t for even by country families living in the
neighbourhood, so great was the belief in her knowledge, luck, and skill
in critical cases. It ended in her practising only among the wealthiest
ladies; she was greedy of money. Feeling her power to the full, she
ended by not putting herself out for anyone. Possibly on purpose,
indeed, in her practice in the best houses she used to scare nervous
patients by the most incredible and nihilistic disregard of good
manners, or by jeering at "everything holy," at the very time when
"everything holy" might have come in most useful. Our town doctor,
Rozanov--he too was an _accoucheur_--asserted most positively that on one
occasion when a patient in labour was crying out and calling on the name
of the Almighty, a free-thinking sally from Arina Prohorovna, fired off
like a pistol-shot, had so terrifying an effect on the patient that it
greatly accelerated her delivery.

But though she was a nihilist, Madame Virginsky did not, when occasion
arose, disdain social or even old-fashioned superstitions and customs
if they could be of any advantage to herself. She would never, for
instance, have stayed away from a baby's christening, and always put on
a green silk dress with a train and adorned her chignon with curls and
ringlets for such events, though at other times she positively revelled
in slovenliness. And though during the ceremony she always maintained
"the most insolent air," so that she put the clergy to confusion, yet
when it was over she invariably handed champagne to the guests (it was
for that that she came and dressed up), and it was no use trying to take
the glass without a contribution to her "porridge bowl."

The guests who assembled that evening at Virginsky's (mostly men) had a
casual and exceptional air. There was no supper nor cards. In the middle
of the large drawing-room, which was papered with extremely old blue
paper, two tables had been put together and covered with a large though
not quite clean table-cloth, and on them two samovars were boiling. The
end of the table was taken up by a huge tray with twenty-five glasses on
it and a basket with ordinary French bread cut into a number of slices,
as one sees it in genteel boarding-schools for boys or girls. The tea
was poured out by a maiden lady of thirty, Arina Prohorovna's sister,
a silent and malevolent creature, with flaxen hair and no eyebrows, who
shared her sister's progressive ideas and was an object of terror