ferent kinds of wood and
ornamented with plates of copper, supporting a crooked mirror in
a frame of which the gilding had turned black. In a line with the
bed-room was the oratory, a little room with bare walls; in the corner
stood a heavy case for holding sacred pictures, and on the floor lay
the scrap of carpet, worn threadbare, and covered with droppings from
wax candles, on which Glafira Petrovna used to prostrate herself when
she prayed.

Anton went out with Lavretsky's servant to open the stable and
coach-house doors. In his stead appeared an old woman, almost as old
as himself, her hair covered by a handkerchief, which came down to her
very eyebrows. Her head shook and her eyes seemed dim; but they wore,
also, an expression of zealous obedience, habitual and implicit, and,
at the same time, of a kind of respectful condolence. She kissed
Lavretsky's hand, and then remained near the door, awaiting his
orders. He could not remember what her name was, nor even whether he
had ever seen her before. It turned out that her name was Apraxia.
Some forty years previously, Glafira Petrovna had struck her off the
list of the servants who lived in the house, and had ordered her to
become a poultry-maid. She seldom spoke, seemed half idiotic, and
always wore a servile look. Besides this old couple, and three paunchy
little children in long shirts, Anton's great-grandchildren, there
lived also in the seigniorial household an untaxable[A] moujik, who
had only one arm. He cackled like a black-cock, and was fit for
nothing. Of very little more use was the infirm old hound which had
saluted Lavretsky's return by its barking. For ten whole years it
had been fastened to a heavy chain, purchased by order of Glafira
Petrovna, a burden under which it was now scarcely able to move.

[Footnote A: One who had not received the usual grant of land from the
community, and was not subject to rates like the rest.]

Having examined the house, Lavretsky went out into the garden, and was
well pleased with it. It was all overgrown with steppe grass, with
dandelions, and with gooseberry and raspberry bushes; but there was
plenty of shade in it, a number of old lime-trees growing there, of
singularly large stature, with eccentrically ordered branches. They
had been planted too close together, and a hundred years seemed to
have elapsed since they were pruned. At the end of the garden was a
small, clear lake, surrounded by a fringe of high, reddish-