on him, which had somewhat softened his anxiety at being drawn into such an unpleasant affair. Tastes differ, as we all know. “She’s by no means so elderly,” he thought, feeling pleased, “on the contrary I should have taken her for her daughter.”
As for Madame Hohlakov, she was simply enchanted by the young man. “Such sense! such exactness! in so young a man! in our day! and all that with such manners and appearance! People say the young people of today are no good for anything, but here’s an example!” etc. So she simply forgot this “dreadful affair,” and it was only as she was getting into bed, that, suddenly recalling “how near death she had been,” she exclaimed: “Ah, it is awful, awful!”
But she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.
I would not, however, have dwelt on such trivial and irrelevant details, if this eccentric meeting of the young official with the by no means elderly widow had not subsequently turned out to be the foundation of the whole career of that practical and precise young man. His story is remembered to this day with amazement in our town, and I shall perhaps have something to say about it, when I have finished my long history of the Brothers Karamazov.
II
The Alarm
Our police captain, Mihail Makarovitch Makarov, a retired lieutenant-colonel, was a widower and an excellent man. He had only come to us three years previously, but had won general esteem, chiefly because he “knew how to keep society together.” He was never without visitors, and could not have got on without them. Someone or other was always dining with him; he never sat down to table without guests. He gave regular dinners, too, on all sorts of occasions, sometimes most surprising