Next morning I had only just drunk my morning tea, when Punin made his appearance. He came into my room with rather an embarrassed face, and began making bows, looking about him, and apologising for his intrusion, as he called it. I made haste to reassure him. I, sinful man, imagined that Punin had come with the intention of borrowing money. But he confined himself to asking for a glass of tea with rum in it, as, luckily, the samovar had not been cleared away. ‘It’s with some trepidation and sinking of heart that I have come to see you,’ he said, as he nibbled a lump of sugar. ‘You I do not fear; but I stand in awe of your honoured grandmother! I am abashed too by my attire, as I have already communicated to you.’ Punin passed his finger along the frayed edge of his ancient coat. ‘At home it’s no matter, and in the street, too, it’s no harm; but when one finds one’s self in gilded palaces, one’s poverty stares one in the face, and one feels confused!’ I occupied two small rooms on the ground floor, and certainly it would never have entered any one’s head to call them palaces, still less gilded; but Punin apparently was referring to the whole of my grandmother’s house, though that too was by no means conspicuously sumptuous. He reproached me for not having been to see them the previous day; ‘Paramon Semyonitch,’ said he, ‘expected you, though he did declare that you would be sure not to come. And Musotchka, too, expected you.’ ‘What? Musa Pavlovna too?’ I queried. ‘She too. She’s a charming girl we have got with us, isn’t she? What do you say?’ ‘Very charming,’ I assented. Punin rubbed his bare head with extraordinary rapidity. ‘She’s a beauty, sir, a pearl or even a diamond--it’s the truth I am telling you.’ He bent down quite to my ear. ‘Noble blood, too,’ he whispered to me, ‘only--you understand--left-handed; the forbidden fruit was eaten. Well, the parents died, the relations would do nothing for her, and flung her to the hazards of destiny, that’s to say, despair, dying of hunger! But at that point Paramon Semyonitch steps forward, known as a deliverer from of old! He took her, clothed her and cared for her, brought up the poor nestling; and she has blossomed into our darling! I tell you, a man of the rarest qualities!’ Punin subsided against the back of the armchair, lifted his hands, and again bending forward, began whispering again, but still more mysteriously: ‘You see Paramon Semyonitch himself too.... Didn’t you know? he too is of exalted extraction--and on the left side, too. They do say--his father was a powerful Georgian prince, of the line of King David.... What do you make of that? A few words--but how much is said? The blood of King David! What do you think of that? And according to other accounts, the founder of the family of Paramon Semyonitch was an Indian Shah, Babur. Blue blood! That’s fine too, isn’t it? Eh?’ ‘Well?’ I queried, ‘and was he too, Baburin, flung to the hazards of destiny?’