snow was lying in the streets. Dr. Hobotov had Andrey
Yefimitch's post; he was still living in his old lodgings, waiting
for Andrey Yefimitch to arrive and clear out of the hospital
apartments. The plain woman whom he called his cook was already
established in one of the lodges.

Fresh scandals about the hospital were going the round of the town.
It was said that the plain woman had quarrelled with the superintendent,
and that the latter had crawled on his knees before her begging
forgiveness. On the very first day he arrived Andrey Yefimitch had
to look out for lodgings.

"My friend," the postmaster said to him timidly, "excuse an indiscreet
question: what means have you at your disposal?"

Andrey Yefimitch, without a word, counted out his money and said:
"Eighty-six roubles."

"I don't mean that," Mihail Averyanitch brought out in confusion,
misunderstanding him; "I mean, what have you to live on?"

"I tell you, eighty-six roubles . . . I have nothing else."

Mihail Averyanitch looked upon the doctor as an honourable man, yet
he suspected that he had accumulated a fortune of at least twenty
thousand. Now learning that Andrey Yefimitch was a beggar, that he
had nothing to live on he was for some reason suddenly moved to
tears and embraced his friend.

XV

Andrey Yefimitch now lodged in a little house with three windows.
There were only three rooms besides the kitchen in the little house.
The doctor lived in two of them which looked into the street, while
Daryushka and the landlady with her three children lived in the
third room and the kitchen. Sometimes the landlady's lover, a drunken
peasant who was rowdy and reduced the children and Daryushka to
terror, would come for the night. When he arrived and established
himself in the kitchen and demanded vodka, they all felt very
uncomfortable, and the doctor would be moved by pity to take the
crying children into his room and let them lie on his floor, and
this gave him great satisfaction.

He got up as before at eight o'clock, and after his morning tea sat
down to read his old books and magazines: he had no money for new
ones. Either because the books were old, or perhaps because of the
change in his surroundings, reading exhausted him, and did not grip
his attention as before. That he might not spend his time in idleness
he made a detailed catalogue of his books and gummed little labels
on their backs, and this mechanical, tedious work seemed to him
more inte