looked after them. On the other hand, he was ready to knock off
something from the price and did not refuse to trust a man's word for
payment--he was a good man and a genial host. In talking, in
entertaining, he was lavish, too; he would sometimes chatter away over
the samovar till his listeners pricked up their ears, especially when
he began telling them about Petersburg, about the Circassian steppes,
or even about foreign parts; and he liked getting a little drunk with
a good companion, but not disgracefully so, more for the sake of
company, as his guests used to say of him. He was a great favourite
with merchants and with all people of what is called the old school,
who do not set off for a journey without tightening up their belts and
never go into a room without making the sign of the cross, and never
enter into conversation with a man without first wishing him good
health. Even Akim's appearance disposed people in his favour: he was
tall, rather thin, but graceful even at his advanced years; he had a
long face, with fine-looking regular features, a high and open brow, a
straight and delicate nose and a small mouth. His brown and prominent
eyes positively shone with friendly gentleness, his soft, scanty hair
curled in little rings about his neck; he had very little left on the
top of his head. Akim's voice was very pleasant, though weak; in his
youth he had been a good singer, but continual travelling in the open
air in the winter had affected his chest. But he talked very smoothly
and sweetly. When he laughed wrinkles like rays that were very
charming came round his eyes:--such wrinkles are only to be seen in
kind-hearted people. Akim's movements were for the most part
deliberate and not without a certain confidence and dignified courtesy
befitting a man of experience who had seen a great deal in his day.
In fact, Akim--or Akim Semyonitch as he was called even in his
mistress's house, to which he often went and invariably on Sundays
after mass--would have been excellent in all respects--if he had not
had one weakness which has been the ruin of many men on earth, and was
in the end the ruin of him, too--a weakness for the fair sex. Akim's
susceptibility was extreme, his heart could never resist a woman's
glance: he melted before it like the first snow of autumn in the
sun ... and dearly he had to pay for his excessive sensibility.
For the first year after he had set up on the high road Akim was so
busy with building his yard, stocking the place, and all the business
inseparable from moving into a new house that he had absolutely no
time to think of women and if any sinful thought came into his mind he
immediately drove it away by reading various devotional works for
which he cherished a profound respect (he had learned to read when
first he left home), singing the psalms in a low voice or some other
pious occupation. Besides, he was then in his forty-sixth year and at
that time of life every passion grows perceptibly calmer and cooler
and the time for marrying was past. Akim himself began to think that,
as he expressed it, this foolishness was over and done with ... But
evidently there is no escaping one's fate.
Akim's former mistress, Lizaveta Prohorovna Kuntse, the widow of an
officer of German extraction, was herself a native of Mittau, where
she had spent the first years of her childhood and where she had
numerous poor relations, about whom she concerned herself very little,
