orosely hovered around the gambling-tables while
dancing was in progress. Pavel Petrovitch understood how to place
himself in society; he talked little, but, by force of old habit, through
his nose,--of course, not with individuals belonging to the higher ranks;
he played cards cautiously, at home he ate sparingly, but when visiting
he ate for six. Concerning his wife, there is hardly anything to say: her
name was Kalliope Karlovna; a tear oozed from her left eye, by virtue
of which Kalliope Karlovna (she was, moreover, of German extraction)
regarded herself as a woman of sentiment; she lived in constant fear of
something, never seemed to have had quite enough to eat, and wore tight
velvet gowns, a turban, and dull bracelets of hollow metal. Varvara
Pavlovna, the only daughter of Pavel Petrovitch and Kalliope
Karlovna, had just passed her seventeenth birthday when she came out of
the * * * Institute, where she had been considered, if not the greatest
beauty, certainly the cleverest girl and the best musician, and where she
had received the _chiffre_;[6] she was not yet nineteen when Lavretzky
beheld her for the first time.

-----

[6] In the Government Institutes for girls, the chief prize is the
Empress's initial, in jewels.--Translator.

XIV

The legs of the Spartan gave way beneath him when Mikhalevitch conducted
him into the rather shabbily furnished drawing-room of the Korobyns, and
presented him to the master and mistress of the house. But the feeling of
timidity which had taken possession of him promptly disappeared: in the
General the kindliness of nature innate in all Russians was greatly
increased by that special sort of courtesy which is peculiar to all
besmirched people; the Generaless soon disappeared, somehow; as for
Varvara Pavlovna, she was so calm and self-possessedly amiable, that
any one would immediately have felt himself at home in her presence;
moreover, from the whole of her enchanting person, from her smiling eyes,
from her innocently-sloping shoulders and faintly-rosy hands, from her
light and, at the same time, rather languid gait, from the very sound of
her voice, which was low and sweet,--there breathed forth an insinuating
charm, as intangible as a delicate perfume, a soft and as yet modest
intoxication, something which it is difficult to express in words, but
which touched and excited,--and, of course, excited something which was
not ti