he match and
flung it away. I looked in her face. She was really a person
prematurely born; but, as it seemed to me, already an old woman. I
credited her with thirty years. A dirty hue of face; small, dull, tipsy
eyes; a button-like nose; curved moist lips with drooping corners, and a
short wisp of harsh hair escaping from beneath her kerchief; a long flat
figure, stumpy hands and feet. I paused opposite her. She stared at me,
and burst into a laugh, as though she knew all that was going on in my
mind.

I felt that it was necessary to say something to her. I wanted to show
her that I pitied her.

"Are your parents alive?" I inquired.

She laughed hoarsely, with an expression which said, "he's making up
queer things to ask."

"My mother is," said she. "But what do you want?"

"And how old are you?"

"Sixteen," said she, answering promptly to a question which was evidently
customary.

"Come, march, you'll freeze, you'll perish entirely," shouted the
policeman; and she swayed away from the fence, and, staggering along, she
went down Khamovnitchesky Lane to the police-station; and I turned to the
wicket, and entered the house, and inquired whether my daughters had
returned. I was told that they had been to an evening party, had had a
very merry time, had come home, and were in bed.

Next morning I wanted to go to the station-house to learn what had been
done with this unfortunate woman, and I was preparing to go out very
early, when there came to see me one of those unlucky noblemen, who,
through weakness, have dropped from the gentlemanly life to which they
are accustomed, and who alternately rise and fall. I had been acquainted
with this man for three years. In the course of those three years, this
man had several times made way with every thing that he had, and even
with all his clothes; the same thing had just happened again, and he was
passing the nights temporarily in the Rzhanoff house, in the
night-lodging section, and he had come to me for the day. He met me as I
was going out, at the entrance, and without listening to me he began to
tell me what had taken place in the Rzhanoff house the night before. He
began his narrative, and did not half finish it; all at once (he is an
old man who has seen men under all sorts of aspects) he burst out
sobbing, and flooded has countenance with tears, and when he had become
silent, turned has face to the wall. This is what he told me. Every
thing that he