will and testament of one at the point of death. The sick man was
not strictly a client of Ivan Feodorovitch; under other
circumstances, he might have refused to make this late call, after
a day's heavy toil . . . but the dying man was an aristocrat and a
millionaire, and such as he meet no refusals, whether in life, or,
much more, at the moment of death.

Lobnitchenko, taking a secretary and everything necessary, with a
sigh scratched himself behind the ear, and thrusting aside the
thought of the delightful evening at cards that awaited him, set
out to go to the sick man.

General Iuri Pavlovitch Nasimoff was far gone. Even the most
compassionate doctors did not give him many days to live, when he
finally decided to destroy the will which he had made long ago, not
in St. Petersburg, but in the provincial city where he had played
the Tsar for so many years. The general had come to the capital
for a time, and had lain down--to rise no more.

This was the opinion of the physicians, and of most of those about
him; the sick man himself was unwilling to admit it. He was a
stalwart-hearted and until recently a stalwart-bodied old man,
tall, striking, with an energetic face, and a piercing, masterful
glance, hard to forget, even if you saw him only once.

He was lying on the sofa, in a richly furnished hotel suite,
consisting of three of the best rooms. He received the lawyer
gayly enough. He himself explained the circumstances to him,
though every now and then compelled to stop by a paroxysm of pain,
with difficulty repressing the groans which almost escaped him, in