difficulty--from his chair when I came in, conducted me to the door,
supporting me with his hand under my elbow, and instead of Suzon began
to call me sometimes, 'ma chere demoiselle,' sometimes, 'mon Antigone.'
M. le Commandeur died two years after my mother's death; his death
seemed to affect Ivan Matveitch far more deeply. A contemporary had
disappeared: that was what distressed him. And yet in later years M. le
Commandeur's sole service had consisted in crying, 'Bien joue, mal
reussi!' every time Ivan Matveitch missed a stroke, playing billiards
with Mr. Ratsch; though, indeed, too, when Ivan Matveitch addressed him
at table with some such question as: 'N'est-ce pas, M. le Commandeur,
c'est Montesquieu qui a dit cela dans ses _Lettres Persanes_?' he had
still, sometimes dropping a spoonful of soup on his ruffle, responded
profoundly: 'Ah, Monsieur de Montesquieu? Un grand ecrivain, monsieur,
un grand ecrivain!' Only once, when Ivan Matveitch told him that 'les
theophilanthropes ont eu pourtant du bon!' the old man cried in an
excited voice, 'Monsieur de Kolontouskoi' (he hadn't succeeded in the
course of twenty years in learning to pronounce his patron's name
correctly), 'Monsieur de Kolontouskoi! Leur fondateur, l'instigateur de
cette secte, ce La Reveillere Lepeaux etait un bonnet rouge!' 'Non,
non,' said Ivan Matveitch, smiling and rolling together a pinch of
snuff: 'des fleurs, des jeunes vierges, le culte de la Nature... ils out
eu du bon, ils out eu du bon!'...I was always surprised at the extent of
Ivan Matveitch's knowledge, and at the uselessness of his knowledge to
himself.

Ivan Matveitch was perceptibly failing, but he still put a good face on
it. One day, three weeks before his death, he had a violent attack of
giddiness just after dinner. He sank into thought, said, 'C'est la fin,'
and pulling himself together with a sigh, he wrote a letter to
Petersburg to his sole heir, a brother with whom he had had no