ng the old man with piercing screams. Vanya, my guide, pushed the
old man aside, and reproved him.

"It's not proper to make such a row," said me, "and you an officer, too!"
and we went on to the door of No. 30.

Vanya gave it a little pull. The door gave way with a smack, opened, and
we smelled soapy steam, and a sharp odor of spoilt food and tobacco, and
we entered into total darkness. The windows were on the opposite side;
but the corridors ran to right and left between board partitions, and
small doors opened, at various angles, into the rooms made of uneven
whitewashed boards. In a dark room, on the left, a woman could be seen
washing in a tub. An old woman was peeping from one of these small doors
on the right. Through another open door we could see a red-faced, hairy
peasant, in bast shoes, sitting on his wooden bunk; his hands rested on
his knees, and he was swinging his feet, shod in bast shoes, and gazing
gloomily at them.

At the end of the corridor was a little door leading to the apartment
where the census-takers were. This was the chamber of the mistress of
the whole of No. 30; she rented the entire apartment from Ivan
Feodovitch, and let it out again to lodgers and as night-quarters. In
her tiny room, under the tinsel images, sat the student census-taker with
his charts; and, in his quality of investigator, he had just thoroughly
interrogated a peasant wearing a shirt and a vest. This latter was a
friend of the landlady, and had been answering questions for her. The
landlady herself, an elderly woman, was there also, and two of her
curious tenants. When I entered, the room was already packed full. I
pushed my way to the table. I exchanged greetings with the student, and
he proceeded with his inquiries. And I began to look about me, and to
interrogate the inhabitants of these quarters for my own purpose.

It turned out, that in this first set of lodgings, I found not a single
person upon whom I could pour out my benevolence. The landlady, in spite
of the fact that the poverty, smallness and dirt of these quarters struck
me after the palatial house in which I dwell, lived in comfort, compared
with many of the poor inhabitants of the city, and in comparison with the
poverty in the country, with which I was thoroughly familiar, she lived
luxuriously. She had a feather-bed, a quilted coverlet, a samovar, a fur
cloak, and a dresser with crockery. The landlady's friend had the same
comfortabl