position long
enough.

XXI. PRINCE IVAN IVANOVITCH

"Now for the last call--the visit to Nikitskaia Street," I said to
Kuzma, and we started for Prince Ivan Ivanovitch's mansion.

Towards the end, a round of calls usually brings one a certain amount
of self-assurance: consequently I was approaching the Prince's abode in
quite a tranquil frame of mind, when suddenly I remembered the Princess
Kornakoff's words that I was his heir, and at the same moment caught
sight of two carriages waiting at the portico. Instantly, my former
nervousness returned.

Both the old major-domo who opened the door to me, and the footman who
took my coat, and the two male and three female visitors whom I found in
the drawing-room, and, most of all, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch himself (whom
I found clad in a "company" frockcoat and seated on a sofa) seemed to
look at me as at an HEIR, and so to eye me with ill-will. Yet the Prince
was very gracious and, after kissing me (that is to say, after pressing
his cold, dry, flabby lips to my cheek for a second), asked me about
my plans and pursuits, jested with me, inquired whether I still wrote
verses of the kind which I used to indite in honour of my grandmother's
birthdays, and invited me to dine with him that day. Nevertheless, in
proportion as he grew the kinder, the more did I feel persuaded that his
civility was only intended to conceal from me the fact that he disliked
the idea of my being his heir. He had a custom (due to his false teeth,
of which his mouth possessed a complete set) of raising his upper lip a
little as he spoke, and producing a slight whistling sound from it; and
whenever, on the present occasion, he did so it seemed to me that he was
saying to himself: "A boy, a boy--I know it! And my heir, too--my heir!"

When we were children, we had been used to calling the Prince "dear
Uncle;" but now, in my capacity of heir, I could not bring my tongue
to the phrase, while to say "Your Highness," as did one of the other
visitors, seemed derogatory to my self-esteem. Consequently, never
once during that visit did I call him anything at all. The personage,
however, who most disturbed me was the old Princess who shared with me
the position of prospective inheritor, and who lived in the Prince's
house. While seated beside her at dinner, I felt firmly persuaded that
the reason why she would not speak to me was that she disliked me for
being her co-heir, and that the Prince, for his part,