cards prudently, and when he was at home he ate with moderation. At a
party he seemed to be feeding for six. Of his wife scarcely anything
more can be said than that her name was Calliope Carlovna--that a
tear always stood in her left eye, on the strength of which Calliope
Carlovna, who to be sure was of German extraction, considered
herself a woman of feeling--that she always seemed frightened about
something--that she looked as if she never had enough to eat--and that
she always wore a tight velvet dress, a cap, and bracelets of thin,
dull metal.

As to Varvara Pavlovna, the general's only daughter, she was but
seventeen years old when she left the Institute in which she had been
educated. While within its walls she was considered, if not the most
beautiful, at all events the most intelligent of the pupils, and the
best musician, and before leaving it she obtained the Cipher[A]. She
was not yet nineteen when Lavretsky saw her for the first time.

[Footnote A: The initial letter of the name of the Empress, worn as a
kind of decoration by the best pupils in the Imperial Institutes.]




XIV.


The Spartan's legs trembled when Mikhalevich led him into the
Korobines' not over-well furnished drawing-room, and introduced him to
its occupants. But he overcame his timidity, and soon disappeared. In
General Korobine that kindliness which is common to all Russians, was