d in trimming the court-yard
and the garden. Its stable became stocked with horses; comfortable
furniture was brought to it from Lavriki; and the town supplied it
with wine, and with books and newspapers. In short, Lavretsky provided
himself with every thing he wanted, and began to lead a life which was
neither exactly that of an ordinary landed proprietor, nor exactly
that of a regular hermit. His days passed by in uniform regularity,
but he never found them dull, although he had no visitors. He occupied
himself assiduously and attentively with the management of his estate;
he rode about the neighborhood, and he read. But he read little. He
preferred listening to old Anton's stories.

Lavretsky generally sat at the window, over a pipe and a cup of cold
tea. Anton would stand at the door, his hands crossed behind his back,
and would begin a deliberate narrative about old times, those fabulous
times when oats and rye were sold, not By measure, but in large sacks,
and for two or three roubles the sack; when on all sides, right up to
the town, there stretched impenetrable forests and untouched steppes.
"But now," grumbled the old man, over whose head eighty years had
already passed, "everything has been so cut down and ploughed up that
one can't drive anywhere." Anton would talk also at great length
about his late mistress, Glafira Petrovna, saying how judicious
and economical she was, how a certain gentleman, one of her young
neighbors, had tried to gain her good graces for a time, and had begun
to pay her frequent visits; and how in his honor she had deigned even
to put on her gala-day cap with massacas ribbons, and her yellow dress
made of _tru-tru-levantine_; but how, a little later, having become
angry with her neighbor, that gentleman, on account of his indiscreet
question, "I suppose, madam, you doubtless have a good sum of money
in hand?" she told her servants never to let him enter her house
again--and how she then ordered that, after her death, every thing,
even to the smallest rag, should be handed over to Lavretsky. And, in
reality, Lavretsky found his aunt's property quite intact, even down
to the gala-day cap with the massacas ribbons, and the yellow dress of
_tru-tru-levantine_.

As to the old papers and curious documents on which Lavretsky had
counted, he found nothing of the kind except one old volume in which
his grandfather, Peter Andreich, had made various entries. In one
place might be read, "Celebra