the turf with the
elastic stride of youth, until at length he halted before a large
monument in drab granite, and stood reading the inscription thereon.
Featured not altogether in accordance with the Russian type, he had on
a dark-blue jacket, a turned-down collar, and a black stock finished
off with a large bow--the latter contrasting agreeably with the thick,
silvery, as it were molten, chin-tuft. Also, from the centre of a
fierce moustache there projected a long and gristly nose, while over
the grey skin of his cheeks there ran a network of small red veins. In
the act of raising his hand to his hat (presumably for the purpose of
saluting the dead), he, after conning the dark letters of the
inscription on the tomb, turned a sidelong eye upon myself; and since I
found the fact embarrassing, I frowned, and passed onward, full, still,
of thoughts of the street where I was residing and where I desired to
fathom the mean existence eked out by Virubov and his "niece."

As usual, the tombs were also being patrolled by Pimesha, otherwise
Pimen Krozootov, a bibulous, broken-down ex-merchant who used to spend
his time in stumbling and falling about the graves in search of the
supposed resting-place of his wife. Bent of body, Pimesha had a small,
bird-like face over-grown with grey down, the eyes of a sick rabbit,
and, in general, the appearance of having undergone a chewing by a set
of sharp teeth. For the past three years he had thus been roaming the
cemetery, though his legs were too weak to support his undersized,
shattered body; and whenever he caught his foot he fell, and for long
could not rise, but lay gasping and fumbling among the grass, and
rooting it up, and sniffing with a nose as sharp and red as though the
skin had been flayed from it. True, his wife had been buried at
Novotchevkassk, a thousand versts away, but Pimen refused to credit the
fact, and always, on being told it, stuttered with much blinking of his
wet, faded eyes: "Natasha? Natasha is here."

Also, there used to visit the spot, well-nigh daily, a Madame
Christoforov, a tall old lady who, wearing black spectacles and a plain
grey, shroudlike dress that was trimmed with black velvet, never failed
to have a stick between her abnormally long fingers. Wizened of face,
with cheeks hanging down like bags, and a knot of grey, rather,
grey-green, hair combed over her temples from under a lace scarf, and
almost concealing her ears, this lady pursued her way wi