one of the family."

At supper they served sterlet, chicken rissoles, and stewed fruit;
the wines were expensive French wines.

"Please don't stand on ceremony, doctor," said Christina Dmitryevna,
eating and wiping her mouth with her fist, and it was evident she
found her life here exceedingly pleasant. "Please have some more."

After supper the doctor was shown to his room, where a bed had been
made up for him, but he did not feel sleepy. The room was stuffy
and it smelt of paint; he put on his coat and went out.

It was cool in the open air; there was already a glimmer of dawn,
and all the five blocks of buildings, with their tall chimneys,
barracks, and warehouses, were distinctly outlined against the damp
air. As it was a holiday, they were not working, and the windows
were dark, and in only one of the buildings was there a furnace
burning; two windows were crimson, and fire mixed with smoke came
from time to time from the chimney. Far away beyond the yard the
frogs were croaking and the nightingales singing.

Looking at the factory buildings and the barracks, where the
workpeople were asleep, he thought again what he always thought
when he saw a factory. They may have performances for the workpeople,
magic lanterns, factory doctors, and improvements of all sorts,
but, all the same, the workpeople he had met that day on his way
from the station did not look in any way different from those he
had known long ago in his childhood, before there were factory
performances and improvements. As a doctor accustomed to judging
correctly of chronic complaints, the radical cause of which was
incomprehensible and incurable, he looked upon factories as something
baffling, the cause of which also was obscure and not removable,
and all the improvements in the life of the factory hands he looked
upon not as superfluous, but as comparable with the treatment of
incurable illnesses.

"There is something baffling in it, of course . . ." he thought,
looking at the crimson windows. "Fifteen hundred or two thousand
workpeople are working without rest in unhealthy surroundings,
making bad cotton goods, living on the verge of starvation, and
only waking from this nightmare at rare intervals in the tavern; a
hundred people act as overseers, and the whole life of that hundred
is spent in imposing fines, in abuse, in injustice, and only two
or three so-called owners enjoy the profits, though they don't work
at all, and despise the wretc