o satisfactorily, he wrapped
himself in the bedclothes, soon fell asleep, and slept soundly till
ten o'clock next morning.

A DEFENCELESS CREATURE

IN spite of a violent attack of gout in the night and the nervous
exhaustion left by it, Kistunov went in the morning to his office
and began punctually seeing the clients of the bank and persons who
had come with petitions. He looked languid and exhausted, and spoke
in a faint voice hardly above a whisper, as though he were dying.

"What can I do for you?" he asked a lady in an antediluvian mantle,
whose back view was extremely suggestive of a huge dung-beetle.

"You see, your Excellency," the petitioner in question began,
speaking rapidly, "my husband Shtchukin, a collegiate assessor, was
ill for five months, and while he, if you will excuse my saying so,
was laid up at home, he was for no sort of reason dismissed, your
Excellency; and when I went for his salary they deducted, if you
please, your Excellency, twenty-four roubles thirty-six kopecks
from his salary. 'What for?' I asked. 'He borrowed from the club
fund,' they told me, 'and the other clerks had stood security for
him.' How was that? How could he have borrowed it without my consent?
It's impossible, your Excellency. What's the reason of it? I am a
poor woman, I earn my bread by taking in lodgers. I am a weak,
defenceless woman . . . I have to put up with ill-usage from everyone
and never hear a kind word. . ."

The petitioner was blinking, and dived into her mantle for her
handkerchief. Kistunov took her petition from her and began reading
it.

"Excuse me, what's this?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders. "I can
make nothing of it. Evidently you have come to the wrong place,
madam. Your petition has nothing to do with us at all. You will
have to apply to the department in which your husband was employed."

"Why, my dear sir, I have been to five places already, and they
would not even take the petition anywhere," said Madame Shtchukin.
"I'd quite lost my head, but, thank goodness--God bless him for
it--my son-in-law, Boris Matveyitch, advised me to come to you.
'You go to Mr. Kistunov, mamma: he is an influential man, he can
do anything for you. . . .' Help me, your Excellency!"

"We can do nothing for you, Madame Shtchukin. You must understand:
your husband served in the Army Medical Department, and our
establishment is a purely private commercial undertaking, a bank.
Surely you must understand that!