t scaffolding, has no longer
the force to control the workmen; instead of him I now run about
the town looking for work, I engage the workmen and pay them, borrow
money at a high rate of interest, and now that I myself am a
contractor, I understand how it is that one may have to waste three
days racing about the town in search of tilers on account of some
twopenny-halfpenny job. People are civil to me, they address me
politely, and in the houses where I work, they offer me tea, and
send to enquire whether I wouldn't like dinner. Children and young
girls often come and look at me with curiosity and compassion.

One day I was working in the Governor's garden, painting an arbour
there to look like marble. The Governor, walking in the garden,
came up to the arbour and, having nothing to do, entered into
conversation with me, and I reminded him how he had once summoned
me to an interview with him. He looked into my face intently for a
minute, then made his mouth like a round "O," flung up his hands,
and said: "I don't remember!"

I have grown older, have become silent, stern, and austere, I rarely
laugh, and I am told that I have grown like Radish, and that like
him I bore the workmen by my useless exhortations.

Mariya Viktorovna, my former wife, is living now abroad, while her
father is constructing a railway somewhere in the eastern provinces,
and is buying estates there. Dr. Blagovo is also abroad. Dubetchnya
has passed again into the possession of Madame Tcheprakov, who has
bought it after forcing the engineer to knock the price down twenty
per cent. Moisey goes about now in a bowler hat; he often drives
into the town in a racing droshky on business of some sort, and
stops near the bank. They say he has already bought up a mortgaged
estate, and is constantly making enquiries at the bank about
Dubetchnya, which he means to buy too. Poor Ivan Tcheprakov was for
a long while out of work, staggering about the town and drinking.
I tried to get him into our work, and for a time he painted roofs
and put in window-panes in our company, and even got to like it,
and stole oil, asked for tips, and drank like a regular painter.
But he soon got sick of the work, and went back to Dubetchnya, and
afterwards the workmen confessed to me that he had tried to persuade
them to join him one night and murder Moisey and rob Madame Tcheprakov.

My father has greatly aged; he is very bent, and in the evenings
walks up and down near his hou