till Anna Nicolayevna’s eyes grew red.

“Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?” she asked.

“Dangerous nothing! It’s all nonsense. He’s more loyal than Novikoff anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising nincompoop, while he is the kindliest, most conscientious, most soulful man in the world.”

“Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty,” she said, sadly. “This is a very queer world, Pasha. It’s[24] just like those wretches who would do away with czars to be warm-hearted and good to everybody. They don’t believe there ought to be rich and poor, either. When you come across a man of this sort keep away from him, Pasha.”

[24]

“But what has that got to do with Pievakin?” he shouted. “The very sight of a Nihilist would be enough to frighten him out of his wits. I want you to tell it all to uncle, mamman. Give him no peace until he promises you to write to the curator about the poor old man.”

The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin of Pavel’s deceased father; but he was also related to the young man by marriage to his mother’s sister, who had died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna promised to see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would not wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness, tapping the thick rug with his foot and shaking all over as he spoke, until she agreed to go at once.

While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball room and played “hunter and partridge,” a game of the gymnasium boys’ inventing. They had not been many minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the errand on which he had despatched his mother and the vast ball room echoed with his voluminous laughter. His great pleasure was to tease Kostia until the little boy’s mouth would begin to twitch, and then to shake his finger at him and say: “Better not cry, Kostia, or you know what I am going to call you.” Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar of merriment.

Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that Pievakin deserved mercy, he[25] made up his mind to see his uncle himself, and he did so the very next morning.

[25]

Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old 

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