nding before him, and who could
not answer the questions put to him, on account of his feebleness. Having
finished his business with the old man, he turned to me. I inquired
about the girl of the night before. At first he listened to me
attentively, but afterwards he began to smile, at my ignorance of the
regulations, in consequence of which she had been taken to the station-
house; and particularly at my surprise at her youth.

"Why, there are plenty of them of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years of
age," he said cheerfully.

But in answer to my question about the girl whom I had seen on the
preceding evening, he explained to me that she must have been sent to the
committee (so it appeared). To my question where she had passed the
night, he replied in an undecided manner. He did not recall the one to
whom I referred. There were so many of them every day.

In No. 32 of the Rzhanoff house I found the sacristan already reading
prayers over the dead woman. They had taken her to the bunk which she
had formerly occupied; and the lodgers, all miserable beings, had
collected money for the masses for her soul, a coffin and a shroud, and
the old women had dressed her and laid her out. The sacristan was
reading something in the gloom; a woman in a long wadded cloak was
standing there with a wax candle; and a man (a gentleman, I must state)
in a clean coat with a lamb's-skin collar, polished overshoes, and a
starched shirt, was holding one like it. This was her brother. They had
hunted him up.

I went past the dead woman to the landlady's nook, and questioned her
about the whole business.

She was alarmed at my queries; she was evidently afraid that she would be
blamed for something; but afterwards she began to talk freely, and told
me every thing. As I passed back, I glanced at the dead woman. All dead
people are handsome, but this dead woman was particularly beautiful and
touching in her coffin; her pure, pale face, with closed swollen eyes,
sunken cheeks, and soft reddish hair above the lofty brow,--a weary and
kind and not a sad but a surprised face. And in fact, if the living do
not see, the dead are surprised.

On the same day that I wrote the above, there was a great ball in Moscow.

That night I left the house at nine o'clock. I live in a locality which
is surrounded by factories, and I left the house after the
factory-whistles had sounded, releasing the people for a day of freedom
after a week of unr