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house and stand in the entrance hall outside the glass doors, not daring to come inside. If he saw one of us going past – Sasha or myself, or one of the servants whom he knew to be kindly disposed towards him – he would immediately start waving, beckoning to himself, and making various signs, and it was only when one nodded to him and called to him – the prearranged signal that there were no visitors in the house and that he might enter whenever he wished to – only then would the old man quietly open the door, smile with delight, rub his hands with satisfaction and proceed straight on tiptoe to Pokrovsky’s room. This was Pokrovsky’s father. I later discovered most of the details of this poor old man’s story. He had once had a government position somewhere, had no abilities whatsoever and had occupied the lowliest and most insignificant post in the service. On the death of his first wife (the mother of our ‘student’ Pokrovsky), he had taken it into his head to marry a second time, and married a tradesman’s daughter. His new wife turned the household upside down; she would leave no one alone, took everyone in hand. At that time our ‘student’ Pokrovsky was only a child of about ten years old. His stepmother hated him. But fate smiled on little Pokrovsky. The landowner Bykov, who knew the government clerk Pokrovsky and had once been his benefactor, took the child into his care and found him a place in some school or other. He took an interest in the boy because he had known his dead mother, who as a girl had received the good favours of Anna Fyodorovna and had been married by her to the government clerk Pokrovsky. Moved by generosity, Mr Bykov, a friend and intimate acquaintance of Anna Fyodorovna’s, had given the sum of five thousand rubles as a dowry for the bride. Where that money had gone, no one knew. That was the story as Anna Fyodorovna told it to me; the istudent’ Pokrovsky never liked talking about his family circumstances. They say that his mother was very good-looking, and I find it strange that she should have made such a poor marriage to such an insignificant man… She died when she was still quite young, about four years after the marriage. From school young Pokrovsky went to some gymnasium or other, and then on to university. But Mr Bykov, who made veryfrequent visits to St Petersburg, did not stop his patronage with that. Because of his disturbed state of health, Pokrovsky was unable to continue his studies at the university. Mr Bykov introduced him to Anna Fyodorovna with his own personal recommendation, and thus the young Pokrovsky was taken into the household as a dependant, on condition that he teach Sasha everything that might be required. Meanwhile, old Pokrovsky, demented by his wife’s cruelty, abandoned himself to the very worst of vices, and was almost constantly drunk. His wife used to beat him, banished him to the kitchen and reduced him to a state in which he grew accustomed to her beatings and did not complain of her maltreatment of him. He was not yet really all that old, but his self-destructive inclinations had practically turned him into a dotard. The only sign of decent human feeling he ever showed was his boundless love for his son. People used to say that the young Pokrovsky was the spitting image of his dead mother. Might it not have been the memory of his kindly first wife that had inspired the ruined old man’s heart with such an infinite love for him? The old man could speak of nothing but his son, and called to see him without fail two times a week. He did not dare to call more often, because the young Pokrovsky could not stand his father is visits. Of all the young man is faults, the principal and most grievous was unquestionably his lack of respect for his father. It should, of course, be added that the old man could on occasion be the most intolerable creature in the world. For one thing, he was horribly