Ordinary visitors remained on the outside of this partition, but lucky
ones were by the saint's invitation admitted through the partition doors
into his half of the room. And if so disposed he made them sit down on
the sofa or on his old leather chairs. He himself invariably sat in
an old-fashioned shabby Voltaire arm-chair. He was a rather big,
bloated-looking, yellow-faced man of five and fifty, with a bald head
and scanty flaxen hair. He wore no beard; his right cheek was swollen,
and his mouth seemed somehow twisted awry. He had a large wart on
the left side of his nose; narrow eyes, and a calm, stolid, sleepy
expression. He was dressed in European style, in a black coat, but had
no waistcoat or tie. A rather coarse, but white shirt, peeped out below
his coat. There was something the matter with his feet, I believe, and
he kept them in slippers. I've heard that he had at one time been a
clerk, and received a rank in the service. He had just finished some
fish soup, and was beginning his second dish of potatoes in their skins,
eaten with salt. He never ate anything else, but he drank a great
deal of tea, of which he was very fond. Three servants provided by
the merchant were running to and fro about him. One of them was in a
swallow-tail, the second looked like a workman, and the third like
a verger. There was also a very lively boy of sixteen. Besides the
servants there was present, holding a jug, a reverend, grey-headed
monk, who was a little too fat. On one of the tables a huge samovar was
boiling, and a tray with almost two dozen glasses was standing near it.
On another table opposite offerings had been placed: some loaves and
also some pounds of sugar, two pounds of tea, a pair of embroidered
slippers, a foulard handkerchief, a length of cloth, a piece of linen,
and so on. Money offerings almost all went into the monk's jug. The room
was full of people, at least a dozen visitors, of whom two were sitting
with Semyon Yakovlevitch on the other side of the partition. One was a
grey-headed old pilgrim of the peasant class, and the other a little,
dried-up monk, who sat demurely, with his eyes cast down. The other
visitors were all standing on the near side of the partition, and
were mostly, too, of the peasant class, except one elderly and
poverty-stricken lady, one landowner, and a stout merchant, who had come
from the district town, a man with a big beard, dressed in the Russian
style, though he was known to be wort