take medicine, and what medicine to take, which symptoms he should heed
and which might be disregarded ... in a word, he knew everything that it
was proper to do.... It was as though he said: "Everything has been
foreseen and decreed by the old men--the only thing is not to devise
anything of your own.... And the chief thing of all is, don't go even as
far as the threshold without God's blessing!"--I am bound to admit that
deadly tedium reigned in his house, in those low-ceiled, warm, dark
rooms which so often resounded from the chanting of vigils and
prayer-services,[2] with an odour of incense and fasting-viands,[3]
which almost never left them!

Andréi Nikoláevitch had married, when he was no longer in his first
youth, a poor young noblewoman of the neighbourhood, a very nervous and
sickly person, who had been reared in one of the government institutes
for gentlewomen. She played far from badly on the piano; she spoke
French in boarding-school fashion; she was given to enthusiasm, and
still more addicted to melancholy, and even to tears.... In a word, she
was of an uneasy character. As she considered that her life had been
ruined, she could not love her husband, who, "as a matter of course,"
did not understand her; but she respected, she tolerated him; and as she
was a thoroughly honest and perfectly cold being, she never once so much
as thought of any other "object." Moreover, she was constantly engrossed
by anxieties: in the first place, over her really feeble health; in the
second place, over the health of her husband, whose fits always inspired
her with something akin to superstitious terror; and, in conclusion,
over her only son, Mísha, whom she reared herself with great zeal.
Andréi Nikoláevitch did not prevent his wife's busying herself with
Mísha--but on one condition: she was never, under any circumstances, to
depart from the limits, which had been defined once for all, wherein
everything in his house must revolve! Thus, for example: during the