if it were a fortnight's growth, and never grew more nor less. This,
then, was Styopushka, whom I met on the bank of the Ista in company
with another old man.

I went up to him, wished him good-day, and sat down beside him.
Styopushka's companion too I recognised as an acquaintance; he was a
freed serf of Count Piotr Ilitch's, one Mihal Savelitch, nicknamed
Tuman (_i.e._ fog). He lived with a consumptive Bolhovsky man, who kept
an inn, where I had several times stayed. Young officials and other
persons of leisure travelling on the Orel highroad (merchants, buried
in their striped rugs, have other things to do) may still see at no
great distance from the large village of Troitska, and almost on the
highroad, an immense two-storied wooden house, completely deserted,
with its roof falling in and its windows closely stuffed up. At mid-day
in bright, sunny weather nothing can be imagined more melancholy than
this ruin. Here there once lived Count Piotr Ilitch, a rich grandee of
the olden time, renowned for his hospitality. At one time the whole
province used to meet at his house, to dance and make merry to their
heart's content to the deafening sound of a home-trained orchestra, and
the popping of rockets and Roman candles; and doubtless more than one
aged lady sighs as she drives by the deserted palace of the boyar and
recalls the old days and her vanished youth. The count long continued
to give balls, and to walk about with an affable smile among the crowd
of fawning guests; but his property, unluckily, was not enough to last
his whole life. When he was entirely ruined, he set off to Petersburg
to try for a post for himself, and died in a room at a hotel, without
having gained anything by his efforts. Tuman had been a steward of his,
and had received his freedom already in the count's lifetime. He was a
man of about seventy, with a regular and pleasant face. He was almost
continually smiling, as only men of the time of Catherine ever do