g-tables and desks covered with papers
and books. A wide sofa covered with red morocco evidently served Rogojin
for a bed. On the table beside which the prince had been invited to seat
himself lay some books; one containing a marker where the reader had
left off, was a volume of Solovieff's History. Some oil-paintings in
worn gilded frames hung on the walls, but it was impossible to make out
what subjects they represented, so blackened were they by smoke and age.
One, a life-sized portrait, attracted the prince's attention. It showed
a man of about fifty, wearing a long riding-coat of German cut. He had
two medals on his breast; his beard was white, short and thin; his face
yellow and wrinkled, with a sly, suspicious expression in the eyes.

"That is your father, is it not?" asked the prince.

"Yes, it is," replied Rogojin with an unpleasant smile, as if he
had expected his guest to ask the question, and then to make some
disagreeable remark.

"Was he one of the Old Believers?"

"No, he went to church, but to tell the truth he really preferred the
old religion. This was his study and is now mine. Why did you ask if he
were an Old Believer?"

"Are you going to be married here?"

"Ye-yes!" replied Rogojin, starting at the unexpected question.

"Soon?"

"You know yourself it does not depend on me."

"Parfen, I am not your enemy, and I do not intend to oppose your
intentions in any way. I repeat this to you now just as I said it to you
once before on a very similar occasion. When you were arranging for your
projected marriage in Moscow, I did not interfere with you--you know I
did not. That first time she fled to me from you, from the very altar
almost, and begged me to 'save her from you.' Afterwards she ran away
from me again, and you found her and arranged your marriage with her
once more; and now, I hear, she has run away from you and come to
Petersburg. Is it true? Lebedeff wrote me to this effect, and that's
why I came here. That you had once more arranged matters with Nastasia
Philipovna I only learned last night in the train from a friend of
yours, Zaleshoff--if you wish to know.

"I confess I came here with an object. I wished to persuade Nastasia
to go abroad for her health; she requires it. Both mind and body need a
change badly. I did not intend to take her abroad myself. I was going to
arrange for her to go without me. Now I tell you honestly, Parfen, if it
is true that all is made up between you, I