I

It was eight o'clock in the morning--the time when the officers,
the local officials, and the visitors usually took their morning
dip in the sea after the hot, stifling night, and then went into
the pavilion to drink tea or coffee. Ivan Andreitch Laevsky, a thin,
fair young man of twenty-eight, wearing the cap of a clerk in the
Ministry of Finance and with slippers on his feet, coming down to
bathe, found a number of acquaintances on the beach, and among them
his friend Samoylenko, the army doctor.

With his big cropped head, short neck, his red face, his big nose,
his shaggy black eyebrows and grey whiskers, his stout puffy figure
and his hoarse military bass, this Samoylenko made on every newcomer
the unpleasant impression of a gruff bully; but two or three days
after making his acquaintance, one began to think his face
extraordinarily good-natured, kind, and even handsome. In spite of
his clumsiness and rough manner, he was a peaceable man, of infinite
kindliness and goodness of heart, always ready to be of use. He was
on familiar terms with every one in the town, lent every one money,
doctored every one, made matches, patched up quarrels, arranged
picnics at which he cooked _shashlik_ and an awfully good soup of
grey mullets. He was always looking after other people's affairs
and trying to interest some one on their behalf, and was always
delighted about something. The general opinion about him was that
he was without faults of character. He had only two weaknesses: he
was ashamed of his own good nature, and tried to disguise it by a
surly expression and an assumed gruffness; and he liked his assistants
and his soldiers to call him "Your Excellency," although he was