d straight into the second room, which was
the largest and best in the house. An expression of fussiness came into
his sleepy face. He spoke at once to the landlady, a tall, thick-set
woman of forty with very dark hair and a slight moustache, and explained
that he required the whole room for himself, and that the door was to be
shut and no one else was to be admitted, "_parce que nous avons a parler.
Oui, j'ai beaucoup a vous dire, chere amie._ I'll pay you, I'll pay you,"
he said with a wave of dismissal to the landlady.

Though he was in a hurry, he seemed to articulate with difficulty. The
landlady listened grimly, and was silent in token of consent, but there
was a feeling of something menacing about her silence. He did not notice
this, and hurriedly (he was in a terrible hurry) insisted on her going
away and bringing them their dinner as quickly as possible, without a
moment's delay.

At that point the moustached woman could contain herself no longer.

"This is not an inn, sir; we don't provide dinners for travellers. We
can boil you some crayfish or set the samovar, but we've nothing more.
There won't be fresh fish till to-morrow."

But Stepan Trofimovitch waved his hands, repeating with wrathful
impatience: "I'll pay, only make haste, make haste."

They settled on fish, soup, and roast fowl; the landlady declared that
fowl was not to be procured in the whole village; she agreed, however,
to go in search of one, but with the air of doing him an immense favour.

As soon as she had gone Stepan Trofimovitch instantly sat down on the
sofa and made Sofya Matveyevna sit down beside him. There were several
arm-chairs as well as a sofa in the room, but they were of a most
uninviting appearance. The room was rather a large one, with a corner,
in which there was a bed, partitioned off. It was covered with old and
tattered yellow paper, and had horrible lithographs of mythological
subjects on the walls; in the corner facing the door there was a long
row of painted ikons and several sets of brass ones. The whole room with
its strangely ill-assorted furniture was an unattractive mixture of the
town element and of peasant traditions. But he did not even glance at it
all, nor look out of the window at the vast lake, the edge of which was
only seventy feet from the cottage.

"At last we are by ourselves and we will admit no one! I want to tell
you everything, everything from the very beginning."

Sofya Matveyevna checked