at the object of his admiration. She was
leaning forward, a red glow coloring her cheeks. Her eyes were bent
upon the stage, but gradually, under the influence of his fixed look,
they turned and rested on him. All night long those eyes haunted him.
At last, the carefully constructed dam was broken through. He
shivered and he burnt by turns, and the very next day he went to see
Mikhalevich. From him he learned that the name of the girl he admired
so much was Varvara Pavlovna Korobine, that the elderly people who
were with her in the box were her father and her mother, and that
Mikhalevich had become acquainted with them the year before, during
the period of his stay as tutor in Count N.'s family, near Moscow. The
enthusiast spoke of Varvara Pavlovna in the most eulogistic terms.
"This girl, my brother," he exclaimed, in his peculiar, jerking kind
of sing-song, "is an exceptional being, one endowed with genius, an
artist in the true sense of the word, and besides all that, such an
amiable creature." Perceiving from Lavretsky's questions how great an
impression Varvara Pavlovna had made upon him, Mikhalevich, of his own
accord, proposed to make him acquainted with her, adding that he was
on the most familiar terms with them, that the general was not in the
least haughty, and that the mother was as unintellectual as she well
could be.

Lavretsky blushed, muttered something vague, and took himself off.
For five whole days he fought against his timidity; on the sixth, the
young Spartan donned an entirely new uniform, and placed himself at
the disposal of Mikhalevich, who, as an intimate friend of the
family, contented himself with setting his hair straight--and the two
companions set off together to visit the Karobines.

XIII

Varvara Pavlovna's father, Pavel Petrovich Korobine, a retired
major-general, had been on duty at St. Petersburg during almost the
whole of his life. In his early years he had enjoyed the reputation of
being an able dancer and driller; but as he was very poor he had
to act as aide-de-camp to two or three generals of small renown in
succession, one of whom gave him his daughter in marriage, together
with a dowry of 25,000 roubles. Having made himself master of all the
science of regulations and parades, even to their subtlest details,
he "went on stretching the girth" until at last, after twenty years
service, he became a general, and obtained a regiment. At that point
he might have reposed,