“There was no one to see about things⁠ ⁠…” Varvara began when they were alone. “I said you should have asked some of the gentry, you would not heed me at the time.⁠ ⁠… A petition would⁠ ⁠…”

“I saw to things,” said her husband with a wave of his hand. “When Anisim was condemned I went to the gentleman who was defending him. ‘It’s no use now,’ he said, ‘it’s too late’; and Anisim said the same; it’s too late. But all the same as I came out of the court I made an agreement with a lawyer, I paid him something in advance. I’ll wait a week and then I will go again. It is as God wills.”

Again the old man walked through all the rooms, and when he went back to Varvara he said:

“I must be ill. My head’s in a sort of⁠ ⁠… fog. My thoughts are in a maze.”

He closed the door that Lipa might not hear, and went on softly:

“I am unhappy about my money. Do you remember on Low Sunday before his wedding Anisim’s bringing me some new roubles and half-roubles? One parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money. When my uncle Dmitri Filatitch⁠—the kingdom of heaven be his⁠—was alive, he used constantly to go journeys to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods, used to take up with other men. She had half a dozen children. And when uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say: ‘I never can make out,’ he used to say, ‘which are my children and which are other people’s.’ An easygoing disposition, to be sure; and so I now can’t distinguish which are genuine roubles and which are false ones. And it seems to me that they are all false.”

“Nonsense, God bless you.”

“I take a ticket at the station, I give the man three roubles, and I keep fancying they are false. And I am frightened. I must be ill.”