his mouth drop complacently and shaking his head, 'I am not easily
satisfied; you won't take me in.' Nikolai Artemyevitch's _frondeurism_
consisted in saying, for instance, when he heard the word nerves: 'And
what do you mean by nerves?' or if some one alluded in his presence to
the discoveries of astronomy, asking: 'And do you believe in
astronomy?' When he wanted to overwhelm his opponent completely, he
said: 'All that is nothing but words.' It must be admitted that to
many persons remarks of that kind seemed (and still seem) irrefutable
arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never suspected that Augustina
Christianovna, in letters to her cousin, Theodolina Peterzelius,
called him _Mein Pinselchen_.

Nikolai Artemyevitch's wife, Anna Vassilyevna, was a thin, little
woman with delicate features, and a tendency to be emotional and
melancholy. At school, she had devoted herself to music and reading
novels; afterwards she abandoned all that. She began to be absorbed
in dress, and that, too, she gave up. She did, for a time, undertake
her daughter's education, but she got tired of that too, and handed
her over to a governess. She ended by spending her whole time in
sentimental brooding and tender melancholy. The birth of Elena
Nikolaevna had ruined her health, and she could never have another
child. Nikolai Artemyevitch used to hint at this fact in justification
of his intimacy with Augustina Christianovna. Her husband's infidelity
wounded Anna Vassilyevna deeply; she had been specially hurt by his
once giving his German woman, on the sly, a pair of grey horses out of
her (Anna Vassilyevna's) own stable. She had never reproached him to
his face, but she complained of him secretly to every one in the house
in turn, even to her daughter. Anna Vassilyevna did not care for going
out, she liked visitors to come and sit with her and talk to her; she
collapsed at once when she was left alone. She had a very tender and