teachers, but the one who
was now anxiously waving his hands he despised and hated, though
he could not have said why. He behaved rudely and condescendingly
to the young man, kept back his salary, meddled with the teaching,
and had finally tried to dislodge him by appointing, a fortnight
before Christmas, as porter to the school a drunken peasant, a
distant relation of his wife's, who disobeyed the teacher and said
rude things to him before the boys.

Anna Akimovna was aware of all this, but she could be of no help,
for she was afraid of Nazaritch herself. Now she wanted at least
to be very nice to the schoolmaster, to tell him she was very much
pleased with him; but when after the singing he began apologizing
for something in great confusion, and Auntie began to address him
familiarly as she drew him without ceremony to the table, she felt,
for some reason, bored and awkward, and giving orders that the
children should be given sweets, went upstairs.

"In reality there is something cruel in these Christmas customs,"
she said a little while afterwards, as it were to herself, looking
out of window at the boys, who were flocking from the house to the
gates and shivering with cold, putting their coats on as they ran.
"At Christmas one wants to rest, to sit at home with one's own
people, and the poor boys, the teacher, and the clerks and foremen,
are obliged for some reason to go through the frost, then to offer
their greetings, show their respect, be put to confusion . . ."

Mishenka, who was standing at the door of the drawing-room and
overheard this, said:

"It has not come from us, and it will not end with us. Of course,
I am not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but I do understand that
the poor must always respect the rich. It is well said, 'God marks
the rogue.' In prisons, night refuges, and pot-houses you never see
any but the poor, while decent people, you may notice, are always
rich. It has been said of the rich, 'Deep calls to deep.'"

"You always express yourself so tediously and incomprehensibly,"
said Anna Akimovna, and she walked to the other end of the big
drawing-room.

It was only just past eleven. The stillness of the big room, only
broken by the singing that floated up from below, made her yawn.
The bronzes, the albums, and the pictures on the walls, representing
a ship at sea, cows in a meadow, and views of the Rhine, were so
absolutely stale that her eyes simply glided over them without
observi