by their tutor, a student wearing a white tunic and very narrow
trousers. When they reached Pyotr Dmitritch, the boys and the student
stopped, and probably congratulated him on his name-day. With a
graceful swing of his shoulders, he patted the children on their
cheeks, and carelessly offered the student his hand without looking
at him. The student must have praised the weather and compared it
with the climate of Petersburg, for Pyotr Dmitritch said in a loud
voice, in a tone as though he were not speaking to a guest, but to
an usher of the court or a witness:

"What! It's cold in Petersburg? And here, my good sir, we have a
salubrious atmosphere and the fruits of the earth in abundance. Eh?
What?"

And thrusting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of
the other, he walked on. Till he had disappeared behind the nut
bushes, Olga Mihalovna watched the back of his head in perplexity.
How had this man of thirty-four come by the dignified deportment
of a general? How had he come by that impressive, elegant manner?
Where had he got that vibration of authority in his voice? Where
had he got these "what's," "to be sure's," and "my good sir's"?

Olga Mihalovna remembered how in the first months of her marriage
she had felt dreary at home alone and had driven into the town to
the Circuit Court, at which Pyotr Dmitritch had sometimes presided
in place of her godfather, Count Alexey Petrovitch. In the presidential
chair, wearing his uniform and a chain on his breast, he was
completely changed. Stately gestures, a voice of thunder, "what,"
"to be sure," careless tones. . . . Everything, all that was ordinary
and human, all that was individual and personal to himself that