and he stood beside me.--'Well? Who is right?'--says he--and keeps rolling his eyes all round me. And then Alexyei Sergyeitch was greatly dismayed; but I said to him: 'Alexis,' I said to him, 'please do not be dismayed; thou shouldst know me better!' And he answered me: 'Be at ease, Melanie!'--And those same diamonds I now have encircling a medallion of Alexyei Grigorievitch--I think, my dear, that thou hast seen me wear it on my shoulder on festival days, on a ribbon of St. George--because he was a very brave hero, a cavalier of the Order of St. George: he burned the Turks!"[43] Notwithstanding all this, Malanya Pavlovna was a very kind woman; she was easy to please.--"She doesn't nag you, and she doesn't sneer at you," the maids said of her.--Malanya Pavlovna was passionately fond of all sweets, and a special old woman, who occupied herself with nothing but the preserves, and therefore was called the preserve-woman, brought to her, half a score of times in a day, a Chinese plate now with candied rose-leaves, again with barberries in honey, or orange sherbet. Malanya Pavlovna feared solitude--dreadful thoughts come then--and was almost constantly surrounded by female hangers-on whom she urgently entreated: "Talk, talk! Why do you sit there and do nothing but warm your seats?"--and they began to twitter like canary-birds. Being no less devout than Alexyei Sergyeitch, she was very fond of praying; but as, according to her own words, she had not learned to recite prayers well, she kept for that purpose the widow of a deacon, who prayed so tastily! She would never stumble to all eternity! And, in fact, that deacon's widow understood how to utter prayerful words in an irrepressible sort of way, without a break even when she inhaled or exhaled her breath--and Malanya Pavlovna listened and melted with emotion. She had another widow also attached to her service; the latter's duty consisted in telling her stories at night,--"but only old ones," entreated Malanya Pavlovna, "those I already know; all the new ones are spurious." Malanya Pavlovna was very frivolous and sometimes suspicious. All of a sudden she would take some idea into her head. She did not like the dwarf Janus, for example; it always seemed to her as though he would suddenly start in and begin to shriek: "But do you know who I am? A Buryat Prince! So, then, submit!"--And if she did not, he would set fire to the house out of melancholy. Malanya Pavlovna was as lavish as Alexyei Sergyeitch; but she never gave money--she did not wish to soil her pretty little hands--but kerchiefs, ear-rings, gowns, ribbons, or she would send a patty from the table, or a bit of the roast, or if not that, a glass of wine. She was also fond of regaling the peasant-women on holidays. They would begin to dance, and she would click her heels and strike an attitude.