"

"Come, that means that thou hast had a bad dream. I will fumigate with
incense if thou wishest--shall I?"

Again Aratoff gazed intently at his aunt, and burst into a loud
laugh.... The figure of the kind old woman in nightcap and wrapper, with
her frightened, long-drawn face, really was extremely comical. All that
mysterious something which had surrounded him, had stifled him, all
those delusions dispersed on the instant.

"No, Platosha, my dear, it is not necessary," he said.--"Forgive me for
having involuntarily alarmed you. May your rest be tranquil--and I will
go to sleep also."

Platonida Ivanovna stood a little while longer on the spot where she
was, pointed at the candle, grumbled: "Why dost thou not extinguish
it? ... there will be a catastrophe before long!"--and as she retired,
could not refrain from making the sign of the cross over him from afar.

Aratoff fell asleep immediately, and slept until morning. He rose in a
fine frame of mind ... although he regretted something.... He felt
light and free. "What romantic fancies one does devise," he said to
himself with a smile. He did not once glance either at the stereoscope
or the leaf which he had torn out. But immediately after breakfast he
set off to see Kupfer.

What drew him thither ... he dimly recognised.

XVI

Aratoff found his sanguine friend at home. He chatted a little with him,
reproached him for having quite forgotten him and his aunt, listened to
fresh laudations of the golden woman, the Princess, from whom Kupfer had
just received,--from Yaroslavl,--a skull-cap embroidered with
fish-scales ... and then suddenly sitting down in front of Kupfer, and
looking him straight in the eye, he announced that he had been to Kazan.

"Thou hast been to Kazan? Why so?"

"Why, because I wished to collect information about that ... Clara
Militch."

"The girl who poisoned herself?"

"Yes."

Kupfer shook his head.--"What a fellow thou art! And such a sly one!
Thou hast travelled a thousand versts there and back ... and all for
what? Hey? If there had only been some feminine interest there! Then I
could understand everything! every sort of folly!"--Kupfer ruffled up
his hair.--"But for the sake of collecting materials, as you learned men
put it.... No, I thank you! That's what the committee of statistics
exists for!--Well, and what about it--didst thou make acquaintance with
the old woman and with her sister? She's a splendid girl, isn't sh