are of the snug warmth and special
smell of the old apartments of a mansion where, whatever the weather
outside, life is so warm and clean and comfortable.

"That's capital!" said Von Taunitz, a fat man with an incredibly thick
neck and with whiskers, as he shook the examining magistrate's
hand. "That's capital! You are very welcome, delighted to make your
acquaintance. We are colleagues to some extent, you know. At one time I
was deputy prosecutor; but not for long, only two years. I came here to
look after the estate, and here I have grown old--an old fogey, in fact.
You are very welcome," he went on, evidently restraining his voice so as
not to speak too loud; he was going upstairs with his guests. "I have no
wife, she's dead. But here, I will introduce my daughters," and turning
round, he shouted down the stairs in a voice of thunder: "Tell Ignat to
have the sledge ready at eight o'clock to-morrow morning."

His four daughters, young and pretty girls, all wearing gray dresses and
with their hair done up in the same style, and their cousin, also young
and attractive, with her children, were in the drawingroom. Startchenko,
who knew them already, began at once begging them to sing something, and
two of the young ladies spent a long time declaring they could not sing
and that they had no music; then the cousin sat down to the piano, and
with trembling voices, they sang a duet from "The Queen of Spades."
Again "Un Petit Verre de Clicquot" was played, and the children skipped
about, beating time with their feet. And Startchenko pranced about too.
Everybody laughed.

Then the children said good-night and went off to bed. The examining
magistrate laughed, danced a quadrille, flirted, and kept wondering
whether it was not all a dream? The kitchen of the Zemstvo hut, the
heap of hay in the corner, the rustle of the beetles, the revolting
poverty-stricken surroundings, the voices of the witnesses, the wind,
the snow storm, the danger of being lost; and then all at once this
splendid, brightly lighted room, the sounds of the piano, the lovely
girls, the curly-headed children, the gay, happy laughter--such a
transformation seemed to him like a fairy tale, and it seemed incredible
that such transitions were possible at the distance of some two miles in
the course of one hour. And dreary thoughts prevented him from enjoying
himself, and he kept thinking this was not life here, but bits of life
fragments, that everything here wa