me into a very beautiful room, which was the engineer's
drawing-room, and, at the same time, his working study. Everything
here was soft and elegant, and, for a man so unaccustomed to luxury
as I was, it seemed strange. There were costly rugs, huge arm-chairs,
bronzes, pictures, gold and plush frames; among the photographs
scattered about the walls there were very beautiful women, clever,
lovely faces, easy attitudes; from the drawing-room there was a
door leading straight into the garden on to a verandah: one could
see lilac-trees; one could see a table laid for lunch, a number of
bottles, a bouquet of roses; there was a fragrance of spring and
expensive cigars, a fragrance of happiness--and everything seemed
as though it would say: "Here is a man who has lived and laboured,
and has attained at last the happiness possible on earth." The
engineer's daughter was sitting at the writing-table, reading a
newspaper.

"You have come to see my father?" she asked. "He is having a shower
bath; he will be here directly. Please sit down and wait."

I sat down.

"I believe you live opposite?" she questioned me, after a brief
silence.

"Yes."

"I am so bored that I watch you every day out of the window; you
must excuse me," she went on, looking at the newspaper, "and I often
see your sister; she always has such a look of kindness and
concentration."

Dolzhikov came in. He was rubbing his neck with a towel.

"Papa, Monsieur Poloznev," said his daughter.

"Yes, yes, Blagovo was telling me," he turned briskly to me without
giving me his hand. "But listen, what can I give you? What sort of
posts have I got? You are a queer set of people!" he went on aloud
in a tone as though he were giving me a lecture. "A score of you
keep coming to me every day; you imagine I am the head of a department!
I am constructing a railway-line, my friends; I have employment for
heavy labour: I need mechanics, smiths, navvies, carpenters,
well-sinkers, and none of you can do anything but sit and write!
You are all clerks."

And he seemed to me to have the same air of happiness as his rugs
and easy chairs. He was stout and healthy, ruddy-cheeked and
broad-chested, in a print cotton shirt and full trousers like a toy
china sledge-driver. He had a curly, round beard--and not a single
grey hair--a hooked nose, and clear, dark, guileless eyes.

"What can you do?" he went on. "There is nothing you can do! I am
an engineer. I am a man of an assured po