del. The house in question is one of
these, and consequently it is composed of three sections--at the one
end the male apartments, at the other the female apartments, and in the
middle the neutral territory, comprising the dining-room and the salon.
This arrangement has its conveniences, and explains the fact that the
house has two front doors. At the back is a third door, which opens from
the neutral territory into a spacious verandah overlooking the garden.

Here lives, and has lived for many years, Ivan Ivanovitch K----, a
gentleman of the old school, and a very worthy man of his kind. If we
look at him as he sits in his comfortable armchair, with his capacious
dressing-gown hanging loosely about him, we shall be able to read at a
glance something of his character. Nature endowed him with large bones
and broad shoulders, and evidently intended him to be a man of great
muscular power, but he has contrived to frustrate this benevolent
intention, and has now more fat than muscle. His close-cropped head
is round as a bullet, and his features are massive and heavy, but
the heaviness is relieved by an expression of calm contentment and
imperturbable good-nature, which occasionally blossoms into a broad
grin. His face is one of those on which no amount of histrionic talent
could produce a look of care and anxiety, and for this it is not to
blame, for such an expression has never been demanded of it. Like
other mortals, he sometimes experiences little annoyances, and on such
occasions his small grey eyes sparkle and his face becomes suffused with
a crimson glow that suggests apoplexy; but ill-fortune has never been
able to get sufficiently firm hold of him to make him understand what
such words as care and anxiety mean. Of struggle, disappointment, hope,
and all the other feelings which give to human life a dramatic interest,
he knows little by hearsay and nothing by experience. He has, in
fact, always lived outside of that struggle for existence which modern
philosophers declare to be the law of nature.

Somewhere about seventy years ago Ivan Ivan'itch was born in the house
where he still lives. His first lessons he received from the parish
priest, and afterwards he was taught by a deacon's son, who had studied
in the ecclesiastical seminary to so little purpose that he was unable
to pass the final examination. By both of these teachers he was treated
with extreme leniency, and was allowed to learn as little as he chose.
H