“Certainly; I knew you at once!” he began in French. “In ’48 I had the pleasure of meeting you rather often in Moscow, at my sister’s—the Ivashins.”
I apologized for not having recognized him in his present costume. He rose, approached me, and with his moist hand irresolutely and feebly pressed mine. Instead of looking at me, whom he professed to be so glad to see, he looked round in an unpleasantly boastful kind of way at the other officers. Either because he had been recognized by me who had seen him some years before in a drawing-room in a dress-coat, or because that recollection suddenly raised him in his own esteem, his face and even his movements, as it seemed to me, changed completely. They now expressed a lively intellect, childish self-satisfaction at the consciousness of that intellect, and a kind of contemptuous indifference. So that, I admit, notwithstanding the pitiful position he was in, my old acquaintance no longer inspired me with sympathy but with an almost inimical feeling.
I vividly recalled our first meeting. In ’48, during my stay in Moscow, I often visited Ivashin. We had grown up together and were old friends. His wife was a pleasant hostess and what is considered an amiable woman, but I never liked her. The winter I visited them, she often spoke with ill-concealed pride of her brother, who had lately finished his studies, and was, it seemed, among the best-educated and most popular young men in the best Petersburg society. Knowing by reputation Guskov’s father, who was very rich and held an important position, and knowing his sister’s leanings, I was prejudiced before I met Guskov. One evening, having come to see Ivashin, I found there a very pleasant-looking young man, not tall, in a black swallowtail coat and white waistcoat and tie; but the host omitted to introduce us to one another. The young man, evidently prepared to go to a ball, stood hat in hand in front of Ivashin, hotly but politely arguing about a common acquaintance of ours who had recently distinguished himself in the