rosy--and had made her eyes not grey but black and even slightly
squinting.... Akim's was a complete failure, the portrait had come out
dark--_a la_ Rembrandt--so that sometimes a visitor would go up
to it, look at it and merely give an inarticulate murmur. Avdotya had
taken to being rather careless in her dress; she would fling a big
shawl over her shoulders, while the dress under it was put on anyhow:
she was overcome by laziness, that sighing apathetic drowsy laziness
to which the Russian is only too liable, especially when his
livelihood is secure....

With all that, the fortunes of Akim and his wife prospered
exceedingly; they lived in harmony and had the reputation of an
exemplary pair. But just as a squirrel will wash its face at the very
instant when the sportsman is aiming at it, man has no presentiment of
his troubles, till all of a sudden the ground gives way under him like
ice.

One autumn evening a merchant in the drapery line put up at Akim's
inn. He was journeying by various cross-country roads from Moscow to
Harkov with two loaded tilt carts; he was one of those travelling
traders whose arrival is sometimes awaited with such impatience by
country gentlemen and still more by their wives and daughters. This
travelling merchant, an elderly man, had with him two companions, or,
speaking more correctly, two workmen, one thin, pale and hunchbacked,
the other a fine, handsome young fellow of twenty. They asked for
supper, then sat down to tea; the merchant invited the innkeeper and
his wife to take a cup with him, they did not refuse. A conversation
quickly sprang up between the two old men (Akim was fifty-six); the
merchant inquired about the gentry of the neighbourhood and no one
could give him more useful information about them than Akim; the