ng
daughter, a taciturn, quiet, sometimes pretty creature; an ugly dog, and
wall-clocks which strike in a melancholy fashion. Then come the actors
whose salaries do not permit them to desert Kolomna, an independent
folk, living, like all artists, for pleasure. They sit in their
dressing-gowns, cleaning their pistols, gluing together all sorts of
things out of cardboard, playing draughts and cards with any friend who
chances to drop in, and so pass away the morning, doing pretty nearly
the same in the evening, with the addition of punch now and then. After
these great people and aristocracy of Kolomna, come the rank and file.
It is as difficult to put a name to them as to remember the multitude of
insects which breed in stale vinegar. There are old women who get drunk,
who make a living by incomprehensible means, like ants, dragging old
clothes and rags from the Kalinkin Bridge to the old clothes-mart,
in order to sell them for fifteen kopeks--in short, the very dregs of
mankind, whose conditions no beneficent, political economist has devised
any means of ameliorating.

"I have mentioned them in order to point out how often such people find
themselves under the necessity of seeking immediate temporary assistance
and having recourse to borrowing. Hence there settles among them a
peculiar race of money-lenders who lend small sums on security at an
enormous percentage. Among these usurers was a certain... but I must not
omit to mention that the occurrence which I have undertaken to relate
occurred the last century, in the reign of our late Empress Catherine
the Second. So, among the usurers, at that epoch, was a certain
person--an extraordinary being in every respect, who had settled in that
quarter of the city long before. He went about in flowing Asiatic garb;
his dark complexion indicated a Southern origin, but to what particular
nation he belonged, India, Greece, or Persia, no one could say with
certainty. Of tall, almost colossal stature, with dark, thin, ardent
face, heavy overhanging brows, and an indescribably strange colour in
his large eyes of unwonted fire, he differed sharply and strongly from
all the ash-coloured denizens of the capital.

"His very dwelling was unlike the other little wooden houses. It was
of stone, in the style of those formerly much affected by Genoese
merchants, with irregular windows of various sizes, secured with iron
shutters and bars. This usurer differed from other usurers also in that