and listless young men who hang morosely about the card-tables while
dancing is going on. Pavel Petrovitch knew how to gain a footing in
society; he spoke little, but from old habit, condescendingly--though,
of course, not when he was talking to persons of a higher rank than his
own. He played cards carefully; ate moderately at home, but consumed
enough for six at parties. Of his wife there is scarcely anything to be
said. Her name was Kalliopa Karlovna. There was always a tear in her
left eye, on the strength of which Kalliopa Karlovna (she was, one must
add, of German extraction) considered herself a woman of great
sensibility. She was always in a state of nervous agitation, seemed as
though she were ill-nourished, and wore a tight velvet dress, a cap, and
tarnished hollow bracelets. The only daughter of Pavel Petrovitch and
Kalliopa Karlovna, Varvara Pavlovna, was only just seventeen when she
left the boarding-school, in which she had been reckoned, if not the
prettiest, at least the cleverest pupil and the best musician, and where
she had taken a decoration. She was not yet nineteen, when Lavretsky saw
her for the first time.



Chapter XIV


The young Spartan's legs shook under him when Mihalevitch conducted him
into the rather shabbily furnished drawing-room of the Korobyins, and
presented him to them. But his overwhelming feeling of timidity soon
disappeared. In the general the good-nature innate in all Russians was
intensified by that special kind of geniality which is peculiar to all
people who have done something disgraceful; the general's lady was as it
were overlooked by every one; and as for Varvara Pavlovna, she was so