them from the shops, and there were heaps of books in three languages,
to say nothing of Russian, which he had read and thrown away, in
the corners of my room and under my bed. He read with extraordinary
rapidity. They say: "Tell me what you read, and I'll tell you who
you are." That may be true, but it was absolutely impossible to
judge of Orlov by what he read. It was a regular hotchpotch.
Philosophy, French novels, political economy, finance, new poets,
and publications of the firm _Posrednik_*--and he read it all
with the same rapidity and with the same ironical expression in his
eyes.

* I.e., Tchertkov and others, publishers of Tolstoy, who issued
good literature for peasants' reading.

After ten o'clock he carefully dressed, often in evening dress,
very rarely in his _kammer-junker_'s uniform, and went out, returning
in the morning.

Our relations were quiet and peaceful, and we never had any
misunderstanding. As a rule he did not notice my presence, and when
he talked to me there was no expression of irony on his face--he
evidently did not look upon me as a human being.

I only once saw him angry. One day--it was a week after I had
entered his service--he came back from some dinner at nine o'clock;
his face looked ill-humoured and exhausted. When I followed him
into his study to light the candles, he said to me:

"There's a nasty smell in the flat."