there is some love
affair--come, tell me."

Nekhludoff related the story of Maslova, exactly as it happened.

"Yes, yes, I remember. Poor Hellen told me at the time you lived at
the old maids' house that, I believe, they wished you to marry their
ward." Countess Catherine Ivanovna always hated Nekhludoff's aunts on
his father's side. "So, that is she? Elle est encore jolie?"

Aunt Catherine Ivanovna was a sixty-year-old, healthy, jolly,
energetic, talkative woman. She was tall, very stout, with a black,
downy mustache on her upper lip. Nekhludoff loved her, and since
childhood had been accustomed to get infected with her energy and
cheerfulness.

"No, ma tante, all that belongs to the past. I only wish to help her,
because she is innocent, and it is my fault that she was condemned,
her whole wrecked life is upon my conscience. I feel it to be my duty
to do for her what I can."

"But how is it? I was told that you wish to marry her."

"I do wish it, it is true; but she doesn't."

Catherine Ivanovna raised her eyebrows and silently looked at
Nekhludoff in surprise. Suddenly her face changed and assumed a
pleased expression.

"Well, she is wiser than you are. Ah! what a fool you are! And you
would marry her?"

"Certainly."

"After what she has been?"

"The more so--is it not all my fault?"

"Well, you are simply a crank," said the aunt, suppressing a smile.
"You are an awful crank, but I love you for the very reason that you
are such an awful crank," she repeated, the word evidently well
describing, according to her view, the mental and moral condition of
her nephew. "And how opportune. You know, Aline has organized a
wonderful asylum for Magdalens. I visited it once. How disgusting they
are! I afterward washed myself from head to foot. But Aline is corps
et ame in this affair. So we will send her, your Magdalen, to her. If
any one will reform her, it is Aline."

"But she was sentenced to penal servitude. I came here for the
express purpose of obtaining a reversal of her sentence. That is my
first business to you."

"Is that so? Where is the case now?"

"In the Senate."

"In the Senate? Why, my dear cousin Levoushka is in the Senate.
However, he is in the Heraldry Department. Let me see. No, of the real
ones I do not know any. Heaven knows what a mixture they are: either
Germans, such as Ge, Fe, De--tout l'alphabet--or all sorts of Ivanvas,
Semenovs, Nikitins, or Ivaneukos, Semeneukos, Nikitenkas pou