if she did not pay up, the old woman rejoiced and
thrust the laundress out of doors. The laundress departed, but returned
in an hour, and the landlady had not the heart to put her out again. And
the second and the third day, she did not turn her out. "Where am I to
go?" said the laundress. But on the third day, the landlady's lover, a
Moscow man, who knew the regulations and how to manage, sent for the
police. A policeman with sword and pistol on a red cord came to the
lodgings, and with courteous words he led the laundress into the street.