CHAPTER VII.



The unfortunates whom I noted down, divided themselves, according to
my ideas, into three sections, namely: people who had lost their
former advantageous position, and who were awaiting a return to it
(there were people of this sort from both the lower and the higher
class); next, dissolute women, of whom there are a great many in
these houses; and a third division, children. More than all the
rest, I found and noted down people of the first division, who had
forfeited their former advantageous position, and who hoped to regain
it. Of such persons, especially from the governmental and official
world, there are a very great number in these houses. In almost all
the lodgings which we entered, with the landlord, Ivan Fedotitch, he
said to us: "Here you need not write down the lodger's card
yourself; there is a man here who can do it, if he only happens not
to be intoxicated to-day."

And Ivan Fedotitch called by name and patronymic this man, who was
always one of those persons who had fallen from a lofty position. At
Ivan Fedotitch's call, there crawled forth from some dark corner, a
former wealthy member of the noble or official class, generally
intoxicated and always undressed. If he was not drunk, he always
readily acceded to the task proposed to him, nodded significantly,
frowned, set down his remarks in learned phraseology, held the card
neatly printed on red paper in his dirty, trembling hands, and
glanced round at his fellow-lodgers with pride and contempt, as