isn't it. So you're still alive?"

The old man bowed in silence, and then ran to fetch the keys. While he
ran, the driver sat motionless, leaning sideways and looking at the
closed door; and Lavretsky's man-servant remained in the picturesque
attitude in which he found himself after springing clown to the
ground, one of his arms resting on the box seat. The old man brought
the keys and opened the door, lifting his elbows high the while, and
needlessly wriggling his body--then he stood on one side, and again
bowed down to his girdle.

"Here I am at home, actually returned!" thought Lavretsky, as he
entered the little vestibule, while the shutters opened, one after
another, with creak and rattle, and the light of day penetrated into
the long-deserted rooms.




XIX.


The little house at which Lavretsky had arrived, and in which Glafira
Petrovna had died two years before, had been built of solid pine
timber in the preceding century. It looked very old, but it was good
for another fifty years or more. Lavretsky walked through all the
rooms, and, to the great disquiet of the faded old flies which clung
to the cornices without moving, their backs covered with white dust,
he had the windows thrown open everywhere. Since the death of Glafira
Petrovna, no one had opened them. Every thing had remained precisely