eached by a clean light staircase, and consisted of seven
rooms, a nice enough lodging, and one would have thought a little too
good for a clerk on two thousand roubles a year. But it was designed
to accommodate a few lodgers on board terms, and had been taken a few
months since, much to the disgust of Gania, at the urgent request of his
mother and his sister, Varvara Ardalionovna, who longed to do something
to increase the family income a little, and fixed their hopes upon
letting lodgings. Gania frowned upon the idea. He thought it infra dig,
and did not quite like appearing in society afterwards--that society in
which he had been accustomed to pose up to now as a young man of rather
brilliant prospects. All these concessions and rebuffs of fortune,
of late, had wounded his spirit severely, and his temper had become
extremely irritable, his wrath being generally quite out of proportion
to the cause. But if he had made up his mind to put up with this sort of
life for a while, it was only on the plain understanding with his inner
self that he would very soon change it all, and have things as he
chose again. Yet the very means by which he hoped to make this change
threatened to involve him in even greater difficulties than he had had
before.

The flat was divided by a passage which led straight out of the
entrance-hall. Along one side of this corridor lay the three rooms which
were designed for the accommodation of the "highly recommended" lodgers.
Besides these three rooms there was another small one at the end of the
passage, close to the kitchen, which was allotted to General Ivolgin,
the nominal master of the house, who slept on a wide sofa, and was
obliged to pass into and out of his room through the kitchen, and up
or down the back stairs. Colia, Gania's young brother, a school-boy of
thirteen, shared this room with his father. He, too, had to sleep on
an old sofa, a narrow, uncomfortable thing with a torn rug over it; his
chief duty being to look after his father, who needed to be watched more
and more every day.

The prince was given the middle room of the three, the first being
occupied by one Ferdishenko, while the third was empty.

But Gania first conducted the prince to the family apartments. These
consisted of a "salon," which became the dining-room when required; a
drawing-room, which was only a drawing-room in the morning, and became
Gania's study in the evening, and his bedroom at night; and lastly Nina