ndlord of the tavern, a Kaluga peasant, Ivan Fedotitch, who hired one-
half of the Zimins' houses and sublet them to lodgers. The waiter, a
thin, hooked-nosed young fellow of eighteen, with a yellow complexion,
hastened up.

"Conduct this gentleman to the census-takers; they went into the main
building over the well." The young fellow threw down his napkin, and
donned a coat over his white jacket and white trousers, and a cap with a
large visor, and, tripping quickly along with his white feet, he led me
through the swinging door in the rear. In the dirty, malodorous kitchen,
in the out-building, we encountered an old woman who was carefully
carrying some very bad-smelling tripe, wrapped in a rag, off somewhere.
From the out-building we descended into a sloping court-yard, all
encumbered with small wooden buildings on lower stories of stone. The
odor in this whole yard was extremely powerful. The centre of this odor
was an out-house, round which people were thronging whenever I passed it.
It merely indicated the spot, but was not altogether used itself. It was
impossible, when passing through the yard, not to take note of this spot;
one always felt oppressed when one entered the penetrating atmosphere
which was emitted by this foul smell.

The waiter, carefully guarding his white trousers, led me cautiously past
this place of frozen and unfrozen uncleanness to one of the buildings.
The people who were passing through the yard and along the balconies all
stopped to stare at me. It was evident that a respectably dressed man
was a curiosity in these localities.

The young man asked a woman "whether she had seen the census-takers?" And
three men simultaneously answered his question: some said that they were
over the well, but others said that they had been there, but had come out
and gone to Nikita Ivanovitch. An old man dressed only in his shirt, who
was wandering about the centre of the yard, said that they were in No.
30. The young man decided that this was the most probable report, and
conducted me to No. 30 through the basement entrance, and darkness and
bad smells, different from that which existed outside. We went
down-stairs, and proceeded along the earthen floor of a dark corridor. As
we were passing along the corridor, a door flew open abruptly, and an old
drunken man, in his shirt, probably not of the peasant class, thrust
himself out. A washerwoman, wringing her soapy hands, was pursuing and
hustli