During the nine years of their married life his wife had borne
him four daughters, all of whom had passed away. While Ignat had
awaited their birth tremblingly, he mourned their death but
little--at any rate they were unnecessary to him. He began to
beat his wife during the second year of their married life; at
first he did it while being intoxicated and without animosity,
but just according to the proverb: "Love your wife like your soul
and shake her like a pear-tree;" but after each confinement,
deceived in his expectation, his hatred for his wife grew
stronger, and he began to beat her with pleasure, in revenge for
not bearing him a son.

Once while on business in the province of Samarsk, he received a
telegram from relatives at home, informing him of his wife's
death. He made the sign of the cross, thought awhile and wrote to
his friend Mayakin:

"Bury her in my absence; look after my property."

Then he went to the church to serve the mass for the dead, and,
having prayed for the repose of the late Aquilina's soul, he
began to think that it was necessary for him to marry as soon as
possible.

He was then forty-three years old, tall, broad-shouldered, with a
heavy bass voice, like an arch-deacon; his large eyes looked bold
and wise from under his dark eyebrows; in his sunburnt face,
overgrown with a thick, black beard, and in all his mighty figure
there was much truly Russian, crude and healthy beauty; in his